How to find out the cost of studying at us universities

When choosing a school and program in the United States price is one of the major arguments in favor of one or another educational institution. On the websites of American universities is difficult to find information about programs cost - especially if the University is large, and has several divisions.

This material will help you understand where to look and how to consider the cost of tuition at American universities.

How to find prices on the website

Cost information may be in sections Tuition & Fees, Admission, Finance and Aid, Student Charges, Registrar Office - the names are varied and can sometimes be quite unexpected.

Council. Use the search function or built-in on the University's website or in Google. The latter option is often the most reliable. The request to Google looks like this: “Tuition for Out-of-State Students + University name”.

Out-of-State Students is all students who are not residents of the state where the institution is located, including foreigners. Sometimes referred to as nonresidents non - resident.

Table with the prices - big and small

You've come to the right page and saw a single small table with the main items of expenditure and final cost, or a few long tables indicating the cost per credit hour.

Council. In order to quickly and correctly calculate the price, you need to determine the basic parameters:

• Type of cost: out-of-state/ nonresidents
• Level of study: bachelor's or master's degree.
• Subject area or program
• The number of credit hours that we plan to take.
• Academic calendar of the University: semesters or trimesters - depends on what is the average credit hours of “fit” in the academic year.

Let's see how it works

The table you see below are shown on the website of the University of California is a large state University with large number of units. The heading is “Costs for nonresidents” - so these prices are for foreigners.

Here everything is simple. The table has two columns: the first contains the price of accommodation on campus ($60882), the second - outside ($56982), as well as all main expenses: tuition and student fees, course materials, mandatory health insurance, accommodation and meals, transportation on campus and estimated personal expenses.

All in all very convenient! But, unfortunately, these convenient tables are quite rare, partly because the schools almost never set a single price on all programs.

And now calculate the cost based on credit hours

Universities often offer prospective students calculate the cost of the program based on the academic load they would like to take. It is quite difficult to determine during a first acquaintance with the website of the University. What should I do?

Council. Calculate prices based on the minimum study load required to complete the program:

Teaching load is a certain number of credit hours of U.S. institutions of higher educationneeded to earn the degree.

Credit hours will require approximately 1.5 times more, if the academic year is divided into trimesters, not semesters. The students doing a comparable amount of work - just “weight” timestravel credit hours somewhat less than a semester. Read more about academic year in USA can be found here.

Now we know enough about how the pricing in U.S. universities, and can work out the calculations. As example, consider a table with the cost per credit hour on the website of Oregon State University.

Consider the cost of a bachelor degree

View, what is the cost of education for undergraduate program. Undergraduate - level undergraduate.To learn more about the bachelor's in the U.S. here.

Step 1. We want to know the price for a foreign student who will live on campus - select the last row in the table, non-residents on-campus.

Step 2. Check the programs covered by the cost of credit hours. In this case, the price effect on the majority of undergraduate majors. Specialty-exceptions are noted on the University's website, but here we do not present them.

Step 3. Check the academic calendar of the University. State University of Oregon is working on an 11-week trimesters, respectively, to complete the bachelor programme, the student will need to dial:

180 credit hours for a four-year/ 45 credit hours per year/ 15 credit hours per trimester.

Step 4. In many universities the more credit hours a student takes, the cheaper they cost. In this case it is: 1 credit hour for foreigners cost $1387,31, whereas 15 credits - $9615,31. The savings is obvious. And 15 credits in a trimester is just what we need 4 years to graduate.

Step 5. We expect annual cost:

15 credit hours x 3 semesters = $9615,31 x 3 = $28845,93.

Important! Now we have calculated only the cost of training - without accommodation, food and other mandatory costs that we have seen in the table, the University of California.

Consider the cost of magistrates

In a similar way we calculate the cost of a master's studies graduate. To learn more about education in USA here.

To complete the master course at the University, working on trimestrali system, we will need 2 years at least:

36 hours for all the courses/ 18 credit hours per year 6 credit hours per trimester.

The cost for most master programs are indicated in the top row of the table under the heading Graduate programs. Like on the bachelor, is a specialty exceptions, but here we do not consider them.

Remember that the more credit hours you take, the cheaper they cost us. Consider the scheme: the cost of 6 credit hours* 3 trimester.

Received: $5364,31*3 = $16092,93 for the year if you take 6 credit hours in a trimester;

$7813,31*3 = $23439,93 for the year, if you take 9 credit hours per trimester.

Important! Now we have calculated only the cost of training - without accommodation, food and other mandatory expenses.

Summarize

In conclusion, we emphasize that the rates for the next academic year, you receive on the website of any University, to be approximate. Calculate the exact cost of the chosen program will help the employee of the University to which you want to apply directly. For this you can go to the profile of the University on our website and click on “Ask a question”. The question will be sent directly to the representative of the University, it's free.

Remember that others are quite significant costs (accommodation, mandatory health insurance, cost of visas, tickets, tests, fee for consideration of documents, etc.) in most cases, the resulting amount does not include.

In addition to the tables, some universities offer students to calculate the cost of training via online calculator. How to use the online calculator to calculate prices for training in U.S. universities, we are talking here.

If you calculate the price turned out to be difficult to contact our consultants by phone or through the inquiry form on the website.