Cost of studying in the United States: tuition fees at 2,565 universities
A year's tuition in the United States runs from $0 to $72,097, and typically $16,440 to $23,210, across the 2,565 universities that publish a rate.
- Universities with a published fee
- 2,565
- Typical year
- $16,440 – $23,210
- Lowest published
- $0
- Highest published
- $72,097
1 of them charge no tuition at all. A semester contribution or student-union fee usually still applies, and it does not reduce rent, food or the sum a student visa asks you to show.
Every figure on this page is the rate the university or the country's own fee law publishes for an international student. Where a university publishes nothing, it is left out rather than estimated, so 2,565 is the number of universities in the United States that state a rate, not the number that exist.
What each university charges an international student
The rate each university publishes for a year, in USD. Open a university to see which programmes the rate covers and where the figure came from.
| University | City | THE rank | Tuition a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Cambridge | 2 | $62,396 – $63,393 |
| Princeton University | Princeton | 3 | $62,688 – $62,860 |
| Harvard University | Cambridge | 5 | $55,440 – $61,676 |
| Stanford University | Palo Alto | 5 | $59,499 – $65,910 |
| California Institute of Technology | Pasadena | 7 | $63,063 – $65,898 |
| University of California, Berkeley | Berkeley | 9 | $30,363 – $50,547 |
| Yale University | New Haven | 10 | $48,300 – $67,250 |
| University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia | 14 | $46,034 – $68,686 |
| The University of Chicago | Chicago | 15 | $66,543 – $70,662 |
| Johns Hopkins University | Baltimore | 16 | $65,230 – $65,956 |
| Cornell University | Ithaca | 18 | $30,085 – $69,314 |
| University of California, Los Angeles UCLA | Los Angeles | 18 | $28,985 – $49,403 |
| Columbia University | New York City | 20 | $56,279 – $71,845 |
| University of Michigan - Ann Arbor | Ann Arbor | 23 | $55,052 – $60,946 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | Pittsburgh | 24 | $49,450 – $66,246 |
| University of Washington (System) | Seattle | 25 | $32,511 – $43,209 |
| Duke University | Durham | 28 | $63,985 – $68,758 |
| Northwestern University | Evanston | 30 | $53,871 – $68,322 |
| New York University (NYU) | New York City | 31 | $41,124 – $62,796 |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta | 41 | $30,646 – $34,484 |
| University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign | Urbana | 41 | $33,640 – $35,124 |
| UC San Diego - University of California | San Diego | 47 | $29,637 – $50,958 |
| The University of Texas at Austin | Austin | 50 | $22,954 – $44,908 |
| University of Wisconsin - Madison | Madison | 53 | $25,615 – $42,103 |
| University of California, Davis | Davis | 64 | $29,662 – $50,974 |
| Brown University | Providence | 65 | $67,006 – $71,412 |
| Washington University in St. Louis | St. Louis | 67 | $62,366 – $65,790 |
| University of California - Santa Barbara | Santa Barbara | 72 | $29,555 – $50,614 |
| University of Southern California | Los Angeles | 73 | $68,128 – $72,097 |
| Boston University | Boston | 76 | $64,712 – $68,102 |
Living costs
the United States puts a student's living costs at $1,500 to $2,300 a month. Derived from official university living-cost estimates, not a national source: University of Arizona publishes USD 18250/year living expenses for the I-20 (~1520/month), ASU publishes USD 18819/year for on-campus housing and meals (2026-27), and Northeastern's 2026-27 Boston cost of attendance implies roughly 2250/month for non-tuition costs. Covers housing, food and personal expenses;