Costs of Study Abroad
The cost of study abroad programs vary depending on where you want to study, how long the program is, what’s included in the program costs and finally, how your university handles study abroad. First, find out from your school’s study abroad office who pays for you to go abroad: you or them. There are essentially three ways this works: 1) You pay your school’s tuition and your school covers the study abroad costs 2) You don’t pay your university’s tuition and you pay for the study abroad costs 3) Some combination of the above. From my experience most private schools go with option 1 and most public schools go with option 2. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. Here’s what it breaks down to: If you are a student at a private school and you pay for study abroad yourself (option 2) you may actually find studying abroad to be cheaper than staying in the US. If you are a student at a public school (in-state) you will find study abroad to be more expensive than staying in the states. Most abroad programs cost anywhere from $8,000-14,000 a semester.
Find out if your program covers:
- flight from the US to host country
- excursions and field trips while you are studying abroad
- food and meal costs (some schools will pay your host family directly or pay you with the expectation that you will pay your host family. If you’re in a dorm find out what that means for you.) Our program gave us $200 a month for food in Russia through an ATM card.
- lodging
- insurance
- other transportation
- books and other academic fees
