Applying costs money whether or not anyone admits you. The fees are spread across five or six organisations, none of which shows you the total, and for a student applying to ten universities the bill arrives in pieces over several months.
A student from India added theirs up afterwards and put the total at about $850, broken down as $275 for the test, $220 for TOEFL, $80 in application fees and $75 to send scores. No outcome attached to any of it.
So we priced each piece from the organisation that charges it. Everything below is quoted from an official page, and the waivers at the end cancel most of it for students who ask.
The application fee: $0 to $100 per university
Each university sets its own, and the spread is wide. Stanford charges a $100 nonrefundable application fee. Harvard's is $95.
Plenty charge nothing. Common App's own guidance says 500+ colleges have no application fee for international students, a separate figure from the 500+ that charge nothing to domestic students, and the application lets you filter for them in College Search.
Outside the US the same is true. One student describes UNIST in South Korea having no application fee at all alongside a scholarship covering four years.
One warning about any fee you read anywhere, including in our own data. Universities raise these between cycles. Our records from universities' Common Data Set filings still list Stanford at $90 and Harvard at $85. Their own pages now say $100 and $95. Check the university's page rather than any list, including ours.
The Common App fee waiver covers every university you apply to
This is the single most valuable thing in this post, and it sits in a part of the form that is easy to pass over.
Common App's guidance on fees and waivers states that the Common App Fee Waiver "waives the application fee of any college you apply to through Common App". Not one university. Every university on your list.
Requesting it takes two steps inside the Profile section of the Common App tab: answer "Yes" to the fee waiver statement, then enter your signature to certify the request. Your counselor is asked to confirm you are eligible, and the guidance is explicit that "you will still be able to submit your application without a fee while your counselor confirms", so a slow counselor does not cost you a deadline.
In 2022-2023 Common App granted $133 million in fee waivers to more than 400,000 applicants.
Universities run their own waivers alongside it. Harvard publishes an answer to this question for international applicants specifically: "If the admissions application fee presents a hardship for you or your family, the fee will be waived." It adds the line worth repeating to anyone who hesitates: "Requesting a fee waiver will not disadvantage your application in any way."
Students use both routes. A student from East Africa who got into Penn's Huntsman Program says a counselor secured a Common App fee waiver "which made all my applications free of charge". A student from Abuja at Luther College had the fee waived by the university directly. One student who applied to 80 universities used the Coalition Application partly because of the waivers available through it.
The SAT costs $43 more outside the United States
The College Board's international fees page is direct about it: "The SAT registration fee is $68, plus a $43 international fee."
That is $111 before anything else, and some locations add a test center fee of $24 on top. Late registration is $38.
Read the US fees page next to it and a second difference appears. The American page mentions fee waivers repeatedly: the registration fee line notes "Some students are eligible for a fee waiver", and the cancellation and late registration lines both say "Free with fee waiver". The international page lists the same services and the same prices with no mention of a waiver anywhere on it.
Sending scores is charged per university
This is the cost that scales with the length of your list, and it is the one nobody budgets for.
The SAT gives you four free score reports if you order them within nine days of the test. After that it is $15 per report.
TOEFL is more expensive. ETS charges US$29 each for additional score reports, alongside US$69 to reschedule and US$49 for express registration within seven days of the test.
Applying to twelve universities on TOEFL, past the free allocation, is most of another test fee in score reports alone.
The Duolingo English Test advertises "unlimited sharing" on its own page, which removes this line from the budget entirely. Duolingo does not publish its price on its public pages, so we cannot quote it here with the same confidence as the others.
The English test itself
Prices are set per country, so the only honest answer is to check your own.
ETS publishes a separate fee page for each country. In India, TOEFL iBT registration is ₹15,729, with additional score reports at ₹2,000 each.
Test fees have waivers too, and they are barely advertised. A student from Uzbekistan who went to Wharton was advised to take the Duolingo test for speed and flexibility, and was given a fee waiver code for it.
The US visa: $350 before the interview
If you are admitted to an American university, the I-901 SEVIS fee is $350 for F and M visa applicants, and you have to show proof of payment at the visa interview.
There is a separate visa application fee payable to the State Department on top of that. Its fee schedule sits behind a bot check that we will not work around, so check the current figure on travel.state.gov or with your nearest US embassy rather than taking a number from a blog, this one included.
How to cut the bill
Ask for the Common App fee waiver first. One request covers every university on your list, and Harvard states plainly that asking does not disadvantage you.
Filter for universities with no fee. More than 500 charge international applicants nothing, and they are searchable inside the Common App.
Order your free score reports inside the deadline. Four SAT reports are free if you order within nine days of the test, and $15 each afterwards.
Pick the test that matches the length of your list. If you are applying to twelve universities, per-report charges of $29 matter more than the headline test fee.
Ask about test fee waivers. They exist and they are rarely advertised. A counselor or a programme advisor is the person to ask.
Check every fee on the organisation's own page. They change between cycles, which is how our own stored figure for Stanford ended up $10 out of date.
Start your own journey
Work out the total before you build the list rather than after. Count the application fees for the universities you want, the test, the score reports for that number of universities, and the visa if you are going to the United States. Then take the waivers off.
For a lot of students the honest total after waivers is close to zero, and the reason they pay anyway is that nobody told them to ask.
Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, can tell you which universities on your list charge nothing, what each one currently charges if it does, and what the deadlines are for the free score reports. It's free to use.
Start with Kai, and read the stories from students who applied on waivers.
