How Much Does a US University Cost International Students? We Checked 2,000+ Universities

The University of Michigan publishes its cost of attendance on one page, in one table. For the 2026-27 year it comes to $40,194.

An international student starting there this year pays $88,394.

Both numbers are on the same university page, one under the other. The first is for Michigan residents. The second is for everybody else, and everybody else includes you.

We pulled the federal cost filings for 2,358 US universities to see how often this happens and how large the difference gets. The answer is that it happens at almost every public university in the country, and the amount it hides runs from a few thousand dollars to nearly fifty thousand a year.

Public universities

US public universities are funded by the state they sit in, so they charge two prices. Residents of that state pay one rate. Everyone else pays a second, higher rate. An international student is in the second group, in every state, with no path to the first one while on a student visa.

Of the 465 four-year public universities in our data with both rates on file, 306 publish a headline cost that understates the non-resident price by $10,000 a year or more. For 71 of them the gap is over $20,000. The median gap is $11,880.

The gap is widest at the flagships that international students apply to most.

Those three are the current 2026-27 figures from each university's own cost page. Michigan charges non-residents $67,096 in tuition and fees against $18,896 for residents. Virginia charges $57,432 against $16,842.

The University of California does it differently and more simply. Every UC campus charges all non-residents a flat extra called Nonresident Supplemental Tuition, and for 2026-27 it is $39,270. That one line is the entire difference between a Californian and you at Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, Davis or any other campus. It does not vary by campus and it does not go away in later years.

So when you read a UC cost page, find the resident total and add $39,270.

Private universities

Private universities charge one price to everybody, which makes them easier to compare and, at the top end, more expensive than anything public.

A year at the most expensive of them has now passed $100,000. These are each university's current published figure:

Pepperdine's figure comes from the page it publishes for international students specifically, which it uses for visa paperwork, so it is the number an admissions office will ask you to prove you have.

Across the 1,038 institutions in our data that charge a single rate to everyone, the median total cost is $52,549, and 115 of them were already above $80,000 a year in the 2023-24 filings.

At that level the sticker price stops telling you anything useful, because what these universities give back varies enormously. Among those 115 universities, the average grant ran from $16,218 to $63,759.

Those five rows are 2023-24 filings and the costs have risen since, but the shape holds. Amherst and the School of Visual Arts advertise a similar number. What a student ends up owing at one is four times what they owe at the other.

Financial aid

Here is where the published figures stop applying to you, and it is the single most important thing on this page.

Every US university reports an average grant and the share of students receiving one. Across 1,509 four-year universities, the median average grant is $16,054 and the median share receiving something is 89%. Those numbers look reassuring, and they are built mostly out of money you cannot have.

Federal student aid, which includes Pell Grants and federal loans, goes only to US citizens and to what the government calls eligible noncitizens. The Department of Education's own list of who qualifies covers permanent residents, refugees, people granted asylum, holders of a T visa, and a small number of similar categories. A student on an F-1 visa is in the country for a temporary purpose, which places them outside every category on that list. State grant programmes work the same way in most states.

So the 89% figure describes a population that is almost entirely domestic. What is left for an international student is the university's own institutional money, and that varies from generous to zero. A university can advertise a large average grant while offering nothing at all to students from outside the country.

Two questions settle this before you apply anywhere, and both have published answers:

1. Does this university award institutional aid to international students?
2. If yes, how many international students received it last year, and what was the average award?

Universities that fund international students publish those numbers in section H6 of their Common Data Set. Universities that do not fund them tend to leave the section blank.

The cheapest four-year degrees

The price range across US universities is far wider than most students assume. In our data, 469 four-year institutions have a total cost under $30,000, and 221 are under $25,000.

The most interesting case is in North Carolina. Four universities in the UNC System run a state programme called NC Promise, which sets tuition at $500 a semester for residents and $3,500 a semester for everyone else, including international students. That is $7,000 a year in tuition at a four-year public American university.

Add housing, food and books and a year lands near $22,000 all in. That is a quarter of what Berkeley costs a non-resident, at an accredited public university with the same visa, the same work rules and the same route to a US degree.

Two further points about NC Promise. The non-resident rate rose from $2,500 to $3,500 a semester for students entering in 2026, so check the current figure before you plan around it. And the four campuses are regional universities rather than research flagships, which matters for some fields and not at all for others.

Elsewhere, Berea College in Kentucky is worth knowing about for a different reason. Its published cost is $60,718 and its average grant is $49,715, because the college charges no tuition to any admitted student and admits international students into that model.

How to work out your number

The figure you need is not on the front of a university's cost page. Building it takes four steps.

Start from the non-resident total. At a public university, find the out-of-state or non-resident column. If the page shows only one total, it is the resident one. At a UC campus, add $39,270 to the resident figure.

Add health insurance. US universities require it and most will charge you automatically unless you prove equivalent coverage. Virginia charges $4,220 a year. Berkeley charges $5,066. This line is often left out of the headline total.

Add travel. Universities build a travel allowance into the cost of attendance, and it is usually sized for a domestic student. Virginia's ranges from $550 to $2,240 depending on where you are coming from. Your flights home will cost more than the allowance assumes.

Subtract only institutional aid you have confirmed in writing. Not the published average, which is mostly federal money. The offer letter is the number.

Check the rate for later years. Some universities charge more in the third and fourth years. Virginia's non-resident total rises from $83,286 in the first year to $87,674 by the third.

Where the numbers come from

The 2,358 cost filings are from IPEDS, the US Department of Education's own collection, for the 2023-24 reporting cycle. Every figure is in US dollars and covers one academic year. All the distribution figures in this post, the medians, the counts and the comparisons of sticker against average grant, come from that dataset.

Seven of the figures here are current rather than from that cycle, taken from each university's own published cost page: Michigan, Virginia and Berkeley for 2026-27, the UNC System's NC Promise rate for students entering in 2026, and USC, Northwestern and Pepperdine. Where a table is built from the 2023-24 filings, it says so.

Tuition rises most years, so treat any 2023-24 figure as a floor rather than a current price, and check the university's own page before you plan around it.

Start your own journey

The cost of a US degree is one of the few things in this process you can find out before you apply, and most students find it out after. A university that costs $90,000 on paper may cost you $25,000. A university that costs $40,000 on paper may cost you $88,000. The published number tells you which universities to look into, and nothing more.

Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, works out what each university on your list would cost someone in your situation, checks which ones fund international students, and tells you where your money goes furthest. It's free to use.

Start with Kai, and read the stories from students who found the money.