How much does it cost to APPLY for a Master’s degree in the US?

Are you thinking about pursuing a Master’s degree or do you just want to casually check if you can get in Stanford? Well, go no further. This article is going to tell you all about it, starting with the not-so-obvious facts. ‘Applying is not as cheap as you think.’

But no need to fret! Make sure you go through this post to understand the money you need to spend on things even before you fly to the US or get a visa. Let’s get started.

Distribution of Expenditure:

Medium made me put a picture: University of Florida

1. GRE: Taking the GRE costs $213 (for Indians), which would nearly be INR 22,550. These costs keep changing so take note when you are applying for the exam. If you take tuition for the GRE, it can go from INR 10,000 to 30,000.
2. TOEFL or IELTS: These are English proficiency tests that are required if you are coming from a non-English speaking country like India. Both the exams cost around INR 17,000. You also need to send official scores to the universities you apply to which might take ~INR 3,000 out of your pocket. I would highly suggest TOEFL over IELTS as some universities do not accept IELTS scores.
3. Transcripts: Your undergrad university might charge you for the approval of transcripts. I spent INR 1,090 for transcript approval and another INR 4,488 to send my transcripts to two universities. Some universities ask for a hard copy of transcripts while applying (hail FedEx and DHL) and others request once you’ve got an admit.
4. Counseling: Not everyone needs this. But if you end up with a counselor, they’ll take up 10 to 40 thousand from you depending on their ‘brand’ name. I paid INR 15,000 which I found a lot of value in but definitely would research a lot before paying 40,000.
5. Application fee: If you think the above costs are a lot, this is not the thing for you! The majority of your money will be spent on applying to various universities. I ended up spending INR 70,000 where fees ranged from INR 3,000 (University of Florida) to INR 10,000 (University of California). Also don’t neglect UCs just because they take a crazy application fee, make an informed decision. Well, I know I would attract criticism for this… ‘You silly girl, many universities offer application fee waivers. You are flushing money down the drain.’ Well, a few universities do let you apply for free, or your counselor might hook you up with some, but do you want to go to a university that offers status, great courses, an unbeatable alumni network, and amazing career fairs or you would go to a university where you save five thousand Rupees in application fee?
6. Visa: Great chances are that you are an international student and which means you would need an F1 (student) Visa. You would have to pay $160 and $360 which means I paid ~INR 38,000 not knowing if it’ll ever get approved!

So adding all these things up… I spent a whopping 2 Lakh Indian Rupees without being sure if I’d be studying in the US! Surprisingly, I spend the least money of all my friends :)

About me: I was an incoming Fall 2021 MS CS student at the University of Florida. I now work at Nvidia as a Software Engineer after interning there over the summer. Check out my LinkedIn profile :)

A step-by-step guide to applying and the timeline for the Fall semester