While MS degrees are offered by universities across the world, for the sake of keeping it simple, we’ll only focus on the most popular MS destination for Indians.

The other thing we’ll do, given the diversity of MS courses on offer, is to generalise. We’ll use broad ranges and averages rather than accurately track the costs (which are ever changing every single day, thanks to the wildly fluctuating INR vs USD foreign exchange rates).

How much does an MS in USA cost in Indian Rupees and USD

We’ll take up the various expenses as they start appearing on your bank statements.

MS in US cost in Indian Rupees : MS Entrance Exam Costs

You’ll need a GRE score, the primary requirement for MS applications. As on the day of writing this post, it costs $190 (11,400 Rupees). We’re skipping those overheads, assuming you plan and execute the MS entrance exams well.

MS in US cost in Indian Rupees : MS Application fees

The average application fee for many of the top MS programs in the USA is $75 (4,500 Rupees).

Additionally, if you haven’t planned your target MS colleges well and included them during the GRE exam (you are allowed 4 free universities) you have to pay $27 (INR 1,620) to send the score to each additional Masters university.

Similarly, TOEFL allows 4 free universities. The fee for sending your TOEFL score to additional MS universities is $19 (1,140 Rupees).

Assuming, you are sending 10 MS applications, at an average application fee of $121 [$75 + $27 + $19] per MS university, you are staring at a total expense of $1,210 [Rupees 72,600]

While most universities have moved to online applications, let’s also factor in the additional expenses to send postal packets with your transcripts, financial statements (bank) and other documents. Let’s cap this at around 10,000 rupees.

Your F1 visa / SEVIS fee would add another $500 (30,000 Rupees). We’ve touched Rupees 1.1 Lakh already. And we haven’t even got into the plane yet.

Which brings us to the next major cost component.

MS in US cost in Indian Rupees : Student Airfare Costs

A return ticket would be cheaper than a one way ticket. Also, applying earlier can get you good discounts from many airlines. This can range from 60,000 to 1 lakh rupees.

We’ll take the middle ground here and assume 80,000 for airfare.

MS in US cost in Indian Rupees : MS Tuition Costs in USA

The big one! Unlike programs like MBA where you pay a fixed fee for the whole course, MS programs in USA charge a fee based on the credit hours.

Typically, you’d be expected to complete around 36 credit hours. The fee per credit hours depends on whether it’s a public school (funded by the state) or private school (more freedom and bigger need to fleece).
It will also depend how if you’ve got an MS scholarship or graduate assistantship, in which case the savings can be enormous.

Without any financial aid, the fee for MS programs in the US ranges from $10,000 to $80,000 (6 – 48 Lakh Rupees) for the 2 years. A top grade university like CMU would fall in the higher range.

Let’s take the middle ground again and assume that the average is close to $45,000 (27 lakh rupees).

Cost of living for MS students

If you are still recovering from that earlier blow, we aren’t done yet. Once you arrive in the land of dreams, there are other activities that you’d get involved in which cost money. Like living (rental costs), eating (if you’ve read the newspapers, the days of surviving on Maggi are gone), drinking (your phoren classmates won’t appreciate your home-made nimbu paani).

For shared rentals and a modest lifestyle, let’s assume that the cost of living in USA for MS students is roughly $1000 a month. Over two years, that adds up to $24,000 (INR 14.4 lakhs).

MS in US Costs that we haven’t considered

Opportunity cost for MS students

This is a notional (not real) cost of not having an income for those 2 years that you’ll be spending in the classroom. For students who join an MS program after a few years of experience, this can be a considerable amount. But many join MS colleges immediately after engineering (B Tech, B.E). At junior levels, the salary isn’t much. As we’ve done with many other parameters that increase the complexity of arriving at a number, we’ll skip one too.

Test prep and Admissions Counselling cost

These aren’t simple expenses like the ones we listed earlier. The ambitious ones take up GRE preparation classes and hire MS admissions counsellors hoping to see some returns – like a higher chance of getting an admit and scholarship.

These are optional in nature and not all MS applicants would incur them. So, we decided to skip them.

We’ve also not considered your student income over the two years (like MS internships) which can reduce the overall costs of attending an American MS university.

Total cost of Masters degree | MS in U.S. Universities