For many international students, money is a major factor when deciding where they want to study abroad. And more often than not, finding out how much studying in a different country actually costs isn’t that easy. Let’s take a look into how much it costs to study at university or college in Canada.
When choosing a specific college or university to attend, there are a number of factors you need to consider. These can include things like safety, geographical location, the size of the institution, the quality of the teaching, the number of international students studying there already and the international reputation of the university. However, if the cost of the course is unaffordable then all of these other factors will play a secondary role.
Your starting point is your course content. First, find a course at a university that you like the look of and find out how much the course fees are. This will either be listed as a total cost for the whole of the course (usually lasting three or four years of study), or the fees will be listed per semester.
Tuition fees by university
UnivCan.ca is an online resource providing information about Canada’s higher education institutions. They break down the basic costs of study for both domestic and international (marked as ‘foreign’) students. You can filter these results by institution, cost per year and province.
These figures do not take into consideration funding options, such as scholarships, grants, students loans which may be used to fund international study at each institution, so they should only be used as a benchmark figure to give an approximate idea of study costs without financial aid.
Certain courses will also incur higher fees so always check with an institution for the most up to date tuition fees for each course. For specific information about study scholarships available in Canada, you should check on specific institutions’ websites, as well as scholarship sites such as TopUniversities and Scholars4dev.
Other costs to consider
When it comes to studying overseas, the costs don’t stop at tuition fees. Here’s a list of other costs that you’ll need to consider when studying in Canada.
- International travel and flight costs
- Student visas
- Accommodation and housing costs
- Additional course costs – textbooks, uniform etc.
- Living costs – food, daily travel, socialising other living expenses
- Health insurance
- Bills such as your phone bill, internet, Netflix etc.
