Which Countries are the Cheapest to Study Abroad?

Studying abroad during your undergraduate or post-graduate years is a life changing experience that attracts more American students every year. Unfortunately, it is not free, and can actually be quite expensive in many cases. Not every country carries the same price tag however. We took the 48 most popular countries in which American students study and determined how cheap (or expensive) those countries were.

Highlights

Mexico, India and Guatemala are the cheapest overall countries to study abroad; Singapore, Switzerland, and Norway are the most expensive.
Of the ten cheapest, there are zero European countries, while in the ten most expensive there are six European countries.
Latin American countries make up 50% of the ten cheapest countries to study abroad.

The Rankings

countries

Cheapest Countries

In the table below you may see how each country ranks within the major factors we used to shape our simulated per semester cost. A "1" means the cheapest for that category while a "48" means the most expensive.

	Country	Rent+Utilities	Flight	Groceries	Nightlife / Dining Out	Clothes Shopping	Recreational	Monthly Transportation	Mobile	Student Visa
1	Mexico	2	1	4	7	5	13	7	28	6
2	India	1	31	1	5	2	2	2	1	21
3	Guatemala	10	5	16	13	29	20	3	33	1
4	Peru	14	7	9	6	12	30	6	25	1
5	Vietnam	7	17	15	2	3	4	1	3	43
6	Dominican Republic	11	3	17	20	24	29	15	8	26
7	Morocco	3	21	3	24	10	8	5	47	8
8	Kenya	4	18	10	26	1	22	17	6	41
9	Brazil	6	22	6	12	15	9	23	42	33
10	Thailand	5	24	21	17	19	28	18	4	32
11	Ecuador	8	8	12	11	38	26	4	38	47
12	South Africa	15	34	2	10	6	3	16	30	9
13	Hungary	18	12	8	3	16	15	22	16	16
14	Cuba	17	11	13	4	9	1	47	24	7
15	Russia	20	9	5	16	18	11	10	20	33
16	Turkey	9	19	14	18	4	19	33	32	42
17	Chile	19	13	18	14	7	17	27	29	33
18	Taiwan	12	14	40	15	27	31	19	12	30
19	Poland	21	38	7	8	14	5	14	10	16
20	Costa Rica	22	6	25	23	28	32	31	22	1
21	Czech Republic	24	43	11	1	17	7	9	36	1
22	Greece	16	28	23	28	23	14	21	43	38
23	Jordan	13	28	20	36	42	40	25	7	39
24	China	25	32	31	9	33	21	11	18	31

The Cheapest Overview

The top ten cheapest countries have representations from all over the world, though Latin America is certainly the most present. In fact, out of the 10 Latin American countries in our study, five are in the top 10 cheapest places to study abroad. The only Latin American country in our study that is outside of the 24 cheapest countries list is Argentina who is the 25th cheapest (24th most expensive) meaning overall, Latin America is a fantastic place to study while still saving money.

Europe, which draws over 50% of American students, has zero representatives in the top ten. Hungary, which got less than 1,000 American students in 2013-14 is the cheapest European country at #13 in our ranking. This neglected central European nation has one of the cheapest capitals of Europe in Budapest, where students can reap the benefits of a very cheap nightlife and affordable rents. For those who want Europe, but not the European prices, Hungary can be a great option. There are only four more countries from Europe within the top 24 countries: Russia, Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic who only received a total of 2.89% of students between them in 2013-14. Interestingly, the Czech Republic, which usually ranks towards the middle of the list in most categories, has the cheapest nightlife of any country. Yet perhaps the most surprising statistic about the top ten cheapest countries, is that only 12.8% of students studied in any of them. Nearly as many students studied in the U.K. alone than in all of those countries.

Costliest Countries

As we did with the cheapest countries, below you may see how the costliest countries rank within each major factor.

	Country	Rent+Utilities	Flight	Groceries	Nightlife/Dining Out	Clothes Shopping	Recreational	Monthly Transportation	Mobile	Student Visa
1	Singapore	48	33	45	48	26	47	35	5	22
2	Switzerland	47	39	48	46	48	48	37	44	16
3	Norway	44	15	47	47	45	37	39	40	46
4	Australia	46	47	34	40	32	33	43	23	48
5	Ireland	45	10	29	45	30	35	48	41	24
6	United Kingdom	42	20	30	39	31	36	40	14	29
7	Netherlands	41	46	28	34	37	10	41	37	45
8	Bahamas	43	2	46	43	40	44	20	26	1
9	Denmark	39	26	39	37	46	12	32	48	44
10	New Zealand	38	40	35	38	25	23	44	35	40
11	Belgium	40	27	38	44	41	6	30	31	16
12	Israel	36	36	36	41	44	43	34	34	10
13	Japan	35	41	44	29	20	46	42	45	13
14	Sweden	30	25	42	42	43	24	45	19	27
15	France	34	30	41	33	39	34	36	20	14
16	Ghana	37	35	33	19	8	41	46	11	22
17	Italy	29	48	32	35	34	38	24	15	28
18	Germany	33	37	27	25	35	16	38	13	14
19	Austria	32	16	37	30	36	18	29	2	25
20	Tanzania	28	42	19	32	11	45	12	17	20
21	South Korea	27	44	43	22	21	39	26	9	11
22	Panama	31	4	26	31	13	42	8	27	11
23	Spain	26	23	22	21	22	27	28	39	33
24	Argentina	23	45	24	27	47	25	13	46	33

The Costliest Overview

The most expensive side of our rankings tells a very different story. Whereas there were zero European countries amongst the 10 cheapest, there are six amongst the 10 costliest. The common theme between them is they are all mostly from Northern Europe. With Sweden and Belgium also within the top 15, it makes this region the most expensive in the world to study. We should also note, although the U.K. sits in our 6th position, if we were to take into account just London, and not other cities such as Manchester, and Edinburgh, the U.K. would actually be the most expensive on the list.

Furthermore, of the “Big Five” of Europe: Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the U.K, who attract 40.62% of all Americans abroad, are all in the costliest list, but only the U.K sits in the top ten. France, Italy and Germany are the 15th, 17th and 18th most expensive while Spain is the 23rd. Spain is also the cheapest country of those that attract over 5% of all students, being about 16% and 33% cheaper than the equally popular Italy and France.

Also on the costliest list are the two major Oceania countries, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand has similar costs to Australia, as both require expensive flights from the U.S, have expensive nightlife and costly public transportation. Nonetheless, New Zealand is still 25% cheaper than Australia.

There are no Asian nations in the top ten. The most popular Asian countries, Japan and China occupy the 13th and 26th costliest positions on our list, with the island nation being about 35.4% more expensive than China. Students studying in Japan will not experience any one particular expense to be extremely high, rather all categories are slightly more expensive.

Methodology

To compile the list of countries, we started with the Institute of International Education's data portal, which lists the number of American students that studied in each country around the world. We selected countries that had at least 500 students study there in the most recent year; the average number of students per country was 5,340. We then determined nine major factors we felt best reflected a college student's spending habits in a foreign country. The factors include the cost of rent and utilities, flights from the U.S, grocery costs, shopping for clothing, nightlife, recreational spending on a gym membership and movie ticket, a mobile phone plan and the cost of a student visa.

The data for rent, utilities, groceries, nightlife, shopping, and recreation were obtained through numbeo.com. The average cost of a flight was acquired through momondo.com's "flight insight" tool. The cost of a mobile data plan was obtained by numbeo.com for the cost of a minute, in addition to a study by the International Telecommunication Union who lists the cost of mobile data plans in different countries. Finally, we compiled a budget, which emphasized certain factors over the other to reflect the college student budget. For example, the nightlife budget we made larger than what a typical, non-student, would spend in that category. We then added the estimated totals and used those sums to rank each country.

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