Not so long ago, I laid out a story about enrolling in graduate school in the United States, but now I’ll tell you a little about the life of a graduate student and the financial issues of admission and the cost of living in the United States using the example of my real numbers (most of the figures are for South Carolina).

Part 1. Admission

The first part lives here .

Part 2. Life

So, imagine that you have passed the exams, completed all the documents and entered one of the US universities for PhD. After that, you get an I-20 from the university, arrange an interview with the embassy, ​​apply for a visa, and come to the interview. At this point, you will spend about $ 300 on a visa (to be honest, I don’t remember exactly, if anyone knows the exact number, write pliz). Then you go to the interview, I ask you about why you are going to go to the USA, you tell that a professor is waiting for you there, that you will create technologies, that you will change the world, but you still get a visa :). In fact, everything was not so bad, and if work / study is not related to the development of the atomic bomb, then everything should be fine.

Now you already have a visa and must have a plane ticket. Everything is interesting with a plane ticket: you can wait for a visa and then buy tickets (but it will be more expensive), and you can immediately buy tickets (but then there is a chance not to get a visa on time). Here you decide how it will be. In my case, the ticket cost $ 1300 (in principle, if you fly from any small city somewhere in the CIS to another small city in the USA, everything will be in the region of $ 1000-1500), so it is worth adding to the initial expenses visa, translation of documents, forwarding, etc. etc.
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Imagine that everything worked out and you fly to the USA. First of all, I strongly advise you to find a person who will help you deal with minor everyday issues and, first of all, meet you at the airport. This could be the same PhD student of your professor (as I had), someone from your university’s Russian community, a taxi driver for money (not cheap), or even me if you decide to go to our lands (how to get to our project will be the next article :)). It is important that America, unlike the CIS, is terribly stretched and, with the exception of large cities, does not have a normal public transport, so it can be very difficult just to get from the airport to the university. In general, you can still rent a car, depending on the state, the price will be $ 10-50 / day plus taxes, plus $ 10 if you are under 25 years old.

I will immediately tell you about taxes, as it still annoys me sometimes. Almost all prices in the states are indicated without taxes, i.e. if it is written that a jar of cola costs $ 1, then most likely it will cost you $ 1.07 (in the case of South Carolina). By and large, there is nothing bad about it, since everyone uses credit cards and no one suffers with a trifle, but occasionally there are inconveniences.

So, you got to the university and you need to live somewhere. There are several options: you still remotely found an apartment at home (as I did, well, almost :)), you settled in the hotel for several days and are looking for an apartment, you live with friends / acquaintances and are looking for an apartment.
In the first case, there may be 2 options: someone already lives in the apartment and then you can immediately settle or there is no one in the apartment, and accordingly there is no water, electricity and the Internet (therefore you either stay in it without amenities, or use one of the alternative options ). All of these options have both pros and cons. In the pros of a remote search - saving on the hotel, in the minuses - the lottery quality of the apartment and its neighbors. By the way, hotels cost from $ 50-100 per day, depending on the city.

Suppose you found your dream apartment and have to pay for it. The cost of renting is highly dependent on the state and location. For example, now I rent 2 bedroom apartments (Americans consider the number of bedrooms, plus there is always a living room, ie, 2br = 3-bedroom apartment) for $ 445 / month in South Carolina (and this is for two), one-room apartments cost about $ 300. This price includes household appliances, but does not include a central air conditioning system. For $ 600 there will already be the so-called central air, but there may not be a washing machine and a dryer, then you will have to go and wash things somewhere in the basement and pay the mountains of quarters. I can say, for example, that if you drive away from the university, the prices fall, but as soon as you approach large cities, they grow. For example, I can say that near Charlotte (a big city in North Carolina) friends rent an entire house for $ 1000, in the north friends rent an apartment for the same money 2x, and in the summer I rented a tiny room without air conditioning for $ 900, but in the center Cambridge (which is near Boston) is a few blocks from Harvard and MIT. And for the apartment they usually require a security deposit (deposit) in the amount of one month, so they will immediately have to pay money for 2 months, but it will be returned later.

True, all these prices (except for Boston) do not include utility payments. For water, I pay about $ 40 for two, not really thinking about the expense. For electricity $ 40-80 for two, depending on the time of year. By the way, all these payments can be made online from the bank site, only for an apartment you will have to carry checks monthly.

But you chose an apartment and began the process of arrangement. In order to connect the light from me they took $ 200 deposit (they will return you later), another like $ 40 took a deposit for water and $ 100 was spent on connecting the Internet.

And once again I advise you to find a person who can be asked about a bunch of small things from the series where to call to connect the water or which Internet provider is better.

Speaking of providers, after Ukraine and a lot of megabits for a few dollars, then I was expected by very unpleasant prices. For example, I paid $ 50 for 6mbit for quite a while. However, sometimes providers arrange promotions for the newly connected ones and now I have changed the provider and pay $ 25 for the same 6 Mbps, but this is only the first year. Internet is likely to be cable or ADSL with all the ensuing consequences.

With the apartment sorted out, now we need to think about the phone and the bank. Almost all Americans use contracts (yes, yes, where there is an iPhone / Galaxy (it’s necessary to emphasize depending on religion) for $ 200). Under the contract with $ 200 iPhone, you will have to pay about $ 80 monthly for 2 years, for it will be almost unlimited everything. I somehow didn’t get a contract and I take a prepayment, considering that I don’t speak very much and I have internet everywhere (there is a good free internet on campus), I have about $ 15 a month. The cost of prepayment is 10 cents a minute and 20 cents of SMS (by the way, Americans do not use the word SMS, but use text). For the first time, you can go to any supermarket and buy a phone for $ 20, and then buy a contract. (Although I’m lying, for $ 20, don’t take it, you’ll swear at developers a lot, but for $ 30 you can already :), I’m having a $ 30 machine with an Android, a camera, gps and other joys, I saw it somehow in Best Buy , I could not refrain from buying, in order to play with the android).

After the phone you have to go to the bank. At this point, you will not have a Social Security Number (this is something like a tax identification code), so you will have to pretend that you are white and fluffy / to open an account, but it is not difficult. Prepare for the fact that cards are a normal way to pay for goods and most Americans rarely have more than $ 50 in their wallet. In general, Americans do not like cash, when I opened an account, I immediately wanted to put money on it and there was a funny situation: I say that I want to put money right away, I say that I want to put $ 3k and the bank employee asks the question: when do I want it do? .. I sincerely did not understand the question and answer that now. I did not understand the next question right away, she asked where I would get the money from. As it turned out, a person who gets several thousand cash from his pocket, shocks local residents :), they are not used to cash. You can try to do the same and see the reaction.

You will have a debit card in the bank, but my advice to you is to get an ASAP credit card. Almost everyone here lives on credit, I even buy bread and gasoline on credit. The fact is that if you pay everything within 2 weeks, you do not have to pay interest and it does not cost anything. But the idea of ​​a credit card is not in the loan itself, but in history and security. From a security point of view, if a debit card is stolen from you and started to use, then the money will not be returned, but if it is a credit card, there should be no problems with cancellation and you will not lose anything. Credit history (and rating) shows how “good person” you are, more precisely, reliable. But the main thing is that it affects the loan rate, if you decide to buy a car, for example, or insurance for a car, or a house.

Since I started talking about cars, I will tell you more. If you do not live anywhere in New York, Boston or Chicago, then without a car to live very hard. Walking to good shops you will not reach, you will not get to the neighboring cities, in general it remains only to sit at home and fall on the tail to those who got a car, since everything is bad with public transport. But there is also good news: gasoline is cheap here (~ $ 1 / liter), and cars are cheaper. If you're interested in seeing prices, then it is worth going to craigslist (in general, this is site # 1 if you need to buy something used). New cars cost about 2 times cheaper than in Ukraine, BU machines are cheaper from 3 to 10 times. For example, a 15-year-old American car costs 1–2 thousand, and a 5-year-old Camry or 5-year-old Mustang is about 12,000; for the same money, you can buy a 10-year old seven or Mercedes S class. The idea is that there are very cheap cars and parts, but terribly expensive work, so repairing cars is very, very expensive, although a student can quite normally drive a 10-year-old car without problems for several years. Another interesting feature, especially in the south, is that half of Americans ride a hefty pickup truck. And here it is very, very difficult to find a car with a small engine :). But the V6 or V8 is easy, so you can ride very, very fun. True, the penalties are very funny here and pay them all, and what is the worst, fines significantly increase the cost of insurance. No insurance is impossible here, so after the car you need insurance, this is plus $ 30-50 per month if you insure only liability or about $ 100 per month if you insure your car.

So, you have a car, an apartment, all kinds of insurance and everything else you need. It's time to go to the supermarket :) I will say right away: do not take much good from home, there is EVERYTHING, well, almost everything :), and quite cheap. Comparing with the Crimea, I can say that food costs almost as much: usually expensive goods (for the Crimea) are cheaper here, and cheap ones (in the Crimea) are more expensive. In general, you can normally eat at $ 300 a month, without denying yourself anything. Household goods cost about the same as in the Crimea. Almost no difference. By the way $ 300 for food, this includes restaurants.

About restaurants should be said separately. There is usually a rule: the cheaper a restaurant is, the more portions are in it (yes, the less you pay, the more you get). On average, dinner at a decent restaurant costs about 15-20 dollars. The food itself costs 12-17, plus a tip, it is customary here to always give ~ 15% tip, since the waiters almost do not pay salaries and they live on tips. During the day, lunch is cheaper and costs about $ 5-8. There are also buffets - these are such terrible places where you can eat as much as you want for a very modest fee. For example, a Chinese buffet costs 8-10, American is about 11-13. This includes a very good selection of dishes, including freshly prepared steaks, shrimps, fruits, frog legs, all kinds of cakes, and so on. I remember that the first time I was very impressed with the abundance. In general, a lot of this is described in my blog . But these are prices for South Carolina; if you move to Boston, everything will be 30 percent more expensive, although I used to eat dinner for $ 5 all summer, so everywhere you can find good food.

At this point I will finish the description of the cost of living in the US, and in the next part I will talk about where the graduate student’s money comes from and in what quantities.