International Applicants

Fees and Information for International Applicants

 

International Flags

Please note: The figures quoted below reflect information available at the time this document was prepared. 

Chances for admission and/or financial aid: Acceptance for admission and awarding of financial aid depend on how each applicant’s record compares with those of many other applicants. It is therefore impossible to estimate an individual’s chances until all applications have been received and examined.

  • Estimated Cost Per Year
  • For an international student the estimated cost per year at UC Davis is $61,000 This sum covers fees, tuition and living expenses.

    The most common kind of financial assistance a new international student is likely to receive is a Teaching Assistantship ("TAship") and / or a Nonresident Tuition Fellowship.
  • Graduate Student Fees

  • All graduate students (international and domestic) must pay "Graduate Student Fees." Additionally, International students also pay “Non-Resident Tuition”.

    Tuition and Fee amounts are updated each year and can be found here:

    https://financeandbusiness.ucdavis.edu/student-resources/tuition-fees/graduate

    (Graduate Student Fees are reduced for Teaching Assistants)

  • Teaching Assistantships

  • The Teaching Assistant salary for the 2021-2022 academic year is $23,246.50. It is paid monthly in 9 equal installments beginning November 1 ($2,582.94 per month). Since each quarter consists of 3 months, 3 payments are made per quarter.

    Teaching Assistants are entitled to reduced Graduate Student Fees and reduced Non-Resident Tuition.
    In addition, international students (and domestic students who are not California residents) who are offered a TAship for the entire academic year are entitled to some funding toward the cost of moving to California (this amount varies, depending on mileage). This funding will be paid after arrival in Davis, sometime after the fall quarter begins. New student TAs moving to Davis from outside the U.S. usually receive an offer of up to $440 toward the cost of moving to California. Students must provide receipts of their own travel costs to qualify.

    Most entering new graduate students each year are offered a TAship and several offers to the best applicants are multi-year TAships for four or five years.

    TAship offers to international students whose first language is not English are conditional on the student being sufficiently proficient in English. Proficiency is ascertained according to the following rules https://iae.ucdavis.edu/graduate/qualify AND https://iae.ucdavis.edu/graduate/toep.

  • Reduced for TAs

  • Teaching Assistants are entitled to a discount ("partial fee remission") on Graduate Student Fees

  • Nonresident Tuition Fellowships

  • All "non-resident" applicants (international applicants and domestic Non-California residents) will be automatically considered "as if" they had applied for a Nonresident Tuition Fellowship (NRTF), so submitting a fellowship application for this kind of fellowship is unnecessary. NRTFs usually provide partial funding toward the cost of the Nonresident Tuition fee (about $5,034 per quarter). NRTFs and Teaching Assistantships (TAships) are the most common kinds of financial aid that applicants are likely to receive. However, they are offered to some of the best applicants each year, and do not provide full financial aid.

  • Fellowships

  • The University offers several merit-based fellowships and scholarships. These are highly competitive and the Department must choose and nominate at most 4 applicants for each of these fellowships; the successful applicants are then chosen through a campuswide competition. Historically, the Department has received fewer than one fellowship per year. Consequently, only those applicants with a GPA greater than 3.7 and GRE scores exceeding the 85th percentile in both Verbal and Quantitative exams should apply. For more information about these fellowships see the online admission application.

    Deadline: All application materials must be received by December 15, 2022. (The GRE must be taken no later than November 2022, to be considered with the application).

    For these UC Davis Fellowships (not NRTF Fellowships as described above) SUBMIT an Application for UC Davis Fellowship ONLINE along with admission application:

  • Decisions

  • Admission and financial aid decisions about many international student applicants probably will not be made until sometime after March 1 because many applications are received and need to be compared, in order to admit the best applicants. The department can not predict exactly how soon decisions will be made, but applicants will be informed after decisions have been made.

    Required Forms

    The formal admission letter you receive from the Graduate Admissions Office will direct you to a website (http://siss.ucdavis.edu/forms/index.html) where you can find a "UC Davis Request for I-20 / DS-2019 Form." International students are required to fill that out and submit it, indicating that they can afford $61,000 for their first year at UC Davis, before the university will send them another form (such as I-20) needed to order a visa to come to Davis ($61,000 is the estimated cost of the first year at UC Davis for international students). Consult that website for full instructions and information.

    If you have received a financial aid offer:

    Indicate on the "UC Davis Request for I-20 / DS-2019 Form" that you have received the aid offer and send a photocopy of your aid offer letter along with it when you mail it back to the university, to prove that you have been offered that amount of aid. Subtract the total amount of the aid offer from the $61,000 and also indicate on the form that you can afford to pay the remaining balance.  Also, if you received a multi-year aid offer, be careful to subtract only the amounts of the aid offer that are for your first year.

    Further information about financial aid can be found online at http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/graduate-program/prospective-students/admission-information in the section about Admission Information.
    You can find answers to some common questions about financial aid online at http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/graduate-program/prospective-students/frequently-asked-questions in the FAQ section (Answers to Frequently Asked Questions).