<p>The cost of living in the U.S. depends widely on where you live. Generally speaking, large cities tend to be more expensive than smaller towns and rural areas, with some cities being especially expensive. For example, I live in New York City, which is one of the most expensive cities in the country. Other expensive cities in the country are Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago, to name a few. Cheaper cities in the country are Atlanta, Houston, Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, St. Louis, Madison, Minneapolis. There are some graduate schools that are located in very inexpensive parts of the country because they are more suburban or rural than the big cities.</p>
<p>However, our professional schools ARE very expensive. Tuition alone for medical school costs well over $200,000 for the best schools. For example, Columbia figures their total costs over 4 years of medical school (tuition + other expenses such as housing, food, supplies, etc.) is about $280,000. Even smaller, less-well-known medical schools can approach this figure. Law school is a year shorter but the costs are similar, with tuition usually from $30-50K per year, so that can run you $90-$150K for three years. There are generally very, very few scholarships available for professional education, so most of the time students finance these schools with loans.</p>
<p>If you go to a master’s program, you likely will also have to pay with loans. Doctoral programs generally fund their students by paying for their tuition, giving them a living stipend, and paying for health insurance.</p>
<p>In any case, you didn’t say what you wanted to study in graduate school. If you are planning to do a master’s degree or a Ph.D, what’s much more important than location is fit with the department and the reputation of the program and the university, inasmuch that those factors are going to determine whether you get a job when you graduate. If you are speaking about law school and medical school, those ranking systems are much more hard-and-fast and typically it’s best for students to go to the best one they get into regardless of whether they like the location or not.</p>
<p>Whether or not you should come here for graduate education depends a lot on what you want to do. For example, let’s say you are considering a professional degree - law or medical school. If you think you might want to move to the U.S. and practice here, it’s smart to get an MD or JD here, because lawyers and doctors from other countries sometimes have difficulty getting licensed and often find themselves having to complete more schooling before they are allowed to practice here. However, the reverse is not true - a U.S.-trained doctor or lawyer can go pretty much anywhere else in the world and practice.</p>
<p>Academic graduate programs (master’s and doctoral degrees) are a bit more fuzzy in that regard. It really depends on the field that you enter. In my field (psychology) for example, there are a number of very well respected German universities that may have as much clout as many American universities here, as well as some British universities. I can’t think of a single Scottish program, though, or any professors I know that were trained in Scotland.</p>
<p>Also, the extra-curricular activities you did in uni won’t matter much here. Medical and law schools will only care about medical and law experiences - like volunteering at a hospital or interning at a firm. Graduate schools will only care about research, unless they are professional master’s programs and then they only care about in-field work - like if you wanted to do an international affairs program and you did Model UN or something.</p>
<p>IMO if you’re not quite sure what to study and you just want to explore the U.S. a bit there are better ways to do it than just trying to get into graduate school here. I think you should have a compelling reason for wanting to come over to the U.S. for graduate school, and just wanting to see the world isn’t a compelling reason. Maybe you could join a volunteer/work/intern abroad program that would bring you here, or try to find a job that would sponsor you to come here for 2-3 years.</p>