<p>CMU is among the highest regarded universities when it comes to computer science. Student from all around the world dream to go there. Yet, CMU does not offer any financial aid to international students, and they have to pay the full tuition, ~60K $. I'm wondering why CMU can't even provide a little financial aid, since their endowment is close to 1 billion US dollars.</p>
<p>They could. They just choose not to. Why? Probably because students from all around the world dream of going there.</p>
<p>Just because a school has a billion dollar endowment does not mean all that money goes toward students with financial need. In my opinion, CMU cannot give aid to international students is because they simply cannot afford to. They do not have a big enough endowment to provide financial aid to internationals. Harvard has, I believe, about a 30 billion dollar endowment. They have enough money to the point where it doesn’t matter whether your a domestic or international applicant, they can provide one with financial aid. CMU simply doesn’t have the money to do so.</p>
<p>tl; dr - [Boromir</a> - one does not simply get money from cmu](<a href=“quickmeme: the funniest page on the internet”>One Does Not Simply get money from CMU - Boromir - quickmeme)</p>
<p>@samMIT, do the universities in your country give financial aid to American students?</p>
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<p>I guess the explanation is that CMU is not as rich as its peer institutions and, hence, can’t afford giving financial aid to foreign ** undergraduate ** students (a one-billion-dollar endowment is actually quite small by US standards).</p>
<p>Foreign ** PhD students ** are fully funded though (i.e. pay zero tuition) both in the CS and ECE programs. That’s because graduate students can be funded with research money from federal agencies (NSF, DARPA, etc.) or corporate sponsors, and CMU has plenty of that.</p>
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<p>In several countries, universities are basically tuition-free (or quasi-free) both for local and international students.</p>
<p>@bruno, which countries offer free university to int’l students?</p>
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<p>As I said, it’s not exactly free, but, for example, at ETH in Switzerland, the tuition fee is only CHF 580 (US$ 630) per semester , regardless of nationality. Similar rates apply in other western European countries. </p>
<p>In Brazil, on the other hand, there are zero tuition fees for all students in public universities, either domestic or international.</p>
<p>Then apply to those universities instead of CMU</p>