Financing Study Abroad

Who Pays What and to Whom?

All students in programs abroad for which they will be receiving credit remain enrolled at Columbia College or SEAS and pay Columbia tuition at the Columbia rate here. Students will be billed by Columbia for the coming semester at the usual time. The bill will be sent to normal billing addresses. Columbia in turn pays the academic costs of the foreign program.

Alhambra detail, Granada, Spain. Nick Pena, CC'05

 Students who receive financial aid at Columbia will remain eligible for financial aid when they study abroad with Columbia's approval. Students must speak with their financial aid officer as soon as they have budget information from the foreign study program and before they register to go abroad.

Students are therefore responsible for the following payments:

To Columbia University: Columbia tuition at the regular Columbia rate, excluding room, board, books, or any extraneous costs.

To the sponsoring program: room, board, and overseas travel (including flights), whether or not these expenses are included in the program's comprehensive fee, as well as any other personal expenses.

To some sponsoring programs: A deposit (usually between $200 and $500), if required, to hold students places in the program once they have have been accepted. Unless the students are on very extensive financial aid, they should pay that deposit and ask the program to credit it against their non-tuition cost. Students should obtain a receipt for this payment for purposes of reimbursement.

To some sponsoring programs: Students may be asked to pay for a school of record transcript (CIEE is one of the sponsors that do this). In this case, please ask that an invoice of this cost be sent to the OGP so our office can take care of this cost directly.

If you receive a bill for tuition costs from your program, please notify your sponsoring program to have the tuition bill sent to:

Office of Global Program,204 Lewisohn, MC 4111, 2970 Broadway, NY, NY 10027, USA