About this toolkit
StudyUS Toolkit is a small set of free, no-login calculators and planners built for international students on F-1 / J-1 visas, and the families helping them decide whether a U.S. degree fits their plan.
We started this because most "study in the USA" calculators we could find were generic expense spreadsheets or college-promo widgets that hide the boring-but-important things: SEVIS fees, the 90-day unemployment cap during OPT, FICA exemption, the cost difference between university and external health plans, and the months-of-rent a sublease can save.
Every tool on this site runs entirely in your browser — your inputs never touch our servers, because we don't run a server. There is no account, no email capture, and no saved data tied to you.
Appropriate use: use the numbers as planning estimates for the early yes/no decision and the rough budget conversation with your family. Not appropriate for: tax filing, immigration filings, or financial-aid decisions. Those documents and filings need a licensed professional and the specific institution's published fees.
Limitations: exchange rates, tuition figures, USCIS fees, and state-tax brackets change multiple times per year. We encode a snapshot at build time and label every estimate as of the date you see in the page footer. If a tool is more than 12 months old relative to your decision date, double-check the source numbers.
Privacy policy
TL;DR — we do not collect personal data on this site. No account, no email, no IP logging for ads, no analytics tied to your identity, no contact-form lookup of you.
Cookies & local storage: the calculators run in your browser using JavaScript. They do not write any cookie or localStorage entry. Your input values disappear when you close the tab.
Google AdSense & third-party advertising: if and when ads are turned on this site, they will be served by Google AdSense or another ad network. These vendors set and read their own cookies (including the __gads, IDE, NID, and similar advertising cookies) to deliver ads, limit how often you see a specific creative, and measure ad performance. Those vendors may use these cookies to recognize your device across sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising at google.com/settings/ads, or via the DAA consumer-choice tool. EU/UK visitors will see a consent banner before any ad is loaded.
Third-party cookies in general: because of the ad partners above, this site loads with cookies that we did not place. We do not have visibility into the full cookie list set by Google and partners; you can review their cookie usage at policies.google.com/technologies/cookies.
Children: we don't knowingly target under-13 visitors; this toolkit isn't designed for K-12.
Contact: if you spot a privacy issue, you can reach the maintainer via the email shown on the linked About section of the index page.
Disclaimer
This site provides general information only. It is not legal advice, tax advice, financial advice, or a substitute for a licensed immigration attorney, CPA, or financial-aid officer.
Figures shown — including tuition averages, federal fees, state tax rates, insurance caps, and lottery probabilities — change frequently. We encode what we believe to be correct numbers at build time but we cannot guarantee that any specific figure reflects your school, your state, or the current academic year.
Do not file immigration forms, tax returns, or loan documents based on values produced here. Use these tools to build a working hypothesis and then verify with the primary source (your designated school official, USCIS, IRS Publication 519, your bursar, your health-plan summary of benefits).
Affiliate & ad disclosure: if this site runs ads through Google AdSense, we may earn revenue when you interact with them. We do not currently endorse any specific bank, insurance carrier, or money-transfer service on this page; the comparisons are based on publicly listed plan details and can change without notice.
No warranty. The site and its calculations are provided "as is" without any warranty of accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. Use at your own risk.