The widest residency gap in the country is $40,300 a year, at a public university in Michigan.
You live in one state. The college is in another. What do you actually pay?
Four regional agreements, dozens of two-state deals and 51 separate residency codes decide the answer, and no single official source covers all of them. Pick your two states and this returns the rule that governs your case, the dollar difference, and the page it came from.
In-State Eligibility Checker
Three fields. Returns the governing rule, the estimated rate, and the official source.
No states chosen yet
Pick a home state and a school state above, and the verdict appears here. Worked example: California to Arizona at University of Arizona costs $20,400 a year instead of $41,100, under Western Undergraduate Exchange.
Every answer this returns is also a static page — 7,650 of them, one per state pair per level.
Browse all 51 states by level
Pick a level to browse all 51 states, or open the full checker.
Start from the level you are applying at
Undergraduate
Four-year public universities: the flagship in-state rate, the non-resident rate, and every regional exchange program that sits between them.
All 51 states →
Community College
Public two-year colleges: in-district, in-state, and out-of-state rates, plus the exchange programs and border-county waivers that two-year colleges actually honor.
All 51 states →
Graduate
Master's and doctoral programs: resident and non-resident rates, the graduate-only exchange programs, and the residency reclassification route most graduate students can actually use.
All 51 states →
Four compacts, and they do not talk to each other
A student in a WUE state gets nothing from the Academic Common Market, and 10 jurisdictions belong to none of them at undergraduate level. The last column applies each program's rule to one median-cost seat — Rhode Island, where residents pay $16,800 and non-residents pay $37,700.
| Program | States | Levels | What you pay | On that seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WUEWICHE | 15 | Undergraduate, Community College, Graduate | Capped at 150% of that state's resident rate | $25,200 |
| MSEPMHEC | 8 | Undergraduate, Graduate | Capped at 150% of that state's resident rate | $25,200 |
| ACMSREB | 13 | Undergraduate, Graduate | The receiving state's own in-state rateApproved majors only | $16,800 |
| Tuition BreakNEBHE | 6 | Undergraduate, Community College, Graduate | Resident rate plus up to 75%Approved majors only | $29,400 |
What non-residency costs
- Median residency gap
- $20,900Per year, undergraduate, across all 51 jurisdictions.
- Widest gap
- $40,300A year, at a single public university, for the same seat.
- Standard wait
- 12 moOf documented domicile before almost any state will reclassify you.
Start from your state
How we know
Eligibility rules are checked against the operating compact commission or the state's own residency authority, and every page lists the sources it used with the date they were read. Tuition figures are compiled from each institution's published 2025–26 rate page and refreshed each June. Where a figure is not published, the page says so rather than estimating one.
Nothing here is a determination. Residency classification and exchange-program awards are decided by the institution you apply to, and this site's job is to tell you which rule applies and where to go and check it. Methodology · Sources · Editorial standards
Dataset last verified 2026-09-27.