How much does cost of living differ between school locations?

Choosing between our two campuses often comes down to more than tuition — where you'll actually live day to day can swing your budget by tens of thousands of dollars a year, and that's a completely fair thing to want to see in numbers before deciding.

Here's what we found when we last checked MIT's Living Wage Calculator and HUD's Fair Market Rent tool, in 07/2026 — these figures move over time, so treat them as a snapshot rather than today's exact number, and the linked source pages will always have the current version:

Sources: MIT Living Wage Calculator, HUD Fair Market Rents, and each city's own minimum-wage page — last checked 07/2026.

The short version: Santa Cruz actually runs a bit higher on overall living costs than San Jose, mainly driven by housing, even though it's the smaller town — but San Jose has the advantage of a higher local minimum wage floor if you're working part-time while you study, and one further wrinkle worth knowing is that San Jose is a "Small Area FMR" jurisdiction, meaning rent varies a lot block by block, so a specific ZIP code will tell you more than the county-wide figure.

Neither of these numbers accounts for a roommate situation, commuting from a cheaper nearby town, or part-time work income offsetting the gap — which matters more to the picture you're building, the raw cost number or how it nets out against what you could realistically earn while studying?