Nearly 2 million students are currently being educated at Polish universities. All students - regardless of the mode and type of studies – have to bear certain costs of acquiring knowledge. The topic of education costs has sparked numerous discussions, as necessary expenses on education covered by students can be a serious barrier of the access to education and may determine students’ educational career. Therefore, the knowledge of the range of necessary financial expenses on higher education should serve as a useful tool to construct the scholarship systems. This paper tries to fill in this gap by estimating students’ expenses using the results of a large-scale survey as its base. Between 1.06.2009 and 31.07.2009 Education Evaluation Unit at Warsaw University conducted a survey among students of 1st and 2nd cycle of studies at Warsaw University. More than 10 000 students of the biggest university in Poland took part in this research. One of the aims of the survey was to determine the range of students’ expenses connected with getting education. Although the results obtained are of an approximate nature and concern only one university, their main merit lies in the fact that they allow to estimate both the general costs of studying as well as to determine main categories of students’ expenses. The paper discusses the structure and the range of students’ expenses, taking into consideration the diversification resulting from a type of studies, fields of study and students’ and the cycles of study at Warsaw University.