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I would not pay that. Instead, contact Vanguard DIRECTLY or TIAA-CREF, DIRECTLY, not through a sales rep, and open up your IRA. Call their customer service line and get the forms. It will take all of ten minutes. You can use a plain index fund or you can look for a target fund that will adjust the aggressiveness of the fund to become more conservative as you age and get closer to retirement. I had, at one time, a license to sell these products, and honestly, the time of a sales rep is not worth the load. In fact, some funds that have level loads or backend loads are even worse although they initially look cheaper. Contact the funds DIRECTLY, and pay no load at all.

There isn’t any one “best” place to open a Roth IRA. There are plenty of good options - Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, Valic, eTrade, TIAA-CREF, etc. It all boils down to how you want to invest your money and the choices that each offer. Each may have their own proprietary mutual funds not available through their competitors. Each will have a different mix of funds available. Commission rates are competitive across the group. I would determine how you want to invest your funds and research what stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, etc. that you wish to purchase first and then see who offers them.

The universal government-run retirement benefit scheme in the United States is known as Social Security. Most employees contribute to it (and also to Medicare, a government-run medical insurance scheme for old-age pensioners) by paying a 7.65% FlCA tax on their wages; their employer pays another 7.65%. While most persons working in the USA, including non-resident aliens, pay the FICA tax, foreign students on F-1 and J-1 visa are usually exempt from this tax (i.e. they don’t accrue social security credits). However, if a foreign student becomes a resident alien for tax purposes, s/he becomes subject to the FICA tax. Typically, an alien on an F-1 visa is treated as a non-resident alien during up to 5 calendar years; in the 6th year, the substantial presence test kicks in, and the alien usually becomes fully liable for the FICA tax, and thus starts contributing to the social security system. For most foreign students (at least those of them who leave the USA after the end of their OPT, and don’t come back into the US tax system again), the FICA tax they (and their employer) have paid is pretty much wasted money, since a retiree normally needs at least 40 credits (= 10 years) of contributions in order to be able to receive retirement benefits in his old age. Some countries, however, have social security totalization agreements with the United States, whereby even a small amount of contributions to the US social security system allows the taxpayer to collect [very small] partial (prorated) benefits during his/her retirement.Privately-financed retirement schemes in the USA these days are mostly defined-contribution schemes (401(a), 401(k), 457(b) etc). In those plans the employee and/or employer contributes a certain percentage of one’s wages to a retirement account, the money is invested somehow (the worker has some say in investment choices, but the choices are often quite limited), and the accumulated money can be withdrawn in retirement (or sometimes earlier, with a penalty). In principle, as far as I know that nothing prevents an employer from allowing an alien to contribute to a 401(k) or some such, or even from making matching contribution. (A friend who did a summer internship at a US company while on an F visa once had to decide what to do with a few hundred dollars in a 401(k) set up for her at that company. 401(k) providers don’t like keeping small inactive accounts, or charge fairly high fees which will eventually wipe out one’s balance… I think the solution was to roll it over to an IRA account with some US mutual fund). In practice, however, many employers have a provision in their 401(a), 401(k) etc plans which bar aliens on F and J visas from participation. Other companies may, for example, exclude summer interns from participation in such plans.You can of course also open a privately funded retirement account (a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA) on your own, and contribute some money (up to $5,500 per year, I think) out of your paycheck. This is between you and the investment firm (such as Vanguard or T.Rowe Price or TIAA-CREF), and your employer has nothing to do with this.Besides retirement contributions, what other “full benefits” do you have in mind? Health and dental insurance are important of course; summer interns, I think, rarely get them from the employer (they are supposed to a have full-year insurance plan, usually purchased through their university, anyway), but if you have a full year of post-graduation OPT, I sure hope your employer allows you to join one of their insurance plans… otherwise it would cost you quite a bit of money to buy it elsewhere!