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KR: I think that's a good thing for some people, but some students slip through the cracks. I think it really depends on the student.
As for price, Hypo applied to a lot of ridiculously priced schools. When it came down to it after financial aid packages/grants, they were all within $3000-$4000/year of each other. The "cheap" state school COA (in state) is $25,200. The COA at the most expensive school where she was accepted is $60,000. After applying grants, work/campus job allotments, and subsidized Stafford loans (same amounts) at each school, our expected financial contribution ranged from $18K to $22K per year. Given the variance in starting points, that final contribution range is relatively small. Barnard was right in the middle of those, even though it was the most expensive to start. American was at the high end. U of M and DePaul were at the low part of the range.
I see a HUGE difference in her courses, coursework and college experiences when compared to her friends at U of M and Eastern Michigan (my alma mater). I am envious of the type of education she is getting. She has some big lecture classes, but even in those, the focus is not on reading the material, listening to lectures and regurgitating the information in exams and papers. There is a much larger focus on learning how to process and analyze information. For example, a traditional lit program has you read a lot of things (books, short stories, poetry) and identify elements, identify what it means... themes, antagonists, character development, etc. Hypo's classes do that, but take it a step further to focus on how the themes and meanings reflect society, effect modern day society, relate to things today. It's a higher level of critical thinking but it is also much more abstract. Individual opinions are more valued but need to be justified as well. I remember being very frustrated in my lit classes in college because they were all taught from a "this is what this piece means, this is what the author means" perspective. I've always felt that works of art mean different things to different people based on their experiences and perspectives. Hypo's courses allow for that second point of view.
How will that relate to a real world job? Does that make a difference when it comes to making money? I don't know. But it appeals to her learning style and I do think a school that came from that kind of perspective would have appealed to mine more too. My only challenge in college came from memorizing massive amounts of material (gross anatomy). If you are going to college to be a nurse, engineer, accountant or even pre-med for a clinical career, it may not matter. If you might want to be a writer, a journalist, a political analyst, or a researcher, it might make a big difference because you are learning to see and analyze the world in different ways.
I know that back in the late 80s/early 90s when I was looking at grad schools for a master's in psychology, there were programs more designed for clinical work and there were programs more focused on research. I suspect the research programs were more like what Hypo is experiencing in undergrad and clinical programs were more focused on therapeutic styles/techniques. I was going for a clinical program.
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