30 Something Student

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The experience that I have had with the faculty at DeVry really got to me yesterday and prompted me to look at greener pastures. The first place that I checked out was University of Phoenix. I went to their website and requested a call from a counselor.

I got the call this morning and met with the counselor during my lunch hour. It was a good meeting.

UP (University of Phoenix) is a little different then DeVry in a couple of areas that has prompted me to consider switching. The first is that they do not operate on a semester based layout. Classes are 5 weeks long and you only take one class at a time and are considered a full-time student. At DeVry their classes are 8 weeks long and a semester is 16 weeks. You have to take 3-4 class every semester to be full time. My financial aid only covers enough to take 1 class every 8 weeks and therefore I am considered part time. With UP my financial aid will their 5 weeks classes so I can go “full time” and finish sooner.

The other thing that is different at UP is that their online classes are actually cheaper then their in-house class. This is the opposite at DeVry. At DeVry you can take online class but they cannot exceed 50% of the classes you take or they charge you more. The one catch is that the lower price at UP only applies to the lower tier class which account for about 2/3 of the classes that you need to take. The upper tier is more expensive then the standard in house classes (it ends up being cheaper at UP in the long run).

The two items above are pretty significant to me because 1.) I am only going to school part time right now and it is going to take me forever at this rate to finish, and 2.) I think that online classes will be easier for me as my schedule gets out of control sometimes and missing class is a probability.

The final difference that I feel between University of Phoenix and DeVry is that UP seems to be more established in the Austin area. Their facility is much larger and does not appear to be a satellite campus like DeVry in Austin is.

If I decide to switch I won’t start taking classes at UP until July since that is when the 2007-2008 Financial Aid kicks in as it would be really messy to try and do it sooner. I am going to discuss it with my wife before making a decision (that is one thing they don’t teach you in school ).

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