<p>Hey so I go to Eugene Lang and I thought I’d pitch in. </p>
<p>First of all, the $17,000 price tag is sort of ridiculous. Dorms are expensive compared to other schools, but the list that that came from is completely untrustworthy - campusgrotto, the site that put it out, receives most of their funding from university of phoenix, the online ‘college’ - part of their mission is to convince you real-world college is completely unaffordable so you’ll sign up for an online degree. There is a room that costs around $17,000, so I’ve heard, but it’s a private single room with its own bathroom and bathtub. I think it may actually have it’s own kitchen, also, and it’s in Stuyvesant Town, which, if you get familiar with the city, is one of the nicest places in the city to live, a residential enclave right on the East River. I think a one bedroom there is like, around $3000 a month. I would never live there, though, since as well as being out of my price range it’s gentrified public housing. A more realistic estimate would be around $12000 a year; I think I paid $11000 for the year I lived in the dorms - in Loeb hall. Really nice, it had a moondeck and laundry and art studio and until this year it housed the health center. (Doctors offices, not a gym) Unlike a lot of other colleges, people generally move off campus their second year and so housing costs are often cheaper; I’ve paid around 400-500 a month most apartments I’ve been in - as low as 200 when I shared a place with my gf. It’s not like everyone’s completely dispersed, students generally tend to congregate living in certain areas where there are a lot of other young people, and closer to where the fun stuff in the city actually happens. Only wall street traders and tourists actually hang out in manhattan, brooklyn’s where it’s at. You end up running into a lot of other lang kids at parties and on the commute. When I moved in to my current apt. last minute off of craigslist, a girl from my philosophy class happened to be my roommate!</p>
<p>Academically the college is amazing; I went there because I heard about the Graduate School (New School for Social Research) having a famous philosophy program and a specialization in the stuff I was interested in (Continental Philosophy), and figured that the top NSSR professors would also teach undergrad classes. It turns out to be like that with a lot of majors - they benefit from having graduate schools in their field (or for music and arts majors, from drawing on resources at mannes, the jazz school or parsons). I also love the style of teaching - it says a lot about the school that we’re consistently #1 for having the best classroom discussions. Unlike many colleges, where you have a lecture and a few tests and a textbook, the classes here are mostly seminars. Which means in most cases each student will have to give a twenty minute presentation on a subject for one class (then the faculty member takes over and it turns into a wider discussion), and write one to three term papers, most times on a subject of their choosing in relation to the class. Most times we’ll read primary texts, and if there’s secondary literature it’s published articles from academic journals. </p>
<p>If cost is a major issue, you can always do what some of my friends have done - go to a cheaper school for two years and transfer in - Lang accepts a lot of transfers (people who hated their traditional college). I almost wish I’d done that, since, yeah, I have a lot of debt and actually had to take a year out because of financial problems (it worked out for the best, I found a killer internship and read a lot). But having four years of seminars has really helped; for my last semester I had to sign up for mostly graduate classes so I’d feel challenged. So yeah, if you get in I’d say come here, live in the dorms for a year or at least a semester (it’s expensive, but it’s a good way to meet other students), then move off campus, eat noodles, get a bike and shop in charity stores (this may inadvertently turn you into a hipster, but it’s the best way to save money and afford school). If not, choose the cheapest school you get into and transfer here unless you love it.</p>
<p>As to the reviews online being negative, yeah, that happens. I work part time doing publicity for a restaurant and the customers that had bad experiences are always the ones that post on yelp, etc. Most people don’t say anything, but they leave big tips. Also, keep in mind that Lang is still a really new school; 25 years old this year but the graduating class for the first decades was a lot smaller than it is now. People who just graduated into a rough economy are going to be a lot more down on the school than those same people might be two decades later, when they’ve worked their way up to an amazing job… because of the way numbers work, there are are more of the former.</p>
<p>Let me know if you have more questions. Just email or sth.</p>
OP, did you get in? And i so, did you like it?