DS has been accepted to both Hampshire and UMass. I had been hoping that he would get a significant merit award from Hampshire so that it wouldn’t be such a premium over UMass, but no such luck – for four years, the cost difference will be $75,000. We do plan to appeal, but don’t expect it to make a huge difference.
My question is, is Hampshire worth the extra $75k?
DS is torn; on the one hand, he thought it could be OK to just have “just a little bit of Hampshire in his life” – by going to UMass and taking a few classes at Hampshire. After all, Hampshire has a pretty activist, ultra-liberal vibe and he’s not sure that’s 100% for him. But in the same breath, he said that “you can get an English degree anywhere – going to Hampshire would have been something special.”
We’ve done campus tours at both schools, and we recently went up to UMass to sit in on a few classes; we were favorably impressed at the quality of the professors and the engagement of the students. We plan to do the same at Hampshire soon to get an apples-to-apples comparison.
Any thoughts would be helpful!