<p>It is expensive, but remember on average students make $15000 per co-op opportunity and the co-op is guaranteed. This brings the price down to about $40,000 and it gives some very good job opportunities for after graduation.</p>
<p>Caruso, your post is not totally correct. Co-op is not guaranteed; Drexel does all it can to help, but it can’t guarantee you a job with another company (especially if you are a poor student). I know some students that struggled to find jobs in the past with the very poor economy, though they eventually found one a couple months after they were supposed to start working. Also, many co-ops outside of science and engineering are unpaid. Paid co-ops in the fine arts are very rare. Finally, keep in mind that by doing 3 co-ops you are missing out on a year of salary post-graduation.</p>
<p>Does anyone know when financial aid monies will be distributed? I just got my acceptance+merit aid, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to pay for the rest…help!</p>
<p>I personally don’t see the hype about the school and why someone would pay $250k for work experience. I know co-op programs are sexy right now. I do know this, they are easy to get in compared to prestigious colleges. I have 2 undergraduate engineering school admission letters and one for a masters in software engineering.</p>
<p>One good thing is that if your parents have money but you lack any real credentials to get into a better college, you may get a merit scholarship. Colleges like Penn and Princeton do not have merit scholarships that are easy to get, their scholarships are need based. Drexel knows that their students lack the ability to get into Penn and for many they are the next best thing in Philadelphia. Penn is the opposite of Drexel, they have very generous financial aid packets but are difficult to get in. Drexel is easier to get in but very difficult to pay for. I applied at the time when the financial aid department was earning commissions on private student loans until order to repay them to students. It is my personal opinion if you have to take out a private student loan, you can’t afford that school.</p>
<p>“Don’t know what your S is interested in, but Drexel is really strong in some areas - engineering and computer science just to name two.”</p>
<p>I am wondering though that if Drexel is strong in computer science, why the low US News ranking in that subject? They are ranked toward the bottom tied with a bunch of schools.</p>
<p>Tuition and Ranking are matters of perspective. A college student could pay 60K per year at a prestigious liberal arts college in a small town and major in psychology, a major with a low income potential. I heard a quote that summarizes my perspective on tuition and ranking: “An English major at Harvard who becomes a high school English teacher, makes the same income as any other high school English teacher.”</p>
<p>I think majoring in Engineering or Computer Science at Drexel is preferable and practical when you consider a student’s potential income earnings. The combination of being located in Philadelphia where there are several employers and having 3 paid coops is a valuable combintation.</p>
<p>By the way, Drexel is moving forward in Computer Science. There is a new College of Computing and Informatics. Sounds exciting to me.</p>
<p>I chose Drexel because it was the cheapest option for me. Hands down. I got upwards of $20,000 a year for a five-year program in merit scholarships, and I applied for the Alumni scholarship which is $1000/year (all you have to do is get an alumnus to recommend you). Granted I have the legacy scholarship as well, but still. I dropped the meal plan after freshman year which helps to cut the costs. Even before factoring in co-op money, it was still my least expensive option. I do not know a single person who is paying full price.</p>
<p>Hello, I recently applied to Drexel and I just used their net price calculator. My estimate was $52,205 total cost, $31,605 total grants and scholarships, so that’s $20,600 net price and it shows 0$ Estimated Remaining Cost after Financial Aid. I’ll be doing biomedical engineering 3 co-ops for 5 years. So that’s about 100k in debt after graduating. Biomed co-ops are on average $16,510, so that’s a total of $49,530. $100,000-49,530 = $50,470 debt after graduation (not including other fees, interest from loans). Is it going to be worth $50k+ debt for the extra job experience and being able to maintain the same co-op job after graduation?</p>
<p>(not sure how accurate the net price calculator is)</p>
<p>Or I could go to Temple, estimate net price of $5k/year for Biomed</p>
<p>Current student here with some wealth of information to consider before choosing Drexel.</p>
<p>For those who are asking about the Tuition/Financial Aid Aspects of it:
-Your tuition goes up ~5-7% each year
-You will get less financial aid the following years after Freshman Year if you are on the co-op. Federal grants are only awarded when you are on academic session.
-Appealing for more financial aid is a very simple process but it is /hard/ to get any increase. YOU CAN ONLY APPEAL ONCE A YEAR, including for merit-aid.
-Keep an eye on your bank statements because fees may impend on your account and you need to question and fight it.<br>
-If you have yet to apply for ParentPlus loan and you are struggling with payments and do not want to take out private loans yet, apply for it regardless if your parents have low credit-scores & etc. If you get rejected, you will instead get an increase in your subsidized/subsidized loans.</p>
<p>Housing Aspects (not my area of expertise but I know a lot of other students complain about it a lot):
-It can be difficult to switch roommates if you and roommate are not compatible. There was this one case where I was working in Drexel’s Housing, in which a student complained about his roommate threatening to seriously harm him and showed serious signs of aggression. The student was rejected and was not able to switch roommates. He was advised to go to his Residential Adviser to have a “therapeutic” session with his roommate. Within two weeks, the student was sent to the hospital because his roommate physically harmed him. (kid got eight stitches on his head as his roommate chucked some sort of metal objects at him)
-Fire Drills in a certain dorm, I forgot which, are more frequent due to faulty fire detectors.<br>
-Myers dorm have a really bad infestation of roaches.<br>
-If one person damages a dorm’s property, likely you and everyone on that floor or dorm will be responsible to pay for it.<br>
-Charges and Fees can be increased or applied in a term notice.
-Housing off-campus between 34th-40th is preferable and much cheaper. </p>
<p>CO-OP:
-Getting a co-op is NOT GUARANTEED. Especially with the way Drexel is accepting wayyy more students than they can fit within their housings. As a 1st year trying to find a co-op job, you will compete with more experienced/qualified upperclassmen. As a current undergraduate trying to find a co-op job, you will compete against a larger pool of people due to the influx of admitted students.
- The thing Drexel doesn’t mention is that BUSINESS and ENGINEERING students are the ones that get paid jobs. It is seriously competitive to find a paid job or job that actually pertains to your field in other majors (ie. those in College of Arts & Sciences). Why? Because you are also competing against Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Nursing students, & etc.
- The co-op job field is very limited for Biomedical Engineering. Trust me. You are better off applying to co-op jobs in other engineering fields.<br>
- You are still paying Drexel for the term when you are on CO-OP as if you are still in academic session.
- There is a lot of GPA requirements so please try to stay above a 3.0.<br>
- You have three rounds to find a co-op job. Round A where most do not get a job, Round B where there are still some good paying jobs, and Round C where you apply to 50 jobs and go to their interviews independently. You can only apply to 25 jobs in the first two rounds. You will probably pay a lot for public transportation in order to get to job interviews.<br>
-If you do not find a co-op job within Drexel system (which a large number of kids do), you have to find the job independently. If you do not find one, you have to write some sort of diary journal each day you aren’t on co-op.<br>
-You can only register for one class on co-op. - If you are a computer science major, you are in luck because we are the most in demand. You will usually get 8-15 co-op interviews per round. You will also get paid about $18-30 an hour.</p>
<p>ACADEMIC aspect:
- The Computer Science curriculum hasn’t changed in years, trust me. I might when Drexel creates the College of Computing Informatics, which takes Computer Science program away from the College of Engineering.<br>
- You are on a quarter system. Meaning, your term lasts only 10 weeks.
- You will have weekly “midterm” exams.<br>
- It’s fast pace but if you flunk a class, it won’t affect your GPA /that/ much.<br>
- Your academic schedule will NOT align with anyone else’s from another school.
- You only have one summer, which is during Freshman year.<br>
- Professors are standard. Some are great, some are not. It is just a matter of checking online reviews and etc.<br>
-Your general classes are going to be huge but it’ll get smaller in size when you get towards more specialized courses. </p>
<p>ADMINISTRATION aspect:
- It’s terrible. There’s rarely ever a person that genuinely wants to do their job and actually help.
- We have a term called the “Drexel Shaft”. We use that term whenever we get screwed over by the administration because it is very frequent. Prepare to transfer out due to the incompetency of Drexel administration. </p>
<p>SOCIAL aspect:
- It is a very diverse atmosphere! We have a plethora of people of all backgrounds.
- We are in the heart of the city where there is a lot of opportunities to explore. You don’t need a car seeing how there’s public transportation all around us.
- There’s all sorts of clubs and organizations to belong to and join, including a Dragon Jedi (swordfighting with lightsabers), Environmental Club, and etc. </p>
<p>INTERNATIONAL ASPECT:
- It’s extremely expensive. Drexel does give out scholarships but even then, the price is too high for an international student.
- You will be required to participate in the UPREP program to practice your English for three weeks during the summer. It will cost you an extra ~$6000 for something that is requried for you to enter Drexel.<br>
- It is still required even if you are proficient English speaker.<br>
- You gotta pay the UPREP tuition by August 27 and they will not take VISA credit cards, by the way,
- Some domestic students and at times, Drexel administration, can be a little unwelcoming and unhelpful, sadly… </p>
<p>ONE LAST THING: We do not have a football team. Do not come here if you are looking to join a football team or expecting a grand homecoming.</p>
<p>Any questions? Let me know.</p>
<p>Niwasit, doesn’t sound like you are enjoying Drexel. What are the other alternative schools? Which one would you transfer to if you could?</p>
<p>So, when you are paying full tuition when you are doing a coop, what are you paying for?</p>
<p>I heard you get credits while on co-op. So you’re paying for the credits I guess.</p>
<p>Drexel charges tuition differently based on which co-op program you choose. So the five year program is cheaper per year, but total costs are about (not exactly) the same as the four year program. It’s more the way they bill your total tuition than the co-ops being charged tuition, but you’d certainly want to understand the costs and how you’ll be billed for those costs before enrolling.</p>
<p>“Niwasit, doesn’t sound like you are enjoying Drexel. What are the other alternative schools? Which one would you transfer to if you could?”</p>
<p>-I do not like what Drexel has to offer me at all once I came here. The financial aid and the Bursar Office, which is now integrated as Drexel Central Service, will not help you should a serious, unordinary problem (ie. missing transcripts, wrong billing, etc) arises. They are unhelpful and often screw you over by not taking the necessary action to address your situation in time, which can lead to the loss of your money and patience as well. Often more than not, you would have to bring legal action to get problems situated. </p>
<p>With that being said, since people are often looking at Drexel for their well advertised CO-OP program, the alternatives to Drexel are (of no significant ranking order):
Rochester Institute of Technology
Northeastern University
Elon University
George Washington University
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Cincinnati
Northwestern University</p>
<p>Technically speaking, all schools (ie. I had a few Penn State co-op co workers at my job), where you have some sort of paid internship/co-op programs. It just isn’t required or a niche that other schools advertise heavily on, like Drexel does. Most of these schools do not require you to pay tuition when you are on a co-op session. </p>
<p>I am looking forward to transferring to Georgia Institute of Technology, Illinois Institute of technology, or Penn State Main for the next semester. The fact that they have an internship program where you will not pay for the semester you are working and have less competition between undergraduates makes them appealing to me already. </p>
<p>“So, when you are paying full tuition when you are doing a coop, what are you paying for?”
-You are paying for the 16 credit you receive for going on CO-OP. These credits are required to graduate Drexel but does not count towards other schools if you are looking to transfer out. You get 4 “free” credits, in which you can take a class while you are on co-op. Even if you don’t take a class, you are still paying equal amount if you did. If you did not find a paying job or no job at all, you are still paying though.</p>
<p>Perhaps you missed the news but Drexel is switching to quarterly billing, in which students will no longer pay tuition during co-op (though they will pay general fees). Tuition will remain the same overall but will be billed quarter by quarter rather than annually.</p>
<p>“Perhaps you missed the news but Drexel is switching to quarterly billing, in which students will no longer pay tuition during co-op (though they will pay general fees). Tuition will remain the same overall but will be billed quarter by quarter rather than annually.”</p>
<p>Oh right, forgot about that. But the fact still stands that you are practically paying for co-op, regardless. Let me quote this from a certain faculty staff member during a discussion with other faculty members but /<em>take it with a grain of salt</em>/, “It’s just a chance for Drexel to increase billing amount instead of waiting for a damn year to increase the tuition bill for some ridiculous reason or hidden fee.”</p>
<p>Might be time to update the title of this thread. My son just received the paper version of his preliminary financial aid package. The projected Cost Of Attendance is listed at $65,849. Yikes!</p>
<p>Granted, that includes things like transportation and personal expenses but it’s still pretty damn high. The only thing Drexel has going for them is that he would save a year of Grad School (3+3 year accelerated program) and have a 6-month paid co-op. I guess we’ll attend an accepted student day and see if they can show us why Drexel makes financial sense when compared to his other options.</p>
<p>I got the same amount! But it includes room and board for 14k (which I don’t even need cause I’m commuting) and a tuition of 45k (which is incorrect cause I’m doing 5yr program with 3 co-op with a tuition of 35k, the 4yr 1 co-op is 45k). So I’d rather not trust the costs on the paper but calculate everything yourself.</p>
<p>Yeah… I know. I did some earlier research and saw that the ‘normal’ room & board is less than the $14K listed in the letter. Don’t know why they published a worst-case cost.</p>
<p>As far as calculating, I created a spreadsheet for all of the colleges where my son applied. Took the 2013 - 2014 tuition rates and added a 5% / year inflation rate. Excluded room & board so we could focus on tuition costs only. Right now, Drexel would be 53% higher over the first four years at one of his options and 45% higher at a similar six-year accelerated program. I chose a four-year period as all three schools offer their financial aid for those first four years (even for the two 3+3 programs). That’s a lot of extra cash for ol’ Dad to dish out…</p>
<p>I’m sure we’ll spend a good bit of time this spring hashing out the pros & cons of each school before the May 1st decision.</p>
<p>Wow! I am really surprised at the cost of Drexel. We totally made a mistake and thought it was $43,000 - yup, we were only looking at tuition. Not sure if we would have applied if we were more with it at the time. Well we will wait it out and see what happens. The other school at $53,000 is looking better since they gave double money in scholarships too.</p>