When attempting to accomplish this assignment, I was in my friend’s dorm with her roommate and friend, along with a couple of our friends. Since we were all together, I decided to spark a conversation about the economy. Being someone who has never really taken an interest in our country’s economy or economic talk in general, I struggled at first. Luckily, it was not too long until we all started conversing about something we all have in general – being students at the University of Delaware.

My friend’s roommate, Cheyenne, and her friend started talking about how they knew someone that paid around $50,000 to attend and live on campus here at UD. Sophia and I, who are from the same hometown out-of-state, instantly interrupted. “$50,000? I only pay a little less than  $30,000 to go here,” she said. After I agreed with her, we were met with shock and laughter. Two of our friends in the room are Delaware residents, and even knowing that tuition for in-state students was considerably lower, I was grossly underestimating the difference between in-state and out-of-state students. My one friend said she was only paying about $8,000 a year. A YEAR. Meanwhile the rest of us are paying at least 20,000 more than that a year. I turned to Cheyenne whose jaw was dropped. I asked what her tuition was per year. “Disgustingly low,” she responded. 

We started talking about why it was so different, and the two Delawarians, Cheyenne and Melissa, said it was due to the lack of Delaware students that end up going to Delaware. They explained their theory that usually everyone living here “…want to get the hell out of Delaware” for college, so UD offers them a lot more money and benefits (i.e. cheaper-to-free living) on top of a tuition that is half the cost of someone from another state. 

I immediately started reevaluating why I would agree to pay an absurd amount of money here, when I most likely could have found schools in my state that offered me similar “cheap” tuition. Sadly, my major of pre-veterinary medicine is not something that community colleges tend to offer. On top of that, veterinary school is extremely competitive, and the undergraduate school you attend plays a role in whether they accept you or not, because the Vet Schools want to make sure students are able to do well in harder programs. I had to look at undergraduate schools that had a high acceptance rate into grad schools, while also looking at how beneficial their specific pre-vet programs will be for my learning. Low and behold, I am here at Delaware paying way too much to follow a lifelong dream, while some students around the country have had to make the decisions to turn down their dream schools or dream majors due to money. Overall, it is just very disappointing to be reminded that money can hold people back from something as valuable as education.