You know when your eyes are bloodshot, your draining the Visine bottle like nobody’s business, your hair is greasy from a whole night of stress, your heart is racing, and your skin is all dry and itchy that you’ve been spending way too much time on research papers and living off caffeine. If I don’t get some water and sleep (not necessarily in that order); I’m going to crash.
It appears that the University of Iowa Board of Regents has just bypassed the Law School’s tuition recommendation. One step forward for the rights of law students anywhere!
They Thought We Were Stupid (We Weren’t)
Way back in October, the University of Iowa College of Law came forward with a tuition proposition that had the students in an uproar. They may not have been in the streets striking, but social media accounts lit up. None of us understood how the Law School thought we would be okay with the proposal – did we look that stupid?
After attending UIowa Law, I will owe nearly $200,000 in tuition. I owed less than $27,000 after undergrad.
According to reports, the Law School wanted to cut non-resident tuition by almost $8000 (with the cost dropping from $47,252 to $39,500 per year). In order to prop up this cut in non-resident tuition, the College was going to raise resident tuition by approx. $500 (up to about $26,750 per year). It sounded really good, especially when you consider the fact that resident applications have dropped drastically in recent years (actually all applications have dropped; law schools are just slow at admitting it). Since 2010, applications from Iowa Residents have fallen by nearly 50% (from 287 to 173). So with more non-residents coming in, it sounds like a good idea to drop tuition for them right?
The Students however saw the following problems –
So now, the resident tuition hike is hitting both the resident students and the non-residents who have R.A. positions.
Suffice to say, students were unhappy.
The Board of Regents Responds
Thank God for the wonderful UIowa Board of Regents who acknowledged the problems with the plan. As Regent Katie Mulholland said,“If it is fair to lower nonresident tuition, then our resident students ought to have the same opportunity in terms of cost.” (2) The Board went on to state that they were “‘disappointed’ a tuition cut wasn’t proposed by the law school.” (2). Instead, the Board has proposed that, while the non-resident tuition drop will stand, there will also be a $4,464 drop in resident tuition (to $22,284 per year). If the Board approves of the proposal, it will begin taking effect in 2014. Too late to help me, but hopefully it will be beneficial to those student in the future. At least it’s a step in the right direction.
MPRE scores are posted if you took the test Nov. 2013! Meaning I just spent 45 minutes trying to figure out where they were going to show up. Now that I have located it, I thought I’d share the directions in case anyone else was having the same problem. 🙂 CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE.
Looks like this. You need the “Scaled Score.” Now go check out the State MPRE Requirements to see where your score is sufficient to meet their laws. You need at least a 75, usually higher, for all but Puerto Rico, Maryland, and Wisconsin.
Did you know that items you lose/leave behind may be turned in to the State Treasury? In fact, a lot of lost property is required to be turned in. And the Treasury office might keep it for quite a while, waiting for you to claim it. On the other hand, the states do auction items off after awhile to raise money.
And we’re not just talking $1 here or there. Some items in the auctions sell for thousands of dollars. State Treasury Offices can have as much as a $Billion+ in unclaimed property that people have lost and never claimed. It can be physical property or something like an Insurance Refund (my uncle found $120+) or a Payroll (cousin had $28) or other such things. Each state has a search engine where you look up your name (or a deceased family members name when searching for the estate). If you don’t find anything there, make sure you try calling the State Treasurer’s office too. Not every state published everything in their possession–some take things down over time or don’t post big items, etc. Then usually you just have to file your claim. Check it out! Great places to start are MissingMoney and NAUPA; they’re working with a bunch of states at once.
I first ran across this lovely little poem about a year ago, and it really resonated with me. Life and school were starting to pile up; and people kept reminding me that it was time to figure out precisely what I wanted to do with my life. Everyone wanted answers as to “what I was going to do”, “where was I applying”, “where was I going?” I had no idea; well that isn’t actually true. You see I went to law school with the idea that I could work with an auction house specializing in fine arts. I have been having a love affair with history for years, pretty much since my first history book on the ancient Greeks. This continued through my undergraduate years, and it was supposed to be part of my employment plans. But then the financial crisis hit, Sallie Mae loans started getting higher and higher, and the jobs scarcer and scarcer. That high-paying job at the New York law firm dealing with Insurance fraud started sounding a little nicer. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure what I wanted to do. I had already been so caught up in school and making sure that my laundry and dishes stayed done that I hadn’t read a history-based book or article in nearly two years. Did it really mean that much to me?–Wouldn’t the monetary reward of a big job be enough?
But that was when God used my world to step in. Radio stations, news articles, Facebook posts, even those little Pinterest pictures friends sent me–everything around me was suddenly saying: “Stop.” and “Live!” Heck YOLO! was showing up everywhere. And I came to the realization that it’s true: You only get one chance to enjoy the world. I don’t care how you depict life after death (or the absence of it), you only Continue reading
“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city” ~ Roman Payne
Language Translation
Deceptively Blonde 