(Article reprinted from GEORGIA MAGAZINE, Vol. 80, No. 2, March 2001, p. 19.)
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SPECIAL PHOTO
Blake Hannon enjoyed
her exchange year in New York so much she is staying to get her degree
and pursue an acting career. |
Exchange program: out-of-state
education at in-state prices
Trading
places
After being born in New York City, but
spending only a few weeks there, Blake Hannon had one clear objective in life:
"Get back to the Big Apple!"
She got her chance, when-after spending
her freshman year at UGA-she learned that UGA participates in an exchange program
that enables students to spend a year at universities from New York to Hawaii
with no change in their tuition.
Founded in 1967, the National Student
Exchange program has expanded to 160 colleges with 4,000 students participating
every year. NSE was established at UGA in 1977, and, on the average, says director
Jenny Best, "40-50 UGA students exchange schools every year-with about
the same number of students coming here."
In Hannon's case, because she qualified
for the HOPE Scholarship at UGA, the NSE program enabled her to realize her
life-long dream of going to school in New York City - she was to do it tuition free.
"The HOPE was too tempting to pass
up, but I hadn't gotten the experience of going away to college," says
Hannon, who grew up in Athens. "So I signed up for Hunter College as my
first choice. My second choice was the University of Montana because I love
to ski!"
Montana is a popular choice with NSE students,
as is UGA.
Holly Picket, a senior from the University
of Montana, spent her junior year on exchange at UGA. Like most NSE students,
she says the main reason she joined the program was to experience a part of
the U.S. she had never seen before.
"I experienced culture shock because
I wasn't 'from the South,' although most people were very friendly to
me," says Pickett. "I began to be nostalgic for my family and friends-and
especially the mountains in Montana. But I'll never forget tailgaters, the roar
from Sanford Stadium on game day, or the Southern drawl."
After spending a year at Hunter College
in Manhattan, Hannon made so many friends in the entertainment world-where her
career hopes lie-that she couldn't get New York out of her system. "After
one year here," she says, "I had already established a life that I
didn't want to leave." Hannon is now a senior at Marymount Manhattan College,
and she plans to live and work in New York.
Which is not to say that everything about
NSE tours is always letter-perfect.
Liz Hansen, a junior from UGA, began to
miss Georgia almost immediately after arriving at UMass-Amherst on exchange.
But it wasn't family and friends she missed. It was her computer. "What
stood out the most between UMass and UGA was a lack of technology throughout
the school," she says. "Registration was still done over the telephone,
campus computers were few and far between, and very few students had their own
computer."
For NSE information: 706/542-7774.
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