Courtney Snyder

Kaplan University
B.A. in Environmental Policy and Management, 2011

My name is Courtney Snyder and I am 21-years-old. I'm currently working on my Bachelor's of Science in Environmental Policy and Management. Ever since I was a young girl, I would love watching Court TV, Law and Order, and other courtroom-based shows. I loved the idea of helping defend people who needed help, but yet I knew I wanted to stay far from murder and rape trials. So during high school I started getting involved in science courses. In my senior year, a brand new course started, Advance Placement Environmental Science. I was engrossed by the course and loved how different it was compared to every other science class I had taken.

After graduating high school I went to a traditional private college in Alaska, and I took on the major of Environmental Policy and Management. After one semester there, I realized that there was no way I could afford to continue attending there, because I had accumulated a debt of over $5,000 after financial aid. Being raised by a single mother and having a brother also in college, I had no way to pay off that amount. So I decided to move back to my home state of Texas and attended a public university in Corpus Christi, TX as an Environmental Chemistry major. I thought things were going really well until it was getting harder to get financial aid and you were lucky if jobs on campus paid $5.75 an hour. Also, being a Chemistry major, it was extremely difficult to work, especially off campus due to my class schedule and the amount of time it took for labs. It finally got to the point where I couldn't see myself as being successful in school, because I was so stressed about money and time management.

I made the very difficult decision to take a semester off from college and see where my next steps would take me. In that time, I really felt like I had strayed from my dreams about what I wanted out of school—to become a successful lawyer working in environmental law. So after doing research online I decided to do an online course to get my certificate as a paralegal/legal assistant. Once I started, I realized how much I loved taking classes online, not having to be in class at a particular time or make a work schedule around my class.

Then it really got me thinking about those commercials that you see on TV. I started searching the different online colleges and even called a few to see what they offered. It wasn't until about two months later that I went back to Kaplan University's website and really looked at their major again. When I saw they offered a B.S. in Environmental Policy and Management, I knew it was what I wanted. I call them that day and was registered for classes two days later.

I am now taking my first two classes at Kaplan University while living in Corpus Christi, TX, and so far, I have had the best experiences possible. Not only was it super easy to transfer to Kaplan, but they make the whole process of registration and financial aid so easy. The classes themselves are awesome! You meet once a week for an online seminar, which is just like an online chat room meeting with your class and professor. Otherwise you do the work when you want and where you want. I can even do my classes at the beach if I want to. The flexibility is one of the best things I could ever ask for.

You also have a different term length then the usual Texas college. Kaplan goes by quarter schedule, which means instead of the normal 16 week long class, you go for 10 weeks. This means that instead of taking four to five classes at once, you concentrate on usually two or three classes. For me, that is amazing since I get overwhelmed by too many classes at once. I love being able to concentrate on just a few. I now work with a temporary agency doing entry level paralegal work full-time while going to school full-time. I am hoping to graduate by August 2011 and immediately start attending law school. My dreams are once again coming true and I think that Kaplan had a lot to do with that.

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