hey everybody welcome to this b1 English listening practice video you can use this video to practice your listening and comprehension as I speak you ready so today I'm gonna talk about universities in the US this is a subject that I'm sure a lot of you are interested in because maybe you've thought about studying in the u. s. so let's talk about some of the essentials that you need to know about American colleges so first things first it's important that you know that in the u.
s. we use the word college interchangeably with the word university you can say either of these words and they refer to the same thing most of the time in other countries this is not the case I'm sure if you go to the UK or Australia you'll hear people use these words very differently but since I'm an American I tend to use the word college more frequently than university let's talk a little bit about the cost of going to a four-year university in the u. s.
before we can calculate the average cost we first need to distinguish between in-state and out-of-state tuition what am I talking about here well if you attend a university that is located in the state where you live where you went to high school it's cheaper if you decide to go to a university in another state it's more expensive this is what I'm referring to when I talk about in-state and out-of-state tuition the average in-state tuition for a 4-year public university in the u. s. at this time is a little more than $25,000 per year I know that's a lot but it's actually not that bad compared to out-of-state tuition the average out-of-state tuition for a 4-year public university in the u.
s. at this time is about 41,000 dollars per year that's crazy isn't it I wish I could tell you that I were joking but sadly I'm not this is the reality of going to college in the u. s.
so you definitely need to think about this before you decide to study in an American University I was pretty lucky because my college wasn't quite expensive you might be wondering how people can afford to pay these astronomical tuition costs the answer is student loans a student loan is money that the government lends to somebody to pay for college sounds great right wrong after you graduate you have to pay back all the money that the government gave you plus interest so after students graduate they spend many years paying back their student loans college is unbelievably expensive in the u. s. all right let's talk about the educational aspect of American universities in the u.
s.
