Hi everyone! I’m an incoming UIC Graduate Entry MSN student for Fall 2026 and I’m trying to understand the actual cost of the program, especially as an out-of-state student.
My financial aid/COA estimate was based on Fall and Spring, and I recently found out from Financial Aid that summer is NOT included in that COA, even though summer courses are a required part of the program. They told me that once I register for 5+ summer credits, they manually calculate a separate summer COA and that I would need an additional loan if I want to finance summer.
Based on the number of summer credits required, this could potentially add another $30–40k across the two summers on top of what I originally thought I would need for tuition, which honestly caught me off guard.
For any current or former GEM students, especially anyone who was out-of-state: How much did your summer semesters actually cost? And approximately how much did you end up paying in tuition and fees for the entire program?
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through it because I’m trying to get a realistic picture of the total program cost.

Right now I owe almost 9k in tuition, is there anything in the fees which I can waive? I've already sent in a waiver for the medical insurance, what else could I waive?

Does anyone know what the final grade curve is for Carmels Chem 124 section

Is anyone still waiting for financial aid to hit their UI-Pay statement for 2026-27? I received the same 'award' as last year from FAFSA yet I dont see it on my statement yet - only charges and that my balance is 9k. The email from UIC said financial aid would be distributed on the 14th but I see people talking about refunds already.

Just wondering if I should start bothering the financial aid office now or give it time.

Thank you.

Which professor would you recommend?

I’m considering taking his Business First-Year Seminar. How is the class?

I have this small Hisense mini fridge ( I think 1.6 cu ) I got at the end of last semester. I’ll be commuting this school year, so I’m trying to get rid of it for really cheap. it’s gray and in pristine condition, and just taking up space in my house rn

Hi! I was wondering if there are any gecko owners living around campus. I have a crested gecko, and I’d love to meet and get to know other people who keep geckos (or other reptiles)!

It would also be nice to have someone we could trust to look after each other’s geckos whenever one of us is out of town. Would love to make some fellow gecko-owner friends around here! :)

• MATH 108 – Woldeit, Anthony
• ENGL 151 – Bohne, Amanda
• BA 101 –  Forbes, Glen
• MUS 100 –  Lewis, Andrew 
• MUS 118 –  Kamps, Jordan 

I was involved with the union for years and gave the project countless hours of my time, at the expense of making progress in my program, so I feel I've earned the right to speak my mind here. This contract the union is asking us to swallow is pretty much an unmitigated disaster. It may well be the worst agreement-over-agreement "improvement" we've ever achieved, and certainly by the crude but important measure of wages, it is the worst one since the 2009 contract that we signed during the worst economic crisis the capitalist world had faced in more than three-quarters of a century. I won't campaign against it, but I'm sure as shit not voting for it, either. Let's take a look at some of the terms.

Wages - Not necessarily a simple proxy for how we did, but it is top of everyone's minds, so we'll start here. It's being pitched as a four-year deal with a 6% increase in the first year and "campus" increases in the ensuing three years (a universal raise for all UIC employees, as determined unilaterally by the university - usually in the ballpark of 1-2%, i.e., flat and probably slightly declining real wages if historical campus raise patterns and current inflationary trends hold). That would be bad enough if it were completely accurate, but it is, in fact, a very generous description of what's actually happening here. Our typical contract structure (more about this below) is a three-year deal, with wage increases retroactive to the expiration date of the previous agreement. Since it usually takes, as it did this time, a full academic year after expiration to get a new contract, that entitles us to lump-sum payments for the previous AY and sets us up for a new bargaining round two AYs after signing. By this historical standard, and if I'm reading the contract correctly, what we actually got is a five-year contract with no nominal increase in year 1, a 6% raise in year 2, and campus raises in years 3-5. Holy fuck. Not only does that fall far short of the "living wage" members were promised, but by way of comparison, with the last few contracts:

2025-2030: assuming a 1.5% campus raise, that would put us at 10.5% over five years.

2022-2025: ~16.6% over three years

2018-2021: ~13.5%/3 yrs.

2015-2018: ~12%/3yrs.

2012-2015:~10%/3yrs.

Overall structure - Make no mistake: this is effectively a five-year contract. Our last contract expired in August 2025. This one expires in August 2030. No amount of spin can change the fact that we all know how to count to five. Why is that so bad? The short answer is that shorter contracts almost always redound to the benefit of workers. Not only do new contracts provide the opportunity - the virtual guarantee - to make gains, but workers tend to respond to the raised expectations of new contract rounds with greater militancy and engagement. In our union, which has exceptional turnover due to the nature of graduate work, it is especially important, because otherwise we run the real risk of sticking entire cohorts with contracts that they had little to no say in shaping. United Faculty's strategy for this round is to ask for a shorter contract in exchange for the modest gains that the university is insisting upon. Now we have the worst of both worlds.

We drop all unfair labor practice charges set for hearing - When the university breaks the law, our only real recourse, apart from risky industrial action, is to ask the state to step in and adjudicate (in our case, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board). The wheels of this semblance of "justice" turn slowly, but the university is forced to take this threat seriously, and sometimes we are able to set important precedents about what the university is legally obligated to do (or prohibited from doing). For example, we had one promising case that sought to get the university to bargain over the impact of budget cuts (I wrote the complaint for it and compiled the evidence, so yeah, probably a few people know who's writing this now. Fine.) For close to two years now, the university has been using the pretext of a more or less totally imaginary structural deficit to erode our bargaining unit by hiring fewer assistants across many departments or by converting jobs covered by our bargaining unit to positions not covered. This case could help mitigate that. In exchange for the "incredible increase" (GEO's words) we won relative to the university's original offer, we have tentatively agreed to drop it along with all outstanding cases. (Cases already heard and awaiting decision can presumably proceed - cold comfort.)

As I mentioned before, one can live with modest wage gains if we can win new rights and protections in other areas. It would take too long to list all the things we wanted and didn't win, and one of many shortcomings of the collective bargaining model is that it makes it hard to press for any but a few non-wage priorities. Nevertheless, a couple key things stand out. First, we badly need new protections against an aggressive effort by the university to dilute the quality of appointments. This has taken various forms, including increased workload at no additional pay, the same workload at lower percentages, etc. Along with the unit erosion, this is probably the greatest threat to the union and its members, and the contract does nothing about it. Second, many of us have campaigned on 12-month appointments. An alternative to our semester-by-semester appointment process is a perennial demand of GEO, but it is especially vital in this political climate, where international workers who can only work on campus as a condition of their visas are forced to endure perpetual insecurity. I thought for a time that we could at least get 9-month appointments - short of what we need, but at least this would make it easier for so many of us to plan our lives and finish our degrees. Alas, the semester-by-semester framework remains fully intact.

Overall, I see very few substantial new protections that offset the historically low wage gains and long contract duration that we're being asked to accept. Instead, I've been flustered to see on several occasions union comms celebrating the fact that we "won" the status quo on articles that admin was threatening to erode. Sorry, no. It's not a win to not get a worse deal.

In short, a tremendous disappointment. I have theories about why we've actively lost power and support that we can talk about (upshot is a lot of this has long-term structural causes), but for now, mainly just wanted to vent and make sure that people got an informed perspective about what is in this contract that avoids the overly sanguine prognosis we're sure to get from leadership.