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. students can choose their major the subject they want to study either before or after starting college many students don't know what exactly they want to study so they don't decide on a major until the end of their second year the way this works is that all students have general classes during their first two years everyone takes more or less the same types of classes math English history science etc then starting in their third year students take classes specific to their major so for example I majored in English so during my third and fourth years of university all my classes were related to English but during my first and second years I had all general classes not all English classes this is why many people don't decide on a major until the end of their second year you don't really have to decide before then I know this is really different from a lot of other university systems in other countries okay lastly let's talk about living on campus this is something that many students do especially in their first and second years all universities have what we call dorms which are like student apartments but usually very small the dorms are located on the college campus so it makes it really convenient for students to walk to their classes the downside of living in the dorms is that you usually have to share your small living space with other people if you get stuck with a bad roommate you're in for a long year I've had some bad roommates in the past unfortunately another negative thing about living in the dorms is that if you're not into drinking and partying it can be pretty uncomfortable for you dorms are notorious for being places where students drink party and get into all kinds of trouble so you might want to consider that before you decide to live on campus okay that's all for today leave a comment and tell me what your country's universities are like I'll see you next video [Music] [Applause] [Music]