Our ideal student is someone who is looking for more. Maybe you are in an institutional 4-year-degree and cannot decide on a major. Maybe you are a transient traveler, working service jobs to pay the bills. Maybe you have retired from working 30 years in a job that didn’t fulfill their real desires.

Anyone can apply to attend SotA, as long as you are 18+! At SotA, everyone has the opportunity to hold every role: we all perform work service, faculty and staff attend classes, and as a student, you can teach pop-up classes. Our programming is self-directed: you choose which classes you want to take!

The cost to attend School of the Alternative is $575/session. We are very grateful to those who can pay for their stay in full, as this allows us to offer need-based financial aid to talented students who would be unable to attend otherwise. We also offer a Justice Rate of $775. This not only covers the break-even cost of your being at SotA, but contributes to meeting our operational deficits incurred from keeping our tuition as accessible as possible. This rate for folks who are able to pay more helps keep SotA sustainable. 

Scholarships:
Each session, we will offer both half and full scholarships, as well as Black Equity Scholarships. Our hope is to continually increase the scholarships that we offer - we want as many folks as possible to be able to attend sessions, and for the experience to be mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially healthy for them.