By: George

George
Thu, 31 May 2018 16:17:23 +0000

From my personal experience and the experience of others: STEP has always been a semi-useless program. They started out by essentially giving students $2,000 even if they didn't do anything, in order to keep them in the residence halls. I got the impression that this was also the case in my sophomore year, where the $2,000 stipend was factored in again. However, they seemed to have wisened to people in it for the money, and made the program almost entirely about the project. They severely restricted the things you could get money for, often over or underfunding students' projects, making it overall more trouble than it's worth. I don't think anyone I know has said that they enjoyed STEP. If anything, it increases retention rates because by the time students have slogged through the inane and bureaucratic requirements for the program, dropping out would seem like a waste of time and effort.