Thank you all for responding to my original post - your advice was very helpful. Perhaps I should explain my situation a bit more - I am 45 and thus have been in the workforce for many, many (too many) years now. And I teach high school, which would make a summer program very doable for me. That's one reason why I'm interested in lo-res programs; the other is that I applied to full-time programs last year and got no response (I'm not getting any response this year, either, as it happens). My salary isn't great, but I could afford loans if I needed to take them out. So I know I could potentially pay for these programs, but I still don't know if it's worth the cash outlay. That's what I'm debating and why I'm looking for advice. If anyone else has information you could pass along, I'd very much appreciate it!