Stay Enrolled In Your School
Study From Here Instead
Live In A Community. Grow As An Individual.
Keep Earning Your Degree.
20 Spots Available For An October 10 Start
Live In A Community. Grow As An Individual.
Keep Earning Your Degree.
20 Spots Available For An October 10 Start
We are not a school. We just make yours better. Each semester, we create an exceptional in-person learning community for students studying online. We provide academic support, professional mentorship, and optional workshops that cultivate social, emotional, and real life skills. And we do it in some of the most beautiful places on earth.
You’re someone who wants to take full advantage of where and how you live while taking your school’s online courses. While here, you’ll build a strong community, learning the necessary skills that will set you up for success. You’re someone who wants to study and learn in a beautiful setting, not your parents’ basement — let’s get you out of there!
A college degree is only a part of the journey toward a successful life. Higher education in its current form is missing a few essential ingredients. Students can unlock more with adaptive leadership, design thinking, practical skills — all best learned in a supportive community. We'll help you adopt these skills and grow with intention.
Rustic simplicity and comfort. Find out what happens when you remove the clutter — spoiler alert: you’re much more focused and productive, and it’s a lot more fun.
Tucked into Prescott National Forest, our campus at Friendly Pines Camp takes advantage of what the mountains of central Arizona have to offer.
Currently unavailable. Timeline pending. Expected update: October. Expected Availability: Spring.
Currently unavailable. Timeline pending. Expected update: October. Expected Availability: Spring.
Building a strong network requires more than just connecting with someone on LinkedIn. It requires collaboration, communication, and emotional intelligence. These are learned skills. At APB, you’ll be learning and applying these skills in real time, all while building strong connections with friends and future collaborators. The community you make here will be with you for a lifetime.
We’re reimagining the college experience. Keep all the benefits of your enrolled school while exploring what’s possible at A Place Beyond. Same dollars in, greater lifelong satisfaction out.
*The above fees were calculated by combining room, board, some non-tuition fees, and expected costs. To learn more, click the link in the comparison chart.
**Generally, student fees are charged by colleges to pay for services such as the gym, health center, orientation, etc. Schools which have had all-online options for several years — such as Oregon State University — usually only charge a small technology fee in addition to tuition. This year, many schools are making student fees optional for distance learning.
Bring your community to our community. Choose a team name (e.g. team redwood) and let us know in your application, so we can better plan our rooms and location.
It’s okay to want it all: academic rigor, professional mentorship, and a connected community invested in changing the world. Maximizing your online experience doesn’t simply mean gaining more information. It means gaining the freedom to explore the things that enrich and empower you offline. Our program of optional trips, workshops, and drop-in activities are specifically designed to adapt to our communities. Below are some of what you can expect:
What if I’m not in an online degree program?
We can help! Contact us and we’ll help you navigate your current college’s distance learning requirements or connect you with the right program.
We are also working with applicants in remote gap year, internship, or other experiential education programs. Let us know in your application if this is the case for you.
Who can apply?
You must be 18-30 years old by the start of your APB experience.
Most of our applicants are enrolled in an associate, bachelor, or graduate degree program. We are also working with applicants in remote internships, gap years, and other experiential education programs.
Let us know in your application if your education or work for the fall is a little different, and we'll talk about what we can do to make it work.
You must have health insurance at the beginning of the semester. If you are uninsured, we can help. Please contact us for more details.
Don’t fit these requirements, but still interested in this program? We’re developing a remote work offering. Click here to let us know you’re interested!
Are we going to be distancing and wearing masks on campus?
Living in a small, intentional community will also allow us to keep people healthy and live a relatively normal life despite the risk of Covid-19. We’ll test everyone upon arrival, provide support and seclusion for those that test positive, and then treat our cohort as a stable bubble.
We'll use a same-day test and trace system and rely on the low population densities surrounding our immediate locations to mitigate the risk. At the end of the semester, participants will quarantine together as one collective family unit in order to go home with the confidence that they are keeping their older relatives safe.
We take the risks of Covid-19 very seriously, and we’re working with the local health authority of each of our campuses to implement best practices.
Read more about our Covid-19 precautions here.
Will there be good internet?
We checked each campus to make sure the bandwidth can withstand 60 people on Zoom all the time. That means fiber, expansive wifi, and lots of space to spread out.
Sounds cool, but how does this work?
This isn’t a gap year. We know that 15 credits or remote work will take up a lot of your time. To us that means you'll be living and working on your own schedule, opting in and out of weekly workshops, trips, and community events based on your workload.
During an average week, there will be about 15 hours of APB trips, workshops, and community events, and you'll get to choose what fits.
We’ll check in with you each week in order to: help you set academic, professional, and personal goals; connect you with a professional mentor that matches your interests; learn how we can better support you; and ask for feedback about what's working and what's not. We want to make sure you find balance and that the workshops and trips that you're most interested in are aligned with your schedule.
We'll also make time each week for small group meetings to reflect on what we're learning about online learning and about our community.
Here's an example schedule a student might make for the first week of October.
© 2020 Place Beyond LLC. All rights reserved.