Sat Test

What did you think of Mr. Marlette’s commencement address? I think he made some valid points ~especially when he spoke about trusting your instincts and also about easing up on yourself for not being perfect. There is no such thing as perfection. Making goals and working towards perfection is a laudable goal. You should do your best in school, in your SAT exams, in your search for the right college and financial aid. However, Mr. Marlette gave excellent advice when he told the graduating class to ease up on themselves. Yes, do your best but do not put so much pressure on yourself that you implode.

Along with all the serious things in your life, make room for the fun and the frivolous. This sounds quite cliché, but do make time to stop and smell the roses. Look up from your studies sometimes and watch the clouds go by in a blue sky. Remember when you used to lay on the grass and try to see shapes you could recognize in the cloud formations? Take an afternoon and do that with a friend. Relax. Breathe.

You’re studying hard for your classes, for your SAT test, for your future. Remember to make time for yourself in all of the hustle and bustle of your life.

Graduating from high school is huge. Parties are held, presents are given, diplomas are awarded and the future spreads out before you with decisions to be made and challenges to be met.

There will be commencement addresses given and you may not be paying attention to them, but you should. Much wisdom is parted out during those sometimes boring talks. I’d like to give you part of the talk that Doug Marlette gave at a high school commencement in 2005. Don’t know who Doug Marlette is? Are you sure?

You may not recognize the name, but you might have heard of the comic strip Kudzu. Its creator is the artist Doug Marlette, who was tragically killed this month in a car accident. He created the cartoon series Kudzu. Mr. Marlette gave a commencement address to a high school graduating class in Texas in 2005. It’s something I wanted to share with you because I think it has a great deal to say to high school seniors.

Here is an excerpt from his commencement address.

Yes, it’s a bottom-line world out there, boys and girls. Everything — including education — has been commodified. Consequently, we think everything worth knowing is test-able, quantifiable, and measurable.

Have fun, don’t worry, be happy, pick up your towels off the floor, and don’t call directory assistance for numbers you can look up yourself. Congratulations, Class of 2005!

In my last blog post I wrote about touring college campuses and getting a feel for the school. Sometimes the visits that parents and students make to check out prospective hallowed halls of higher learning are wonderful experiences, some are not so wonderful. As it said in an article I referenced in my last post, a lot of people try to sandwich in their college campus visits between all their other activities and sometimes there is too little time and too much stress involved in these visits. If you’re stressed out, then you might not be seeing the college campus in its best light as you’re filtering it through eyes that are overtired from a long drive, or harried because you’ve made too many time commitments.

There’s a company based in Charleston, SC called College Visits (www.college-visits.com) that has come up with a unique way to help parents and prospective students tour colleges and universities across the nation and get the most out of their college search. While they have developed an innovative way to aid you in touring colleges, such as offering tours to major universities in the east from July 21-27, you should be aware that this does come with a price tag. This particular college tour originates in Boston, MA and costs nearly two thousand dollars.

While it does give you useful check lists in order to help you remember questions to ask and things to see, it is expensive. If you don’t find that this route to visiting colleges is for you, then do as I suggested in my previous blog; visit the college or university’s website, take their virtual tours, contact them for more information, set up a time when you can visit the school in person and don’t forget to write down questions you may wish to ask your tour guide. Talk about it with your parents and your friends and your high school counselor. See if they can come up with questions that you haven’t even considered. College’s give free guided tours on their campuses. They want you to know everything there is to know about them and they want you to be an incoming freshman applicant. Their visitors’ office is there for the express purpose of answering your questions and helping you learn about their school. If you aren’t able to make the guided tour, some colleges, like Texas University at Austin http://www.utexas.edu/tours/ has a self-guided tour available for you. All you have to do is download the PDF file for the self guided walking tour and you’re set to go at your own pace.

Some colleges and universities actively recruit students via snail mail and emails. This may sound like they’re desperate to you, and they just might be. Some schools offer to defer the cost of your admissions application just to get you to apply. Other schools might give you a grace period, where you can apply before the stated deadline for admissions, or you can apply after the deadline has passed. It all depends on the school and what they have to offer.

Speaking of deadlines, there are a lot of them to consider when you’re senior in high school. We’ll talk about that in my next blog post

In my last blog post I talked about different ways to visit colleges or universities that interest you. You can go to their websites and take virtual tours, click on links that tell you about the student population, how diverse it is, the history of the school, information about various departments and areas of study and even perhaps some tidbits about the town or city in which the college resides. There is a great deal of information to be gleaned by simply going to the school’s website.

So let’s say that you’ve taken the virtual tour, and you still want more. You want to go there, walk around the campus, visit the campus bookstore, its library and take a peek at on-campus housing. Virtual tours are wonderful things, but there is something to be said for physically walking around, taking in the atmosphere of the campus, looking at the school and talking to students who attend there.

It may be time for a road trip.

Most times parents will want to go with you if you’re going to look at colleges and in order to see how you feel about the school, its surroundings, campus, dorms and other aspects of your prospective school.

As I said before, it’s a great idea to check out the school’s website and glean all the information available there in order to get a feel for the school before actually committing to physically visiting.

Before you make a potentially expensive trip (depending on where the school is located and how far you’re going to have to travel) make sure that you’ve also checked out everything about the school beforehand. Look into the cost of tuition, their student financial aid package, do they have scholarships for something you’re qualified to receive, is the student body a group you feel you’d feel comfortable with and fit in. There are also considerations based on private versus public institutions of higher learning. Schools generally have codes of conduct rules that, should you be admitted, you will be required to live by. For example, some private religious universities ask you to commit to not smoking, drinking, taking drugs and maintaining a moral lifestyle. Public and therefore more liberal universities and colleges do not require these standards of their students, but they do have some rules of conduct.

If you’d like to learn more about touring college campuses, there is an amusing article written by a parent that has had the experience of taking their child to tour schools, only to find that their student was less than thrilled with the weather, the tour guide or the town the college resided in. You can read the article here.

Enjoy!

In my last couple of blog posts I talked about scholarships and grants and student loans. These are all important issues for a student getting ready to head out into the world for his or her first year of college, but there is also something equally important and in my opinion, much more exciting; touring the colleges you’re interested in attending!

Hopefully you’ve narrowed down the number of schools that you are committed to looking at to get your degree. You’ve done your homework and you’re going to look at your dad’s alma mater and a handful of other schools that you’re interested in. How do you go about looking at them in person?

Sure, you could just show up and walk through the campus, try to get a feel for the place and maybe even talk to some of the students that attend the college. However, if you’d like a more in-depth look at the university or college, than go to their website. Every college and university, technical school or community college has a website these days.

Remember that applying for admission to schools costs you money each and every time. If your resources are limited, you will definitely want to apply only to those schools that you are serious about attending.

For example, let’s say that I’ve chosen the University of Washington as one of the schools I’d like to visit so I can make up my mind about whether or not I want to apply.

I’ll go to the University of Washington’s official website. http://www.washington.edu/

If you look at that page, you will find that the sidebar to the right has ways you can visit the school. They give you a phone number to call for visitors’ information. In this era of technology, you don’t have to physically visit the campus at all if you don’t want to, or can’t fund visits to many schools. The UW offers you a virtual tour! Click on their virtual tour download and you are treated to a visual of the entire campus.

If you can visit, then you might be interested in the daily walking tours of the campus given by students attending the university. Getting to ask questions of a student who attends the university you are interested in is a valuable tool to help you in making your decision. It might be a good idea to have some questions written down ahead of time to ask the tour guide so you don’t forget anything.

The University of Washington also offers special guided tours for schools and organizations of 15 guests or more can be arranged as well. They also offer specialized tours from different departments, such as the fish hatchery, the Washington Park Arboretum and others.

I don’t want you to think that I’ve chosen the University of Washington as an example because it’s my alma mater, it’s not. I’m just using it as an example of the things you can discover on a university’s website that will give you a closer look at the school, its students, its educational opportunities and even its surrounding areas. All these things will aid you in making your decision about applying for admissions.

In my next blog I’ll talk about planning road trips to see different colleges and how you might be able to visit several places and not break the bank in doing so!

Did you know that you can go through school paid for entirely by student loans? Did you know that if you are in school at least half time, the loans do not come due for repayment until you graduate? And even then, there is usually a grace period before repayment begins.

Perhaps you’re not thinking about all the financial things that you’re going to need for your future right now. You’re more interested in who you might be going to the prom with, or why your bff hasn’t text messaged you for at least half an hour. Then again, there’s always who you’re going to chill with on Friday night or what music you need to download for your myspace page. There’s a great deal of things calling for your attention when you’re a senior in high school and most of them aren’t things that will directly affect your financial future.

However, just like puppies and kittens one day turn into dogs and cats, teenagers turn into adults. Along with that maturity comes a responsibility for your finances. Hopefully your parents have given you a base of knowledge to help you understand just how important it is to keep your finances in order.

You can apply for student loans to pay for your college education, but do not use that avenue if you do not have to do so. Remember, anything you borrow, you must repay. There are a great many lending companies out there vying for student loan business, so make sure you research your loan options thoroughly before committing.

You can see how many companies are looking to finance student loans by googling ’student loans’. It’s important to remember find the best interest rates available. Hopefully your parents have talked to you about staying away from drugs, about driving carefully and have fully explained interest rates and credit card issues to you. If not, then here is a little crash course.

You can consider the interest rate the price of money. Credit is pretty easy to obtain and is fairly dangerous to use and if used unwisely it can take years to fix. Interest rates can vary and depending on how much you borrow, you will always end up paying more than you borrowed and this is due to the interest rate. Up till now you’ve probably not had to even think about interest rates or loans. You’ve been a student and that has been your most important job up until now.

An excellent site to go to for student loan information and interest rates is called Sallie Mae SallieMae has a great deal of excellent information about different kinds of student loans and how to apply for them. On their website it says that there are fixed interest rates or you can get a variable interest rate. A fixed rate means that the amount you pay will not change; a variable rate means that your interest rate can change but will never go above a certain point.

These things can become confusing, so it’s a good idea to have a parent or someone who understands financial matters sit down with you and discuss all your options. You won’t be sorry that you planned ahead for the financial aspect of your education and it could end up saving you money in the long run!

In my last couple of blog posts I talked about scholarships and how to find one that will help fund your college education. I also mentioned some obscure scholarships that might have made you giggle. Life is serious, but you should always make time for laughter. Hopefully some of those offbeat scholarships gave you a little fun.

Now I’d like to get serious for a little while. Funding your education is a serious business and there is the potential for disaster if you’re not careful how you go about doing things. I’m talking about using credit and student loans responsibly.

Maybe you haven’t qualified for a scholarship so you’ve decided that you might want to look into how to go about getting a student loan. No matter what career choice you’ve made once you graduate from high school, you should make a financial plan and do your best to stick to it.

Previously I gave you some tips on where to look for scholarships. Now I’ll talk a little bit about grants. A grant is money that you get and do not have to pay back. There are different grants available to help you fund your college education.

Federal Pell Grants~ A Pell grant helps over five million full and part time students in four year colleges, two year college and vocational schools. Your family can have an income of up to $50,000, but most Pell Grants are awarded to students whose family’s income is less than $20,000. Go to FAFSA at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ to find out how to apply for a federal grant. You’ll need to collect all of your personal information and learn the deadlines for federal and state filings. Some state deadlines are earlier than the federal ones, so make sure you don’t miss any deadlines! Grants are given out in increments from $400 to $4,310, depending on qualifications.

Academic Competitiveness Grant is a federally funded grant given to students in addition to a Pell Grant, so you must be eligible for a Pell Grant to be given this extra financial aid. It’s given to first and second year students. First year students are awarded $750 their first year and up to $1,300 for their second year.

National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant or SMART Grant or Smart Grant~ This is a grant that’s also given in addition to a Pell Grant, so this means that you must be Pell eligible to receive this money. The Smart Grant gives up to $4,000 to third and fourth year students in a baccalaureate program with a 3.0 cumulative G.P.A. and be enrolled in an eligible program. Eligible programs include Computer Science, Engineering, Critical Foreign Languages, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Technology or Multidisciplinary Studies. There are other requirements to qualify, so check here for more information. http://www.studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/NewPrograms.jsp

Be sure to talk to the financial aid office at the school you’ve chosen to apply to for more information on their special financial aid packets. More than likely there is something there for you to consider.

There are a great many high school seniors across the country each year, all vying for scholarships. I came across an excellent website that offers you advice on how to prepare yourself to win the scholarships you apply for. Yes, I did say scholarships, plural. You should apply for as many as possible in order to win the most scholarship. If you qualify for a scholarship, why not apply for it?

At www.collegescholarships.com, there is a page dedicated to strategies for winning scholarships. Once at their website, go to their page on How to Win a Scholarship. Here you’ll learn how to put together scholarship packets, including pictures of yourself, letters of reference from teachers and mentors, gather your high school transcripts, work on a winning essay to wow the scholarship committees and how to put it all together in a binder to best showcase yourself.

You may think that this is tooting your own horn about your accomplishments, and you’d be right. It’s time to let go of your humility and let scholarship committees see how wonderful you are, how involved you’ve become in your community, how hard you’ve worked to maintain your grade point average and how right you are for that particular scholarship. There is a time to be humble and there is a time to recognize your own gifts and talents; this is most definitely the latter. Don’t be shy, you need scholarships and this is how to go about getting them.

To end this blog post I want to showcase a few more odd scholarships that are available out there for the brave, the few, the off the wall…

Fat Acceptance Scholarship ~if you’re from the Northeast portion of the United Sates, and are a bit on the heavy side, you might be in luck. The New England chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance offers $500 tuition scholarships to applicants who write essays on their attitude towards overweight people and size acceptance.

Organ Donation~ No, they’re not asking you for a kidney, at least not yet. The Students for Organ Donation Youth Leadership Award gives out scholarships to full time high school students and undergraduates who have had an active role in raising their community’s awareness of organ donation and organ transplant issues. These scholarships are from $500 to $1,000.

Strike a Pose with your Milk Moustache~ at www.whymilk.com you can see scholarship winners proudly displaying their milk moustaches for all the world to see. And why wouldn’t they have big smiles on their faces? They’ve won scholarships! It’s called the SAMMY, which stands for Scholar Athlete Milk Moustache of the Year Award.

Sweet Tooth Pays Off!~The American Association of Candy Technologists sponsors an annual $5,000 scholarship for undergraduates who eat a lot of candy. Ok, not really. It’s offered for students who are interested in confectionary technology and are majoring in food science, chemical science, biological science and maintain a stunning grade point average in their studies. And you thought that candy was bad for you!

Keep looking, I’m sure you’ll find more than one scholarship that you should apply for and that will make a huge difference in your college experience.

Have you looked for scholarships yet? I went to a high school graduation this year and in the program it listed the senior’s names along with any and all scholarships that they’d gotten to go to college. Some of the names had several prestigious scholarships listed after their names. I was quite impressed and wondered why the list of names with scholarships after them was so short.

I talked to a few parents and found out that their students simply hadn’t made mention to the graduating committee or the committee in charge of the programs that they’d received scholarships. However, the majority of students hadn’t even applied for a single scholarship from the schools they wanted to attend.

Do you know how many scholarships and grants go unclaimed each year simply due to the fact that no one applied for them? The number is higher than you might think. And do you know what this means? It means that there is scholarship money out there waiting for you! Yes, you, the senior in high school with the great G.P.A. and the one with all the leadership skills and the desire to better themselves by getting a degree.

So, what’s the first thing you need to know about how to get a scholarship or grant? It’s simple. Look for them. If you typed ‘college scholarships’ into your favorite Internet search engine, you would come up with massive results. I did just that and got over 19 million hits.

I want you to be wary about giving out personal information when go to websites that offer to give you thousands of free scholarship matches if you just give them your email address and tell them a little about yourself. For instance, at Fastweb they say they can offer you all these free matches because you’re giving them information that they in turn are going to give to lenders and colleges and who knows who else so they can in turn contact you. This is an excellent way to have your email box fill up with spam. I’m not saying that Fastweb isn’t a reliable or a good source for finding available scholarships, I’m simply saying that you need to be selective in what personal information you put out there on the web. If you are able to locate scholarship matches without giving out any personal information, all the better for you and your email box. In fact FastWeb gives you an opt out option at the end of their registration form so you don’t have to have outside sources contact you with offers or more information. If you don’t want your email out there, you might also consider creating a free email address with yahoo or hotmail just for scholarship search purposes. That way you know that your personal email addy won’t be bombarded with spam.

In my next blog post I’ll show you a great strategy for winning the scholarships you want.

In my last blog post I showed you some very odd scholarships that can be found if you’re looking.

Maybe some of these apply to you, perhaps some don’t. The point I’m trying to make is that there is something out there for everyone. From the very tall, to the very short, from those who want to become fluent in Klingon to those who wear a tuxedo made out of duct tape to their prom.

Along with the odd scholarships, there are also the scholarships that are unique to each university or college. When you are looking at which colleges to apply to, you may want to research what kinds of grants or scholarships those schools have available. Perhaps you might qualify for them, and if so, that might be a factor in your decision to apply to those schools.

Let’s face it; getting a college education is not cheap. It costs money; A lot of money. You’ve learned to be creative during school with your art classes or your music interests. Why not be creative in your search for ways to pay for your college degree?

Some of the oddest scholarships out there have to go to somebody. Why shouldn’t you be that somebody? There’s no rule that says you cannot try to get every scholarship available. Often students are eligible for more than one scholarship, and most from different sources. I can’t stress the importance of doing your research in this area because the less you have to pay out of pocket for your tuition and books at college, the more money you have for living expenses and other important things like entertainment. Ok, so entertainment isn’t actually a vital expense but it is something you should factor in to your expenses. You know the saying that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

You don’t want to be dull. You don’t want to be broke either. In my next blog post we’ll talk about some other creative ways to fund your next great adventure: college!