How to Win the Scholarships You Find : Strategically Choose What to List

Imagine that you need to give a speech to two groups of people. Without knowing who your audience is, you would have a difficult time composing a speech that would appeal to them, right? It would make a huge difference if one were a group of mathematicians and the other a group of fashion designers. To grab the attention of each of these audiences, you’d need to adjust your speech accordingly. References to
mathematical theorems would hardly go over well with the designers, just as the mathematicians probably couldn’t care less about how black the “new” black really is.

In much the same way, you need to decide what to highlight on your
scholarship application based on the purpose of the award. When you
know what the scholarship judges are looking for, it makes it easier to decide
what to include or omit. As we mentioned earlier, organizations don’t give
away scholarships and expect nothing in return. Behind their philanthropic
motives lies an ulterior motive—to promote their organization’s purpose. If
you prioritized your list of scholarships correctly, you’ve already uncovered
the purpose for each award. Now look at all your activities, interests, hobbies
and achievements. Ask yourself which ones fi t the purpose of each award and
would make a positive impression on the scholarship judges.

Let’s imagine that you are applying for an award given by an organization
of professional journalists. In visiting their website, you learn that print and
broadcast journalists join this group because they are passionate about the
profession of journalism and want to encourage public awareness about the
importance of a free press. Immediately, you know that you need to highlight
those experiences that demonstrate your zeal for journalism and, if applicable,
your belief in the value of a free press.

Among your activities and accomplishments are the following:

• Soccer team captain
• Vice President of the Writers’ Club
• Key Club treasurer
• Columnist for your high school newspaper
• English essay contest winner
• Summer job working at a pet store
• Summer internship at a radio station

As you look at this list, you can eliminate some activities outright. Your
involvement on the soccer team, with the Key Club, and your job at the pet
store are not relevant and don’t show how you fi t with the purpose of the
scholarship.

However, even looking at what’s left, you still have to decide which ones
to list fi rst. As you think about the purpose of the scholarship, you remember
that in the Writers’ Club you participated in a workshop that helped
a local elementary school start its own newspaper. Since this achievement
almost perfectly matches the mission of our hypothetical journalism organization,
use your limited space in the application to list it fi rst and to add an
explanation.

You might write something like this:
Writers’ Club, Vice President, organized “Writing Counts”
workshop at Whitman Elementary School, which resulted in the
launch of the school’s fi rst student-run newspaper.

Think of the impact this would have on the scholarship judges. “Look
here, Fred!” one journalist on the judging committee would say. “This student
does what we do! Defi nitely someone we should interview!”

When choosing accomplishments to list, don’t be afraid to eliminate any
that don’t fi t—even good ones. You have limited space in which to cram a
lot of information. As you fi ll out the application, you may fi nd that you are
trying to squeeze in too many details or simply too many things. You need to
be ruthless in trimming down what you submit to the judges. Make sure to
include the accomplishments that best fi t the purpose of the award.

At the same time you are picking which things to include in your application,
be sure to also be aware of what might be offensive to the organization’s
members. Just imagine what would happen if you thoughtlessly mentioned
that you were the author of an economics project entitled “How Labor Unions
Make the U.S. Unable to Compete and Lower Our Standard of Living” to
judges who are members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Clearly you can’t use the same list of activities and accomplishments for
every scholarship. You must take the time to craft a unique list that matches
what each of the scholarships is intended to reward.
Read More : How to Win the Scholarships You Find : Strategically Choose What to List

How an Equity Line of Credit Works

Because this is a secured loan—the lender is somewhat protected because it can always sell your house out from under you or collect from your insurance company in the case of fire or other damage—there is less emphasis on investigating your ability to repay the loan. Depending on the lender, though, you may be asked to provide proof of income, and the credit limit percentage may be adjusted up or down based on your credit history.

Depending on the economic climate, banks and other lenders may be chasing after homeowners with cash in their hands, or they may be more conservative. In times when lenders are eager to loan they may waive most or all of the up-front fees. In 2005, a combination of a steady rise in the value
of homes and historically low mortgage interest rates saw many institutions
offering equity loans without any charge to the borrower.

At other times you may be asked to pay fees, including:
• A charge for a professional appraisal of the value of your home.
(If you bought your home not long ago or otherwise have a
recent appraisal, you may be able to have the lender accept that
evaluation.)
• An application fee, which is merely added profit for the lender
for performing the work it is set up to do anyway.

• Points, which is a way for the lender to collect interest up-front;
one point is equal to 1 percent of the amount borrowed or the
credit limit. If you are comparing a loan that requires payment
of points to one that does not, you should see a lower interest
rate if you are prepaying interest.
• Closing costs, including attorney fees, title searches, title
insurance, recording fees at local government offices, and
special mortgage taxes.

The lender will record its interest in the home on deeds or other records
held in your locality to prevent you from selling the home to someone else
before the loan is paid off. You will also have to add the lender as a beneficiary
to your homeowners’ insurance so that they are protected. (Issuers of equity
loans and second mortgages are generally second-in-line behind the primary
mortgage company when it comes to collecting from the insurance company;
the homeowner is last in line behind creditors.)

There may even be some terms of the loan that require you to maintain
the value of the property through scheduled maintenance and repair (which
you should be doing anyway). And some lenders may insist that the home
remain as your principal dwelling; if you move elsewhere and rent out the
property to someone else, the loan may become immediately due.

Some plans are open-ended, meaning that as long as you own the home
and keep current on interest payments, the account is active.
Other equity lines have a fixed “draw period”; at the end of this period—
a typical term is ten years—you will not be able to borrow more money and
must begin paying off the principal as well as the interest.

Another form of equity line of credit calls for the outstanding balance
to be paid off in full at the end of the draw period, while others give the
borrower the right to “renew” the loan at the end of the draw period, although
interest rates and other terms might change.

If the loan requires full repayment at the end of a specific period of
time, you will have to come up with a “balloon payment” from one source or
another. You may be able to take out a new equity loan for the balance; you
may have to take money from other investments you have; or you may be
forced to sell the home to pay the creditor.


Interest Rates on Equity Lines of Credit
Most equity lines use variable interest rates; the agreement between
lender and borrower ties the rate to a published index such as the prime
rate or the U.S. Treasury Bill rate. The rate can be set to exactly mirror the
index, or might be something like “prime minus 1 percent” or “LIBOR plus
2 percent.” (LIBOR is an international index, the London InterBank Offered
Rate, used by some lenders.)

When the interest rate charged is above or below the index rate, the
difference is called the margin.
Some lenders will offer a discounted introductory interest rate for the
first few months or even for a year or more before the rate becomes set by an
index. Variable rate equity lines of credit are required by federal regulations
to have a cap (a ceiling on how high the rate can rise).

And some agreements permit you to change the terms of the loan so that
the interest becomes fixed at a certain rate, usually a point or so higher than
the current variable rate. If you see that interest rates have begun an upward
climb, you should consider locking in a fixed rate if you can.

However the interest rate is structured, be sure you fully understand the
process. If it is variable, find out which index it is tied to. How often can it be
adjusted? What is the cap? Can the loan be converted to a fixed rate?
Read More: How an Equity Line of Credit Works

How To Make A Company Hire You?

Why would a company want to hire you?
Looking at hiring from an employer’s perspective is an essential first step in preparing your resume and launching your job search. Generally speaking, companies hire people who have the skills needed to do a particular job and the attributes that will make them a good employee, one who will contribute to the mission and goals of the organization.

Please don’t assume that your new college degree automatically qualifies you for a great job.
Yes, you’ve worked hard, learned a lot, and feel prepared to launch your career. Now it’s essential that you show employers that you have skills, attributes, and abilities that will help them be more successful.

Your resume is the tool that you will use to show employers that you have those skills,
attributes, and abilities. The result—you hope—is that they will be motivated to call you for
an interview to better determine whether you are, in fact, a good fit for their needs. Your
resume must clearly relate your education, activities, and work experiences to specific job
qualifications—both the “hard” and “soft” skills that together paint the picture of the ideal
candidate.

Identify Your Job Target and Write Job Target Statements
Before you can create a resume that is effective—that presents your skills, abilities, and
potential that will interest employers—you must know what kind of job you want.

Don’t worry that by writing your resume for a specific job you’ll be aiming for a target that’s
too narrow. The skills and accomplishments approach I recommend—which you’ll be learning
as you work your way through the exercises in this chapter and the next—will result in a
versatile resume that you can use when applying for a variety of related jobs, or one that
you can change quickly and easily to steer toward a slightly different target.

But if you’re interested in several jobs that are quite diverse—say you’re a business major
torn between a job in human resources and one in retail sales management—you’ll want to
develop two different resumes so that you are a credible candidate for each position. Start by
choosing one target and completing your resume. Then repeat the process for the second
target. (It will be much quicker and easier the second time, and you will be able to use much
of the same information.) You’ll end up with a focused and effective resume for each target.

Write Your Job Target Statements
Use the following form or open a new document in your word-processing program and label
it “Job Targets.” Write the specific jobs you’re interested in. You might be definite about one
particular goal (“design engineering position with a robotics manufacturer” or “med-surg
nursing position in a teaching hospital”), or you might want to list three or four jobs that
use similar skills; for example:
1. Public relations position with a large corporation, ideally involved in writing press
releases and newsletter articles
2. Marketing communications position (agency or corporate) with primary focus on marketing
writing
3. Reporting and copyediting job with a major metropolitan newspaper

Beware of confusing an industry or general profession with a job target! “Advertising” is an
industry. “Accounting” is a profession. Neither is a specific job target. Do some research to
find out what jobs are available in your chosen industry or profession, and work to refine
those broad targets into something more specific, such as “account executive in an advertising
agency” or “entry-level auditor for a Big 5 accounting firm.” If you need help developing
your specific job targets, the resources described on pages 7–8 will help you understand what
different job titles mean and how specific jobs are defined. And don’t forget about your college
or university career center. There you’ll find all of these resources and more—plus the
expert advice of career professionals—to help you define your job targets, identify your
skills, prepare your resume, and perform all of the other activities involved in a job search
campaign.


Identify Your Core Job Qualifications
The next step in the resume writing process is to identify the core qualifications for your
specific job target—the combination of “hard” and “soft” skills that make up the ideal
candidate.

Hard and Soft Skills
Hard skills are the core knowledge and abilities needed to do the job. A C# programmer
must know how to program in C#. A social worker must be able to perform assessments,
counseling, case planning, and case management. Hard skills are the kinds of things that
can be proven through education and experience—you can do the job because you’ve been
trained in the discipline or you’ve worked in a similar job. Or maybe both. Your resume
must show that you have the core knowledge and skills needed to do the job.


Soft skills describe personal attributes—how you get things done. Soft skills are more difficult
to measure and quantify. They include things such as teamwork, drive, leadership, a
positive attitude, a good work ethic, attention to detail, or a customer-first attitude. To be
believable, your resume must prove your soft skills—not just list them.


Finding Job Qualifications
One of the easiest ways to unearth job qualifications is to look at want ads or online postings.
Most ads specify a variety of required hard and soft skills. Let’s take a look at some
examples.
This listing for a Telesales Account Executive calls for specific hard skills and experience:

TELESALES ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor’s degree and 3+ years of experience in outbound telesales.
PC literacy including Windows, Microsoft Office, and contact-management software needed.
Familiarity with the World Wide Web is also required, and prior recruiting experience is a PLUS.

This next ad, for an Executive Assistant, is much less explicit—it doesn’t even specify what
kind of computer skills are needed, nor does it demand a degree. But it clearly communicates
the kind of attitude the company is looking for, along with some basic competencies
(organization and follow through; and administrative, clerical, and computer skills).

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
We are looking to hire a person who has not only the right basic skills but also the attitude we
need. Are you a person with a “roll your sleeves up, happy to pitch in and help” attitude? If you
answered YES, then this job is for you!

You are a highly organized person with the confidence to see tasks through to completion with
minimal supervision. You possess administrative, clerical, and computer skills.
Most postings specify a combination of hard and soft skills, as in these next examples. By
communicating information about attitude, atmosphere, and expectations along with the
specific competencies required for the job, employers are hoping to find the best match for
their needs and the best fit for their culture and environment.


Beyond job postings, there are other sources you can use to identify the hard and soft skills
your target positions require:
■ Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH). This guide produced by the U.S. Department
of Labor describes job duties, working conditions, required training and education, job
prospects, and typical earnings for a wide range of occupations. The OOH is revised
every two years and can be found online at www.bls.gov/oco/, in your college or public
library’s reference section, or in bookstores.
■ Company job descriptions. More complete than a want-ad posting, job descriptions
are a comprehensive account of the activities and expectations for a specific job within
a particular company. When you interview for a job, you can ask to see the job
description. You can approach a company’s human resources department and ask
whether you can view a description. You can also request a copy from your employed
friends and relatives, especially those whose jobs are related to your target position. Be
aware that not all companies have formal job descriptions, and not all descriptions are
up-to-date or an accurate reflection of the job as it really is.

Beyond job postings, there are other sources you can use to identify the hard and soft skills
your target positions require:
■ Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH). This guide produced by the U.S. Department
of Labor describes job duties, working conditions, required training and education, job
prospects, and typical earnings for a wide range of occupations. The OOH is revised
every two years and can be found online at www.bls.gov/oco/, in your college or public
library’s reference section, or in bookstores.
■ Company job descriptions. More complete than a want-ad posting, job descriptions
are a comprehensive account of the activities and expectations for a specific job within
a particular company. When you interview for a job, you can ask to see the job
description. You can approach a company’s human resources department and ask
whether you can view a description. You can also request a copy from your employed
friends and relatives, especially those whose jobs are related to your target position. Be
aware that not all companies have formal job descriptions, and not all descriptions are
up-to-date or an accurate reflection of the job as it really is.
Read More: How To Make A Company Hire You?

Facing the College Interview

During an interview at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the head of admissions asked my daughter Caitlin this question:
“What is the most creative thought you’ve ever had?” Caitlin’s first panicked thought was this: “What? I have no idea.”
Then her brain kicked in, and she blurted out something about chopsticks.

She told the dean that she wanted to learn how to use chop
sticks with her left hand because she thought this would impress colleges.
Was this a silly answer? Absolutely. But Caitlin figured that answering the question was far better than hemming and hawing and ultimately punting on it. And looking back, she believes that this was the turning point in the interview. The dean seemed to be intrigued by my gregarious daughter’s enthusiasm for eating Kung Pao chicken lefthanded, and he continued to ask her questions 35 minutes longer than the interview was scheduled to last.

The point of sharing this anecdote is to drive home this point:
There aren’t necessarily right and wrong answers in a college interview.
Admissions officers don’t want kids to fail. They like teenagers
or they would have chosen another occupation.

Admissions staffers strive to extract from kids a sense of who they
are. They want a student’s personality to shine through. Did my

daughter even intend to practice eating left handed? No. But the
answers she provided during the interview showed that she is selfconfident,
a quick thinker, and an entertaining storyteller. It wasn’t so
much what she said, but how she said it. Months later, she received an
acceptance letter from Dickinson, along with a merit scholarship.

As you anticipate spending face time with admissions officers,
here are some things to keep in mind to increase the chances of
having productive and successful interviews:
Ask about interview opportunities. Many large public universities
don’t have the luxury of conducting one-on-one interviews with potential
students. Because of the large numbers of applicants, their
admission policies are often largely dictated by a child’s grade point average
and standardized test scores. But that’s not the case with plenty of
private colleges and universities, which take a more holistic approach.

Before visiting a school, ask whether interviews are available or required.
If the answer is yes, find out which kind are conducted. Some
schools use informational interviews that allow students to ask the interviewer
questions about their institutions. Typically, the admissions
officer does not fill out a written evaluation of the meeting and so your
admission file will not mention what took place.

In contrast, many schools rely on an evaluative interview. These
interviews can be stressful because the admissions officer will typically
write an interview summary afterward. At these schools, the interview
is just one of many factors considered beyond grades and test scores.

The caliber of a student’s school, extracurricular activities, admission
essay, recommendations, and the applicant’s level of interest, her character,
and whether her relatives are alumni may all be considered.

Some schools require interviews, but they don’t always need to take
place on the campus. Some schools use regional admissions officers or
alumni to conduct interviews at hotels in other parts of the country.

Prepare for the interview. The best way to sabotage an interview
is to show up knowing little if anything about the school. If your
knowledge of a school is nil, an admissions officer is going to wonder
why you’re sitting in his office. What’s more, interviews aren’t one
sided. While you will be expected to answer questions, this is also a
time for you to elicit information about the campus from your host. If
you don’t know enough to ask intelligent questions, you’re in trouble.


Dress appropriately. There’s definitely no need to wear a suit
and tie to interviews, but you should look like a well-dressed college
student wearing comfortable clothes. (Be sure they are ironed.)
Watch the slang. Don’t pepper your conversation with “um,”
“you know,” and “like.” Practice ahead of time to try to eliminate these
sorts of words from your conversation. And during interviews, don’t
slouch, stare at the floor, play with your hair, or display other nervous
mannerisms.

Ask intelligent questions. During campus visits, use the opportunity
to pose meaningful questions. While you might want to know
whether the school has a vegan meal plan or which is the best dorm,
often the most valuable questions go unasked. A great source for more
insightful questions comes from the National Survey of Student Engagement
(NSSE), which is trying to be a welcome alternative to the
ratings frenzy perpetrated by U.S. News & World Report’s annual college guide.

Unlike U.S. News & World Report’s publication, the NSSE is curious
about what kids learn after they are enrolled in schools. You
should download a handy brochure, A Pocket Guide to Choosing a
College: Are You Asking the Right Questions?, from the NSSE’s Web
site at http://nsse.iub.edu/html/students_parents.cfm. The questions
in the brochure focus on such areas as student and faculty interaction,
academic workload, and class collaboration.

Be yourself. Don’t pretend to love Leo Tolstoy and William
Shakespeare if you’re into science fiction novels and Japanese comic
books. Resist trying to figure out what you suspect are the “right” answers;
you don’t want to sound phony. The interview is a time to brag
about what you’ve accomplished without sounding conceited. On the
flip side, you should put the best light on any black marks tarnishing
your record such as a “D” in honors calculus class. And before the
interview starts, take a deep breathe!


Action Plan
Research a school before an interview and be prepared to ask intelligent
questions. During the interview be sure to relax.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price

How To Winning The Financial Aid Lottery

Sometimes, a school wants a hot prospect so badly that it will twist its financial aid rules into a pretzel. That’s got to be what happened when an elite West Coast school reeled in an exceptional student who
just happened to be sitting on a $500,000 trust fund. A financial aid administrator could have run the numbers any way he wanted, but this teenager still wouldn’t have qualified for need-based aid. But surprise, surprise, the private university, ignoring the trust fund, awarded him a yearly $30,000 aid package.

I mention this story not to make you more cynical about the financial aid process, but to alert you to one of the many ways that you can
boost your chances of receiving more than crumbs from your favorite
school. Whether you are a trust fund baby or far from it, here’s what
you need to do:

Always apply for financial aid. The best way to sabotage your
chances for assistance is to assume that applying for need-based aid is
pointless. Even families with six-figure incomes can qualify for a helping
hand from more expensive schools. If you discover that your
income far exceeds the income ceiling, you should still complete the
forms because it could help your child secure a spot in the next freshman
class.

This will sound crass, but some schools could be far more interested
in your child after taking a peek at your finances. At some
schools, an excellent candidate from a wealthy family will enjoy a better
chance of being admitted over a promising student whose dad is
on disability and whose mom works as a cashier. You may rightly
believe that favoring an affluent student over a poor one is appalling,
but plenty of schools make these sorts of decisions.

Skip the reach schools. If you’re eager to capture a great financial
aid package, reread the quote that starts this chapter. Muhlenberg
College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is a school I greatly admire,
posted on its Web site a remarkably candid portrayal about how
schools award financial aid today. You can read the piece yourself by
typing its title, “The Real Deal on Financial Aid,” into Google’s search
engine.

One of the most important points that Muhlenberg’s admissions
office makes is that students who require financial aid need to focus
on schools where they would be within the top one-third to the top
one-quarter of the applicant pool. A child with a 3.2 GPA and a 1050
on the combined reading and math portion of the SAT shouldn’t
expect a financial aid windfall if the top 25% of students admitted into
a particular school have an average GPA of 3.7 and a 1200 SAT. In fact,
it’s likely that this teenager’s aid package would be stuffed with a work
study opportunity and loans. In contrast, a teenager with a 3.8 GPA
and a SAT of 1250 would be far more likely to receive a package that
contains a large grant that doesn’t have to be repaid.

If you’re in the middle of the pack of kids accepted to a school,
what you receive financially can depend on what else you’d bring to
the institution. To break ties, schools will look at the extras. Are you a

phenomenal volunteer in your community? Did you show leadership
in your extracurricular activities? Are you from a state that’s a 20-hour
drive away? Are you a minority? Do you have special talents, such as
music, art, or athletics?

A variety of online and printed sources provide individual schools’
range of SAT scores and average GPA, which can help you compare
your academic record with others. CollegeBoard.com and
Petersons.com, for instance, provide both these statistics, as do various
college guides that you can buy at a bookstore. You shouldn’t
assume, however, that any figures you see are the most current ones.

Sometimes enrolled student scores are a couple years old and a
school’s standards might have risen since then.
Finding schools where you will be among the top bananas is a far
cry from the approach that a lot of kids favor. Many students, as well
as their parents, are eager to see how prestigious a school they can
finagle their way into. Aiming for a reach school is fine if you don’t
mind when the financial aid office stiffs you. If you cringe at paying
full price, include financial safety schools on your list.

Know where the money is. Some schools are more generous
than others. The schools with the most money are typically private
ones, which sit on their own institutional pots of financial aid. The
Ivies and other wealthy schools have large endowments that allow
them to provide generous aid packages. Schools that don’t share the
same star wattage but want to compete for high caliber students will
sometimes ante up even more cash. They understand that some applicants
will reject a fabulous financial package if an Ivy League institution
welcomes them without giving up a dime.

In contrast, public schools typically don’t have as much discretionary
financial aid to toss around. At public schools, financial aid
packages will often be filled with federal loans. Lower income families,
whether they attend a private or a public school, will often qualify
for a federal Pell Grant, which doesn’t have to be repaid. Typically,
these grants are reserved for families with income under $40,000.

Public and private institutions will provide subsidized federal Stafford
Loans to low to middle-income students. Eligibility is determined by
a federal formula.


A student who doesn’t qualify for a Pell or subsidized Stafford, can
obtain a regular Stafford, while parents can take out a federal PLUS
loan. Once again, you can obtain these regardless of whether the
school is public or private. Unlike private schools, state institutions
can’t always offer financial aid beyond the federal program. Ironically,
while families who expect their kids to go to state schools worry about
being qualified for financial aid, the assistance will often be strictly
loans.

Be leery of the numbers. If your child gets accepted into a
school that brags that it meets 90% or 100% of its students’ financial
need, you may feel like celebrating. But hold off on the confetti. You
need to know what’s behind those numbers.

You’re not going to be happy if a school meets 100% of your financial
need with a package of loans. It’s far better to find schools that
back up their promises with grants, which don’t have to be repaid.
You can learn whether a school is typically miserly or generous by
looking at its profile on CollegeBoard.com. Once on the site, type the
name of a college in the College QuickFinder and then click on the
Cost & Financial Aid link. Using Muhlenberg College as an example,
College Board indicates that the school meets 91% of a student’s
financial need. The breakdown was $19,116 in grants and $3,398 in
loans.

Don’t let the price tag fool you. Plenty of families assume that
expensive schools are superior to cheaper ones. That belief is so pervasive
that some schools have jacked up their prices to generate more
foot traffic.

Higher tuition, however, doesn’t mean that a school is sinking
more cash into its academic programs. Some schools inflate their price
as part of what insiders call the Robin Hood admission strategy. The
school boosts its sticker price and then uses the excess cash to offer
more assistance to the candidates it covets. While private schools use
this strategy, some public colleges and universities try something similar
for nonresident students. Often the out-of-state tuition is much
higher at public universities, but a school will offer to cut the price in
the form of a scholarship for the most desirable nonresidents.


In contrast, other schools, particularly those that serve a region,
keep their prices lower and offer less financial aid because of the more
reasonable cost of an education there. They use their cost advantage
as a selling point.


Action Plan
You should enjoy better success at capturing a tuition price cut if
you look for schools that represent a good academic fit.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price

How To Figuring Out The FAFSA?

The doorway to nearly all federal grant and loan
programs and most state and institutional (direct
from the college or university) funding is through the
Free Application for Federal Student Aid, universally
referred to as the FAFSA form.

Some programs are even more demanding of
information, requiring an additional privately managed
document, the CSS/Profile. And depending on your
particular circumstances, you may also be asked to
provide specific additional information about your
investments and sources of income.

THE KEY TO THE VAULT
For most students, the quest for financial aid begins with the FAFSA.
Throughout this chapter I will be speaking primarily to the parent or guardian;
be aware, though, that the student is also responsible for filling out the portion
of the form that relates to his or her assets and earnings. In most families it
probably works like this: the parents and student work together to answer the
student-only questions, and then the parents work on the rest of the form. As
a parent you have no obligation to disclose all of your finances to your child,
but you do have to do so to the U.S. Department of Education, at least if you
want to be considered for financial aid.

You can obtain a printed copy of the form through high school guidance
counselors, from many colleges and universities, and directly from the U.S.
Department of Education. It’s a good idea to hold one in your hands and read
it to get an idea of the sort of information it demands. But when it comes
time to fill out the form, the easiest and fastest way to do so is through the
government’s online Web sites: www.fafsa.ed.gov and the more general www.
studentaid.ed.gov site, which explains many available federal programs and
offers entrance to the FAFSA site.



Applicants for financial aid can file a FAFSA by hand, filling in the
form and mailing it to the processing center. Filling in the form by hand may
require more than an hour.

But if you have access to a computer, you will save time and possibly
avoid rejection of the form due to errors by filling in the form over the Internet
through the official government portal (www.fafsa.ed.gov) and submitting it
electronically.
Using the Internet has several advantages:
1. There is built-in help for every page of the form; click on the
Help icon for further explanation of questions.
2. You can fill out the form a section at a time, saving your work in
progress and returning later. Information saved in progress is
kept in storage for retrieval and editing for forty-five days. If you
do not file the form within that period, you will have to start a
new application.
3. Worksheets that are linked to the form can be used to calculate
the answers to some of the financial questions, and the
resulting numbers are automatically inserted into the FAFSA
you are working on.
4. Based on some of the answers you give to questions, the
computer will skip over areas that are not relevant to your
personal situation or your finances.
5. Before the form is completed, the computer at the other end
of the connection will proofread your form and check the math,
alerting you to omissions, errors, and contradictory answers.
6. Filing the form electronically will shorten the processing time
by as much as two weeks as well as avoid delays caused by
the postal service.
7. Once you have filed electronically, you can easily re-enter the
site to correct, change, or update information.
8. In subsequent years you can begin the process with much
of the background information automatically filled in from the
original filing.


If you don’t have a computer with an Internet connection, you should
be able to arrange for use of a machine at a friend or acquaintance’s home,
at the student’s high school, or at a public library. Be aware that if you use
a public machine, there may be a risk that some of your private information
may be observed or recorded by others. One step you can take to protect data
is to shut down the Internet browser after you have completed your work in
order to clear the “cache” (pronounced “cash”) of recent work.


Deadlines and Details
The FAFSA for the coming academic year can be filed between January
1 and June 30 of the overlapping calendar year. That means, for example,
that the 2006–2007 FAFSA (which covers the academic year from July 1,
2006, through June 30, 2007) can be mailed or electronically filed no earlier
than January 1, 2006, and no later than midnight (Central Daylight Time)
on June 30 of that same year.

Corrections to forms filed on the Web must be submitted by midnight
Central Daylight Time in the middle of September; for 2006, the date was
September 18.

It’s probably not a good idea to wait until the last possible date and
minute to file a FAFSA anyway, because if there is a problem with any critical
piece of information, the form may be rejected after the deadline.

Warning: Some schools may ask for all of your financial information on a
date before the final FAFSA deadline. Or the college may require that the form
be submitted and processed by a certain date, in which case you will need to
include sufficient time in advance of the submission deadline. Be sure to read all
application requirements and call financial aid offices if you have any questions.

If you file online, the computer will display a confirmation page after
you have electronically signed the form using your PIN. The confirmation
includes a code number; you should print out the page or record the number
for your records in case there is any doubt about the date of submission.

The code number is twenty-two characters long for the initial submission
and includes within it the date and time the form was received. If you file a
correction, the number expands to thirty characters in length.
There’s another number associated with a successfully submitted FAFSA.

A Data Release Number (DRN) is included on the bottom left corner of the

Student Aid Report (SAR), which you will receive several weeks after you
file the FAFSA. The DRN is necessary if you contact the Federal Student
Aid Information Center to make corrections to your mailing address or your
school list, and it is necessary in order to release FAFSA data to schools you
did not select on your original form.

If you fill out the FAFSA online but do not have a PIN or choose not
to sign the form electronically, the final step in the online process is to print
out a signature page, which will be prefilled with a student ID made up of
a code for the type and year of the application, your Social Security number,
and the first two letters of your last name. The form must be signed by the
student and at least one parent if the student is a dependent; for a renewal or
a correction of a previously filed FAFSA, the parent needs to sign the page
only if information about the parent has been changed.
However you sign and submit the form, you are agreeing to the
following:
• Federal student financial aid will be used only to pay the cost of
attending a school of higher education.
• The student will not receive a Federal Pell Grant for more than
one school during the same academic year.
• The student or parent are not in default on a federal student
loan and do not owe a refund of a federal student grant.
• The financial aid office of the college you or the student attends
will be notified if a borrower goes into default on a federal
student loan after the FAFSA is submitted.
• You and your student give permission to the U.S. Department
of Education to verify income and other data reported on the
FAFSA with the Internal Revenue Service and other federal
agencies.
And just for the record, intentionally providing false or misleading
information could be punished by a fine of as much as $20,000 or a prison
sentence or both.
Read More: How To Figuring Out The FAFSA?

Facing Your Student Debt Demons

If you pay your student loan bills every month, and then try to forget the giant pile of debt to which your loans are attached—stop! In order to work toward paying off your student loan debt, you need to be aware of the existence and the amounts of each loan.

You no longer should think about whether you borrowed too much, or if you should have rejected the part of your student loan you used for spring break. Your new focus is on making small changes to pay off your loans faster without impacting your life. The first step on this path is looking up the specifics of all your federal loans in the National Student Loan Data System.

Facing Your Student Debt Demons
Where do you begin when it comes to dealing with your debt? Figure out what your starting point is by taking the following pop quiz to find out how much you really know about your student loans. If you don’t know some of the answers, don’t worry. This quiz comes with instructions for creating a kind of “cheat sheet” for getting the details on your loans.
1. How many different federal student loans do you have? _____
(You could have two or more per semester you were in school, and don’t forget loans for graduate school or for any community college or summer courses at other universities.)
2. Are they all consolidated into one loan? ___ yes ___ no
3. How many are subsidized? _____

4. How many are unsubsidized? _____
5. Who are the servicers on each student loan? (Use an additional sheet of paper if you have more servicers than can fit in the spaces provided.)
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

6. Do you have the contact information in a file? ___ yes ___ no
7. Do you know where the file is? ___ yes ___ no
8. Do you know your interest rates on every single loan?
___ yes ___ no
9. If you put one loan in forbearance or deferment—temporary hold on making payments—did you remember to hold others?
___ yes ___ no

How did you do? If you didn’t know all the answers, you are not alone. Whether you just graduated from college or you’ve been out of school for a decade, it’s not always easy to keep tabs on eight semesters of loans—or more if you went to grad school or took five or six years to graduate—when each could be with a separate servicer. Luckily, the federal government offers a free Web site (www.nslds.ed.gov) where you can locate all of your federal loans, what servicer they are with, and the details of how much you owe. By accessing this information you can build a kind of cheat sheet to help keep track of your loans.
Read More : Facing Your Student Debt Demons

A Crash Course in Sports Injuries

As soon as you fi rst hear the word rest, your number-one question will probably be, “When can I start playing again?” Understandably, you want to get back to the sport you love as soon as possible. But rushing into play too soon may not only extend your time on the bench, it could even do permanent damage and take you out indefinitely. So giving your body adequate time to heal is imperative.

The amount of time necessary to suffi ciently rest and heal your injury will depend on your specific situation, and you and your doctor will have to determine a plan of action together. Mild injuries may take you out of only a game or two; moderate injuries may take you out of your sport for three to six weeks or longer; more severe injuries may require surgery and take up to one year (or more in rare cases) to heal. Luckily, in most cases, (and again, depending on the site of your injury), you will be able to stay fi t with alternative activities
such as swimming, water therapy, rowing, or stationary biking while your injured body part heals.


As you recover, you may need to engage in some sort of rehabilitation (rehab) program, which will also be of help for you to stay in shape and get back to your sport as soon as possible. Rehab may be required as part of your treatment program, or you may decide to engage in it on your own (under the direction of your doctor, of course) to keep your body fi t and healthy. Rehab may include manual therapy from a physical therapist, exercise, or technology such as ultrasound, which heats the injured area, speeds healing, and increases your range of motion. No matter what your treatment regimen, the more diligently you follow it, the faster you will return to play.

As a basic rule of thumb, you will be able to return to play when you have regained full range of motion of the injured area without any pain, and you have at least 85 percent full strength. If you suffered a head injury, you will have to be completely symptom-free and back to baseline mental status before you can compete again.

When you fi nally get the green light from your doctor to return to your sport, you may be tempted to go back to it full-force and play at your preinjury level; after all, you will be eager to get back in the game. It is important that you take it slowly, however. Be sure to warm up adequately before you practice or compete, and take time to cool down when you’re done. If you have received any special instructions from your doctor, follow them. And to reduce your risk of reinjury, stop right away if you feel any pain, either in the injured part or any other body part. If any pain persists, tell your doctor.

Also keep in mind that as you ease back into your sport, you may need some new protective gear to help avoid reinjury, including shoes with special inserts or arch supports, tape to wrap and support the injured area, or knee or elbow braces.

TALKING TO YOUR COACH
As a student athlete, your relationship with your coach may be one of the most important and enriching in your life. After all, beyond helping you stay fi t and excel in your sport, your coach can teach you a lot about teamwork and dedication, and he or she can act as a mentor for both sport- and nonsport-related issues in your life.

Within your sport, your coach can also provide you with expertise  on how to improve your skills, deal with a loss, or psych yourself up before competition. Many coaches have played the sports they coach themselves, so they can offer valuable advice and guidance. Overall, a good relationship with your coach—one based on mutual respect and trust—will be of help to get the most out of your chosen sport.

As with any good relationship, communication will be a crucial part of the relationship with your coach. If you become injured or have a physical limitation that requires certain activity restrictions, an important step in determining when you can get back into the game or how to alter your training schedule will be talking with

your coach about your injury and your doctor’s treatment plan for you. Most coaches are very understanding and supportive about athletes’ injuries, and they respect doctors’ orders. However, there are some coaches like Aaron’s who pressure students to return to play too soon.

The best way to get your coach’s support in the proper healing of your injury or respect of your physical limitation is to keep the lines of communication open. Keep your coach informed throughout the entire course of your injury, from the time it fi rst happens to your diagnosis to your ultimate recovery. The more your coach knows about your injury or condition and your doctor’s plans for you, the less likely he or she will be to impart his or her own agenda.
Read More : A Crash Course in Sports Injuries

How You Can Help A Loved One Cope With A Sport Injury?

To best support your friend or loved one and help him or her through the sports injury—whether the recovery process lasts for two months or two years—here are some additional things you can do:
Listen. One of the best things you can do to offer support to your friend or loved one is to offer an ear. If he or she is feeling really down about the injury and needs to “vent,” let the athlete do. Often people who suffer sports injuries or other setbacks don’t need advice; they just need to get their feelings out by talking.

Watch. Sometimes teens who are used to spending most of their time on the soccer fi eld or basketball court will use the newly acquired free time in the wrong ways—for example, to drink alcohol, do drugs, or commit crimes. The combination of free time and pent-up aggression from having to rest can be a bad combination. Watch for signs of troublesome behavior in your friend or loved one, and talk to a parent or school counselor if you start to notice a problem.

In addition, as mentioned above, watch out for signs of depression in your friend or loved one, such as loss of interest in activities once loved, weight loss or gain, restlessness, or mental or physical fatigue. If left untreated, this depression can lead to suicide, so urge him or her to talk to a health-care professional about feelings and talk to a parent or counselor right away.

Be there. One of the best ways for teens to avoid becoming depressed or turning to drugs, alcohol, or other troublesome behaviors following an injury is to spend time with friends in positive social situations. So urge your friend to join you at the movies, the mall (if walking isn’t an issue), to get some ice cream, or to participate in other activities that will help to get his or her mind off the injury. If there are certain physical activities that your friend or loved one is permitted to engage in—such as biking—offer to do those things with him or her.

Don’t project. If you also play a sport, particularly if you play the same sport as your friend or loved one who got hurt, an injury may serve as a reality check for you and make you feel vulnerable to injury yourself. Try to put those feelings aside for the sake of the other person. The last thing an injured athlete needs is to feel alienated by friends or teammates.

Overall, keep in mind that teenagers who have recently been diagnosed with a sports injury need the love and encouragement of their friends and family members more than ever. Whether it’s your best friend, brother, sister, or cousin who is injured, your comfort and support will help ease both the physical and emotional burden.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Even if you have never suffered from a sports injury yourself, once a friend or family member is currently dealing with one, you, too, will be affected.
• As a supportive friend or family member of a teenager newly diagnosed with a sports injury, you can provide help and comfort.
• If your friend or loved one who has suffered a sports injury shows any signs of depression or loss of interest in activities once loved, weight loss or gain, restlessness, or mental or physical fatigue, urge him or her to talk to a health-care professional about feelings and talk to a parent or counselor right away; if left untreated, depression can lead to suicide.
• One of the best things you can do to help your friend or loved one is to be there for him or her to listen, talk, and get out of the house with positive activities such as going to the movies, taking a walk (if he or she is able), and spending time with other friends.

Read More : How You Can Help A Loved One Cope With A Sport Injury?

11 Secrets of Getting Good Grades in College

Grades are the measure of college success. Like the salary at a job, a batting average in baseball, or the price of a stock, your GPA is an objective indicator of how you’re doing. And yet, there’s surprisingly little good information—least of all from professors—about just what you should do to get good grades. We go where others fear to tread. And so, here are the eleven secrets of getting really good grades in college (A’s, we mean):

1. 1. Take control of your destiny. Your grade destiny, that is. There’s no teacher or parent to remind you every day what you need to do, or to make sure you’ve studied for exams. It’s all in your hands. So step up to the plate and take responsibility. The grades you get will depend on what you yourself do.
2. Don’t overload. Some students think it’s a mark of pride to take as many course hours as the college allows. It isn’t. Take four or, at the most, five courses each semester. That way you’ll be able to devote all your energies to a manageable number of subjects, and you won’t have to sacrifice quality for quantity. 
3. Get your a** to class. Most students have a cutting budget: the number of lectures they think they can miss in each course and still do well. But if there are thirty-five class meetings, each class contains 3 percent of the content: miss seven classes, and you’ve missed 20 percent of the material.
4. Take really good notes. In many intro courses, the professor’s lectures form the major part of the material tested on the midterm and final. So as you’re taking notes, you’re really writing the textbook for the course—which in many cases is more important than the official textbook. Be sure to get down everything the professor says and to maintain your notes in an organized and readable form. After all, these are the notes you’ll have to study a number of times later in the course. 
5. Study like you mean it. There’s a difference between studying and “studying”—and you know what it is. When you’re really studying, you’re 100 percent focused on and engaged with the material: a total immersion in what you’re doing and a strong desire to get it right. When you’re only half-heartedly studying, you’re really only 35 percent involved, with the other 65 percent of your attention divided among tweeting your friend about how much you’re studying, scoping out the surrounding tables to see who else might be around (and how attractive they are), and daydreaming about all the fun things you’ll do when you finish this awful studying. Look, we know studying can be painful, but all students who get A’s do it—no matter what they tell you. 
6. Do all the homework. You might think the homework and problem sets—each of which is worth maybe 0.1 percent of the grade—are just busywork: something the professor assigns to make sure you’re doing something in the course each week. But really, the homework provides applications of the concepts, principles, and methods of the field to actual examples—the same sort of examples that will come up on the bigger tests. If you do well on the homework—that is, get ten out of ten on the problem sets or a check-plus on the little writing exercises—you’re putting yourself in a good position to get a 100 when it really counts—on the midterm or final.
7. Take each test three times. When done right, taking a test is really three activities: preparing for the test, taking the actual exam, then going over the comments to see what mistakes you made. Each activity furnishes important—and grade-improving—information: the studying gives you practice in questions very similar to the those that will be on the test; the actual test is where the A is earned (at least in the best case); and the review of the comments (often accompanied by a visit to the professor’s office hour to clear up anything unclear) is an investment in an A on the next test.
8. Always answer the question asked. More points are lost on tests and papers by not answering the question asked than by giving the wrong answer. That’s because students often have strong—and wrong—preconceptions about what the professor should be asking. “How can the question be so specific?” they wonder. “How can the professor not be asking a question about last week’s classes, especially since he (or she) seemed so interested in that topic?” “Can the professor really be asking about that journal article we weresupposed to read, or about the discussion in section?” Don’t try to psych out the professor or distrust what you see before your very eyes. Answer the question, as asked, head-on. (If you’re not sure what’s meant, always ask—and rescue your grade.)
9. Play all four quarters. Many college courses are “back-loaded.” More than half the grade is left to assignments due the last month of the semester: a third test, 15 percent; the term (or research) paper, 25 percent; the cumulative final, 30 percent. You get the idea. Pace yourself and don’t run out of gas just as you’re coming into the home stretch.
10. Do all the “extras.” In some courses, there are special end-of-thesemester activities that can improve your grade. Review sessions, extra office hours, rewrites of papers, extra-credit work—all of these can be grade-boosters. Especially in schools where there are no pluses and minuses, even a few extra points can push your borderline grade over the hump (from, say, a B-plus to an A-minus—that is, an A).
11. Join a community. Many students improve their grades by working with study buddies or study groups. Try to meet at least once a week—especially in courses in which there are weekly problem sets or quizzes. And if your school offers “freshman clusters” in which a group of students all take the same section of some required courses, sign up for them, too. Students can improve their grades one level or more when they commit to working in an organized way with other students.

Read More : 11 Secrets of Getting Good Grades in College

How To Find The Hidden Truth Of Great Academic Before You Apply

On a hot summer day in 2007, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, announced its own obituary. The college trustees voted to close the school—at least for a few years—after the class of 2008 had graduated.

The 155-year-old college, which had been founded by abolitionists, had imploded. The once proud prominent liberal arts college, was pretty much out of money, out of students (around 300 were enrolled),
and out of time.

Critiques published in The Chronicle of Higher Education
suggested that the school’s demise would hardly have been a surprise
to those with any familiarity with the school. An Antioch graduate of
the 1960s wrote this scathing observation in the Chronicle: “By the
early 1990s, its once-packed library was nearly deserted. The campus
itself was beyond seedy. Some buildings were crumbling, others were
vandalized, and many walls were spray painted with edgy graffiti. Beer
bottles and cigarette butts littered the grounds.... The library’s collection
was spare and dated, rich with pre-1970 books and serials, poor
on materials thereafter.” And esthetics and a lousy library collection
were hardly the school’s only problems.

Why dwell on the problems of a troubled school that will obviously

not be on any teenager’s list of must-see colleges in the years to come?
(Since the announcement, the trustees and the alumni have been
working to find ways to keep the historic college open.) Antioch can
serve as a warning to any students or parents, who are tempted to rely
too heavily on rankings. Here’s why: Despite Antioch’s severe problems,
those ubiquitous college guides were still praising Antioch.

The popular Fiske Guide to Colleges, 2008 edition, for instance,
devoted two and a half pages to Antioch in its tome that included more
than “300 of the country’s best and most interesting colleges and universities.”
U.S. News & World Report America’s Best Colleges, 2007
edition, singled out Antioch for its high proportion of classes that contained
under 20 students. It also listed Antioch in its compilation of 13
schools with “outstanding” internship programs.

The most over-the-top critique about Antioch came from a very
popular book entitled Colleges That Change Lives, 40 Schools That
Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges by Loren Pope, a former
education editor at The New York Times. Here’s what the book,
which I happen to greatly admire, had to say about the school in its
2006 edition: “Antioch is in a class by itself. There is no college or university
in the country that makes a more profound difference in a
young person’s life, or that creates more effective adults. None of the
Ivies, big or small, can match Antioch’s ability to produce outstanding
thinkers and doers.”

How could all these college experts have been so wrong about Antioch?
The easy answer is that any book that tries to sum up what a particular
college or university can offer by using a numerical ranking or
a two-page write-up can’t possibly provide a meaningful analysis of a
school.

Economics explains one reason why evaluations of colleges are often
superficial. Imagine spending enough time on a campus to be able
to draw a realistic picture of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. Now
multiply that amount of time by hundreds of schools. It would require
a huge commitment of man hours—and money—to compile a meaningful
analysis of hundreds of schools in a guide that’s cranked out
annually.


That explains why a lot of the analysis is done at computer terminals
far from campus quadrangles. Fiske Guide to Colleges, for example,
obtains a great deal of background from the schools through
questionnaires that it mails school administrators. Fiske also asks
these administrators to distribute a different set of questionnaires to a
cross section of students. What it sounds like to me is that institutions
do a lot of self-grading. In other words, it doesn’t sound too tough.

Meanwhile, U.S. News & World Report relies too heavily on school
reputations (deserved or undeserved) rather than trying to measure
whether institutions are doing a good job of educating students.
It’s fine to use these guides as a starting point. Through these
books you may discover schools you didn’t even know existed. You can
also use them to discover what range of grade point averages and SAT
or ACT scores is typically required to be admitted to a particular
school. The guides can also share valuable financial aid information.

What you shouldn’t do is rely heavily on these books to determine
which schools you explore and which you snub. Some students believe
that if a school didn’t get a nod in the Fiske book or Princeton Review’s
The Best 366 Colleges, there must be something wrong with it. U.S.
News & World Report induces even more snob appeal. Some kids
don’t want to step foot on any campus that doesn’t crack the lists of the
top 10 liberal art colleges and national universities.

At the same time, you shouldn’t make decisions based on the marketing
material that colleges generate. The promotional assault, which
often starts after your child has taken the PSAT test (baby SAT) as
early as his or her sophomore year, isn’t just relegated to the booklets,
postcards, and letters that clog mailboxes. The deft marketing is just
as visible on college Web sites.

Finding and paying for the right academic fit is too important to
leave to superficial snapshots of colleges and universities. There is a better
alternative. In the next few chapters, you’ll learn ways to evaluate
schools and academic departments based on what is important to you.

Action Plan
• Don’t rely on any book as the ultimate source of information on a college.
• Do your own research on colleges.
Source:The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price

How To Answering the Financial Aid Question

How you begin your collegiate treasure hunt depends a great deal on whether you will receive need-based financial aid. At the start, it’s critically important, therefore, that you determine whether your family will qualify for financial aid. Once you’ve figured that out,
you will know what kind of schools to pursue. In the next chapter, you’ll find the tools you’ll need to determine whether financial aid is a possibility.

If You Do Qualify for Financial Aid...
You need to figure out which schools are generous and which are miserly. Many schools don’t advertise their financial aid breakdowns of grants, loans, and work study, but as you’ll learn later in the book, it is easy to retrieve financial aid statistics for individual schools.

The colleges and universities that often dangle the fattest financial
aid packages are routinely the richest ones that sit on endowments
that can reach into the billions of dollars. Recently 76 colleges

and universities were sitting on endowments that were worth at least
$1 billion. These schools are more likely to be able to bestow a kid
with a free or heavily subsidized education.

Many of the schools with the most generous reputations,
however, are also the hardest to wheedle your way into. Amherst
College, for instance, says it will meet 100% of its students’ financial
needs. And even better, the school does not saddle its financial aid
students with loans. Instead all Amherst students receive need-based
grants. Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey; Pomona
College in Claremont, California; Davidson College in Davidson,
North Carolina; Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine; and Williams
College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, are also among the small,
but growing number of elite schools that don’t saddle families with
loans.

Harvard, however, made everybody else’s generosity look like a
pittance when it announced its ambitious aid plan, which attracted
front-page media attention. In addition to continuing to help middleclass
and poor students, Harvard is now assisting families who make
between $120,000 and $180,000 per year. The school caps the cost to
these families at 10% of their income, which means the richest of
these families will typically pay roughly $18,000 a year for a school
with a recent price tag of $45,600. After Harvard’s announcement,
Yale University, Stanford University, and Brown University were
among the schools that quickly followed with their own plans to
benefit more affluent families.

It can’t get much better than that, but, of course, there is a catch.
Very few students can earn a spot in the freshman class at these
schools. Amherst’s acceptance rate is just 19%, and Davidson’s is
30%. Harvard and Yale reject 91% of their applicants. Pomona turns
away all but 18% of its applicants.

Luckily, plenty of schools do provide generous financial aid packages
without requiring stratospheric SAT scores and valedictorian
credentials. What’s more, you can find schools that mix need-based
financial aid with merit money, which is awarded regardless of whether
a family is rich, poor, or in between. It’s possible to obtain both kinds of
assistance if you fit the profile that a particular school covets.


If You Don’t Qualify for Financial Aid...
If “no” is the answer, you’ll want to focus on the sugar daddies that
award merit aid to students for academic achievements or other talents
because the alternative is paying full fare.

As you’ll learn in great detail later, tons of schools distribute merit
aid without caring how much money mom and dad make or how much
cash they have stuffed in bank accounts. The average merit award that
private schools hand out slashes the tuition bill by 33.5%. Many public
schools have also jumped on the merit aid bandwagon. And here’s
equally great news: Even “B” students can qualify for these awards at
plenty of schools.

If you aren’t receiving financial aid, you’ll want to identify up front
the schools that dispense merit awards, which are also known as
tuition discounts. If you don’t, you could end up spending tens of
thousands of dollars more than you had planned.


Action Plan
Make it a priority to determine whether your family will qualify for
need-based aid.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price

How to succeed in college: tips from former students

So you’re in college. Now what? Your teary-eyed parents have just left—finally—and you’re in your room with a roommate you’ve just met, who’s now putting up posters you’re not sure you want to live with all year. You don’t know if you should go to the freshman meet and greet, or if it’ll be too corny. You sit down on your bed and wonder what lies ahead.

Since it’s been a few years since we’ve been in college, we’ve collected words of wisdom from former students about what they think is important. Some of these items are big, others small, but they’re all meant to help you see what it’s like.

Here’s what they offer . . .

“Location of the school might seem superfi cial, but area/ weather/and ease with which students can get to a city really are important factors. For example, I know people who thought they could handle cloudiness but just can’t.”
“Don’t go to school while you have a serious boyfriend/ girlfriend far away. The only people I know that are homesick or miserable here left a boyfriend/girlfriend at home or at another school. Seriously, it sounds harsh, but it really hinders your friend-making abilities when you’re always missing someone.”
“If you’re not sure what you want to study, you might want a bigger university instead of a liberal arts college. No one ever told me that, but at a lot of the schools I looked at, there weren’t great communications or sociology programs, which I’ve become interested in now.”
—Madeline, University of Southern California

“Be patient when you get to college. Because everyone is living in the same area, college life tends to move very quickly, and you can easily feel as though you are behind. It may take a few months for your life to fall into place, but if you are patient and willing to try new things (take classes in new disciplines, join an extracurricular activity) you will fi nd your niche. And once you fi nd your group, remember to slow down every once in a while!”
—Elena, Harvard

“You’ll meet more people if you don’t live with a close friend from high school, but sometimes it’s just great to be with people you know well and trust. So, I’d say that if you do decide to room with a good buddy, be aware that you’ll have to make more of an effort to meet new people.”
“Join clubs early. Time management goes better when you have a lot to do.”
—Steven, NYU

“If you’re an only child, remember to remain fl exible. You’ll have some adjusting to do when you have to share your living space.”
“Go somewhere you can shine.”
—Anne, UVA

“College classes are different from high school. There are only a few grades, so you need to keep up with your reading and attend class, even though nobody is taking attendance!”
“Take classes outside your major.”
“Get to know your professors—it’ll help you do well in school!”
“Go abroad.”
—Natalie, Colorado University

“The best thing that could prepare a person for college, more than just a few lines of advice, is a simple understanding of how college functions. I don’t think I ever really comprehended that being prepared for college mostly entailed structure: in my work, in my room, in my socializing, and in my whole life. I fi nd that what I really pursue now that I am at Stanford is efficiency. I feel that I need to fi nish a huge pile of work as quickly as possible so that I can make time for other things. I feel that I need to compartmentalize my life. While this might sound like a drag, it’s definitely worth the effort. Wherever this craving for efficiency comes
from (maybe a worry that college will be over before I get a chance to do everything I want to?), I wish that I’d recognized this necessity the fi rst day I arrived on campus.”
—Joe, Stanford

“Don’t be afraid to use all the resources available to you—such as tutors, for example. Kids who were at the top of their class in high school might feel bashful about getting help in college, and they shouldn’t.”
—Brianna, Washington University


“Match the location of the school according to your personality. For example, think whether you’d enjoy having a whole city available to you or if you’d prefer a more rural college where campus life focuses on frat parties.”
“No matter how diffi cult your roommate is, make him think you like him while you’re plotting your escape. Most housing forms have stupid questions, but write your sleeping hours, and try to make sure someone pays attention.”
“It’s good to have a friend from home at your college. That person won’t keep you from meeting new people and having your own experiences, and there are lots of times when she/he can be a real comfort as you navigate a new world.”
—Alex, Fordham

“Coming from a small, private high school, I was used to having close contact with my teachers and really becoming friends with them. I was surprised that this was not the norm at Dartmouth. My advice would be to be assertive in getting to know your professors—you’ll have to go to them, because they won’t be coming to you in the same way they did in high school. You’ll want to form these relationships, but you’ll have to make it happen.”
—Lauren, Dartmouth

“Go to college with a mind open to all sorts of things. You should have some goals connected with what you’d like to accomplish, but be flexible. Also, be ready to make friends with people you might not immediately identify as ‘your type.’”

—Blaine, George Washington

“I found that college was a balance of activities, schoolwork, and socializing, and if I were starting over again, I would like to have participated in more of the activist groups on campus. It is incredibly hard to be involved in even one or two worthwhile activities while still getting what you want from classes and having time for friends, but I eventually figured out how to do it. It’s tricky to advise people about this, though, since it’s very easy to become so over-programmed that you end up doing everything poorly. Finding the right balance is the ticket!”
—Ben, Stanford
Read More : How to succeed in college: tips from former students

How to keep your scholarship?

If you talk to almost any coach in the country, he’ll tell you that it isn’t that difficult for a student to keep his or her athletic scholarship. Give your best effort each day at practice and in games, work hard in the classroom, and keep a positive attitude. Oh, yeah, and stay out of trouble!

Many student-athletes believe that, after they’ve been awarded a scholarship for the year, it can’t be taken away regardless of behavior, performance, or outside circumstances. This is not true. In reality, a scholarship may be revoked during the period of award for a number of reasons, including:

•  Ineligibility for intercollegiate competition
•  Fraudulent misrepresentation on a school application, National Letter of Intent, and/or financial-aid statement
•  Misconduct warranting substantial disciplinary penalty
•  Voluntary withdrawal from the team

If your scholarship is reduced or cancelled for one of the preceding reasons, you’re entitled to an appeal hearing. However, the chances of a committee overturning your coach’s decision if you’re engaged
in one of these activities generally fall in the slim-to-none category unless there are some strong mitigating circumstances. For example, you quit the team because you needed to focus on your academics so you wouldn’t be suspended from the university — the coach allowed you to keep your scholarship for the remainder of the year but did not renew it for the next year.

You can’t accept a scholarship, quit the team, and then continue to receive the scholarship. Your grades, behavior, and commitment to the team are all extremely important factors in whether or not you will receive a scholarship for four or five years — or be dropped after one.

Unfortunately, injuries are a part of athletics, and sometimes those injuries are severe enough to end a student-athlete’s career. Be sure to ask your coach if you’ll continue to receive your scholarship if you suffer a career-ending injury or illness. The scholarships that are awarded to student-athletes who will never play again due to injury do not count toward the team’s maximum limitations.

Who decides if you get to keep your scholarship?
Ultimately, the decision as to whether you’ll keep your scholarship and for what amount is made by the head coach. Most coaches have individual meetings with players toward the end of the spring semester and let them know their status. This way, it isn’t a surprise when you receive the financial-aid agreement (or a letter
telling you that you aren’t receiving a scholarship) in the summer.

Although the coach is the one who makes this decision, you have the power to make it a “no-brainer” decision. If you stay away from the four ways your scholarship can be immediately cancelled that we discussed in the preceding section and adhere to the following tips, the chances of your keeping your scholarship for four or five years will increase to nearly 100 percent:

• Go to every class unless you have an away game or are sick. Take a schedule to your professors the first week of class, and let them know the days you’ll be gone for away games.
• Try to schedule your classes around your practice schedule as often as possible. Just don’t do this at the expense of your ultimate goal: to get your degree.
• Show up on time (or early) for practices and games.
• Dress appropriately for practice. Don’t wear torn T-shirts and your hat on backward.
• Dress appropriately to travel to away games. When you’re on the road, you’re representing your team, your school, and yourself!
• Work out on your own in the off season to try to improve your skills and get in better shape. Talk to your coach to find out the areas in which you need to improve.
• Stay focused and pay attention during practices and games.
• Don’t talk to your teammates about the frat party later that night. During games, avoid waving to your buddies and family in the crowd. If you’re on the bench, stay ready to play at any time.
• Keep a positive attitude even if you aren’t playing a lot (or traveling) as a freshman or sophomore. More than likely, there are juniors and seniors on the team who went through the same experience.
• Be respectful of your coaches, teammates, and professors. As corny as it sounds, treat them the way you want them to treat you!

Even though there are events that can happen beyond your control, in which you may have your scholarship reduced or cancelled (for example, your coach quits, or an unexpected star transfers to your school), following these tips will make a coach want to keep you on scholarship and as part of the team!

If your scholarship is reduced or cancelled, the school must notify you of this in writing and give you the chance to appeal the decision if you think it’s unfair. If you want to appeal this decision, a committee made up of members outside the athletic department (for example, the director of financial aid, the dean of students, faculty members, and so on) will hear the appeal, and their decision is final. If you have specific questions about this, the director of compliance on campus should be able to help you.
Read More : How to keep your scholarship?