Anyone who spends time on this blog should realize that very few people pay the actual published price for college. This makes it difficult to judge the significance of the rising prices of college tuition. A lot of schools, especially public institutions, justify increasing tuition by pointing out that a certain percentage of the increase will go to financial aid. + Read More
If you’re serious about playing college athletics, you need to understand when and how college coaches start contacting you (officially) and when you can contact them. I remember sitting in the bleachers in April and listening to one parent’s angst that the baseball coach from a particular college hadn’t called them yet. The fact was that this was April of the player’s junior year–according to the NCAA recruiting periods and contact rules the coach couldn’t call him until July. + Read More
Anyone who pays attention to the media has heard the alarming reports about student debt. In the United States student loans total $870 billion which now exceeds the total credit card balance. Scary numbers. You would expect the question, “How much should I borrow for college?” to be the question that all students and their families are asking. But I don’t’ think that’s actually the case.
Robert J. Kibbee, the former Chancellor of City University New York, observed “Over the years, we have come to identify quality in a college not by whom it serves but by how many students it excludes. Let us not be a sacred priesthood protecting the temple, but rather the fulfillers of dreams.” And if the dreams fulfilled aren’t going to be determined by family income, colleges are going to need to provide substantial financial aid to the neediest students. + Read More
As students and parents start to wade into the college athletic recruiting process, they’ll soon see all kinds of advertisements, websites, and offers from athletic recruiting services. All promise to help you with getting an athletic scholarship because, they’ll tell you, they have access to people and information that you don’t. And as the wading starts to feel like drowning as parents begin to realize how much college costs and how many colleges are actually out there, paying for a recruiting service doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. + Read More
With all of the college scholarship search websites available, it would seem that getting a scholarship to pay for school has never been easier. Unigo’s scholarship match offers to match students to 3.6 million college scholarships worth over $14 billion. And Scholarships.com tells you that there are over 3.7 million scholarships worth $19 billion just waiting for you. How hard can it be to get a scholarship? + Read More
I remember as a sophomore sitting in an American Literature class when the professor starting talking about the advantages of attending a large university such as the University of Texas (hook ’em) versus going to a smaller institution such as Rice. I don’t know what brought on the lecture but he was adamant that we were receiving just as good of an education as those going to Rice. Furthermore, unlike the students at Rice, we would never run out of classes to take. + Read More
Nobody likes wasting their time and college coaches are no exception. So when you start to contact college coaches, be sure that you are prepared. If nothing else, what sort of impression do you think you make when the coach has to inform you of basic facts regarding the school or finds out that you aren’t qualified to play on his team? + Read More
Most college students know that they can study abroad but fewer realize that there are opportunities for off-campus study without ever leaving the country. Why would you want to do that?
Such exchange programs allow you to explore academic subjects not normally available on your campus or to immerse yourself in one area for a semester. Off-campus study programs can help you establish contacts in distant cities for internships or job opportunities. They can provide you the chance to try something different without having to commit to four years at one campus. + Read More