College Happenings

If you’re like me and you don’t live near any colleges, then the online route might be the best one. The cool thing about the online option is that you can get your degree from a number of high quality schools without having to move halfway across the country to do so.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s a new ranking of the top 25 online colleges for 2012:

Here’s the top 10:

#1. Northeastern University
#2. Duquesne University
#3. Penn State World Campus
#4. Washington State University
#5. Drexel University
#6. Regis University
#7. University of Massachusetts
#8. Colorado State University Global Campus
#9. Oregon State University
#10. Robert Morris University

Some very good schools on that list. And there are other highlights in the top 25 too such as: #12. University of Illinois at Chicago, #14. Arizona State University, #16. University of Cincinnati.

For the full top 25 rankings of the best online colleges for 2012, here’s the source.

Yes, college can be a waste of money especially if you choose a worthless degree.

From: The Best Colleges

It’s college rankings season for 2012 (well, really 2011 but they all say for 2012) and the school rankings are pouring out from places like Forbes, Princeton Review and US News & World Report. A new addition to the rankings flood comes from The Best Colleges who has a list of the 50 best colleges in America.

According to their site, they entered the rankings fray because they wanted to better reflect what students actually care about like quality of life and economic value (after all, everyone goes to college to get a job right?).

Here are some interesting things we noticed in their 50 best college rankings of 2012: continue reading…

Ever wonder what the college admissions board is thinking when they read essay after essay? How can you make a good impression and get admitted to your dream college? Here’s everything you need to know.

1. Who are you? GPAs and accomplishments are just words on a page. Your essay is the one chance you have to be unique and memorable. Tell a story about yourself that will demonstrate to the admission staff your positive qualities. Spend the most time preparing the first and final paragraphs. They should be your best material and contain a central thesis statement which the rest of the paper will address more fully.

2. Can you write? The admissions board will want to see if you were properly prepared in secondary school to be qualified for their program. It is important to have strong transitions and good flow between sentences and paragraphs. Your ideas need to be well-organized and relevant. Of course, it is essential to use correct grammar. It is most common for people to make mistakes with possessive apostrophes, quotation marks, run-on sentences, and hyphenated words.

3. Careless errors are the number one red flag. The board will ask themselves- are you focused and competent? Take your time preparing your essay and be thorough. Proofread again and again to ensure that every word, phrase and punctuation mark is correct. Most often people make mistakes with commas and with words that are spelled right, but are the wrong word for the context (for example- affect vs. effect). After you have proofread it yourself several times, then put it aside and look at it again later with fresh eyes, or ask a skilled friend to help edit.

4. Are you ready to face a demanding curriculum? College will be a marathon of reading assignments, papers, exams, labs and group projects. Show that you have the discipline it takes to follow the rules and meet the demands by sticking to the proposed page limit or word limit. Double-check that you have done all formatting and spacing as suggested. Be sure you have actually answered the question with your essay and kept to the point.

5. Will you succeed in college? Use your words to bring to life your past successes and what is great about you. Think about a few characteristics that enable you to be an achiever and have helped you accomplish past goals. Stay positive. There’s no need to mention negative qualities about yourself, unless it would help to clarify reasons for a low GPA or limited extracurricular activities or incompletes. If you have to discuss flaws in your previous academic performance, then explain steps you will take to not repeat these failures.

This article was written by Amy Clark from Paper Proofreader, a website that specializes in providing help for college application essays.

We got such a great response to our list of 28 Cliche Dorm Room Posters that we figured we should put together a list of funny College T-shirts. We’re sure we didn’t find all the best funny college t-shirts out there, so we’d love it if you’d add some suggestions in the comments.   Thanks!

1. FU from Animal House

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Seems like a lot of people these days are choosing to forgo the grand debauchery of traditional college for the safe and secure world of online college. If you’re going to go that route, make sure you avoid all the junk online schools out there.

Here’s the best list of quality schools that we found on a quick search of the Internet: Top 25 Online Schools

In case you didn’t already know… 15 Professors Who Were Also Criminals

In my experience, college professors aren’t to be admired so much as laughed at. They’re dorky. They weird. And they think they’re better than everyone else (when really they’re mostly all just social outcasts). Some of them are criminals too.

Whether you like it or not, students use college rankings to make decisions about where to go. How a college or university is perceived matters to students because they know that their future employers will care too.

College rankings are all over the place, but the most prestigious and most often cited is U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges. Their college rankings for 2011 recently came out and here are the top 10:

1) Harvard University
2) Princeton University
3) Yale University
4) Columbia University
5) Stanford University
6) University of Pennsylvania
7) California Institute of Technology*
7) Massachusetts Institute of Technology*
9) Dartmouth College
10) Duke University

*These two schools were tied

It starts early. College freshmen arrive to campus only to be bombarded with student credit card offers from day one, increasing the likelihood they will spend too much, carry big balances, and enter into a lifetime of debt. Thankfully, there are ways for college students to establish credit with credit cards and do so responsibly. Keeping these tips in mind will help students pay off their balance each month and graduate from college free from credit card debt.

1. Carry only one credit card. With so many opportunities for college students to get credit cards, it’s easy for them to get carried away and end up with more cards than they can afford. By having just one credit card, students are more likely to keep up with what they owe, and it will be easier for them to establish credit.

2. Use the credit card for one thing only. By limiting credit card purchases to just one thing like gas for the car, groceries, or textbooks, college students are more likely to know exactly how much they owe at the end of the month. If the items designated for credit card purchases are essentials – food, for example – students should know before making a purchase that they’re buying something they can afford.

3. Use the credit card sparingly. College students can establish credit even if they almost never use their credit cards. By just using the card a few times a year, students will be able to build a good credit score, and doing so also makes it easier to pay off a balance since students owe less money.

4. Get a family member to cosign. If you’re a college student thinking about a credit card, see if your parents or other family members with a good credit are willing to cosign with you on a card. College students often sign up for credit cards when they’re away from home, neglecting the fact that cosigning with a family member may allow them to get a credit card with a low interest rate.

5. Shop for a low interest rate. College students shouldn’t just fill out the first credit card application set before them. Many banks, credit unions, and other institutions offer credit cards with competitive rates. These cards are often geared toward college students trying to establish credit.

While it’s easy for college students to head down a slippery slope ending in mountains of credit card debt come graduation time, there are still ways for them to use credit cards responsibly. Considering the credit card options available and knowing how to avoid several common pitfalls can go a long way for students trying to establish credit. In the end, the careful use of a credit card can bring financial rewards.

This is a guest post by Dee Barizo from The Best Degrees, an online school site that picks the top online degrees. Also, the site provides tuition rankings for students looking to save money on their education.

Getting sleep in college is sort of like getting water in a desert.  It’s hard to come by, but when you get it, it feels great.

Last night we ran across this cool article called 10 Ways To Get A Good Night’s Sleep While Living In A Dorm Room and here’s what they say (visit their site for all the details):

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