College Happenings

More and more colleges and universities are aiming to become sustainable. As the world gets bigger and more populated, conserving resources is one way to maintain quality of life and overall sanity. Schools are choosing to be sustainable in a number of ways including water efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor environment quality, materials usage, and food production.

Here’s a quick primer on some ways colleges are choosing to become sustainable:

Source: How Universities are Going Green

Some of the schools mentioned in this sustainability graphic include:

Colorado State University
Brown University
Duke University
Georgetown University
Emory University
Louisville University
Iowa University
Columbia University
UCSB University
Vanderbilt University
Harvard University
Toledo University
Clemson University
The American University of Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania
Carnegie Mellon
The University of Utah
Oregon State University
Northwestern University
Buffalo University
Arizona State University
California Institute of Technology
Sewanee: The University of the South
Cornell University
Yale University
Princeton University
Brown University
Dartmouth University
The University of Vermont

So what are some ways that your college is going green?

Here’s an infographic about the top party colleges of the last decade. What do you think? Florida over Penn State?

Source: Best Colleges Online

We’ve had a few of these “top online christian colleges” sent our way in the last month, so we figured we’d go ahead and post. It’s crazy to us how hungry people are for college rankings. But some of our most well visited pages on this site are posts about college rankings so we can’t complain.

Apparently there are people out there who are looking for Christian colleges. And some people want their Christian college to be an online one. So it would serve to reason that some people are looking for the top ranked online Christian colleges. Here’s a collection of the best ones we’ve found online, for those of you who are:

Top 5 Online Christian Colleges
10 Best Online Christian Colleges

Our recommendation with rankings of any kind is to take them with a grain of salt. They are pretty subjective (but so is a college degree after all!) The main thing to remember is that you can get a degree at any school that’s got a decent reputation and the proper accreditation. We think the lower the cost, the better;)

One of the clearest paths towards career advancement is getting an MBA degree. An MBA allows you to move up the business career ladder a whole lot faster and further. But how do you choose which MBA to get?

In our opinion, you should only get an MBA if you want to be in a leadership position. And these leadership positions often come with added stress. So be forewarned.

If you’ve already gotten your bachelors degree, and aren’t happy with your current position or feel that your career has hit a ceiling, and MBA may be the right option for you. Here’s how to decide:

1) If you currently have a job, and can’t take a sabbatical, consider the flexibility of an online MBA. Rankings such as SuperScholar’s SmartChoice Top 25 MBA Programs are worth looking at to make sure you’re going to a quality school. These days, so long as you’re going to a good school, an distance learning MBA can be just as good as a traditional degree.

2) If you have the time and flexibility, consider going to one of the cream of the crop MBA programs. Harvard. Michigan. Wharton. These schools are very competitive, but if you get your MBA from any of them, you’re virtually guaranteed a high paying job with a Fortune 500 company. When going the traditional route, make sure to pick your school from a reputable MBA ranking site like US News or Business Week.

Whatever your choice, choose carefully. There are many MBA programs out there that won’t give you much competitive advantage. It’s important to go to a school that’s regionally accredited and well respected. And when making a decision, please take our advice: always consult multiple MBA ranking sites in order to determine a consensus. Otherwise you might be going off just one random person’s opinion.

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

continue reading…

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