College and University Blog

Resources, help, and insight for your college experience

How to Choose a Career: The Strength-Centric Approach

Continuing on in my study of choosing a career goal before college, there are several approaches that you can take in narrowing your possible choice. If you have specific interests, passions, or hobbies that you would like to pursue further, or if you have clear-cut strengths that you believe could benefit a certain job, this is an article for you.

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How to Choose a Career: 4 Basic Questions

If you are a regular reader, you might notice a common thread between blogs this month—choosing a career and choosing wisely. For some, the future is mapped, its charted, its financed, and ready to rocket to the limit. For others, choosing a career goal is an agonizing topic of ponderation.

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Parents' Four Step Guide to the College Enrollment Process

Parents play an essential role in the college enrollment process. Without their efforts, resources, and faithfulness to their child, entering into a college with ease may not necessarily betide. For this reason, it is important for parents to become acquainted with information that gives guidance and insight in order to find the right college for their child and help them enroll successfully.

A parent’s role is a delicate one. Too much involvement can leave their child feeling as if their opinion is irrelevant and cause dissent between the parent and the student. Too little involvement can leave their child in the balance of how to go about a complicated process, and when mistakes are made, it can cost the student time and money, possibly a missed semester. It is consequential that the parent find the adequate balance of collaboration.

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Why College?

If you are a college student, do you ever wonder some moments, why you are there? If you are a high school student, do you find yourself questioning the purpose of attending a university? These queries should not go unanswered. In fact, understanding “why” you would continue on to higher education is foundational for your success.

Remember, your success is personal. It should not be intertwined with the outpouring of outsiders’ opinions of what is best for your life. If you choose to go to college or if you are already attending a college you should know the reason why you’re there.

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Modern College Dorms: Privacy, Technology and Luxurious Living

College living was once notorious for its subpar offerings of stale rooms, florescent lighting, and marginal provisions. In the 1920s, college students, who were exclusively male, spent their study years in cloistered, cinderblock rooms, and since then, the profile of a college dorm has undergone an astounding transformation.

Students of today’s era may spend their dorm life living in the lap of privacy, technology, and luxury, where some of the top schools offer swimming pools, hot tubs, rock climbing, large plasma screen TVs, fitness centers, wireless internet, personal laundry services, cleaning services, quality dining, panoramic city views, expensive lighting and room decor by acclaimed interior designers, high-end furniture, and the list goes on.

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Creating a College Planning Calendar for High School Seniors

Your senior year of high school should be your busiest year when it comes to college planning. Expect to find that every month, especially for the fall semester, will consist of some sort of college-planning activity.

The most important piece to your organizing is creating a deadline calendar. Skipped deadlines and incorrectly filled out paperwork can cause you to lose out on scholarships, financial aid, and even admission so be diligent in fulfilling your college-planning tasks every month.

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College Essentials: 5 Study Tools to Master

Your degree of consistency, conviction, and orderliness can change the dynamic of your success at college. To progress from high school where lower levels of expectation are met into college, a place of high stakes and accountability, it requires a change in your state of mind and habits. Therefore, it is important to familiarize yourself with ways that enable you to grasp the processes of higher learning.

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Creating a College Planning Calendar for High School Juniors

Planning for college is not a “just add water” type of process. It requires meticulous organization, preparation, determination, and time. The day you enter high school freshman year, college should be in the back of your mind, if you intend to go to college. And throughout your freshman year leading up to your junior, every effort you make in your classes should be made on behalf of college planning, again, if you intend to go.

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Ways to Maximize Your Potential At College

When a person considers making an investment, he has to consider several things, the cost, the return, and quite possibly the risk of failure. Attending college with prospects of gaining a degree is an investment. There is a cost, and there is a return. There is also a possible risk of failure. When you keep in mind the steep price of tuition for most colleges, failure should not be an option, and an eye for success should be the primary motivator. However, what does definitive success look like to a person wishing to gain a return on a college investment?

What many college students or high school students do not realize is that just because they graduate with a degree and a high grade point average, they should not necessarily define their success based on those accomplishments. As high school prepares a student for college, college prepares a student for the career world. How is it, then, that so many college graduates are working jobs not even closely related to the career they studied while at school?

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Choosing the Wrong Major in a Bad Economy May Lead to Unemployment

The last thing a student would anticipate as he or she graduates college would be that soon after graduation, they would be down the path to the unemployment office.

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ACT Releases 2009 Condition of College Readiness

As an appropriate follow-up to my blog entitled, College Preparation Courses: The “Quality” in the “Qualifications” May Not Be Enough, ACT, the Iowa testing organization, has recently released the 2009 Condition of College Readiness. The purpose of this report is to determine the overall readiness of students entering into college-level courses based upon ACT testing measurements of 2009 high school graduates’ academic performance.

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College Athletic Recruiting Process and the NCAA

The collegiate athletic recruiting process is a complex web of rules, deadlines and eligibility requirements. It begins during the athlete’s first year of high school when college coaches are on the prowl for new talent.

The problem for athletes is that nearly 6% or less will compete at a college level, which causes the competition for playing positions to become extremely severe. (NCAA) Institutions and the coaching faculty that represents them will also show zeal for recruiting specific talent because the appeal of many is that the great capacities of prospective recruits can bring about future team victories, and so much of the school’s profit can come from popular athletic programs. To that end, the process of athletic recruitment, without the governance of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association), would be pell-mell at best.

The NCAA is an organization that oversees and regulates the operation of college-level athletics. High school students must be aware of the NCAA requirements and rules in order to be eligible to participate in college level sports.

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New Demands, New Jobs: The Latest Evolution of Careers to Consider

Rumor has it the job market is not appearing to be too promising for many graduates. In many cases, that has been true. If you are a concerned college student, the good news is that with the evolution of technology and demand, new well paid careers are coming to the surface that you just might want to consider.

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Academic Research Studies Can Earn Extra Cash

We all know that it can be difficult to find a full-time, campus-living college student with loads of money. Unfortunately, their need for cash is great. While finding a job is an option, it may not be entirely conducive to a study schedule or profitable, for that matter. The good news is there are other ways lurking about to turn a few extra dollars—research studies.

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University Document Translating Service Offers $500 Scholarship From Photo Contest

StateUniversity.com is happy to offer you many college resources for an optimal college experience from start to finish and beyond. So when we get wind of a special opportunity, we want to share it!

University Language Services has recently announced their newest scholarship photo contest for international students and students who have studied abroad.

Contest entries must submit a photo of an international place they have studied in that relates to their experience studying abroad. Participants must also include, along with the photo, a 200 word description about where and why the picture was taken.

Winners of this contest can take away one of four scholarships from $100-$500!

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How to Do Laundry Dorm Style

For those you of you fine individuals who never learned to do your laundry, the time has come. You don’t have your mama or the maid….I say it again, the time has come.

If you are living in an apartment, I’m going to assume you’ve been at college long enough to figure out how to wash your clothes. Therefore, I’m directing my attention to college newbies in dorms—the run of the mill, dirty, confined, and overpopulated type of dorms. Be prepared for a mini laundromat that consists of limited space, small washers, not-so-hot dryers, and theft.

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The Benefits and Returns on Executive M.B.A. Programs

For many executives, the appeal of advancement, salary increase and opportunity comes with a price tag. Employees wishing to climb the corporate ladder greatly increase their chances of doing so by pursuing an Executive M.B.A. degree, the tuition cost of which ranges from $50,000 to $150,000.

Unfortunately, companies that once gave monetary support to employees wishing to further their professional development have begun to view this company expenditure as frivolous and examine the real weightiness or return it would have to their bottom line, thus forcing students more often to pay for costs out-of-pocket.

So what is the value of this type of investment? How can an employee or employer be sure that the monies and resources spent will be justified? What programs have the best ROI?

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International Edition Textbooks: An Economical Alternative

If you’re planning on higher education, prepare your billfolds to be swiped clean by the cost of tuition, hidden fees, living expenses, and textbooks. Over the past few years, American publishers have driven the cost of textbooks to outrageous amounts, handing over a sure financial blow to already insolvent students.

Claire Suddath of Time reported in her article, “Outsourcing the Textbook,” that according to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, “U.S. textbook prices rose 186% between 1986 and 2004, or twice the rate of inflation.” (Suddath, Time)

As unscrupulous as college textbook price gouging is, there is an alternative if you’re strapped for cash. The same college textbooks are published by different companies all over the world to give equal opportunity for education in other countries. The international edition textbooks are published at lower costs to be sold overseas and are available to purchase by any interested foreign or domestic buyer via the Internet.

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How to Deal With Bad Dorm Room Odors

It may come as no surprise that unpleasant odors swarm college dorm rooms. A multitude of fast-tracked young adults living a life of little time, little hygiene, lots of fast food and fermented beverages, tightly domiciled in 8X8 square feet-sized rooms, can cause even the poorest of olfactory senses to be overwhelmed.

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