Tag Archives: college

10 Skills High School Students Must Have To Prepare Themselves for College Life (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, study skills by

It’s never too early to learn new skills, especially if you know these skills will be central for college success. College is very different from high school; your responsibilities and the self-discipline required to meet them increase drastically. By cultivating these skills as a high school student you will be able to prepare adequately for college life.

College awaits you. Be prepared!

College awaits you. Be prepared!

1.         Time Management

Coursework, classes, and exams are your basic responsibilities in college, so it’s essential to be able to manage your time wisely to avoid pressing deadlines and failure to commit to your responsibilities. Honing your organizational skills will help you act proactively and manage your time more efficiently.

Time management is closely related to your study habits. To manage your time efficiently you need to review your notes daily, expand on them, and assign time for research and comprehension, especially for challenging textbook reading.

2.         Stress Management

College can be very stressful if you’re not prepared for it. During your high school years, make an effort to always have your stress levels under control. Sticking to a healthy, balanced lifestyle will ensure your stress can be managed in a sustainable and effective manner.

To avoid feeling overwhelmed, take care of your body and mind; engage in sports, eat healthily, and find channels for expressing your frustration, whether it’s through art, writing, or talking with someone. Knowing how to relax and process your anxieties rationally are two other important aspects of stress management you should master before college starts.

3.         Computer Literacy

Technology is changing education from the roots up. Having basic computer literacy skills, like touch typing and researching, are skills you will find handy in college. Many students find it easier to use a laptop or a tablet for note-taking, so mastering fast and accurate typing skills will facilitate your studying.

4.         Critical Thinking

In college you will be expected to critically analyze study material, journal articles, and other often obscurely-written academic material. Critical thinking is the ability to engage intellectually with what you read. Rather than passively taking in new knowledge, critical thinking and analyzing means you assess, challenge, and then absorb new knowledge in ways that ensure it can be beneficial and, as much as possible, objective and freed from dominant discourses.

5.         Note-Taking

Note-taking is a complex skill. It requires attention, critical thinking abilities, and efficient writing so as to not miss any valuable remarks by your instructor. High school is a great time for starting to work on your note-taking skills, which you will find to be essential for college success.

If you choose to use a laptop or tablet for note-taking, you need to have advanced typing skills to keep up with your professors’ speech. So better brush up on your typing skills today!

6.         Note Reviewing

It’s not enough to take good notes if you never bother studying them. More of a habit than a skill per se, daily reviewing of your notes means less time during exam preparation because you will already have substantially covered and comprehended the study material.

7.         Motivation

In college you will not have as much support from your parents and instructors; college is a more independent road you’ll have to walk. For that reason, being able to find motivation internally is crucial. Motivation is what will help you stick to your efforts and resist the temptation to give up when things get ugly.

Discover what motivates and inspires you. It’s what will push you to achieve your goals and make you a better person and an achiever.

8.          Reliability

The increased independence college grants a student is often undercut by that student’s yielding to bad habits of procrastination and unreliability. Students naturally prefer to engage with more fun free time than educational activities, but if they do so to excess, their academic performance suffers. Avoiding procrastination and successfully committing to your duties is a central skill for college success.

9.         Concentration and Study Environment

College is full of distractions, and that’s why you need to know how to concentrate and shut off any diversions. A quiet, isolated study environment that also inspires learning will help you stay focused on your academic work. There’s no better time to practice this skill than in high school, which is already a very noisy and distracting place!

10.        Completing Assignments

In college there will be no one to remind you of your responsibilities, and as an adult you will be expected to meet deadlines for all your coursework. Get into the habit of committing to your tasks and do so ahead of schedule. You never know what might come up, so it’s better have extra time on your hands than scrambling to compensate for unexpected events that take up the time you’d planned on using.

These ten skills will boost your performance during high school and prepare you for college life, and your professional life thereafter. Start mastering them one by one and you will be able to start and finish your college years full of confidence and enjoying your well-earned success.

About the Author: Chassie Lee is the Content Expert for eReflect – creator of Ultimate Vocabulary Software which is currently being used by tens of thousands of happy customers in over 110 countries.

Learn how to succeed in college from the experts.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

 

A College Student’s Guide to Time Management (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, self-help, study skills by

Sam Greaves is a writer who specializes in topics related to college life, study hacks and productivity. He writes for Classof1, which is one of the largest providers of online study help for college students.

“I wish I had more time….”

If you haven’t used this line in college, then I’m pretty sure you’re doing well in the time management area.  But for those of you who are struggling to keep things going within the limited time available, this post is for you!

I could write about the plethora of time management techniques that you could use to manage your time. However, let’s start by looking at the basic rules of time management. You can use these rules to optimize the way you’re spending your time, and to create your own time management techniques.

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Rule 1: Understand the Objective

The first rule is to understand the purpose or the objective of all the tasks that you do (or need to do). This will help you understand why you should do it. And if there are multiple ways of doing it, this will help you determine the best way to reach the objective.

Rule 2: Prioritize

The problem with tasks is that you almost always have more than one! Especially as a college student, you have to be constantly juggling between lots of things. The best way to make the optimum use of your time is to do tasks based on priority.
You should be able to rank your tasks based on the importance or the urgency of the task. So when you have to do your school work, the tougher assignments or the ones with the closer deadlines should almost always have the higher priority.

Rule 3: Split into Smaller Sub-tasks

It’s best to divide and conquer your work, i.e., split big tasks into smaller sub-tasks. Organizing your work into smaller tasks makes it easier and achievable. Sometimes the massiveness of a task can make it daunting and you may put it off for a more favorable time. Whereas the smaller sub task can make the whole thing seem more approachable.  Dividing the task into smaller units will ensure that you’re constantly progressing in your task!

Rule 4: Take Them One at a Time

Although students like to be proud of their multitasking abilities, studies have shown that multitasking is a weakness, not strength. At any given time, two tasks are the maximum our brain can handle. So it’s detrimental if you try to overload your brain with more than two tasks at a time.
You should always plan to ensure that you’re doing just one task at any given moment. This will make you more effective and efficient in dealing with what you’re doing. Since you’re not distracted with multiple tasks, you will be performing at your highest potential.

Rule 5: Be Relentless

“With self-discipline most anything is possible.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Almost any habit that you want to build requires persistence and self-discipline, and it’s no different with time management. While in college, many times you may have to make the hard choice between doing the task you want to do and the task you should do! So being relentless in following your plan is crucial for the success of your time management efforts.

Rule 6: Track and Control

Last but not the least, you should make a note of all the tasks that you plan to do. This will make it easier for you to constantly be aware of the tasks you have pending at any given time. Tracking your tasks also serves another, more important purpose of being able to monitor your progress. This will help you make changes wherever necessary, and plan in advance for any impending tasks.

Now that you’ve learned about the basic rules of time management, you can get started on making the most of your college life. If you’re not satisfied with just the basics and would like to learn more about time management and productivity, I would highly recommend the following titles:

  1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
  2. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Photo Credit: gadl cc

Learn how to study quickly and efficiently.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

8 Deep Study Tips for Math Students (Guest Post)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, school, STEM, study skills by

By Harry Red.  Harry is a developer and math fanatic who helps students at exammastery.com

Deep study is a rare commodity. It’s what happens when you’re studying at your peak ability. Mathematics definitely requires lots of deep study. But it doesn’t really come naturally to us. With some practice though, you can train yourself to fall into deep study mode more easily.

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1. Make a dent

Ever spent a whole day avoiding the actual hard work you wanted to do? Ended up doing busywork instead?

Everyone’s done that.

Fortunately there’s a way out of it: ignore things that are trivial but urgent (chores etc.) for a while, and make a dent in that difficult, non-urgent thing you’re somehow avoiding. Make some small amount of progress on it.

It doesn’t have to be big. It may take several attempts. It may be just a vague, uncertain feeling of having understood the subject a tiny bit better. But it can release a lot of anxiety – conscious or otherwise – and give you some energy and insight so that you can later nail the thing completely.

In math, small insights can make a really big difference towards understanding some larger concept. A single, apt diagram, a carefully remembered assumption, or an unwritten, abstract and seemingly trivial equation or mathematical fact can be enough to set your mind on a marathon to finally connect all those little dents that you made when you last studied the subject.

2. Jump around when working on questions

At least two bad things happen when you’re neck-deep in math: tunnel vision and myopia. Not seeing other parts of a question, and focusing too much on the minutiae of just one aspect of it.

Both waste time and increase your risk of failure.

So next time you find yourself stuck in tunnel vision or math myopia, stop yourself. Feel free to jump around. Go back to the question and pick out key words or concepts. See if you can quickly verify given results. (Trig identities are usually a good target for this.) Recall definitions – maybe write them down.

The point is to engage with the material at varying levels of breadth and intensity. Actively avoid the thing you were working on: it brought you into tunnel vision, so you want to get as far away from it as possible.

This can save you both study- and exam-time. Both are extremely valuable.

3. Change your views on proofs using the ‘scaffold’ method

Writing a mathematical proof can be much like constructing a building.

First, you need a construction plan, or at least a rough idea of where to begin. Then comes some scaffolding and preparation. Then the actual construction – putting things in place so they’ll stay there when the scaffolding is removed.

Suppose you’re asked to prove something in an exam. You understand clearly what you’re asked to prove, you’ve broken down the problem into smaller parts as best you can, and you’ve got a few ideas of how to get from one thing to another and then to something that is at least close to what you’re asked to show. However, something is still stopping you from actually writing down the proof, because you’re not sure you’ve got the details figured out correctly.

Cases like these are where the scaffold method is most useful. The idea is this: write the scaffolds in, then do the actual construction work.

That is, don’t worry too much about the intermediate steps and their mathematical rigour for the moment. Instead, write down what you are able to write down; for instance, any intermediate steps, leaving some free lines between them. This will set the problem out more clearly in your mind, and may even trigger memories of similar proofs that you’ve worked through during revision.

4. Don’t neglect boring stuff

As strange as it may sound, you need to be aware of how bored you are while you’re studying.

When you’re in the ‘bored’ mode, you’re just trying to get by. It’s likely that you’ll miss very important things if you just coast through a part of your subject without conjuring up actual interest for it.

You need to prevent this. Monitor your boredom levels (only you can do that accurately), and take a break whenever they spike. (When I say ‘monitor’ here, I don’t mean make lists and charts. Just use your subjective judgement.)

Taking a break in such situations is effective because everyone’s level of enthusiasm for something drops once they’ve spent a long time expending mental energy on it. Enthusiasm is replenished with rest and time spent doing more enjoyable or relaxing activities.

So take that break. You will lose a bit of study time, but as long as your time-management is not too far off you won’t lose anything important. Try not to think of this as lost study time. A difficult, less interesting subject is best studied with a fresh mind, not an exhausted, interest-starved one that will make all the wrong connections at the worst possible time.

Sound obvious? Maybe so. You should be taking breaks anyway. But monitoring your boredom levels is a good way of measuring a lot of things in one go. Boredom is complicated. Taking that extra break because your boredom indicator goes critical will help you avoid missing important bits of your subject.

5. Watch out for behaviour deemed ‘interesting’

Sometimes you’ll get questions like this:

a) Investigate the function f(x), particularly its properties with regard to |some topic on the course|. (4 marks)

b) Draw suitable conclusions from this. (2 marks)

I call this a professorial question – it’s asking you something in a roundabout way. These questions might explicitly ask you for ‘interesting’ behaviour, or they might just instruct you to ‘draw suitable conclusions’ from some mathematical argument. In a lot of cases, what they’re really asking you to do is to link the question to ‘interesting’ behaviour that you’ve previously studied in your course. Physics exams are especially prone to this.

It’s like you almost need to know what to do in advance.

The trick is to identify ‘interesting’ special behaviour before the exam starts.

Whenever your lecturer, teacher or textbook goes on about so-called interesting behaviour, pay extra attention. You may be looking at something that is more exam-relevant than you think.

However, it’s not always easy to spot when this is happening. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes you can smell interesting behaviour when one part of a course links in to a much larger field.

For instance, in a course on algebra you may be told that there’s no general algebraic solution for any polynomial of fifth degree or greater, and to get usable numbers out of such equations, we usually need to develop numerical techniques for solving these, which in turn is a huge topic in mathematics.

6. Start with a long attention span

Mathematics contains a lot of information. Simply reading it will take up much of your mental bandwidth.

You’ll need to have a big enough attention span to process everything and avoid missing important bits. The tiniest detail can make all the difference.

But nowadays, it’s hard to start anything with a long attention span. So you’ll likely need to spend (read: waste) time trying to adjust your attention span.

Here’s what you can do. Before you start a difficult exercise, go read a slightly heady but non-math text for 15 minutes. Then start that exercise.

You’ll find that your attention span has expanded a bit.

The reason why I’d recommend reading a non-math book is that you don’t want to exhaust the math faculty of your brain. See what kind of books will work best for you.

Best part? Over time, you can read entire books like this. I’ve read The Book of Five Rings, The Art of War and most of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos using only this method.

7. Return to neutral + leave study hooks for tomorrow

It’s hard to get motivated to do a long, hard math study session.

Here’s what you do. Keep an eye out for interesting topics or problems that you’ve just encountered near the end of a study session. Then, don’t study them. Restrain yourself and leave those topics or exercises for the next session.

That gives you an incentive to get back into the material even if you are distracted and don’t start your next study session when you intended to.

There’s a passive variation on this – call it returning to neutral. That is, don’t leave a tangled mess of study notes on your desk after a long session, because when you come back to it in the morning you’ll lose at least some motivation in cleaning that mess up.

8. Use hard exercises

Pick a few hard exercises on your course. Make sure they’re likely to be relevant for your exam. Struggle with them.

When you’ve solved them, memorize some of the key insights that led you to solve the problem. That’s right: memorize them.

Why spend time on even more memorization? The reason is that math exams often reuse the same kinds of problems. So if you already to know how to solve them at a basic level, you’ll have a real advantage in the exam.

But even if those hard problems don’t turn up in the exam, they provide some of the best teaching you’ll ever get. By definition, they’re going to be weird in some way. And understanding weird things improves your mind.

More math study tips on www.exammastery.com

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Are MOOCs the Future of Online Education? (Infographic)

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, high school, technology by

Have you ever taken a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)? What was your experience?
MOOCs
Source: BestCollegesOnline.org

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Paid or Unpaid Internships: Getting the Experience You Want (Guest Post)

Posted in careers, college, education, high school, jobs for students, school by

By Diana Neal. Diana is currently an intern for the Marketing Zen Group. You can connect with her at http://about.me/indiananeal

There have been some good points made recently about the disadvantages of unpaid internships. The most obvious disadvantage is money — or the lack thereof. Although I cannot argue against the importance of money, I can make a compelling argument for why unpaid internships should not be overlooked.

In my twenties and thirties, I was busy raising kids and going to college. Now in my forties, I have been unemployed for an extended period of time. Since there seemed to be no end to my job search, I started giving some thought to how I could apply my skill set and do something else.

At this time I began looking at internships. When you are in your forties, some traditional routes for internships are not an option. Most internships want college-aged students who have a degree or who will graduate soon. Many internships require relocation, which was not an option for me. My internship choices were slim pickings, but they were out there.

I applied and was accepted for an unpaid internship with an online marketing company. My internship is online, and I work with a team who work from home writing for search engine optimization, or SEO. I have been assigned three clients, a Leave Your Legacy campaign, an ophthalmologist in New Jersey, and a mobile apps development company. I am responsible for the research, outreach, and the writing of blog ‘guest posts’ that use keywords to connect back to the client’s site.

Here are six things you should consider when choosing an unpaid (or paid) internship. I chose topics based on my personal experience. I also offer some suggestions on how to carve out an internship that is right for you.

1. Contact companies directly. Sometimes you may find there isn’t anything offered in the area you live, or maybe what is offered is not something you are interested in doing. Sometimes the internship requires relocation. Not everyone can relocate to take an internship. What do you do when your choices are limited? Well, you can always ask if a company would be willing to provide you an internship. Just email them, or give them a call. I have usually started with the human resources department when doing this in the past.

2. If you approach someone about an internship, come up with a list of goals you would like to reach during your internship. This will help you find an internship that fits your needs while making you look super capable. You will appear self-motivated and committed to a successful internship — all positive things that will most likely lead you to getting an internship you will love.

3. Think outside the box. Many skills are universal. You may find you can get the skills you want from an internship that does not exactly match your degree plan. An example would be my internship. I wanted to write and learn more about marketing. I had no previous experience with SEO, but I found my internship could meet my personal needs while giving me the experience I wanted.

4. Negotiation and compromise are a part of life. Be willing to negotiate and compromise for the types of experiences you would like to have in an internship. In any internship, be willing to do things you may not find that great, because you learn from those experiences too. Knowing your goals and what you are willing to do — and what you will not do — will help you negotiate in a way that puts you in the driver’s seat.

5. Reach out to those around you who can help you. You are never too young to understand the importance of building networks and forming connections. There are many ways to do this online, and the internet is full of tutorials. When you are looking for an internship, tell everyone who will listen. They might connect you to someone who can give you the internship you are looking for.

6. Consider a volunteer position. There are many volunteer opportunities that are just as good as an unpaid internship. When you volunteer there is usually some form of training; you learn new skills, you can get someone to write you a letter of recommendation, and it looks just as good on an application.

The Pros and Cons of Doing a Work-From-Home Internship

My internship is based from home. If you’re interested in a work-from-home internship, consider the pros and cons before making a decision. To get you started, I have listed some of the pros and cons I have experienced.

Pros:

Flexibility.  I set my own hours. If something happens at home I’m there to take care of it.

Informal. I can wear whatever I want. If all I want to wear are my pajamas, then that’s what I wear!

Less Stress. I am sensitive to light and noise. I find it very stressful to work in a loud, noisy setting. I just don’t function well in that kind of environment. I need to be able to think, and I can’t think in an environment where I am subjected to intrusive stimuli that I can’t control.

Time.  I like being able to take a break, and maybe do my dishes. I also like avoiding interruptions from well-meaning coworkers, and bosses. Also, being able to manage my time cuts down on distractions and gives me more flexibility in my day.

Less Distraction. I find I am more productive at home because I am not distracted by idle gossip and chit chat. If I am distracted I retreat into my room.

Now for the cons:

The cons are easy. Pretty much anything considered a pro can also serve as a con. Some days, being self-directed is easier than others. A break with family around can easily become an hour — or two. Doing the dishes can turn into cleaning the whole house. Being at home can also become monotonous. It can be too quiet, or too loud. Wearing your pajamas everyday sounds cool, but after a while you just feel gross and in need of a shower. If you do choose an internship from home you will have to find ways to balance the demands of home and work. You will also need to develop tunnel vision so the distractions at home are not disruptive, and you can get your work done.

In conclusion, you may find your list of pros and cons looks differently than mine. That is okay. Your list should be based on your unique needs. Regardless of what type of internship you choose, I hope you find an internship that will help you meet your goals and rock your world!

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5 Smart Budgeting Strategies for College Students (Guest Post)

Posted in budget, careers, college, education, money, saving money, school by

By Robert Carr. Robert writes full-time for small business, finance and car repair how-to sites.

Some believe the most valuable life lessons are learned in grade school, like being polite, the importance of sharing, and always looking both ways before crossing the street. Others believe critical life knowledge comes from years spent in middle school and high school—useful skills like navigating diverse social landscapes and putting a winning wardrobe together.

College, though, is really when experience comes fast and furious: when you are on your own for the first time, interacting with new classmates and faculty, and completely in control of things such as when, where, and what you eat. Unfortunately, this level of independence can be a challenge for modern college students who enjoy having their own place but may not be ready for adult commitments, including paying the electric bill or creating a grocery budget.

In addition to be being prepared for the rigors of academic life, you’ll need solid financial habits while in college. Master these, and you’ll be the big man or woman on campus. If not, you’ll have a tough time and maybe, gulp, have to head back to the “real” world where your parents set the rules, budget and dinner menu.

College Planning

Here are five strategies for students to manage money while in college:

  • Paperwork is vital, whether you keep actual receipts or use software. This tells you not just how much you’re spending but what you’re spending it on. Bank of America’s Money Management site suggests keeping detailed track of everything for a couple of weeks, then comparing this to income from any jobs, parents, loans or other sources. The difference will be your general budget.
  • Be disciplined. Debt.org, a site dedicated to helping people of all ages reduce costs, reports that it’s not hard to create a budget on paper, but a bigger challenge is having the self-discipline to keep to it. This may mean forgoing regular nights out with friends, or watching TV and making a meal on a Friday night instead of going to dinner and a movie. Your financial institution may even have online or printable templates to help illustrate your planning in action.
  • Be flexible. Though you will have fixed costs like rent and tuition, you’ll have other varying expenses, like your utility bill. Beyond this, you’ll have other unexpected costs that need to be absorbed into your budget, such as repairs to your computer or car. Wells Fargo’s online student budget section points out that you should be ready for everything from a rise in the rent to approval for extra financial aid.
  • Look for ways to save. There are plenty of creative ways to reduce day-to-day costs. See if merchants in town offer a college discount. Consider a roommate or roommates to split costs. Check into ways to combine services, such as bundle.tv that offers Internet, TV and phone service for one monthly price—an attractive option for frugal students who still want all three services.
  • Learn effective credit habits. Creditcards.com suggests paying bills on time, using a credit card for emergencies and then paying it off quickly. Such behaviors will help you build good credit and minimize debt later in life.

Now that you’ve got your budget under control, learn how to maximize your GPA with The Secrets of Top Students.  Order your copy today!

Secrets of Top Students (and Other) Updates

Posted in college, education, getting better grades, grades, high school, study skills, travel, writing by

Many thanks to Nancy Ruhling for writing an article about me that appeared in the Huffington Post!  I am now officially an “Astoria Character.”  Check out the article here.

In other news, I’m super excited to be giving a talk about academic success at Stern College/ Yeshiva University next week.  I’ll be introducing the SMARTER system (SMARTER is an acronym for some of my top studying strategies).

I also recently went on a trip to Turkey.  Did you know that the city of Istanbul is full of beautiful, friendly cats?  It was like I had died and gone to heaven!

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5 Budgeting Tips For High School Seniors Getting Ready For College (Guest Post)

Posted in careers, college, education, high school, money by

Dave Landry Jr. is a financial consultant and economist dedicated to blogging and the creation of infographics in his down time. He has two young daughters who will be graduating from high school before he knows it, and will be sharing these budgeting tips with them as well. He hopes you find these tips useful for your own pre-college budgeting, or if you’re a parent, will give some of this advice to your children.

Congratulations, you’ve made it through high school! As you get ready for the next big step, it’s important to learn real world skills that will help you transition not only from high school to college life, but also from college life to the world beyond.

Budgeting skills are important in everyday life; learning how to manage your money before you’re on your own in college will keep you from overspending and finding yourself deep in debt. Below are some budgeting tips that will help you get started on to that path to financial security.

1. Learn to track your spending. The first step to creating a budget is to document everything you spend money on or buy. Whether you stick with an old-fashioned notebook and handwritten lists or choose to download spending tracker apps for your smartphone, track everything you spend for at least a month. It doesn’t matter if it’s as small as a pack of gum or a soda from the vending machine at school. While not strictly necessary, it would be good to include notes on your spending behavior, like how you paid for it, where you bought it, and why you bought it.

After a month’s documentation, you’ll have a better sense of where your money is going. If you use apps or a spreadsheet, you can quickly see how much you’ve spent on entertainment, car expenses, clothing, food, and school-related purchases. This will form the base categories of your budget.

2. Learn to develop a budget. Once you’ve established where you spend most of your money, start to set up a budget. The budget will consist of the major categories established during your spending, and will include a space for savings, emergencies, and income.

Ideally, you’ll create this budget on a spreadsheet, or using one of the free online budgeting tools or apps. Once you graduate from high school and enter college or the workforce, your budget categories will change and shift; using a malleable system allows you to customize and adjust as needed.

Establish spending maximums so that your spending doesn’t exceed your income.

3. Pay yourself (start saving). One of the important categories in your budget should be a savings account. Even though interest rates on savings accounts are low right now, putting money in the account is more about the practice and the act of creating an emergency fund, than it is about making your money work for you (even though it is a good idea to start thinking about investments and interest rates).

Whether you’re saving for a rainy day, or towards a particular big purchase like a post-graduation trip or a new car or college, getting into the habit of “paying yourself” and including it on your budget will serve you well in your adult life, when you won’t necessarily have alternative sources of financial assistance.

Learn to prioritize within your budget by putting money in your savings account before you spend any of your income or allowance on entertainment.

4. Figure out financial aid, student loans, and other means of paying for college. Most families will need to rely on financial aid and student loans to pay for school. As you, the student, will need to start paying back the loan as soon as you graduate (up to a six month grace period, or possible deferment if you are going to graduate school), it’s important that you learn as much about your options before taking out the loan. Don’t borrow any more than absolutely necessary for tuition, room and board, and other essentials.

5. Get a summer job. Now that you have a sense of your expenditures, and can project how much you need in order to fulfill all your bills and other costs, you need to start bringing in income. If you’re not already working a part-time job of some sort, consider getting one in the summer between high school and college. Previous work experience can help you get a coveted college job, which will help with bills that the student loan doesn’t cover.

Keeping to a budget isn’t as boring or challenging as it may seem. These are necessary skills that can translate into an opportunity to study abroad, buy that dream car, or have money on hand for an emergency, which greatly reduces stress in the long run. Learning to manage your money is a skill you’ll use for the rest of your life. You can also consider obtaining your education online through affordable programs that offer equivalents of in-classroom learning and degrees. Online degree programs also allow students to pursue their education at their own convenience, allowing them to work full-time to support themselves or a family if need be.

Now that you’ve got your budget under control, it’s time to focus on your grades.  Order your copy of The Secrets of Top Students today!

Preparing for an Opportunity to Teach English Abroad (Guest Post)

Posted in careers, college, education, high school, school, travel by

Jeremiah Jordan is a teacher-turned-entrepreneur who blogs about business solutions.

When you teach English to a citizen or a child in a developing country, you can actually increase that person’s earning power by an average of 25 percent, according to The Guardian. In fact, your volunteer teaching efforts might actually make the difference between that person barely scraping by for the rest of his life or having a job with a promising future. While it’s almost certain that you could make more money teaching English in a first-world country like Japan or South Korea, the satisfaction that you’ve actually made the planet a little better by teaching in a developing nation may be worth more than cash to you.

Children and education, teacher reading book to young students

Program Options

Unlike many other volunteer efforts that can be completed in a one, two or three-week time frame, English teachers are typically asked to make a commitment of a semester — about two months — to a year or more. For example, WorldTeach has teaching opportunities of various lengths, including year-long positions in India and Costa Rica, six-month-long semester positions in Ecuador and Namibia, as well as eight-week-long summer positions in China and Morocco, according to WorldTeach.org.

Preparing for Your Trip

Being away for the length of time required by most teaching jobs takes quite a bit of pre-trip organization. Unlike shorter volunteer trips where you can just ask a neighbor to take your mail in for a week, being away for several months means taking care of the following:

  • If you rent or own a home and will be going away for several months or more, decide whether or not you want to sub-let your abode. If not, you will have to arrange for someone to keep an eye on your place. In addition, you may have to make special arrangements to pay your mortgage or rent, such as setting up automatic payments from your bank account, as TransitionsAbroad.com recommends.
  • Have your mail stopped or picked up by a trusted relative or neighbor who can open it and inform you of any important information that may require your action.
  • Oxford Seminars recommends appointing your power of attorney to someone you trust in the United States. You never know when you might need someone in America working on your behalf to transfer funds or to represent you in a legal matter.
  • Set up an account with an identity theft or credit fraud protection company. If you are living halfway around the world from your home and you suddenly learn that you have become a victim of identity theft, it may be next to impossible to try to unravel the mess on your own, especially in a developing nation where phone calls could cost you a fortune. Having LifeLock protection can save you a lot of grief in the long run.
  • Determine how you are going to handle any prescription medication that you take on a regular basis. Will you be able to get them through the mail or get a supply that will last you for your entire trip? You may need to speak with both your physician and your insurance company to see how best to handle this situation.
  • TeachAway.com suggests getting health insurance that will cover any of your medical needs abroad.
  • Do your homework on the country that you will be living in and do your best to be culturally aware. For example, if you are a woman who will be living in a conservative Islamic nation, try not to walk around in a top that shows too much cleavage or is too tight.

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