Education Articles from College Matching Service

There you are, at the foot of a mountain wondering what you are going to do in the future.

You have ideas, thoughts, plans, aspirations, motivations, and dreams. You see the world as your playground; obstacles and oppositions are at a minimum. You are surrounded by people just like yourself who have similar interests and thoughts. You are in a constant state of a creativity flux. One day you meet an eccentric recluse with an idea of how to revolutionize the slow cooking movement in your hometown, the next you meet a cross country runner who practices 4 times a day, counts calories, believes warm-ups are sexy, and thinks of nothing more than the feeling she gets at mile 25.

The greatest thing about college is the fact that it is designed to nurture and develop. Design and nurture what you may ask? That is limitless, but often limited by the focus of the college or the imagination of the student.

Take it from me, once you graduate, your access to the university is severely limited.

The best time to pursue any type of entrepreneurial quest is while you are a student at a university. Do not spend your time hatching the “perfect” plan, instead, move your idea out the door as quickly as possible. Get your idea in front of faculty members. Find faculty that have an entrepreneurial background. Email your universities newspaper, radio station, tv station, or even their public relations department. A university is filled with people who can help you take an idea through to the launch of the end result.

Think about all the things you have going for you as a student with an idea:

1. Being in debt up to your eye balls has very few advantages, but one of them is that it affords you the time you would have otherwise spent on a dead-end job.
2. Every large university has everything a business needs to succeed.
3. You are paying to attend the university, so naturally the majority of faculty feel like they owe you something (if only a little).
4. An atmosphere that naturally fosters creativity even if it wasn’t designed for it.
5. Spectacular access to a brilliant pool of labor.
6. General lack of real-world responsibility.

Greg McAdoo spoke at the Startup School 2008 and gave a great analogy about surfers and startups. He said, and I am paraphrasing, that the greatest surfers in the world don’t make their own waves. They don’t go against the waves, they choose the right wave and ride it perfectly. And that is what a great founder has to do.

So my challenge to you is simple.

Find your huge wave and ride it with passion, conviction, and courage.

Twitter Education – Twitter as an Educational Resource

College Matching Service (CMS) has been exploring the education value of Twitter. We found a couple interesting resources while researching education on Twitter, or Twitter Education.

Twitter has what is referred to as a “firehose” of information. With hundreds of thousands of people sending status updates every hour, there is a large amount of data on Twitter that is of value.

To find the education data, you have to perform the proper searches. Once you do so, you can find Twitter users that you wish to follow, or you can save the Twitter search that produces the most accurate results.

Finding Scholarships on Twitter

Recently CMS has been exploring scholarships online. We’ve found that there are very few valuable scholarship resources that are easy to find. The more precise your scholarship search the more fragmented the results become. For example, if you’re looking for classical music scholarships in Colorado, it is going to be very difficult to find something that you qualify for.

What we decided to do was develop a scholarship tool that would help users by limiting their choices. For example, if you’re looking for classical music scholarships, we allow you to select music scholarships. What people don’t often realize is that most music scholarships offered will also include classical music under the umbrella of acceptable programs. Therefore, by directing our users with the scholarship tool, we often achieve a higher success rate in getting scholarships for our visitors.

Of course we provide this tool free of charge. Our goal is to bring thousands of scholarships into one tool that will allow visitors to quickly and easily find a scholarship and apply for it.

Mashing up content for Twitter.

We’ve been coordinating our efforts for scholarships through our Twitter account ScholarshipsUSA. Through unique tools we have developed especially for scholarships on Twitter, we have been posting scholarships on a daily basis to our Twitter account. Everytime we post a scholarship to our website, it gets posted to our Twitter account.

We have also tagged this posting with the hashtag “#scholarship” which will allow people to find it with a scholarship search on Twitter.

Which brings me to my first recommended resource, performing a search for #scholarship on Twitter.

Let me be the first to warn you that you may find results where people are simply promoting their “product” and are not interested in helping you find scholarships. If you have ever heard the term bait & switch, that is a lot of what you will find on Twitter.

So how do I know what is valuable and what isn’t on Twitter?

Usually it doesn’t hurt to checkout anything on Twitter, but for the sake of saving time, here are a few tips to look for:

• If someone is linking to their root website domain, such as http://MyWebsite.com, they are probably just trying to drive traffic to their website, and not provide value to you.
• Look for a shortened link in the Tweet. If there is no link, chances are it is not a valuable resource for you. (bit.ly, 9mp.com, tinyurl.com)
• Beware of results where the same user posts 8-10 times in a row. This could be spam.
• If they don’t have a custom profile image on Twitter, chances are they are spammers.
• Look for something related in their Twitter username, such as education, edu, scholarships, etc.

Keep these things in mind when searching Twitter for valuable resources.

How do I search Twitter for valuable resources?

Keep in mind there are two ways to search on Twitter. Checkout this article by Joshua Odmark that explains keywords on Twitter. Essentially this article states there are two ways to search on Twitter. As a hashtag and without.

e.g. #education AND education

As you can see, one has a “#” preceding it, and one does not. Hashtag searches always contain no spaces. For example, “#EducationScholarships” as compared to “Education Scholarships”. The hashtag version of the search will return far more specific results, and thus far less results. Most of the time when I am researching education on Twitter I search for both of them and compare the results.

Stick to generalized searches on Twitter. Unfortunately Twitter has not perfected the search results just yet. They are working on it though, because they keep hiring Google employees to help them in their real-time search.

Speaking of real-time search, that is EXACTLY what Twitter is. Which means, when you perform the search is absolutely critical if it is a broad search term. For example, a search for “education” returns results minute by minute. A search for “#education” returns results hour by hour.

That means that when you perform the “education” search is critically important. Which also means that to research Twitter properly, you must perform general searches at multiple times throghout the day

I have found it best to search during peak times, such as about 8:40AM and 9:00PM.

Valuable Twitter Education Resources

Twitter

• College Matching Service
• ScholarshipsUSA
• OnlineCollegeUS
• FafsaHelp
• EducationWeek
• Education_com
• Education

Other Resources

• WeFollow.com Scholarships
• WeFollow.com Education
• Edmodo
• More Edmodo

Why should I consolidate?

I myself have education loans, so I started looking into the possibility of consolidating these loans to lower my interest rate and reduce multiple payments into a single payment, for simplicity.

The purpose of consolidation is to save money and make things easier on yourself. When you first took out the loan for your education, you may have received an unfavorable rate on the loan. With the current economic status, the government is taking strides to help students with their education loans.

In my research, I found out these important facts about consolidation:

• You cannot consolidate a private loan into a federal loan. That is to stay, if you have a loan through a bank institution such as Citibank, you cannot consolidate it into your federal student loan (which almost always has a far lower interest rate and much more favorable payment terms).
• You can consolidate a private loan and a federal loan. Right now there are huge opportunities that the Department of Education has offered to past and current students that will reduce interest rates and limit monthly payments based on income.
• You can only consolidate an education loan during the grade period, which is generally right after graduation for six months, or during repayment.
• Generally to consolidate a loan a minimum loan balance must be met. These generally average around $5,000.

Flexible Repayment Terms

One of the biggest reasons people consolidate their loans is to restructure their payment plan. For any number of reasons a loan holder may be interested in adjusting their payment terms to either extend the length of their payment terms, and thus often lowering their payment. A federal loan typically has a 10 year agreement. By consolidating the loan, that length can be extended for between 12-30 years.

By extending a loan, you often will lower your monthly payment, but by extending the term of the loan, you will pay a significantly more interest on the loan.

It is generally recommended to agree to the lowest number of years because it will save you money.

Does it cost anything to consolidate?

No, generally there is no cost to consolidate besides the chance that the interest rate will be increased, which as discussed, will increase the amount of money that will need to be paid for the loan (as compared to before the consolidation).

Occasionally depending on the type of consolidation, a fee may be incurred. Almost always this fee is added to the loan or deducted from the disbursement check. If you find yourself in a situation where any type of upfront fee is being requested from you, there is a high probability that you are involved in some kind of scam.

Here are a few more consolidation resources to help:

• How To Repay Your Student Loan
• Student Loan Consolidation
• Reduced Student Loan Payments
• Direct Consolidation Loans
• Department of Education

In response to the tough economic times and an even tougher job market (unemployment is almost at 10%), the Department of Education has passed a plan that will help college students, past, present, and future with their federal loan repayment program.

This program essentially allows you to reduce your loan payments based on your income. This program caps the monthly payment you are required to pay based on income and family size.

The loans that qualify for this program are, any Stafford, Grad PLUS or Consolidation loan made under either the Direct Loan or FFEL program is eligible for repayment under IBR, EXCEPT loans that are currently in default, parent PLUS Loans, or consolidation loans that repaid a parent PLUS Loan. The loans can be new or old, and for any type of education (undergraduate, graduate, professional, job training)

For more information on the qualifications for this program, checkout this Department of Education website, Student Aid on the Web.

Also, the interest rate on federal Stafford loans, the most widely used federal student loan, will be reduced from 6% to 5.6%. Furthermore, by 2012, that rate will be decreased to 3.4% by mandate from Congress. That means great things for students who will be using federal student loans to fund their education over the next few years.

Nursing Scholarships

Nursing is a career that is currently in demand and appears to be on the rise for the next few years. Any time a career field is in demand, there are an abundance of scholarships that help to meet this demand. Right now there are hundreds of nursing scholarships that are available to students interested in pursuing nursing.

A trend that has been advancing in the scholarship world is that nursing is now being considered an acceptable criteria for hundreds of medical related scholarships. As you know, many scholarships have strict criteria that the student must meet in order to submit an application for the scholarship. As demand rises, scholarships start to broaden their criteria. This is what is happening for nursing scholarships and grants.

What can nursing scholarships be used for?

As with most scholarships, they can be used for any education related expenses. This includes tuition, room and board, food, books, equipment, and much more.

The purpose of a scholarship is meant to help the student with financial aid so that he/she can afford the things necessary to achieve success with their nursing education and their nursing career. Some scholarships stipulate that the money must be used for specific purposes, but others allow the student to decide what the money is used for.

How do I find nursing scholarships?

The most efficient way of finding scholarships is to have the ability to filter scholarship results based on criteria that you meet. If you are attending a 4 year university full-time with a grade point average of 3.4, an ACT score of 26, and a nursing major, you should be able to see which scholarships you qualify for, rather than having to search for them.

By using our nursing scholarships search, you can see all of the nursing scholarships and filter them by grade point average, education level, enrollment, state of residency, and more.

This allows you to quickly find nursing scholarships that you qualify for.

You can also use Google to search for nursing scholarships. The problem with this is that it forces you to look at scholarships on an individual basis. Not only is this time consuming but it is extremely inefficient. Because scholarships have strict criteria, you most likely will not qualify for the majority of nursing scholarships you find.

This is why having the ability to narrow a scholarship database down by criteria that you meet as an individual can save you a lot of time.

Music Scholarships

If music is your passion, and you plan to pursue it in college, than music scholarships should be of great interest to you. Even if you do not plan to pursue it in college, you can still receive music scholarships. Sometimes receiving a music scholarship is as easy as sending in a demo tape of a performance.

Many forms of music scholarships exist to help students pursue their passion for music. Some scholarships simply require certain criteria be met, for example, playing in your high school band. Others require that your university major be related to music. And some just require that you submit a performance better than anyone else.

Whatever your passion for music may be, there is some sort of music scholarship that you will qualify for.

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You read it right, finally the Department of Education is shortening the fafsa online application.

The current fafsa online application is 30 “screens” long, it will now be 10 “screens” long. This is great news for anyone who needs to fill out the fafsa application.

It isn’t just the online fafsa application that is getting shorter.

The fafsa application will also become shorter.

Furthermore, the fafsa application will also be less confusing. For example:

At any time… did your high school or school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?

Will now become:

Are you homeless?

Part of the difficulty of the Fafsa is the tax information it requests. Unless it is April 16th, you probably can’t remember anything specific about your tax return. So you then have to go and find your tax return and fill out the Fafsa. Then you have to provide information on your parents tax return, so then you have to wait for them and fill that out as well.

However, starting in January, you will be able to automatically download your tax return information from the IRS right into the fafsa application. How amazing would that be?

Online Colleges – An explosion of accessibility.

Because the Internet has become available almost anywhere, the availability of distance learning has grown tremendously.  A student can now achieve education through the Internet from the comfort of his or her home.

An online college is essentially an online portal, or otherwise known as a website.  Through web 2.0 technology, a student can interact with other students and a professor through online chat rooms, bulletin boards, virtual classrooms, conference calls, webcam conferences, and much more.

This essentially turns their website into an online campus, one that is accessible from any Internet connection in the world.
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Why are scholarships so difficult to find?

I remember how difficult it was for me when I was trying to find money to fund my education. I asked my adviser to show me where I can find scholarship applications. To which she replied, we have a scholarship book! Her tone was one of excitement. She handed me a book full of hundreds of scholarships alphabetically. As I began to read through these, I quickly realized that the majority of these had strict criteria.

After an hour of searching through a book of scholarships, I found one scholarship that I qualified for and had a shot at getting. The scholarship was only for $2,500. My tuition was around $12,000. Just finding enough scholarships to fund my education was going to be extremely time consuming. Furthermore, filling out scholarship applications is time consuming!
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Almost every college has a tool that is available to students, but more importantly to prospective students interested in attending college.

Who should read this article?

This article is for prospective students of all ages. Its purpose is to show you a resource that often is not utilized properly by students interested in going to college. When you know which school you would like to attend, or you have a short list of schools, than this is the next step for you to take.

What is a college adviser?

A college adviser is a staff member at a university whose sole job is to help figure out a way to help a student attend that university. Most commonly they are used for financial aid advisement. If you do not have the funds sitting in your bank account, and most people don’t, these college advisors will help you find the money necessary to pay your tuition. This can be done through scholarships, loans, grants, and many more options.
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