Education Articles from College Matching Service

The word essay means to attempt. But when you have to write a college essay staying awake all the night, it may not be so easy. Though every essay is written in a unique manner and is based on different topics, the basic procedure to write an essay is always the same.

While writing a college essay the most important thing you should know, is the difference between high school essay and a college essay. The purpose of the high school essay is usually to state information or explain the basic topic.

While writing a college essay, you should analyze the topic critically. Instead of stating facts like the high school essays, think about the topic and justify it. If you are writing about some eminent personnel, do not state facts of his life history only. Justify the character critically. Try to relate some typical traits of that character, with some other character. Stating example from contemporary life would be an added advantage.

A good college essay will reflect your creativity in the composition as well as in criticism, you make. When you are including critical thoughts, it makes your essay much more unique than the others. Composing a good college essay involves time and energy.  To stay up late, avoid energy drinks or items that may cause your body to want to shut down after short periods of time.  Stick to keeping your blood flowing by stretching periodically. Music may also be something that keeps your mind focused as you start to wander off your essay topic late into the game.  If you feel you must have some type of food to help you out then have an apple or other fruit that has a good amount of natural sugar.  Though caffeine may cause you to crash, black tea may also be something to consider.

There is no doubt that the experience you developed in writing a school essay will help you in the process.

Apart from being critical in your approach do not forget to follow the basic steps you usually follow while writing an essay. Choose a suitable subject matter, arrange your thoughts logically, use correct expressions, keep you essay short and simple and manage the topic in a logical manner. Do not forget, your essay should have an introduction a body and a conclusion. Overall compose the essay in an organized manner.

The first day at your college is the beginning of a lifetime experience. In fact, many students tend to be shy and are worried that they may look silly. You need to be very confident in that day as it may affect the following days of your college years.

Try to meet as many new people as possible and make new friends on the very first day. Do not try to look over smart. Try to make your first day at college a fun experience – you have something in common with nearly everyone around you in that it is there first day as well.

One of the best ways to prepare for your first day at college is set a purpose apart from just getting the degree. Make sure the purposes you are setting help in your personal transformation as well as rectify your pitfalls.  Always be willing to take in new information as the things you experience may adjust your goals. The following are some guidelines you need to keep in mind to set such goals:

• Take a piece of paper and write down what you want to do in the first six months of your college.

• It can include anything such as learning a new subject, language, music or instruments as well as making friends or even finding a good relationship

• Remember to give it an end date. Keep in a place where you can view it easily without making the list public.

Make similar goals for each semester. This will help you to achieve what you have always desired.

There are some more important factors you need to consider while you go to the college on the very fist day.

• Since it is your first day so you are not expected to know everything. Do not hesitate to ask somebody the directions if you have to.

• To get some confidence make it a habit to walk with your back straight. It will make you look smart as well. Remember that your body language is an important factor.

• Give people a polite smile if they look at you. This is a simple solution to make new friends on the very first day of your college.

Unnecessary delaying of work due to some problems related to the mind and body is called procrastination. Students suffer from numerous mental and physical problems during their childhood and adolescent days. Obtaining poor marks is mainly caused due to lack of concentration and various other physical causes. Some of the factors responsible for procrastination are enlisted below:

Psychological Problems:

Even though the psychological reasons of procrastination vary largely, the factors like low self-worth, self-defeating mentality and anxiety are considered to be responsible for this. It is a well known fact that people who suffer from procrastination have a higher memory power than the rest. But the fact that they stick to their own dreamy world and while away their time never helps them much.

It is therefore considered as a psychological problem and can only be cured if the person concerned comes to understand his/ her fault. Only then he/ she will be able to get rid of procrastination habits.

Some people depend more on wishes and dreams than on reality. It is not only because of the inherent laziness that a person suffers from procrastination. He/ she suffer from more anxiety than the rest. They feel that doing the work will hamper their flow of thought and they flee from it. Another psychological problem is the fear of doing work and anticipation of a bad result.

Physiological Problems:

According to the popular research, reasoning (for procrastinating) is controlled by the prefrontal cortex of out brain. This part of our brain manages the vital mental functions like attention, impulse control, planning. It also acts as a filter and causes decrease of stimuli from one to another region of the brain. Therefore it results in amplified procrastination, loss of attention and inferior organization capability.

Any type of low activation or damage in this part of the brain may lessen the capacity of an individual to filter out the distracting stimuli. Therefore in medical term, procrastination is similar to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Life is full of varieties and options. The selection we make during our college years helps to shape our life in future. A college or university education makes our future secured. If you have proper education you will be capable of earning more money that will further help you to lead a better lifestyle. Apart from learning, college education also makes you a complete person. It expands your knowledge, shapes your skills and makes you more organized and methodical. Hence, you must prepare yourself thoroughly in order to get proper college education.

Preparing for college or university is something every student must do. Parents also try hard to prepare their child for easy college admittance. Parents provide their child with fully paid tuition and also offer them all necessary help so that they can achieve good grades.

Tips For Preparing

• Preparing for college or university generally means preparing fiscally. If your child is young, you can think of investing in university tuition plans. Few countries and some financial companies can offer these help. If your child is older you can assist them to find financial assistance and get scholarships that they may need. Although you may wish to apply for home loan for the education of your child, it is advisable to think of other options instead.
• Preparing for college or university means emotional preparation. You must prepare your child for the actual world by permitting them to commit mistakes and by assisting them to take lessons from it. It is crucial for your child to develop skills too. You must encourage them in a proper way in order to help them succeed.
• Prepare academically. Some parents start this preparation at an early age. Your child should not just gather information from the text book, but also from practical experience in life. Allow them to visit museums and other intellectual aspects. This will also help them in their coursework during their college years. Provide the work environment and the study plan they require to achieve good grades. Reward your students for achieving success and good marks.

You will need to develop certain good study skills in order to excel in your course. One of such skills is your note taking ability. In fact, it is essential to take down your lecture notes efficiently. The following are some helpful tips that will enable you to enhance your note taking skills.

• Develop your listening abilities: You need to develop a positive attitude once you are in the class. This positive attitude will help you to be attentive to the lectures. Thereby you can make the most out of the classes. You also need to follow the direction of your lectures. By doing so you will not miss any crucial information in case the lecture takes an unpredicted deviation.
• Be prepared before going to your class: You need to carry certain things with you to write the lecture notes properly. The first thing is a three-ring binder. This type of binder is much better than a bound or spiral book. You can easily remove the pages of a three-ring binder for reviewing your notes. Moreover, for cross referencing you can add handouts and out of class notes into your binder. You will also need to carry highlighters and mark the important parts of your notes with them. Reading your previous class notes and other assigned materials is also necessary. Mark the portion you don’t understand.
• Be attentive to the content: While taking notes try to make it detailed and include all the important facts and figures. Define and explain all the important points and give example. You will also need to include drawings or charts. Give a thorough reading to your notes to check out for repetitions or missed out points.
• Develop your own note taking method: This will ensure that the style you are adopting will work out for you. However, the easiest way is to start every new lecture in a fresh page. Do not forget to add the date as the sequence of your notes is also essential. It is also better to write on one side of the paper both for cleanliness and for easier reviewing.

Apart from the advantages, there are numerous disadvantages of staying back at home. If you are a student, then the most important thing which you should do is studies. While staying back at home, people generally tend to relax and therefore they lose the golden opportunity that lie before them. Few things make staying at home a disadvantageous experience for many. They are enlisted below:

• Sleeping till late morning hours : This is one of the principal causes for the failure of the students. They sleep till late morning and start their studies afterwards. This hampers their studies and is the main cause of their poor marks. Make sure not to kill your time by sleeping and doing things which are not necessary. Some people are extremely lazy. They just while away their time by doing certain things which are harmful for their studies. One of them, undoubtedly, is sleeping and smoking (if you have the habit). Some people take to alcohol and prefer staying back at home. Leaving their studies, they gossip online and while away their time by doing things which are not beneficial for their studies.
• Boredom and how to get rid of it: Getting enough time does not mean that you have to waste your time. You must put all your efforts into your studies. Only then, you can get a very good result. There will be times when you feel lonely and bored. In those cases also, make sure not to waste time on phone calls or online chatting. They would simply kill your valuable time.
• Success: One who has the will can find the way, so goes the saying. If you have the will to success, then you can find the right way in no time. What you need to do is find the right opportunity and grasp it before it actually slips out of your hand.

Most of the parents play a role only in encouraging their children to get higher grades in high school. Though grades are important for getting admitted to renowned colleges, parents need to play a much broader role to help their children to be successful.

As a parent you need to prepare your child for the college experiences. The following are some guidelines that will help you to assist your child.

• You need to help your child to develop a strong communication skill. From the very beginning help them to develop a sound reading and writing ability. Moreover, give them opportunities to prove their speaking and presentation skills. Make sure that your child has a strong command over grammar, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary as these factors play an important role in their college.
• Ensure that your child is gaining enough real world experience before stepping in the college campus. To help your children to broaden their perspectives encourage them to visit museums, national parks, concerts and athletic events alone or with friends. In the beginning you can escort them, but make sure you let them take their own decisions. A very good option for broadening the perspectives of your child is to let them visit a different, state or even a country if possible. This will allow them to come across different cultures, peoples as well as to develop ability to cope up with various situations.
• Encourage your child to take responsibilities. This is a very important criterion for being successful in their college. You need to teach your children that they are accountable for their behaviors and efforts. You can give them little responsibilities when they are in their schools and see how they perform.
• Teaching etiquettes and desirable behavior is not enough. You need to demonstrate them to help your child learn the difference between wrong and right from the very beginning. It is essential for you to remember that parental behavior has a critical effect on the child’s mental growth.

Imagine the eve of a college exam and a pile of text books stacked in front of you. Are you going to read through the books to prepare for the exam? Are you going to cover even a small fraction of your curriculum, by going through the text books even if they are liberally filled with highlighted and underlined blocks? Truthfully speaking, the answer would be no. So what do you do? The answer- you consult your notes. They are the only way you can cover your prescribed curriculum in the shortest possible time and ensure your success in the exam.

That makes note-taking a vital ability. So if you have questionable note-taking skills, you should pull up your socks and work on them if you really want to obtain good results. The following suggestions would help you in developing good note-taking habits.

Be prepared:

Usually students are aware about the topic that is going to be covered in a lecture beforehand. So prepare yourself by reading on the relevant topics. This will ensure that you are familiar with the terms and concepts and will be able to make coherent and better quality notes.

Don’t Be Late:

If you miss the first few minutes of a lecture, you will spend a few more minutes trying to understand what you missed, and the rest of the session wondering what the hell is being discussed.

Focus on getting down to the heart of the matter:

A lot of students write too much, that’s a mistake, it makes them slow and they also miss out on significant points as well. So pay attention, and try to figure out where your professor is driving to. Good notes touch upon the essential concepts, or those areas which you find difficult to understand. For more details you can always refer to your textbooks.

To enter a college of your choice, you must start taking preparations beforehand. As soon as you enter junior high school, you must start preparing yourself for college admittance. At junior high school students usually have strong understanding of math and are capable of composing essays grammatically and logically. You can also establish a university saving fund that are specifically designed for your higher education. At this stage, students are able to visualize their future independent of their parents.

Life In High School

In high school, extracurricular activities, grade point and curricula become crucial factors for college admittance. Usually, most universities and colleges want the students to complete few basic subjects successfully in high school. These are:

• Foreign language
• Lab sciences
• Social sciences and history
• Math including geometry and algebra
• English

Guidance Counselor

Students must start meeting a guidance counselor from the beginning of their 9^th grade in order to make sure that they are taking proper coursework. Often, a guidance counselor provides information on scholarships and college admission examinations.

Extracurricular Activities

Apart from study, colleges also prefer those students who make some contribution towards their community. Students who take part in extracurricular activities during school years are eligible to get grants and scholarships in college which helps them to fund their own education. You will get unlimited volunteering opportunities; look around, and you will find something that will give you a chance to volunteer.

College Admission Examinations

Most colleges need either ACT or SAT scores for easy admission. Contact your chosen college and ask about the exam they require. It is always advisable to sit for both the tests, so that all types of options are available before you.

ACT: This examination consists of multiple-choice questions which cover science, reading, math and English. Sit for the exam during your 11^th grade; if you score badly, you can sit for the exam again. Start studying for this course from your 9^th grade.

SAT: This examination tests writing skills, math problem solving and critical reading. Start preparing for SAT from your junior years especially from your 9^th grade. If you get lower score than desired, you can sit for the exam again.

Proper college preparation may ensure success and will provide a smooth transition towards independence.

When you first arrive at a university or college, you meet new students and friends. And if you decide to stay in a campus hostel, you have to contact your new roommate. Finding the perfect roommate is quite difficult. Each individual has different habits and way of living, hence making adjustment with your roommate is essential for successful living. If your roommate plays loud music, or chats with her friends just when you are trying to sleep and relax, you will get highly irritated. Hence you must follow certain tips to live successfully with your roommate.

Tips You Must Follow

• Talk openly with you roomy. If there is any dispute between both of you, communicate freely regarding that issue before it gets out of your control.

• Decide in advance how the utilities and rent will be split. Also decide what to do in case your roommate cannot make the payment for the month.

• You must accept that sometimes your roommate may have bad temper. If your roommate doesn’t agree to do something, do not always take it personally.

• Establish rules regarding company, food, parking, noise, chores and alcohol and tobacco use. Ensure that the responsibilities and expectations of each person are clear.

• Always remember to knock before you enter your room when your roommate is inside.

• Respect the privacy and right of your roommate as well as her possession. Make sure to ask before borrowing anything, even if it is a small thing.

• Take messages from the telephoners. Write down the phone number and name of the caller so that your roommate can see it whenever she comes.

• You must realize that some individuals are louder, neater, more possessive and more private than others. Never expect that you roommate will reflect your personality.

• Do not tell any lie. In case you make a mistake, admit it instantly.