Personal Finance and Investing » Family/College

College Loan Calculators

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:21:42 +0000

College loan corporations are companies that provide financial aid to college students. The corporations have their own websites on the Internet that list very detailed explanations of what the companies offer, from college-planning guidelines and loan programs, to access to their loan consultants.

One of the most common services offered on college loan corporations? websites is the so-called college loan calculator. However, there are also other independent companies or websites that focus generally on loans and budgeting strategies that offer this service as well.

Calculators

College loan calculators are basically a set of criteria aimed at computing and evaluating a specific category of college education financing. It aims to help students and parents analyze how much needs to be invested in education, how much financial aid they can take advantage of, how much the student will eventually earn after getting a college degree, and which repayment program will help the student save money in the long run. There are no general standards for what the criteria should be, as each company?s website has a different approach in its method of evaluation.

There are similarities, though, in general regarding how these calculators help users or clients to make their decisions.

College Cost Calculator

College cost is one of the more standard criterion found in calculators. This takes into consideration a lot of different inputs like annual college costs, college cost inflation rate, years of attendance, percent of costs you plan to cover from savings, and years before college. Basically, this calculator helps parents and students analyze how much they have to save and pay for college and whether or not the student shoulder on his/her own finances.

Savings Calculator

Savings calculators help students and parents determine if they are on the right track regarding how they budget and save money for college. This calculator takes into consideration the following: years until college, family?s current savings for college, expected annual interest earnings, and monthly savings for college.

Others

Other calculators include student loan calculator, parent debt calculator, and parent loan repayment calculator. Student loan calculators compute how much students would have to pay monthly or annually after they graduate. Parent debt calculators basically analyze parents? capacity to take on more debt to finance their child?s education. Lastly, a parent loan repayment calculator computes how much of the loan parents have to repay monthly or annually.

How To Write A Personal Statement For College

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:29:32 +0000

The entire college admission process can be exhausting and nerve-racking but there are few things worse than writing the personal statement for college applications. Your first thought is that it would be a piece of cake, everything you have to do is write a few words about yourself – what your interests are, what you would like to accomplish in life. However, personal statements for college have never been an easy task. When writing a statement for college, your high school writings for which you got straight A’s won’t do you much good.

The main issue is that when writing your personal statement for college, you are not in that world and you are well aware of it. Personal statements are not supposed to be essays about how much you admire famous people like Gandhi. You shouldn’t also write about the first time you leaned how important teamwork is or anything like that. They have heard it all, so you cannot write anything new and this, unfortunately, is not in your favor.

These are the reasons why so many people seek help when writing their personal statement for college is concerned. I had a good time growing up. As my mother is a very famous and acknowledged writer, I always counted on her for feedback. Even now she is there for me when I need an intelligent and well-structured statement or paper. Apart from helping with my essays, my mother was also good enough to give me a hand when I was writing my personal statement for college.

Of course, I realize not everyone is lucky enough to have such a valuable resource at their home, and not everyone can also depend on their high school English teacher. So, if this concerns you, then you can try searching some sites on the internet that might turn to be quite helpful. For instance, most of them offer free tips telling you what you should avoid and what you should include when writing your personal statement for college. From my point of view, when writing your personal statement it’s best to try to find face to face feedback from someone whom you trust.

College Students – 5 Tips For Making Top Grades

admin — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:42:30 +0000

Did you know that every year more than 17 million students enter college but only half of them will actually graduate? Believe it or not, according to the education department, 45% of students who attend college will drop out or fail out. When these students enter college, they all have high expectations and aspirations of making good grades and graduating. Every semester I see students make simple mistakes that, unknown to them, jeopardize their grades. More and more students are dropping out or failing out of college each year because they lack essential information that goes beyond the typical classroom skills. Here are 5 suggestions for students who need and want to make better grades:

Go to class the first day. Many students make the mistake of missing the first class because they think it’s a waste of time. But it is a mistake that will cause many problems throughout the semester. When you miss the first day of class, not only do you miss pertinent information, but you also create a first bad impression. Before you go to class, find out what books or articles the professor has written. Buy a copy of their latest book, or borrow it from the library and take it to class with you on the first day. If there are no books, find an article by the professor and read it. This will impress the professor and will show that you have an interest in the material and the professor’s work. Introduce yourself to your professor on the first day and make a comment about their book or article. Just because you’re familiar with your name do not assume that the professor will know and remember it. It’s your job to make yourself stand out from the rest of the class, and the first way to do that is to get the professor to associate your face with your name. Schedule a personal appointment with your professor during the first two weeks of school. Most students wait until there is a crisis in their lives to schedule an appointment with the professor. Take the initiative and meet with the professor before a crisis. It helps create credibility and ground the relationship between you and the professor. During the appointment let the professor know of your interest in the subject, and ask what you can do to receive a top grade from the class. Ask your professor how he or she became interested in the subject matter of the class. Asking this simple question will do more for you than you will ever imagine. It will make you stand out from everyone else, and it will help that professor remember you. Ultimately it could work to your advantage in receiving a better grade. Don’t underestimate the power of this question. While these tips may seem innocent on the surface, they can make a big difference in the results you receive if you apply them.

College Student Resume Examples For College Graduates

admin — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 15:34:17 +0000

Every student has to know sooner or later how to write a college resume. Despite the fact that there are countless good college resume examples to be found online, writing your own resume is not as easy as you think. The first difficulty is that your career goals might not be as defined as you wanted it yet. Sometimes you might be uncertain even about the industry you want to work in, and surely you will not have a lot of professional experience to back your goals.

You should not worry much about these difficulties instead you should start building your resume around them. If you know what experiences you want to emphasize, you will have no problem in choosing the appropriate one from the dozens of available college resume examples. Never write a career goal because you feel it is a must: you should leave out the goals that are not very convincing to you. In the meantime, you should put accent on the qualifications you have: it is very important to include everything, from your educational background and seminars attended, awards received to personal traits.

When you look thorough a number of college resume examples, it will become obvious that your achievements in education are a very strong basis for a hiring decision. So it is important to include a full list of institutions you studied in, as well as all the workshops and seminars you participated in. By doing this you will show you have a strong motivation to learn, even if these studies don’t have much in common with the job you are applying to. It is a good idea to write about the skills you gained from these classes, such as leadership or teamwork experience.

Before you decide on the proper format, it is important to look thorough the college resume examples available online. By choosing a template, you don’t have to worry about the format itself. You will see that there are three kinds of format used generally used for resumes. The most popular format is the chronological one, but many people also like the functional or combinational formats. If you review the samples online, you can easily decide which one works best for you.

Another important decision you will have to make is whether to use only plain sentences, lists, bulleted or numbered items? Each has its pros and cons, but if you take a look at college resume examples, you will make up your mind easier. You should also keep your resume short: two pages must not be exceeded, but usually one page is enough.

College Essays

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:46:48 +0000

College essays are of great importance when seeking admission to a college. In this regard, choice of a topic is very significant. College essays reveal the individual characteristics of the student and help the College Board in forming a correct picture regarding the student’s preferences, value systems, sense of humor, discipline and other core aspects. The primary questions any college essay usually addresses are the student’s reasons for choosing a particular institution. The authorities will also try to evaluate the creative and critical skills of the prospective student.

Therefore the student should choose a topic with great care. Once the topic is finalized, it is advisable to prepare a rough draft. It is important that the points for the essay are thought out and put into a preliminary order, so that the rough draft can be prepared well in advance. The rough draft will help to bring focus to the rambling ideas and enable a creative reorganization of the same.

Just as in normal essay writing, the college essay has to be divided into paragraphs. Each paragraph can elaborate a point discussed. Economy of words is a desirable quality. The college essay is ideally one written in a focused style, since a rambling style can distract the reader. An uncalled for ornate style is best avoided — simple language very often serves the purpose. College essays should be proofread thoroughly so that typos, grammatical and spelling errors do not occur. Any references made have to be properly cited, so that nothing is left vague. Slang usage has to be necessarily avoided; repetition of the same idea is another pitfall that the student has to stay away from. The essay should encode the enthusiasm and eagerness of the student and must never be written in an indifferent style.

A well-written college essay will highlight the sincerity, commitment and creativity of the applicant. The college essay is in every way the best and practical tool to ensure enrollment in an institution of one’s choice.

Planning Your Degree In Line With Your Career Path

admin — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:20:50 +0000

A college degree is really important since it decides what your future career holds for you. To keep it straight and simple, a college degree is an investment with assured long-term benefits.

But is earning a degree really that important? Well, there are statistics that will make the picture clearer for you. Consider this: professionals with a Bachelor’s degree earn 60% more than high school graduates, while those with an Associate degree earn 20% more!

This simply points out that a person with a college degree can earn about 72% more, over a forty-year working life than a high school graduate. Given below are a few tips that can help you decide on the right degree and career path.

o Capitalize on your interests: That’s right – if you don’t want a boring old career, avoid following the herd. See what you’re interested in; it could be writing, music or acting. Maybe you are the science geek in your class. The point is, follow your interests.

You may be interested in the Arts; but when you see that it doesn’t offers you a good chance to make a living, you quickly jump on to a degree related to science or some kind of research. This often results in sacrificing your interests for a field that could be boring. If you pursue a degree that interests you, the chances of you becoming bored or disillusioned decrease.

o Make your goals clear: Set your goals before you decide on a degree. That simply means that you need to know what you are getting yourself into. You’ve got to know how exactly a specific college degree can help you get closer to your dream career.

If you are still not sure about your goals, it is high time that you get serious about it – because if your goals are not clear, you may end up getting a degree that will result in wasting both, your time as well as your money. It is always better to spend some time thinking and conducting a self-assessment to set your career path.

o Studying options: There are many online degree programs that you can choose from that are conducted by prestigious colleges and universities. In this way, you can get good work experience that is related to your career and a college degree at the same time.

The world is extremely competitive and you have to rise to the occasion by making your goals clear and designing them specifically in conjunction with your career. A degree is an ideal way to achieve this objective and pave the way to a successful career.

Advice From Your Favorite Uncle – Planning For College Success

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:53:42 +0000

There’s a lot of things that go on to college in your freshman year that are new and exciting area not everyone of them is going to help you achieve your academic goals. This is not to say that classwork is the only aspect that’s important college because social skills and broadening your for rhizomes and new experiences are crucial to your development as an adult. But if success in the business world after college graduation is important to you and you want to be an independent adult who pays for their own way through life you clearly cannot neglect academics.

Here are some things that will help you keep things in balance:

people from your high school who did not go to college are working 50 to 60 hours a week to feed their families and pay their rent. They’re struggling to get by. So when you feel tired and sorry for yourself with your 15 hour credit load, remember the effort they’re putting in and see if you can find a little bit of energy to take care your business.

Don’t hang around with a bunch of people that do nothing but party all night unless you plan to make a career out of saying “would you like fries with that?”

prep plan your daily class schedule so that you have breaks in between classes that allow you to study while you’re out and out of your dorm room. That will leave your evenings free to take care of special projects or relax.

If you’re not a morning person then don’t schedule your most difficult classes for that time. It’s a good idea though to learn how to function at a time when the rest of the world is functioning. College is as good a place as any to learn that.

Make a master calendar for the whole semester the records the dates of every assignment and test so that you can budget your time.

Keep a study journal that has a page devoted to nothing but the excuses that you used to blow off your studies say you can see how pathetic your excuses really are.

Spotting a Frightening Trend in the Job Market

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:14:07 +0000

Have you noticed a terrifying cyclical trend in the job market?

Before your high school student heads off to college and even before he/she starts looking for a major, they must research a career path.

Recently published online at informationweek.com, an article entitled “IT MANAGERS TO HIRE FEWER COLLEGE GRADS IN 2008″ describes how there are fewer jobs available in the Information Technology field than previous years.

What they (colleges) are promoting as the hot career, after a period of time, there will be a glut of new graduates in the market. It’s the old “supply and demand” cycle rearing its ugly head.

Understand that colleges are in the business to: A. Educate and B. Make money. Hopefully their priority emphasizes educating students. However, if they do not make money colleges would not be in business very long.

TV commercials are promoting the “hot new jobs”. One of the hot tickets right now is computer animation/computer gaming.

It won’t be long before there are more graduates that hold this degree than there are jobs. We are in the stages now where we are seeing this with IT support. The ending result is the number of new jobs offered will be fewer, with lower salaries.

There are resources out there that have demographic information pertaining to job growth in a particular field. Spending 4 to 6 years earning a degree in a specific medium only to find out that there are no jobs available and/or the employer wants experience is disheartening.

Research your career before you start college. You (the student) must know if there is going to be a job market in your discipline, so that you don’t waste your time studying for a job that wont be there. I’m going to go out on the limb and say that pharmacy majors may find themselves finding fewer and less paying jobs in the not to distant future, due to market trends along with supply and demand.

Students starting college now will be 4+ years behind in the employment market before they are out of school and available for the job market with a degree. Knowing that there will be employment after graduation is crucial. One way to have the odds be in your favor is for the prospective student to get an intern position. This will give them real world experience and positions them for success in their future years.

The unfortunate thing is that High School guidance counselors are over worked, under staffed and under paid. With the average ratio in Arizona of 700 students to 1 counselor, it is no wonder that this is near epidemic proportions.

The growing trend for not only the affluent, but for middle class families is to seek advice and direction outside of the public and private school systems.

Researching your career options now will give you choices and stability later.

When Should You Start Planning For Retirement?

admin — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:08:41 +0000

Most people don’t look forward to getting old. Most people, unless they are lucky, won’t retire until they get old, making the word ‘retirement’ sound less than desirable. Still, we all want to retire someday, and in order to live comfortably, or even just survive, we have to plan.

Is it ever too early to start planning for retirement? I will say that planning fore retirement at 12 is a little overkill, but it’s not much later then that when you should get started. As soon as you start your first full time job you should get started planning. For most, this will be out of college and others it will be out of high school. For those who are planning to head right into the work force and skip college, I strongly urge you to reconsider. You should get some sort of training whether it is trade school or an Associate’s Degree. This will greatly increase your potential salary.

If you have already been working for a while, you should begin planning for retirement right away. Talk with your employer about the retirement plans they have available. It is possible that they have a 401K match plan which means they will match all or a percentage of what you put in. If you don’t take advantage of this, you are leaving money on the table.

If you have been working for a while and are a bit older, don’t worry that you will never be able to retire because you have not been saving. You will just have to start saving a bit more aggressively now. Talk with your employer about starting a plan and invest as much as you can.

The best time to start planning and investing for retirement is right now. The longer you wait, the less you will be able to save. This is largely due to compounding. If you invest $20 a month now and through the next 30 years for a total of $7,200, you will make a lot more than if you invest $7,200 all at once and wait just 10 years. How much more, you ask? At $20 a month for 30 years at an 8% average stock market return, you will end up with $30,005.90, and $7,200 invested for 10 years at an 8% average stock market return will have $15,544.30. That’s almost double with the same investment but more time and compounding. What are you waiting for?

Creating Your Own Path With Radio Schools

admin — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:42:58 +0000

Do you want to start a career in the radio industry? If you do, then you would be a bit surprised by the number of alternatives that you’ll have when searching for Louisville Radio Schools. Should you enroll in online classes, or go to a campus somewhere? Online classes are cheaper, but it’s difficult to take radio-oriented programs online and there is less possibility of internships.

Then you also have to decide on the type of degree that you want to enroll in. Are you more passionate about being in front or the center of a radio program? Then it is a good idea to get media communications degrees. These degrees are helpful if your desire is to become a sportscaster who knows the game inside and out and can make local matches sound really fascinating over the airwaves. Or maybe you prefer being the newscaster, reporting on local news with a journalistic flair – or a weathercaster with a fun and more focused responsibility. Or maybe you like to be a DJ and have an afternoon music hour or a cool morning show. Regardless of your interest, you would typically go for a media communications program to realize your dream. Obviously, if you want to be involved in the technical aspects of radio, from sound boards to broadcasting arrays, then a technical degree of some sort is a necessity, and your alternatives change again. Other concentrations are also required if you like to be in the business side of running a radio station: advertising, marketing and even production.

So let us take a closer look at Louisville radio schools and what options you have. You need to know beforehand that college classes aren’t the first route to take. Why is this the situation? Firstly, it is a bit difficult to get a degree that will fully concentrate on your dream radio job – what with loads of specialties available. The other reason has to do with time – you may not be able to meet the required time as you already have existing commitments. The University of Louisville, for instance, offers both technical and media communications classes which have reasonable, general training on several radio jobs. Asbury College, a little outside of the city, has a media communications degree with a performance emphasis that’s appropriate for those considering a career in front of the microphone, along with a production degree for those who like to be more involved in the business and technical aspects of the radio business. But if options like these do not work out for you, you can always check out radio stations in the area for internships and other more specific training programs.

These programs are really ideal since they offer flexible opportunities and put you on a radio-oriented environment; among the organizations that have these programs are the Radio Connection. There are also local radio stations in Louisville that are more than willing to assist students who want to make it big in the radio business. Examples are Lite 1069 as well as WFPL News. These and similar options may be more advantageous than the conventional Louisville radio schools route.