My three-week vacation is officially over. I had a relaxing time, though I didn’t even start on my primary goal (writing my book proposal). Instead, I rested and recharged my batteries, which was probably the best choice. I’m back full of energy and ideas.
First up, however, a look at a few articles that have caught my eye recently, all of them somehow related to college finances:
It’s the new year, and many folks are thinking about resolutions and goals. But Studenomics — a blog offering financial advice for current students and recent graduates — writes that the best New Year’s resolution is “to live a life where you do not need to wait for a new year to change something”. This is an excellent philosophy. Don’t wait, the article says, but challenge yourself constantly.
This morning, Trent at The Simple Dollar detailed seven huge financial mistakes he made during his college career. Trent and I have similar backgrounds, philosophies, and approaches. No surprise then that his list of regrets reads like mine. When I think of the scholarships I squandered, it makes me wan to cry. (On the other hand, without all the dumb decisions, I wouldn’t be where I am today, so it’s not all bad, right?)
GRS-reader Terry from Your Scholarships wrote to tell me about his site. “The goal is to have a scholarship listing service that doesn’t bog you down with a bunch of ads and emails, and let’s you see all of our scholarships without a lengthy profile to fill out,” he says. He’s nearly done with the site, but before he goes live (there are still some features missing), he’d like to have some beta-testers take it for a spin. If you’re interested, he has a special page where 20 or so GRS readers can register for a free one-year subscription to the Your Scholarships. Try it out and give him feedback! Terry extended this offer to 200 GRS readers, but has had to close the free registration. Thanks to everyone who signed up!
Finally, Free Money Finance wonders if students are wising up. He notes a new stat that 57% of students are considering less prestigious colleges for affordability reasons, a trend he likes. I tend to agree with FMF on this. I think that most of the time (but not all of the time), the quality of the education is more dependent upon the student and her efforts than it is upon the institution.
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Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Finding the right scholarships has been, well… difficult. And yesterday my dad told me a week before I find out the admission decision that affording my #1 would no longer be difficult, it would be impossible.
There are public more affordable alternatives, but in my defense, I know I would look forward to everyday at this #1 (Emory), I know its a perfect fit, and I think I would make more out of it with a more positive attitude than at an alternative. I haven’t completely given up. Just my 2 cents as a high school senior going through it all.
p.s. Thank you!
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Glad to hear you are rested, three weeks sounds lovely! I am not in need of scholarships but the site described sounds like it will be an excellent resource for students. I’d like to promote it on my blog when it goes live. I applied for a few scholarships when I was attending community college and they really helped a lot! Thanks.
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Wow. Great college finance links. Hopefully they’ll be of use to people I know that need it.
Thanks.
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Well, you stated something very important here: that the quality of your education depends chiefly on your own efforts.
I went to a small state school, and I feel like I received an excellent education. Others among my peers, not so much. They graduated from the same university, but many of them only put forth enough effort to pass. As a result, they did not receive the quality of education that I did.
In theory, any school that is accredited should be “good enough”. After all, that’s what accreditation is for. The rest is up to you.
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For any prospective college students, the quality of undergraduate education is roughly similiar among all major universities, public or private. It’s much better to spend money on a particular graduate level program rather than fund a very expensive undergraduate program.
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I’ve done a lot of work into learning about public/private schools. If you have a top tier public school in your state, that is where you need to go (Carolina, Virginia, UCLA, Berkley, Ohio State etc).
If you’re like the rest of us and probably couldn’t get into those programs and can afford the private schools, go for it. The networks you get coming out of the most prestigious schools are very much worth it depending on your major.
Most of us though are better off going to a simple public school.
The biggest ripoffs – small private schools.
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Blog post idea for ya JD if your vacation’s left you as fuzzy headed as mine has: is now a good time to try to pay down my 75K in student loans if I’m only paying $315 per month and the loan is at 2% interest? I’ve always thought with that low interest I should be putting money elsewhere, but with my 401K fund performance at about -40% for the past year, I’m starting to wonder!!! Thanks for considering it!
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Our best solution for saving money in grad school is to do it one at a time — then one of us can work and we can live off of that income.
Since scholarships are hard to come sometimes in grad schools, this will hopefully help us stay out of littlest debt as possible.
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Thanks its truly an honor to be mentioned with The Simple Dollar and Free Money Finance in the same round up. My post on Resolutions came from the fact that everyone around me was stressing about setting New Year’s Resolutions all month while I was more focused on getting things done.
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It took me 5 years to find what I wanted to do…and then it turns out I get carpal tunnel pretty easily and it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to do IT stuff long term after all. *sigh*
At least I have a solid idea of what I want to do for grad school, and a plan to get there.
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How does one get the free beta for Your Scholarships?
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Just to mention that in the US graduate school in the sciences is often/generally free with stipend or teaching assistantship whether it’s a public or private university. This is at the PhD level, but in some cases funding is also available for Masters courses. To a certain extent this is true in the EU, although it is more difficult for international students to get funding.
Not all graduate school is expensive.
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I kind of understand why some people pick the prestigious schools, though. As I understand it it’s more about the networking than about the quality of the education. Which, I notice, seems to have degraded across the board in the last several decades–isn’t Harvard now grade-inflating too? University seems to have become more about job training than about becoming a well-rounded individual, which is going to mean some of the courses that help with the latter are going to be dumped by the wayside. This has already occurred in public K-12 schools; if the schools are running out of money they dump art and music classes in favor of classes that will “help kids get jobs later in life.”
Isn’t that sad?
I would go so far as to suggest that someone considering college should take time out and do a LOT of research on what is necessary for the career they wish to enter. For instance, contrary to popular myth, you do not have to obtain an MBA to become a business owner. (When I was in the Army, we had a LOT of MBAs who were officers because they were stuck with no jobs at graduation and had to pay off the loans somehow.) You don’t have to go to art school to be an artist; you don’t have to be an English major to be a writer. You really don’t even necessarily have to go to vocational school to do the blue-collar jobs, depending on what they are, because the blue-collar unions have apprenticeship programs that pay you to learn!
So… It saves lots of money in the long run to figure out what you’re doing before you jump in. If nothing else it’d save you from being one of those students who didn’t know what their major would be when they applied for college and then switched their major something like five times over ten years before finally graduating with a degree they had never originally intended to get in the first place. And I do know people like that. One in particular is over $50k in debt, and no way will her degree ever help her pay it off unless she writes a bestseller. (Undergrad: English. Masters: Creative non-fiction. Yeah.)
There are people getting their MDs in their fifties. Either we have all the time in the world to figure out what we want to be when we grow up, or we’ll be hit by a bus tomorrow and it won’t matter anyway.
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I did the same thing with my two week vacation. Intended to spend a lot of time writing and ended up sleeping, watching football, and forgetting about work.
Did pull out a new blog design, which was a lengthy process, but no actual writing.
Ah, there’s always tomorrow…
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“to live a life where you do not need to wait for a new year to change something”.
This should be a t-shirt!
Great find.
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I see a lot of my friends going to schools with $30k+ (non Ivy schools, just expensive private ones) a year tuition, and I just have to wonder why. Some have rich parents who pay, okay I can understand that. But others are going to be $100k in the hole by the time they graduate and it just boggles me. I go to a university that costs $3k a year in tuition, and I couldn’t be happier. The program I’m in is nationally ranked in the top 50, and it’s in a good area. Will their education land them better career prospects? Absolutely not, education is what you make of it.
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I went to UC Berkeley, which was just barely affordable as an in-state student. My parents did not take out loans on my behalf and I’m so glad they didn’t (although they did co-sign for mine). 2 years out of school I have paid off almost half of my school loans, anticipating deferring for grad school next year. I am definitely looking for an affordable master’s program! And scholarships! The idea of being $80k or more in debt after a 2-year master’s degree program makes me queasy.
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