College

Financial Education for Teenagers

It is never too early to start practicing good money habits–in fact, the earlier teenagers are exposed to financial education, the better the chance they will become financially savvy. This is an important life lesson in general, but especially if college is on the horizon for your teenager. Becoming a college student is probably one of the most exciting and immediate milestones for high school students; teenagers feel a sense of freedom, and it’s often…

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FAFSA Setbacks and Delays Affect Students

Families and students will have to wait even longer for financial aid offers from colleges and universities. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education announced yet another delay in the already-turbulent FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) timeline: The department says it won’t be sending students’ FAFSA data to schools until the first half of March. Previously, it had said it would start sending that data in late January. For more than 17 million…

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Mental Health-Focused Study Tips

You’ve signed up for classes, you’ve learned your way around the virtual course system — and now, you’ve got to make sure you survive all the way to graduation. Laptop or paper notes? Highlighter or flashcards? And does music help while studying? Here’s how to take better notes and study so that you remember what you’ve learned — without getting crushed by college stress. Plus: what to do if you do feel crushed. There is…

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FAFSA Tips: Everything You Need to Know

Here are our best FAFSA tips with everything you need to know about filling out the FAFSA. You should fill out the FAFSA form as soon as possible on or after Oct. 1, but you should definitely fill it out before your earliest FAFSA deadline. Each state and school sets its own deadline, and some are very early. Check deadlines for your state here. It’s important to get a StudentAid.gov account username and password (FSA…

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Student Activism in Modern America

Peaceful, student-led protests and activism have been a powerful force for change throughout American history. In 1925, for example, students at Fisk University staged a 10-week protest to speak out against the school’s president, who didn’t want students starting a chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. In 1940, almost 2,000 students protested after New York University decided to pull a black player from its football roster to accommodate the University of Missouri’s segregationists. And campus-based activism, including…

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Top 6 Student Loan Payoff Tips

Student loan payoff can often be a financial nightmare. The system is loaded with confusing loan payoff and payment plan options, bad information, and pitfalls to avoid, and one wrong move can cost you thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has added even more confusion with federal student loan payments being suspended temporarily, but even if your loans are on hold for now, you’ll likely need to start making payments eventually. If you know how to…

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COVID School Year Roundup: 2022-2023

From teachers to students, anyone who’s been to class since March 2020 has had to deal with COVID-19. But for the class of 2023, that connection is a little deeper, as the pandemic hit during their freshman year and turned their time at school upside-down. “Kids were talking about ‘What are we gonna do after spring break?’ And I remember saying that we might miss a couple days, maybe a week after spring break at…

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Low Stakes Presentations Build Student Confidence

Elizabeth Dunham, MLS, is a retired marketing executive and current adjunct lecturer at York College of Pennsylvania. She teaches courses in business communication as well as the first-year experience. Here is her first person account of how she incorporated low-stakes oral presentations into her courses to build her students’s confidence.  Most students dread presentations. Every time I start a new semester, and I announce that presentations are a requirement, the fear and tension in the…

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Using Websites as Digital Portfolios for Students

The English Composition I course at New Jersey City University is designed to prepare students to meet the requirements of writing for university course work. The course learning objectives focus on the achievement of basic communicative skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Instead of completing a traditional essay or oral presentation as the signature assignment for the course, students were asked to build websites using skills honed over the course of the semester in…

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Why Don’t Students Ask for Help?

Students are often reluctant to seek academic help from their instructors, despite the fact that many of them could benefit from the help. Teachers are being encouraged to develop supportive relationships with students, and most are willing to do so. In the case of students seeking help, what we need is clear information about those teacher characteristics that motivate students to ask. Here are the top ten reasons students don’t ask for help, according to…

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