BY BILL FERRIS
Google, apparently fed-up with the stereotype of programmers being a bunch of pasty white dudes, is trying to open up the computer science field to women, minorities, and special-needs students with a series of scholarships. These $10,000 scholarships will go to qualifying students who intend to pursue computer science in college.
BY BILL FERRIS
As teachers, we’re tasked with molding students into intelligent, productive citizens. That includes more than just homework. Volunteering is a wonderful trait to instill in students, and at the very least, looks great on a college application, too. You can help your students get involved in their community by directing them to Serve.gov.
At Serve.gov, students can find hundreds of volunteer service opportunities within a few miles of home. They can search by their service interest area, enter their zip code, and they’ll get a Google-Maps-Enabled list of results with details, dates, and driving directions.
Your students have a great opportunity to see exotic places, and all they have to do is learn to speak Turkish.
The National Security Language Initiative for Youth offers 550 scholarships for high school students to travel overseas to learn less-commonly taught languages for a summer, a semester, or a full year. Through these immersion programs, students can learn Russian, Mandarin, Farsi, Arabic, Korean, Hindi, or Turkish. The scholarship covers all program costs, travel, food, accommodations, all that stuff.
In addition to picking up a language, this is a wonderful chance to absorb foreign cultures and see historic landmarks. To qualify, students must be U.S. citizens 15-18 years of age, earn at least a 2.5 GPA, and be enrolled in high school at the time of the application. Also, they’ll have to get a passport, and all the other things you do when leaving the country. The site has an FAQ that covers how to get a passport, plus other…well, frequently asked questions.
The application deadline is February 2, 2009, so there’s still time for your students to apply. Who wouldn’t want to see the world and learn a new language? -BILL FERRIS
National Security Language Initiative for Youth Scholarships to Study Abroad
10 Virtually Instant Ways to Improve Your Life – I’m all for improving my life, but why does it have to take soooo long? Here are ten easy ways to pull yourself up by your boot straps courtesy of Stepcase Lifehack. If you find yourself wanting to change something about your life, then why not start out with the simple stuff like Don’t over-generalize and Don’t take things too personally.
12 Ways to Use Project Censored in Your Classroom – Project Censored is an intiative designed to help aggregate news stories that often go under reported. This guide offers ways teachers can educate their students in fair journalism methods and help them understand the practice and importance of research. There are in-class activities and projects on the list, so if your students are studying media and journalism, this is a good place to start them on the right path.
101 Scholarships Just For Teachers – From TeachingTips.com comes this amazing list of scholarships available for teachers working their way through college. It might be too late for most of us, but if you have some students who are interested in becoming teachers themselves, give them this list to ease college’s financial burdens. Some are region specific, so all 101 might not be completely pertinent. By the way, be sure and check out some of the other amazing lists on TeachingTips, they’ve got some great stuff there.
101 Things to Do When You’re Bored – I don’t know how anybody could possibly get bored when there are hundreds of Instructify posts to read, but if you find yourself with some idle time, then try out a few of these activities to rescue yourself from ennui. Lists Galore recommends flying a kite, starting a blog, or you know, making a list. – JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: Wetsun on Flickr
35 Scholarships Anyone Can Get - CollegeDegree.com has put this list of scholarships together that just about anyone is eligible for. The list includes scholarships in various amounts, as well as essay writing contests and some unorthodox contests like the Duct Tape Stuck at Prom Scholarship.
50 Things from Ben Jones – Ben Jones blogs for the M.I. T. admissions department. This letter, addressed to the incoming freshman, is a quick and dirty “here are the things I wish I’d known” list, with such advice as: All nighters are highly overrated. You said it, Ben.
101 Tips to Help You Make Money Doing What You Love – If you love teaching, don’t ever stop. But if your students have no idea what to do with their lives, then point them towards continuing to do the things they love. These tips from InspiredMoneyMaker.com should do the trick.
No Takebacks! Five Playground Rules to Live By – When the kids are at recess, you might do yourself some good by paying attention to what they’re yelling at one another. As it turns out, those tried and true rules like: No cutting and No do-overs might be more applicable to your adult life than you thought. From Dumb Little Man. – JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
(photo by: HeavyWeightGeek on Flickr)
Right now, your high school seniors are probably stressing out about the difference between the cost of college and the amount of scholarship money they received. If you’re a guidance counselor or a teacher who doesn’t want your students to have to decide between buying books or food, show them these financial aid options, courtesy of studenthacks.org. They’ll find information about Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, plus lesser-known options like Plus Loans, as well as Social Security for students unlucky enough to have a deceased parent.
This list is a good resource for students scrambling to fund their education. Juniors can also use it as a primer for all the financial aid rigmarole they’ll have to go through next year. By exploring financial aid options, your students will have the money they need for school, and the peace of mind of not worrying how they’ll pay for their next meal. -BILL FERRIS
How to Find More Cash for School – 9 Financial Aid Options via studenthacks.org
Related Stuff:
Warn Your Students Against Financial Aid Myths
Student Loan Advice for High School Seniors
The Final Countdown – Countdown to College
As your students start to get college acceptance letters, they’re probably trying to figure out how they’re going to pay for the next four years of school. If your students are stressing about an expensive education, have them check out Campus Grotto‘s advice on how to avoid a lifetime of crushing education debt.
The article focuses on the various types of student loans, and what to watch out for. Campus Grotto advises using federal loans before turning to privatized lenders. Federal loans have more borrower protection, and are easier to get for families who don’t have perfect credit.
No matter how they pay for it, your kids’ college education will cost them a big chunk of money. Make sure they read up on the subject so they can make informed decisions. -BILL FERRIS
Student Debt in America via Campus Grotto
Are your students freaking out about their SAT scores? Before they spend a bundle on SAT preparation materials, have them frequent the College Board’s SAT Question of the Day. Every day they’ll get hit with questions just like they’ll see on the tests. If they create a free user account on the College Board site, they can keep track of their results. To make things even easier, RSS feeds and email can deliver the questions directly to their computers, so they won’t have to muck about with filters and firewalls.
For more review, check out their SAT Practice Questions in Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing. Note: on the main page, they’ll see a lot of products with price tags. Though more review never hurts, they can still get some practice with the freebies listed above. And when in doubt, their local library will probably have SAT review books available. So while the SAT test is expensive, studying for it doesn’t have to be. -BILL FERRIS
Deborah Fox is every teenager’s parents’ hero. On her Pay For College Blog, Fox gives oodles of great tips and advice on going to college without having to join the Armed Forces or becoming a plasma prostitute. In a recent article, she describes the ways to easily spot a scholarship scam. Everything she mentions follows the old adage “if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.” The bottom line: if someone is offering you a great deal for no effort on your behalf, or if they want something in return, then it’s likely a scam.
For that matter, what tips do YOU have for spotting a scam? Have you fallen victim to a Nigerian diplomat looking for a place to keep his funds? Won a “Toy Yoda”? Accidentally purchased a Nintrendo Wiii on E-Bay.net? Tell us your stories, and enjoy Ms. Fox’s helpful tips on avoiding sleight of hand when it comes to getting what you’ve earned. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Six Ways To Spot Scholarship Scams
Prevent your students from adding years to their student loan repayment schedule. Bankrate.com offers up some more good advice for your college-bound students. Cheryl Allebrand’s “13 Financial Aid Traps” is as much for parents as for their kids, and dispels several (thirteen, in fact) myths about getting more funding for college.
Allebrand lists mistakes ranging from withdrawing money from retirement accounts to using credit cards as a means of establishing credit to impress financial-aid types (and not running up credit card debt is darn good advice for anybody. Not that I’d know from experience or anything).
It’s all good advice, but I worry about the next generation if there are myths floating around like, “Get married to achieve independent status” for the FAFSA. -BILL FERRIS
College can teach your students many important lessons – the satisfaction of broadening one’s mind, the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the crushing burden of lifelong student loan debt. If you’re still paying for the bestest four years of your life, you owe it to your students to stress the importance of planning how they’ll finance their education. And since there’s nothing teenagers enjoy more than listening to adults’ advice, Instructify recommends you tell them to visit Bankrate.com’s Countdown to College.
Countdown to College is a month-by-month guide to students’ senior year, with the goal of maximizing grant and scholarship money. Advice includes registering for the SAT or ACT in September, harassing parents in January to file their taxes so kids can submit their darn FAFSA already, and spending February sucking up to civic and church groups who award scholarships.
Yeah, it’s a lot of work to cram into one year. Students are free to start following Countdown to College’s strategies early, of course. But if they’re that on the ball, they probably don’t need the advice.
As for everyone else, Countdown to College breaks up the nebulous concept of securing financial aid into doable monthly tasks. For kids bagging groceries for minimum wage at the local Try-N’-Save, asking total strangers for several thousand dollars probably never sounded so easy. –BILL FERRIS
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