When it comes to financial aid, few people will be able to point you in right direction as well as national expert Mark Kantrowitz can. As the publisher of the very resourceful FinAid and Fastweb websites and the author of the bestseller Secrets to Winning a Scholarship, Mark has developed quite a name for himself as the go-to source for all financial aid inquiries. He has been featured in numerous prestigious publications and media outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and much more. Read on for the incredibly valuable insights and advice Mark shares on financial aid options and the future of higher education. VT: Wha ...Read More About Ask a Financial Aid Expert: Mark Kantrowitz

It’s the day before your big test. You’ve vigorously read through all the material, flipped over every flashcard, and memorized every fact. If you prepared adequately, you’ve been doing this for weeks (or months, depending on the test) and not just in the last 24 hours. Procrastination is not a method of choice for a task this huge – that task being studying for an important exam. Assuming you did not leave it all to the last minute, the final day before you actually face the exam can be a little strange. You’ll have those first-day-of-school butterflies and be unsure of how exactly y ...Read More About How to Mentally Prepare for Test Day

通常,学生决定去to grad school simply to avoid the doomed job market. Others choose to go because they flat out miss being in school. Neither of these are logical reasons and in the end, they usually won’t leave the student feeling fulfilled. Graduate school is a very serious and big commitment that should only be undergone if a graduate degree is definitely what you want and/or need. There are several aspects of being a graduate student that may not be hitting you just yet as you scour admissions pages for application requirements and deadlines. There are a few key questions yo ...Read More About Is Grad School the Right Option for You?

Students who participated in after-school activities for two or more years during high school were almost twice as likely to complete college than those who did not. This finding comes from professors at Columbia University, who also found correlations between participation in extracurriculars and increased high school GPAs. The key is not simply joining a club, but being involved for an extended period of time. The determining factor is persistence, or "grit". If you can develop persistence and passion for an activity, that mindset is likely to carry over to your academic pursuits. In contrast to the extrinsic motiv ...Read More About Why Extracurriculars Boost College Success

Are you one to take notes meticulously during lectures? Or study one section of a textbook for a whole hour? Or always go to the same room to study? Contemporary research on brain psychology and memory retrieval suggests that those may not be the best methods when it comes to learning. Instead, researchers recommend the following tips: Interleaving learning: rather than drilling 50 algebra questions, you should solve a few algebra questions, a few graphing questions, and word problems. The key is to identify related skills sets to alternate. In the sports world, using basketball as an example, rather tha ...Read More About Learning About Learning