As Bet­ter­Grads will con­tinue to pro­duce col­lege admis­sions and acceptance-related posts for those anx­iously await­ing bulky pack­ages from first-choice four-year schools, we will not fail to serve those prospec­tive col­lege stu­dents look­ing to fur­ther their edu­ca­tion at a com­mu­nity col­lege. This will be a series of posts, and I encour­age read­ers to sub­mit their com­ments and feed­back regard­ing two-year schools.

Let's cut to the chase. Com­mu­nity col­lege has a bad rap. While I could have a field day list­ing numer­ous stig­mas and stereo­types about com­mu­nity col­leges, I'd rather divulge the impres­sive accom­plish­ments I've wit­nessed from my peers at two-year schools. While I bypassed com­mu­nity col­lege (adding onto my ever-growing stu­dent loan…) I look back on the debt and gen­eral edu­ca­tion classes and won­der if I wouldn't have been the same–or better–getting those first two years out of the way at one of these under­dog insti­tu­tions. Per­haps next week's post will detail some com­mon myths about com­mu­nity col­lege. For now, it's story time.

One Exam­ple of How Com­mu­nity Col­lege Stu­dents Hold Their Own

As a bud­ding mem­ber of my four-year university's speech & debate team, I prac­ticed my speeches and per­for­mances reli­giously lead­ing up to my first tour­na­ment as a var­sity com­peti­tor. Scan­ning the list of schools entered in the com­pe­ti­tion, I noticed sev­eral had the phrase "Com­mu­nity Col­lege" in their name. Com­mu­nity col­leges com­pete against us? I snick­ered. I chor­tled. I fon­dled elit­ist notions of supe­ri­or­ity, assum­ing the smaller, less-robust schools would bring weak com­pe­ti­tion against which I would pre­vail. Ha!

And it's exactly that kind of elit­ist think­ing that handed me a big, honk­ing piece of hum­ble pie.

Expect­ing to have the upper hand as a "real" col­lege stu­dent, I was sur­prised to encounter stiff com­pe­ti­tion at my first tour­na­ment. The com­mu­nity col­lege speak­ers were elo­quent, pre­pared, well-dressed, and many of them had been com­pet­ing far longer than me! A few com­mu­nity col­lege com­peti­tors boasted that they had trav­eled to Argentina the year before to com­pete in an inter­na­tional speech com­pe­ti­tion. I had only been to a nearby town to com­pete. I was befud­dled, instantly embar­rassed by my judg­men­tal atti­tude. In fact, nearly every tour­na­ment for the rest of the year was over­whelm­ingly dom­i­nated by com­mu­nity col­lege atten­dance, and I found myself fight­ing to be rec­og­nized and awarded as a mem­ber of a four-year university.

With only two years to cul­ti­vate their stu­dents, many insti­tu­tions like Glen­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Los Ange­les Val­ley Col­lege, Mt. San Anto­nio Col­lege and Las Posi­tas Com­mu­nity Col­lege (to name very, very few) are churn­ing out some of the most pro­fes­sional, pol­ished and per­sua­sive college-aged pub­lic speak­ers in the coun­try. (That 'P' allit­er­a­tion would sound way cool if it were spo­ken… by a com­mu­nity col­lege speech com­peti­tor.) Instead of wast­ing away two so-called embar­rass­ing years at a com­mu­nity col­lege, these stu­dents take advan­tage of resources avail­able to them on their cam­puses. Con­sid­ered a "senior" by their sec­ond year, these stu­dents gain the advan­tage of own­ing a larger stake in their cam­pus, rather than get­ting lost in the mud­dled num­bers of fresh­men that can reach up to the tens-of-thousands at some four-year schools.

I had some exhil­a­rat­ing wins as a speech & debate com­peti­tor at my uni­ver­sity, but my suc­cesses some­times went largely unno­ticed by the tons and tons of other activ­i­ties my cam­pus offered to the 30,000+ stu­dents. My com­mu­nity col­lege cohorts, how­ever, had oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with a larger per­cent­age of their stu­dent body, recruit­ing fresh, unsus­pect­ing new stu­dents onto the team, who oth­er­wise may never have encoun­tered speech & debate. For exam­ple, Glen­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege began their student-run speech & debate team in 2004 with only three stu­dents. At the start of the 2010 sea­son this semes­ter, the team reached an all-time high of 50 speech & debate team signups, after much-deserved on-campus press cov­er­age for their impres­sive wins at the annual national tour­na­ment for four-year schools. I was so impressed by my for­mer com­pe­ti­tion that I wrote up this press release tout­ing their successes.

Speech & debate is one of this country's old­est and most respected aca­d­e­mic activ­i­ties, and it is alive and well among com­mu­nity col­leges in California.

While this exam­ple is highly per­sonal and spe­cific to my col­lege expe­ri­ence, it opened my eyes to the abil­i­ties of com­mu­nity col­lege and the types of stu­dents it can pro­duce. The many com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dents I knew back then are either now thriv­ing at four-year uni­ver­si­ties or just grad­u­ated, most of them with only two to three years of stu­dent loans to repay.

I don't regret my deci­sion to attend a four-year uni­ver­sity for all four years. I do, how­ever, regret writ­ing off com­mu­nity col­leges as unim­por­tant, as many of these insti­tu­tions offer oppor­tu­ni­ties to excel, thrive, and accom­plish great things.

More on com­mu­nity col­leges next week.

Have an idea for an angle on com­mu­nity col­lege? Leave a comment.

As Eliz­a­beth men­tioned, Feb­ru­ary is a month filled with oppor­tu­ni­ties for bud­ding rela­tion­ships (col­lege accep­tance let­ters) and heart­break. (sigh…rejection letters).

In some cases, these same let­ters may force some soon-to-be grad­u­at­ing high schools seniors to revisit a ques­tion they once con­fi­dently answered months before pen­ning rough draft per­sonal state­ments. What's more, the answer to this ques­tion may not arrive after one discussion.

The ques­tion is sim­ple: “What’s the value of a col­lege degree?” Using qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis, Wall Street Jour­nal colum­nist Sue Shel­len­barger attempted to answer that ques­tion. Below you will find excerpts from her Decem­ber 2009 arti­cle as well as some great BetterGrads-inspired com­men­tary.

Find­ing work you love. Col­lege degrees can guide stu­dents' career choices in sub­tler ways. Jason Wot­man, 24, loves his work as a co-founder of Tail­wait­ers, a Great Neck, N.Y., startup that runs tail­gate par­ties for clients at sport­ing events and con­certs. "It's mine, it's my baby. Every step, every ounce of progress, feels good," he says.

His degree in human and orga­ni­za­tional devel­op­ment from Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­sity helped launch him as an entre­pre­neur, he says. His courses in mar­ket­ing, human-resource man­age­ment and lead­er­ship equipped him well to size up oppor­tu­ni­ties and run a startup. "Tak­ing it from an idea to an actual busi­ness, I felt like I had the tools," he says.

BG com­ments: Jason’s story illus­trates how col­lege is an incu­ba­tor for great ideas. On a sim­i­lar note, course­work, research grants, and vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­pared our own Kevin Adler to run Bet­ter­grads.

Prepar­ing for a rich, well-rounded life: To Megan DeLa­mar Schroeder, Texarkana, Texas, plan­ning the col­lege expe­ri­ence based entirely on future income demeans its true value. "The intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits … can­not be reduced to some kind of short-term cost benefit-analysis, as though one is pur­chas­ing a piece of prop­erty or an expen­sive sports car," she says.

She bor­rowed $40,000 to earn an eco­nom­ics degree from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity in the 1980s, which landed her only an entry-level job at a bank upon grad­u­a­tion. She spent 10 years pay­ing off her stu­dent loans. But the expe­ri­ence was worth every penny, she says. The oppor­tu­nity "to 'mar­i­nate' for four years in an amaz­ing envi­ron­ment" served as a "spring­board to life­long learn­ing and inquis­i­tive­ness," she says. She will encour­age her 10-year-old twin daugh­ters to hew to sim­i­lar val­ues when they start their col­lege search, she says.

BG com­ments: What’s the value of “expe­ri­ence” and “intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits?” As Chris Ander­son, author of Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price notes, “Tuition buys direct prox­im­ity to ask ques­tions, share ideas, and solicit feed­back from aca­d­e­mics like [UC Berke­ley Physics Pro­fes­sor Richard] Muller. It’s access to the net­work of other stu­dents and the idea exchange, help, and rela­tion­ships this pro­vides.” That sounds like value to me.

Click here to read the full arti­cle and feel free to share your thoughts below.

As Feb­ru­ary gets under­way, we can antic­i­pate many impor­tant mile­stones: Valentine’s Day, the day after Valentine’s Day (hello, dis­counted candy!), President’s Day week­end, and of course…the col­lege admis­sion deci­sions that will start crop­ping up in mailboxes/inboxes across the coun­try. It’s nerve-wracking, tense, and excit­ing all at the same time.

My own expe­ri­ence with this time turned out much dif­fer­ently than I first antic­i­pated. For one thing, after sub­mit­ting my appli­ca­tions I had more time to really con­sider what I wanted in a col­lege. I know that this sounds very counter-intuitive, but I had loved some big uni­ver­si­ties just as much as the small col­leges through­out the col­lege search and I applied to a mix of both. Specif­i­cally, George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity was high on my list for its loca­tion, the Elliot School of Inter­na­tional Affairs, and the fact that going there would mean meet­ing many other stu­dents whose inter­ests were sim­i­lar to mine.

By the time the fated deci­sion let­ters arrived, how­ever, I had decided that I needed to be on a smaller cam­pus. Col­lege would already be over­whelm­ing whether I went to the school with the largest stu­dent pop­u­la­tion or the very small­est. So even though I’d applied to sev­eral medium-to-large uni­ver­si­ties that appealed to me very much, I had a strong feel­ing that I would aim to end up at a small lib­eral arts col­lege. I never regret­ted apply­ing to that range of schools because it never meant that I would not have had great expe­ri­ences there; it’s sim­ply that some­times we need to go through the entire process, start to fin­ish, in order to gain clar­ity on what will be the best decision.

Of the schools that accepted me, I zeroed in on Bryn Mawr Col­lege, and Occi­den­tal Col­lege. Oddly enough, Oxy was one of the first schools I ever seri­ously con­sid­ered while Bryn Mawr was lit­er­ally my last tour and appli­ca­tion. They dif­fer greatly and yet I was equally drawn to each of them for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. I did overnight vis­its at both schools and e-mailed with pro­fes­sors from depart­ments that inter­ested me. I hemmed and hawed. I majorly freaked out about the deci­sion and con­sulted with just about any­one who would lis­ten. As cliché as it sounds, I even­tu­ally put away the rea­soned lists and com­par­isons and went where my heart took me.

Ulti­mately, I was very happy with my final choice—though hon­estly, I know that I would have been happy with many of the schools to which I applied. After all of the stress of apply­ing to schools, we some­times for­get that it can also be very dif­fi­cult to hold the decision-making power. Here’s what I learned:

• mak­ing pro/con lists is great—but don’t under­es­ti­mate the value of that clas­sic “gut feel­ing” (that’s what tipped the scales for me)
• tour guides and overnight hosts are help­ful, but it’s cru­cial to talk to as many stu­dents as pos­si­ble to get a gen­uine feel for the col­lege and its stu­dent body
• food is key: try out as many eat­ing loca­tions on cam­pus as pos­si­ble and be sure to ask about vegetarian/vegan/kosher/allergy accom­mo­da­tions if that’s a factor
• clar­ify finan­cial aid information

And most importantly…everyone will have an opin­ion and it’s def­i­nitely good to lis­ten to the input of fam­ily, friends, teach­ers, guid­ance coun­selors. Lis­ten. But then make your own decision.

How did you make your col­lege deci­sion? What mea­sures were most help­ful in the process? Least helpful?

When you are a kid, get­ting sick is not too big of a deal.  You get to miss a day of school, your par­ents take care of you, and you get sym­pa­thy from your friends.

At col­lege, being sick is a totally dif­fer­ent story.

You have to take care of your­self, and miss­ing a class means that you are behind sched­ule, and have to pro­cure the notes from some­one who did go to class.

I thought I had it all fig­ured out until this past week­end, when I awoke Sun­day with severe pain in my throat.  I slept very lit­tle, and I had to study for a midterm and fin­ish a paper while seri­ously under the weather.  It was not an easy expe­ri­ence for me, and I learned some impor­tant lessons:

Get as much rest as you can

When you are sick, sleep is your best friend.  Your pri­mary focus should be restor­ing your health, so don’t waste energy on par­ties or sports.

If you have to study or write a paper, give your­self breaks and don’t stay up work­ing all night.

We don’t do our best work when we are sick, and that is mag­ni­fied when we are sick and tired.

If it’s bad, see the doctor

Hit­ting up WebMD is not the same as going to a doc­tor; don’t try to diag­nose your­self.  Most schools have a stu­dent health cen­ter on cam­pus; please do not be afraid to visit it.

Plus, if you need a delay on a test/paper because of your ill­ness, most pro­fes­sors require copy of a doctor’s note.  Also, if you need an exten­sion on a paper or test, let your pro­fes­sors know as early as pos­si­ble, because they may not grant it if you ask them on the day of a test.

And if it is a really seri­ous ill­ness, see­ing a doc­tor is the fastest way to recovering.

Take care of yourself

Just as impor­tant as treat­ing your sick­ness is pre­vent­ing it in the first place.  Try to get a decent amount of sleep each night, and wash your hands regularly.

One last piece of per­sonal advice: do not drink alco­hol when you are sick.  Your body is strained enough when it is fight­ing an ill­ness; don’t bur­den it even more by get­ting drunk.

If any­one else has per­sonal sto­ries of being sick at col­lege, or advice on the topic, please com­ment below.

If you're fac­ing the dreaded-yet-necessary beme­hoth of an appli­ca­tion known as FAFSA (the Free Appli­ca­tion for Fed­eral Stu­dent Aid), you prob­a­bly have some ques­tions. For many peo­ple, fil­ing for taxes is a sim­pler process than ensur­ing that the FAFSA is com­pleted accu­rately and thoroughly.

The cum­ber­some umpteen-long FAFSA appli­ca­tion process has been an easy tar­get for com­plain­ing about the dif­fi­cul­ties of secur­ing higher edu­ca­tion, but alas, Sal­lie Mae (one of the biggest stu­dent loan providers) has come to stu­dents' aid… For secur­ing that finan­cial aid.

Brand-spankin' new, Sal­lie Mae's Feb­ru­ary Resource Cen­ter is chock-full of advice, instruc­tional videos, Twitter/Facebook links and even a chance to win $10,000. Par­tic­u­larly help­ful, the site's list of com­mon finan­cial aid myths dis­pel many notions that often pre­vent otherwise-eligible stu­dents for apply­ing for money for college.

When I applied for FAFSA in 2004, I relied on my dad's independent-business-owning tax knowl­edge and school coun­selors for help, but I still wasn't clear about the mean­ing of those end­less num­ber fields and cal­cu­la­tions. While I'd much rather see high school courses begin to offer more classes geared toward life skills (read: teach us how to fill out bureau­cratic forms), Sal­lie Mae's online tuto­r­ial would have helped leagues. Leagues, I say.

For more up-to-date help with FAFSA, check out a 7-part FAFSA FAQ series on the New York Times's blog, The Choice, writ­ten by the founder of FinAid.org, an online self-help guide to fund­ing your col­lege education.

Happy FAFSA-ing.

The Los Ange­les Times ran an arti­cle, where fash­ion colum­nist Adam Tschorn inter­viewed Neil Patrick Har­ris from “How I Met your Mother” who dis­cussed how much he loves his Paul Smith and Dolce & Gab­bana suits, because they fit and flat­ter his tall and nar­row frame like no other. The arti­cle reminded me of the time when I pur­chased a suit the sum­mer before my first year of col­lege. Though it was one size above my true suit size, the store man­ager said that I would grow into it. After four years, and some occa­sional rib­bing by for­mer co-workers who made a habit of not­ing that my suit was too big each time I wore it to work, I never, “grew into my suit.”

At Bet­ter­Grads, we think the idea of a great fit extends beyond the fash­ion world. Around this time of year, when prospec­tive stu­dents begin to receive their admis­sion let­ters and weigh their var­i­ous offers, the phrase “I’m look­ing for the col­lege that’s the best fit for me” becomes ubiquitous.

At first glance, gaug­ing how a par­tic­u­lar col­lege could be the “best fit” sounds neb­u­lous. To the best of my knowl­edge, there is no mag­i­cal num­ber crunch­ing for­mula where one can plug in a val­ues for vari­ables such as qual­ity of social life, num­ber of majors, professor-to-student ratio, etc, and yield a “best fit” rat­ing. How­ever, just as there are sim­ple ways to deter­mine that a suit does not fit one’s body (ex: if the shoul­der pads extend beyond your shoul­ders, you’ve got a prob­lem), there are sim­i­lar ways to eval­u­ate whether a col­lege will be a great fit too.

Do your home­work ahead of time

As a for­mer room­mate once told me, “When you know your­self, deci­sion mak­ing becomes easy.” With­out hav­ing to spend an exor­bi­tant amount of money revis­it­ing each school that sends you an accep­tance let­ter, take the time to cre­ate a check­list filled with pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion ques­tions high­light­ing the nec­es­sary attrib­utes required for a col­lege to be con­sid­ered a great fit. This exer­cise will pro­vide you with the nec­es­sary frame­work to com­pare schools across the board. In my case, I knew that I was not ready to attend a col­lege located 3,000 miles away from home. Addi­tion­ally, the strug­gles I expe­ri­enced in some of my larger Advanced Place­ment classes made me real­ize the value of the smaller learn­ing envi­ron­ment from my days at a pri­vate Jew­ish day school.

Con­sid­er­ing these fac­tors, I decided to pass on the admis­sion offers from two medium-sized schools on the east coast. Thus, putting in the time to gen­er­ate these pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion ques­tions was an excel­lent exer­cise in help­ing me nar­row down the list of schools that met my require­ments and saved me unnec­es­sary travel expenses.

Use your Eye-Q

Yes­ter­day, a co-worker lent me his copy of Stu­pid, Ugly, Unlucky, and Rich, an easy to read book filled with inter­views from a range of folks shar­ing their thoughts on what really leads to suc­cess. In one sec­tion of the book, Author Richard St. John shares a quo­ta­tion from Mar­i­lyn vos Savant , “‘To acquire knowl­edge, one must study; but to acquire wis­dom, one must observe.’”

So, when vis­it­ing schools on admit­ted stu­dents day, use your Eye-Q to help deter­mine whether a par­tic­u­lar school will be the “best fit.” For the intro­verted folks out there, an easy way to learn about cam­pus is to pick up a school news­pa­per. This one pub­lished doc­u­ment pro­vides a snap­shot of cam­pus polit­i­cal views, past social events, and in some cases, cur­rent stu­dent gripes. For those who would describe them­selves as extro­verts (myself included), I found that talk­ing to the stu­dents who were not tour guides or had any affil­i­a­tion with the admis­sions depart­ment pro­vided me with invalu­able insight to hard­ball top­ics rang­ing from access to pro­fes­sors, diver­sity, strength of the career cen­ter, and over­all sat­is­fac­tion with school. Overnight vis­its are also useful.

A com­mon refrain on many col­lege cam­puses is that they become a sort of “bub­ble” around their stu­dents, whether it’s a 1500-person lib­eral arts col­lege or a uni­ver­sity with 20,000 under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. Here at Bet­ter­Grads, we spend a lot of time dis­cussing col­lege com­mu­ni­ties and the impor­tance of get­ting involved on cam­pus and explor­ing dif­fer­ent classes, research oppor­tu­ni­ties, activ­i­ties, and events. A col­lege cam­pus can also feel a bit sti­fling at times, espe­cially when com­pared with sig­nif­i­cant real world events that put things into perspective.

Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina struck right around the week that I started col­lege. My first weeks at Oxy were marked by op-ed arti­cles in the cam­pus news­pa­per by upper­class­men dis­cussing (okay, crit­i­ciz­ing) our stu­dent body’s involve­ment in relief efforts on the Gulf coast. I got involved in a sort of ad hoc effort to raise ini­tial funds to con­tribute to local relief orga­ni­za­tions and, with a bit more time, exist­ing col­lege clubs devel­oped tools to edu­cate on the rel­e­vant issues, raise funds, and ulti­mately send stu­dents as relief vol­un­teers. By the fol­low­ing year, Pro­fes­sor Car­o­line Held­man had estab­lished a Dis­as­ter Pol­i­tics course that takes stu­dents to New Orleans to do relief work over win­ter break. This was a con­sid­er­able les­son in “burst­ing the bub­ble” in the sense that stu­dents and fac­ulty took the reins in stay­ing abreast of the sit­u­a­tion and, more impor­tantly, facil­i­tat­ing stu­dents’ abil­ity to get involved in as many dif­fer­ent ways as possible.

I com­pletely under­stand why many col­lege students—particularly in times of national and/or inter­na­tional crisis—feel that their course­work and other oblig­a­tions pale in com­par­i­son to the needs pre­sented by the sit­u­a­tion at hand. Rather than feel­ing inef­fec­tive or unhelp­ful, I would urge these stu­dents to find (or start) the rel­e­vant efforts on their cam­puses and sur­round­ing communities.

I know that this has already started to take place in the after­math of the recent earth­quake in Haiti. Class­room dis­cus­sions, teach-ins, speak­ers, fundrais­ers, sup­ply col­lec­tions, and many fur­ther endeav­ors are all extremely valu­able ways for uni­ver­si­ties to both con­tribute to aid­ing Haiti as well as prepar­ing their stu­dents to be informed citizens—and vol­un­teers and/or pro­fes­sion­als in rel­e­vant fields if they so choose.

Stu­dents, educators—what’s going on in your col­lege com­mu­ni­ties to help Haiti? What would you like to see uni­ver­si­ties do in the wake of a dev­as­tat­ing event like a nat­ural disaster?

Mil­lions of high school seniors await the wave of col­lege accep­tance and denial let­ters this spring. For most, the often gru­el­ing appli­ca­tion process is over, allow­ing for a healthy case of seniori­tis to set in. Once those let­ters arrive, how­ever, a whole new sea­son of plan­ning and decision-making begins. Pay­ing for college.

Many an eager appli­cant may encounter a tem­po­rary state of pride-induced mania after receiv­ing a "Yes, we like you" let­ter from their top-choice school… fol­lowed by the more sober­ing news of tuition and liv­ing costs bal­loon­ing upwards in the tens-of-thousands. Yikes!

The U.S. News & World Report recently (yes­ter­day) their updated 10 Steps to Raise $15K or More for Col­lege Now, and here are some high­lights from the article:

Big­ger and bet­ter tax breaks: The fed­eral gov­ern­ment esti­mates per­haps 2 mil­lion tuition-paying Amer­i­cans will be able to get as much as $2,500 back on their taxes when they file in 2010 and 2011 by tak­ing advan­tage of the new Amer­i­can Oppor­tu­nity tax credit. The new credit is tar­geted at low– and middle-income fam­i­lies and isn't avail­able to sin­gles earn­ing more than $90,000 a year or cou­ples earn­ing more than $180,000. Even those who earn so lit­tle that they owe no taxes can receive refund checks of up to $1,000.

Cheaper schools: The biggest increase in enroll­ment has been in two-year com­mu­nity col­leges, which are the lowest-priced col­leges in the coun­try. The sticker price of a year's tuition at an aver­age com­mu­nity col­lege rose by $220 for the 2009-10 aca­d­e­mic year, to $2,540, the Col­lege Board reported. But because of increased Pell Grants and tax breaks, the out-of-pocket (or net) price paid by com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dents actu­ally fell, the Col­lege Board believes. The aver­age com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dent got enough aid to pay all tuition, with $460 left over to help pay for books and sup­plies (which typ­i­cally add another $1,000 to total col­lege costs), the board estimates.

More, big­ger, cheaper, and eas­ier fed­eral stu­dent loans: At least 6 mil­lion stu­dents are tak­ing out fed­eral Stafford stu­dent loans this year, up from about 4 mil­lion two years ago. Young fresh­men can bor­row up to $5,500. Upper­class­men 24 and older can bor­row up to $12,500. The gov­ern­ment has made it eas­ier to repay those loans by allow­ing grad­u­ates to cap their monthly pay­ments below 15 per­cent of their incomes.

These are just some of the timely finan­cial aid info for col­lege that might make or break a col­lege deci­sion, espe­cially with prospec­tive col­lege stu­dents from fam­i­lies with mod­er­ate incomes.

If you have some tips for finan­cial aid that we've not yet men­tioned here at Bet­ter­Grads, please let us know.

Check out pre­vi­ous Bet­ter­Grad arti­cles related to fund­ing your col­lege education:

Count Those Pennies

Mak­ing Col­lege Affordable

Things to Think About Before Transferring

Pro­fes­sors Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman, edu­ca­tors and higher edu­ca­tion experts, recently pub­lished a list on The Huff­in­g­ton Post about “red flags” that col­lege stu­dents should look out for when encoun­ter­ing new pro­fes­sors. I tend to be wary of absolute state­ments like some of the advice that they offer while other tips rang true for me as well.

For one thing, Jacobs and Hyman advise stay­ing away from pro­fes­sors that are “bor­ing” and write that you can tell right away if a pro­fes­sor will be bor­ing or not. I feel that “bor­ing” is a very sub­jec­tive term and although it can cer­tainly describe many peo­ple (or at least their approach to teach­ing or pub­lic speak­ing), I think that it is a bit unfair to make such an absolute state­ment. Stu­dents respond to dif­fer­ent teach­ing styles—the pro­fes­sor that one stu­dent finds totally intrigu­ing very well may bore another stu­dent. I put off tak­ing a course with a pro­fes­sor that some class­mates said was bor­ing. When I finally took his class, I loved it! Fur­ther­more, the first class of the semes­ter is a bit of a throw­away class: per­sonal intro­duc­tions, going over the syl­labus, and real­iz­ing that the assigned class­room is either way too big or too small for the size of the class. Sorry if it’s bor­ing, but I would urge stu­dents not to judge a professor’s teach­ing style on that first class.
Jacobs and Hyman also cau­tion against pro­fes­sors who assign an “undoable amount of work—or none at all.” First of all, every col­lege has dif­fer­ent ways of orga­niz­ing courses accord­ing to level and it’s impor­tant that stu­dents pay atten­tion to the number/level of the courses as well as their titles; courses above a cer­tain num­ber (or let­ter, code, etc.) may be con­sid­ered advanced or upper-level and thus too chal­leng­ing for under­class­men. Dou­ble check before you register.

Also, some pro­fes­sors “front load” their courses in order to get the best work out of stu­dents before the inevitable avalanche of final papers at the end of the semester—my advi­sor actu­ally did this with all of her classes and it worked very well. It meant jump­ing into paper-writing ear­lier than other classes demanded, but her classes typ­i­cally closed with less ardu­ous assign­ments to bal­ance things out.

I would be sur­prised to find a pro­fes­sor who can get away with assign­ing noth­ing at all, if only because most uni­ver­si­ties have some sort of over­ar­ch­ing pol­icy that would not allow zero or barely exis­tent course­work. So if Jacobs and Hyman are con­cerned with pro­fes­sors who base the major­ity of the final grade on one big paper and the rest on everybody’s favorite phe­nom­e­non, par­tic­i­pa­tion, then I under­stand this con­cern. Again, I think that it is a mat­ter of how advanced the course is and its role in the over­all curriculum.

While I believe that it is per­fectly accept­able and even advan­ta­geous to stu­dents and pro­fes­sors alike to focus on an extended research paper in upper-level courses, stu­dents deserve ear­lier and more fre­quent eval­u­a­tions of their learn­ing in intro­duc­tory and sur­vey courses. If a stu­dent finds himself/herself in a class with only one major grade and feels dis­sat­is­fied with this for­mat, then I would sug­gest talk­ing to the depart­ment chair to find a suit­able sub­sti­tute for the par­tic­u­lar course.

Check out the rest of Jacobs and Hyman’s advice and let us know what you think—have you expe­ri­enced any of the sce­nar­ios that they present? What are your pro­fes­so­r­ial “red flags” What should not be con­sid­ered a bad sign?

Last week, Elizabeth's post about books that mat­tered in col­lege was a poignant review of the last­ing impres­sion of books: both in our minds and in the groove cut into our shoul­der from increas­ingly heavy over-the-shoulder book bags.

While noth­ing will ever replace the tac­tile sen­sa­tion of thumb­ing through hun­dreds of  high­lighted pages, e-books are here to stay, whether librar­i­ans like it or not. For­tu­nately, phys­i­cal book-loving cul­ture is alive and well in the world, so the advent of dig­i­tal texts doesn't seem to be push­ing out the tra­di­tional form just yet.

A recent arti­cle in The Chron­i­cle of Higher Edu­ca­tion dis­cussed a new state law requir­ing that all post-secondary edu­ca­tion text­books be dig­i­tized by 2010. (Post-secondary edu­ca­tion = all edu­ca­tion after high school.) While not affect­ing the exis­tence of tree-made text­books, the law will force pub­lish­ers to ensure that all of their mate­r­ial is avail­able electronically.

Col­lege text­books are expen­sive. In fact, text­books often highly con­sid­ered when esti­mat­ing the cost of tuition each semes­ter. E-books tend to run far cheaper than phys­i­cal text­books, and The Chron­i­cle notes an exam­ple of an e-book cost­ing nearly half of its phys­i­cal coun­ter­part. HALF!

A quick search on Ama­zon reveals that the top account­ing col­lege text­books run between $140 and $200. Con­sider that the aver­age col­lege stu­dent pur­chases at least one text­book per 3–5 classes per semes­ter, and we're talk­ing poten­tially thou­sands of dol­lars bet­ter spent on gas. Or Cheez-Its. In addi­tion to a huge cost ben­e­fit to stu­dents, text­book com­pa­nies are likely grow­ing tired of the count­less unsold books returned to them each semes­ter. An e-book can't be returned. At least not yet.

As an Eng­lish major who took three lit­er­a­ture review classes in one semes­ter and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions major who took another three comm. the­ory classes that same semes­ter, I attest that my shoul­ders (and wal­let) have yet to recover from tens of thou­sands of pages bur­den­ing me for those 14 straight weeks. (And, since I have a near-religious stigma against throw­ing away, reselling or aban­don­ing books of any kind, I still own all of them. From each semes­ter. Sigh.)

While this post may sound like a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment cham­pi­oning the mer­its of the e-book, this cam­paign doesn't need much sup­port, as it's already hap­pen­ing. In a world that's grow­ing more accus­tomed to pay­ing bills, book­ing flights and find­ing love online, it's no sur­prise that edu­ca­tion is mak­ing the e-transition, too.

Per­haps next week we'll dis­cuss how the modern-day class­room is trans­form­ing… within your com­puter screen.