BetterGrads College News & Views is an ongoing collection of college-themed posts around the web. Our social media team, partners and guest contributors take part in providing this service to you.

This week, we came across several articles about how to negotiate your student loan package, relative poverty levels for college-age students and non-students, plus a fun way to look at college clubs. Enjoy reading!

College Life:

10 Bizarre But Real College Clubs (Zen College Life)

Did you always want to be a highly-skilled assassin? Or just have an excuse to stare at people on campus? We’ve all got strange interests, but these institutions of higher learning have taken the next step by offering up a club for that craving.

What to do if you’re failing a class in college (Helium)

The agony and defeat of a failing grade may first pop up in college. Maybe you never worried about failing a class before, but with the hectic pace and responsibility of college, you’re looking at a “fail.” Don’t panic! Read on to find out how to mitigate and resolve the problem without losing your mind.

The Value of College:

Tips for Negotiating a Better College Financial Aid Package (Ask the Money Coach)

Did you even know you could negotiate your financial aid? This author gives a list of tips for asking for a better rate and terms that could save you thousands. Never hurts to ask!

What the Lost Decade of Wages Means for Colleges and Their Graduates (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Yes, tuition is expensive. But what will it mean for your long-term earning potential? This article details the relative poverty level for college-age students and non-students.

Getting into the right classes can be quite a difficult task in college, especially in your first couple of years, when you do not have registration priority.  Since you do not get to register first, sometimes you will find yourself in a class with a difficult professor.

This is also the case when it comes to required classes, for a major or minor; but, you can find a way to survive, and succeed in the class.

So if you leave the first lecture in fear or disgust, know that there are ways to endure this tough situation

Use the TA

If you have a professor whom you find insufferable, consult the TA for further help.  If you have a discussion section, it can be a great way to get clarification on difficult or confusing material.

When I took Statistics in my freshman year, I could not stand my professor.  She moved through the material far too quickly, and her strong accent caused me even more confusion.

Fortunately, my TA was fantastic, pretty much saving my grade in the class.  His discussion section made the material understandable, and his one section more valuable for me than the professor’s three lectures.

Go to the office

In a big lecture hall, professors can seem larger than life.  But remember that they are people too, not figures to be afraid of.

All professors have office hours, and most will make appointments to accommodate your schedule.  Talk to them, because they want to help you.  Even if their lectures are excruciating, they are likely approachable one-on-one, and it is worth a visit if you need help.

I took my first upper division class in my sophomore year, and my teacher was extremely difficult.  Her lectures contained more information than I could process, and her homework assignments were very difficult.

But when I finally got up the courage to visit her office, she helped me with the subject matter, and remained patient with me.  So don’t be afraid or intimidated, because they want to help you.

And if/when you do visit office hours, make sure you are polite, no matter how insufferable their lectures may be.

If anyone else has advice on dealing with difficult professors, please post below.

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.

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?

The image of the stressed-out student bearing a bag full of books as s/he trudges to the library aptly reflects a significant part of the college experience. But what is in that bag, exactly? Across my college career, mine was at times filled with a heavy economics textbook (yikes) and introductory political science tomes. Later I scoured the library for every book I could find on youth, political participation, and the media for my senior thesis paper. Books, it would seem, make the student.

My freshman core seminar was an English literature class called Urban Fictions. The readings were based around the cities from which they originated and/or examined—from Baudelaire and Paris to Gloria Naylor and New York City. Nina Revoyr’s contemporary novel Southland served as a sort of cornerstone for the course since it was about Los Angeles, where Occidental College is located. The book is part mystery and part historical narrative about the Watts riots in 1965. I think that reading fiction that takes place wherever you are living at the time can be a particularly meaningful experience because literary writing can shed light on history and culture in ways that non-fiction accounts simply cannot.

Part of why I decided to attend Oxy was because I was born in Los Angeles, but reading Southland in my first semester of college opened up a whole different aspect of the city for me. Of course I recommend the book, but I also recommend seeking out literature about whatever city your new university is located—it can be a very valuable way to contextualize the start of a college career.

Interestingly, an introductory theater class required Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke as part of a memorization exercise. The book dispenses poetic advice and insight in the form of letters that Rilke wrote to a former student. Sometimes the advice comes off as a little cheesy and other times a bit grandiose—I remember gushing about the book to a classmate who rolled his eyes in apparent disagreement—but it’s a rare occasion that such a book is assigned these days, especially in a theater class.

We did not use the book very much beyond that early assignment, which left me with the slim volume of life advice that I’ve since re-read several times. I find the lyricism of the words comforting and the content motivating, a combination that can become very useful when adjusting to college life.

I took a Spanish class called Hispanic Autobiography the semester before I left to study abroad in Chile. Reading Mi País Inventado (My Invented Country) by famed Chilean writer Isabel Allende was an excellent way to prepare, plus I presented on the book with two classmates who were also getting ready for the same program. Reading about a place before you travel there is a time-honored way of enriching the experience, but Allende’s attention to detail and reflections on the nuances of daily life during Chile’s dictatorship also heightened my attention to detail in my own life and travels.

Sometimes when I look back on my four years of college, I see stretches of time and experience punctuated with what I read. None of these books were for classes in my field of study, politics. Of course several readings from courses in my major also stand out in my memory, but these are the peripheral three; a few volumes that formed a sort of cerebral border around the majority of my learning.

So there you have it. What books meant something to you in college? What should every college student read?

A recent article in The New York Times discussed criticism that too many honor societies in American high schools is, well, not very honorable. Reporter Winnie Hu writes that honor societies started out ways to distinguish the “top 5 or 10 percent of a class but have become a routine item on college résumés.” Moreover, the sheer number of societies now available for membership (some are national societies with local chapters while others are unique to each high school) does not necessarily translate into substantive experiences for the members.

This article resonated with my own experience with honor societies in high school and their ultimate role in college admissions. I was a member of my high school’s chapter of the National Honor Society as well as vice-president of our Spanish Honor Society. Picking up our membership pins was the extent of the involvement required for the former and planning the next class of members’ induction ceremony comprised my vice-presidential responsibilities. Pretty limited. Imagine my surprise when I got to college and learned that NHS is a huge time commitment at many high schools!

Part of the problem seems to be that by the time students are inducted into these honor societies (often at the end of junior year or beginning of senior year), students have already established their extracurricular commitments and it is difficult to demand that the very students being rewarded for their high achievements tack on additional activities. Faculty sponsors and brave chapter presidents must walk a fine line between fulfilling a society’s goals and not burdening its members with further obligations.

The NYT article also discusses criticisms that as more honor societies are established, the degree of “honor” associated with them diminishes. This is a point where I am somewhat torn; on the one hand, I agree with the argument that making membership in an honor society extremely accessible (by having such a multitude of organizations) rather contradicts the very meaning of an honor society. At the same time, however, I don’t want to imply that various fields (languages, the arts, etc) do not merit their own organizations with which high schools can recognize students who have achieved in a given area of study.

I did not see the potential downside to boasting two honor society memberships on my college applications until I started doing alumni interviews. Suddenly I realized that if they asked to talk about either organization, I would have almost nothing to say—what’s the point of that? I think that I only ended up being asked once about the NHS, which I honestly explained is treated more like an honorary society than an honor society at my high school. The distinction is important, especially when listing these organizations on a résumé or list of activities. Getting stuck in a situation where it’s clear that membership does not translate into substantive experience—and this was not articulated on the initial application—is not very conducive towards academic and professional success.

As the article cited here discusses, some high schools have actually cut existing honor societies in order to combat this problem. While I see the value in this action, my first choice would be for high schools to clearly convey the objective of each organization so that the role of each member is clear. If the society is intended to be purely honorary, then say so. Furthermore, it may be useful for high schools to limit the number of honor societies to which each student can belong. This would encourage students to actually consider their interests rather than simply try to rack up as many memberships as possible which, as we see from the article, may not actually help them in college admissions.

It’s a tricky situation—what do you think? Did you belong to an honor society in high school? Do you think that doing so (or not) made a difference in your college admissions results?

Throughout my college career, I made a lot of resolutions. I made resolutions at the beginning of each school year as well as the calendar year, so basically I made a new set of goals/resolutions every semester. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. In all honesty, many of the same resolutions surfaced at the start of several semesters. What worked? What didn’t?

Make the Dean’s list every semester for the rest of college.
I was very excited to receive a letter at the end of my second semester of college informing me of my place on the elusive Dean’s list. I had no idea what the GPA minimum was or if any other indices of evaluation existed (i.e. number of credits, upper-level coursework, etc). Nevertheless, I put more value on that piece of paper than the actual schoolwork that got me there. I don’t think I ever received another letter even though some semesters I earned the same or better grades—the criteria was never clear and, in reality, it did not make much of a difference in how hard I worked. I was shooting for an external measurement of achievement that ultimately did not hold much relevance to my individual course of study. I think that setting goals for grades can be extremely useful, but they should be made with regard to the student and not directed towards a broad, institutional benchmark.

Eat one meal a day with someone else.
Seems obvious, right? Wrong. By the third week of the semester, classes are in full swing, events and extracurricular projects need planning, and internships eat up time. It’s pretty easy to fall into a pattern of eating on the go or while studying and writing papers. To-go containers are a college student’s best friend, but it’s also useful to actually plan time with your real best friends as well. The first time I actually resolved to sit down to eat with a friend every time, it felt kind of strange and artificial. And no, I didn’t actually fulfill it every single day. Setting the goal, however, meant that I actually made the effort to do so and I’m glad that I did. I was more relaxed on days that I scheduled lunch or brunch or coffee with friends and I didn’t feel like the weeks were flying by quite as fast—one resolution definitely worth keeping.

Go to more events on campus.
This is one regular appearance on my resolutions list that could have used some tweaking. It’s vague. I would intend to go to “more events” without actually thinking through what I meant: Speakers? Career workshops? Performing arts events? It’s no wonder that I ended up skipping most of the campus happenings I jotted all over my day planner. College calendars are chock full of a vast range of opportunities to see authors and experts of all kinds, musical performances, join discussion groups, learn about a certain career, and so much more. There was no way that I was going to hit it all. Eventually I realized that I was more interested in certain speaker series and career workshops than other events, and aiming to attend more of these made this resolution far more feasible.

Read for fun.
If it happens, great. But do yourself a favor and stop stressing about the stack of untouched bestsellers on your bedside table. Reading for fun is supposed to be fun, not a source of more stress!

Does anyone else make academic resolutions at the start of each year or semester? If so, what are they?

Toward the tail end of my senior year, I would end most weeknights with the following ritual: Around 11:00 PM, I would climb a flight of stairs up to Jason’s suite, and would engage in a 30 minute session of playing one of Electronic Arts’ best selling video games, FIFA 2009 on Jason’s XBox.

I went through a long and embarrassing newbie curve. Jason, and his suitemate, Josh, would select the worst teams imaginable while I would try my best with FC Barcelona, (the equivalent of the Los Angeles Lakers, in terms of talent, but in the world of soccer). It was not until the third or forth week when the 10-0 drubbings turned into tight, 2-0 losses or, if I got lucky, a 1-0 win!

Jason and Josh are skilled gamers. Their talents were not just limited to sports video games. They could hang with the best of them in Halo too.Keep Reading…

Had Occidental College offered some kind of Video Game science minor, I can guarantee you that Jason and Josh would have signed up for courses. And while Occidental College does not plan on doing this anytime soon (to the best of my knowledge), the Los Angeles Times ran article stating that the University of California at Irvine, just added itself to the growing list of schools who offer students the ability to major in Video Game Science or Game Science. Other schools include Full Sail University and Bettergrads co-founder Erhardt Graef’s alma-mater Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Do we get to play Halo 2 during class?!!

One question that arises with such a major would be the associated coursework. Most schools would not be keen on having their students spending class time engaging in massive Halo tournaments. An article from the Washington Post noted that students at Carnegie Mellon, take classes such as Intro to Entertainment Technology, Building Virtual Worlds and Game Design. When I took a look at the course requirements for a BS in Game Design and Development from RIT, I was pleased to learn that the major encompasses a variety of subjects including Discrete mathematics, Physics, website development, and of course, Game Software Development III, and Foundations of 2D Graphics programming. Future students, be prepared to study more than just Halo maps.

Will they take me seriously after college? I mean video game design is more ledgit than basket weaving, right?

Another point to consider is the validity of such a major. When I spoke to my friend Josh about this, he stated, “The quality of teaching (and sincerity of the major’s educational spirit) matters much more than the content…it makes sense to have a games major.” With the course requirements at RIT, it is safe to say that there are plenty of transferable skills. And while some employers may chuckle or raise an eyebrow when they see BS in Video Game Design on a student’s resume, such a response can never take away from that individual’s passion for the field.

Want to learn more about the projects students have made during their college careers? Curious readers can check out the links to cool projects in video game design below:

Sociable

Dino Quest

WOW inspired RPG

There’s no way around it—finals are rough. Whether it’s exams, papers, group projects, take-home tests, or other evaluations, finals in college are stressful. I think that part of it comes from a sort of group mentality that seems to permeate college campuses, small and large, around this time of the semester. It took me the first year and a half or so of college to figure out some reliable approaches to tackling finals while staying as sane as possible.

1) Use study groups wisely
Study groups can be great ways to divvy up tedious exam preparation and allow individual students to play to their strengths while helping each other out. Good stuff. But study groups also run the risk of becoming ineffective, which just adds to everybody’s stress levels. Study groups need to be kept relatively small for the sake of equal workloads and simple scheduling. Freshman year I found myself in a study group for a Spanish literature class that comprised almost the entire class and I don’t think it helped anybody. There is no shame in bowing out gracefully in a situation such as this one—or suggest splitting the group in half!

2) Scope out multiple study spaces
Whether you’ve studied in the library all semester long or not, now is when everyone starts trickling in and snagging the sweet table by the coffee kiosk that you covet. It’s important to have a few places on or near campus that you can rely on as workspaces—I got a fair amount of work done at my own desk but also utilized study rooms/lounges in dorms, empty classrooms, and even on-campus eating facilities during off-peak hours. The latter was actually a great place to study in the non-busy time between lunch and dinner because I could spread out my books on a big table and the easy access to coffee was a major plus.

3) Plan breaks and rewards
I think that I would have lost my mind during finals had it not been for late-night trips to In-n-out and borrowed Friends DVDs. Even when I still had a mountain of studying left to do, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to run full speed ahead without taking a pause to commiserate with friends or just get absorbed in an entertaining sitcom for a bit. Sometimes I felt guilty taking a few hours off here and there, but the times that I forced myself to work for too long without a break, I just ended up more exhausted and less productive. Taking the time to recharge is crucial.

Final exam periods can provoke a rather intense, collective sense of impending doom on a college campus. I am still susceptible to this mentality and even now, as a grad student, find myself treating each final paper as if it will make or break the rest of my education. It’s not a healthy approach and I constantly remind myself to just take each task as it comes and try not to inflate its significance to epic proportions. Taking things in stride helps keep any endeavor in perspective, which can only help in the long run.

Jacob, I totally agree with you on the “failure” front. Having just graduated in May (and in school all over again in a school), I think a lot about the choices I made and did not make during my undergraduate years. There are certainly things that I would have done differently and maybe even wish had never happened–but the cliche rings true that I would not be the person I am today if it weren’t for those mistakes or missteps. The only reason I feel capable of being a grad student now, for instance, is because I just spent four years figuring out how I learn best. I used to be obsessed with flash cards; call it a stubborn high school holdover, but I insisted on making flash cards for just about everything throughout my freshman year of college even when they really weren’t the best study tool. Eventually this dawned on me (probably in the form of red marks all over a blue book exam) and I realized that I had to explore other study techniques to find what worked best for me.

I also regret how much I pushed myself into a certain double major “box” from the get-go and then had to pull myself out when I realized that what I thought I wanted to do as a high school senior might not be true forever. I started out planning a Diplomacy & World Affairs/Theater major, but my last-minute decision to drop a theater class and try out Race & American Politics was possibly the most liberating moment of my undergraduate career. The realization that I was in charge of my academic path was extremely powerful and I’m so grateful that it happened because I ended up very happy with my Politics major/Spanish minor. Sometimes I look back on how frenzied I was as a freshman, trying to map out a rigid 4-year plan, and wonder whatever made me place all that pressure on myself in the first place!

Along similar lines, I experimented with so many extracurricular opportunities. Although some of them were definitely not good fits from the start (i.e. wish I’d known that Assistant Business Manager for the college newspaper meant folding and stamping copies for 200+ off-campus subscribers. Every. Single. Week.) I am glad that I allowed myself the flexibility to explore a variety of options. Otherwise, I never would have found the ones (writing for aforementioned newspaper, writing advising, Orientation team, etc) that felt truly fulfilling.

It’s easy to look at mistakes we’ve made and call them “regrets” and “failures.” But those words have such negative connotations, I think that we are better served to view these instances as learning experiences instead. Easier said than done, I know–but so worth it when we come out on the other side more prepared for the next challenge.