Adults can find the means to go back to school despite the pressures of work, family, and a mortgage with this guide to funding continued education. With expanded information on online and distance learning and part-time classes and new financial aid, loan, and scholarship opportunities, this updated resource teaches adult students how to find and win scholarships designed especially for them, obtain financial support from employers, get financial aid for distance learning, receive larger financial aid packages, take advantage of educational tax breaks, trade tuition costs for volunteer service, and cancel education debts with loan forgiveness programs. Twenty firsthand anecdotes inspire adult students with creative and unusual ways to pay for their education.
Completely revised with updated descriptions, contact information, websites, and available monies, this guide to financing higher education is the only resource students need to fund their pursuit of knowledge. Balancing detailed explanations with real-life examples and practical resources, the featured topics include finding and winning scholarships, requesting a reassessment from colleges for more financial aid, maximizing assistance from state and federal governments, taking advantage of educational tax breaks, and benefiting from government-subsidized student loans. Creative strategies—such as starting profitable dorm-room enterprises, trading tuition costs for volunteer service, and canceling debts with loan-repayment programs—help students find extra money when more traditional routes are exhausted. The provided tips are designed for students of all ages and levels and their parents.
Examining the two basic components of scholarship competition—essays and interviews—this vital guidebook offers practical advice and real-life examples to guide students through the entire application process. A roundtable panel of judges and applicants supply inside information regarding the winning qualities sought after by award-giving organizations and tips for finding scholarships by using books, the internet, personal connections, and sources in the community. With insight into the judges' criteria for a successful application, 30 previously awarded scholarship essays are thoroughly analyzed, from choice of topic to writing style. Revealing unique strategies for preparation and overcoming nervousness, this definitive resource also includes sample interview questions and answers.
Based on the real-life experiences of students who were admitted to the United States' most prestigious universities, this guide provides proven strategies to get into and pay for any college. Detailing what high school students—from freshmen to seniors—can do to prepare, this updated edition addresses recent changes in admissions and financial aid processes and the increasingly popular early-admissions option. Examples of applications, interviews, and 25 actual college-admission essays complement information on how parents can help without hurting, what it takes to ace the SAT and ACT, and where students can find free cash for tuition. Stories of students' successes and failures reveal how the college-admissions and financial-aid processes really work, while giving a personal face to what is often seen as an impersonal experience. A section for special groups includes admission considerations for athletes, transfer and international students, students with disabilities, and home-schooled students.
The secrets, tips, and strategies used by actual students to win millions of dollars in financial aid and scholarships are revealed in this completely revised guide for parents and high school, college, and graduate students. Every step of the scholarship process is examined, with advice on finding the right scholarships, crafting applications, writing exceptional essays, and asking the college for a financial aid reassessment. Profiles of scholarship judges give potential applicants insight into the scholarship selection process and the qualities that judges seek in selecting the winners. A fully updated scholarship directory contains the top 150 scholarships that anyone can win with awards worth more than $100 million; examples of winning scholarship applications, essays, and interview questions and answers are also included.
Illustrating that there is a spot for everyone, this completely revised recruitment manual is a go-to guide for all high school students that dream of participating in college athletics. It addresses not only how to get recruited by top colleges and universities but also how to excel academically in both high school and college to ensure a successful career as a student-athlete. Offering insider information, this guidebook for getting scholarship money also provides tips for understanding the complicated NCAA recruiting rules, information on what colleges really want from athletes in their programs, and techniques for developing individual skills to transition successfully from high school to college athletics. Candid and insightful input from college athletics experts, college and high school counselors, and athletic trainers helps athletes achieve success in many areas of their life—including training, nutrition, and time management—catapulting these students beyond their peers both on and off the field.
Students will prepare powerful and successful admission essays with the tools provided in this invaluable, newly-updated resource for the college-bound. Examples of 50 real essays are included, discussing such topics as leadership, personal obstacles, athletics, public service, special talents, and future goals. The strengths and successes of each example are analyzed, as well as the inspirations of each writer. A comprehensive writing workshop provides tips toward selecting topics, developing stories, editing drafts, and applying finishing touches. Further examples of 12 unsuccessful essays, a list of 25 easy mistakes to avoid, and new interviews with admissions officers are presented to help would-be entrants avoid costly blunders.
Written within an educational framework, this handbook offers general guidance to help students do a self-assessment and select the top eight colleges that are the strongest fit for them. Establishing readers as anthropologists, students will learn to observe 20 campus cultures, assess each one, and research their options in American higher education. Additionally, it offers several basic assumptions that are contrary to common knowledge about getting into college. Written by a college counselor with decades of experience, this guide offers insight into the college admissions process and allows students to hone in on the schools that are right for them.
It's a fact that children with disabilities are more likely than other children to be living in single-parent homes. If you're raising a child with disabilities on your own—solo parenting—whether by choice or circumstance, you'll find a wealth of support, affirmation, and practical ideas in this guide to living well. <P> This is the first book for solo parents whose kids have a wide variety of disabilities (physical, neurodevelopmental, and psychiatric), and who are widowed, separated, divorced, single by choice, adoptive or foster parents, or military spouses with deployed partners. <P> In Going Solo, Laura Marshak skillfully weaves together extensive interviews and survey results of solo mothers and fathers (and grandparents, too) with reliable coping strategies gleaned from 25 years as a practicing psychologist and specialist in disability adjustment. The book's insightful personal narratives and the author's deconstruction of these to offer universal lessons—from the basic (e.g., practice mindfulness to de-stress) to the profound (e.g., cultivate gratitude as the antidote to resentment)—can help readers assess and transform their own lives for the better. Agencies, extended family, and friends will want a copy of this book, too, to support the solos they care about.
Visual supports—any pictorial, graphic, or scheduling aid—are excellent tools for teaching academic, daily living, and self-help skills to people with autism. This reader-friendly and practical book shows teachers, parents, and service providers how to make low-tech visual supports, and offers strategies for using them. <P> The second edition includes expanded information about using visual supports with the youngest children, advice on fading supports, and updated photo examples of: activity schedules, calendars, charts, checklists & to-do lists, color coding, flip books, graphic organizers, mnemonics, nametags, photo boards, Power Cards, scripts, Social Stories, and video modeling. <P> A new chapter covers high-tech options for visual supports (iPads, smartphones, etc.) and how to choose appropriate ones, and particular features that are good for people with autism.