Recommendation Letters
Recommendation letters are often used by students during college admissions and job applications. Some graduate schools may even require prospective students to have at least two letters of recommendation during admissions. Writing a recommendation letter for someone else is a huge responsibility and getting everything just right is important. If you are hoping to get a shining recommendation from a teacher, employer or mentor, here are some tips to guide you in this process.
1) Make sure you choose a person to provide your recommendation that knows your strengths.
2) Give information to the teacher, employer or mentor about who will receive the recommendation and why they are writing it. Few people write outstanding recommendations well, either because they don't know you well enough or because they don’t want to be bothered. If you help them by providing answers relating to it, they will feel more comfortable in the process.
3) Make sure you give the person who is writing the recommendation plenty of time.
4) Lastly, thank the person for the outstanding recommendation.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
TIP OF THE WEEK – May 10, 2010
How to Manage the Cost of Textbooks:
E-books, textbook rental services, and new laws could help students save money. Textbook prices, which have nearly tripled in the past 20 years, may finally start to decline thanks to some new laws, technology, and upstart companies. Undergraduates who take advantage of the new alternatives could easily slash their textbook costs in half this coming academic year. That means the typical student could save more than $300. There are new laws that are being put in place where congressional negotiators spent closed door sessions hammering out bipartisan agreement on a proposal designed to rein in skyrocketing book prices. The proposal requires publishers to provide more pricing information to professors who, in the past, often assigned books without knowing how much they would cost students. In addition, the new law would require publishers to "unbundle" the increasingly common and expensive packages of textbooks, CD-ROMs, workbooks, and Web tools so students could buy whatever part they need and not have to spring for the parts they don't need.
Using E-Books, students who don't mind studying a computer screen instead of a paper-and-ink book have several free or low-cost options. The growing number of free E-books archived on sites like Project Gutenberg (which has jumped to 28,000 from 5,000 free E-books since 2002) and four-year-old Google Books is especially helpful for students assigned older, out-of-copyright books such as literary classics.
In addition, many students are accessing free texts from E-book sharing sites such as scribd.com or bitme.org. But publishers charge that many of the sites are too much like the original Napster--allowing illegal sharing of copyrighted material. Such allegations led to the mid-July shutdown of textbooktorrents.com. Those who want legal access to up-to-date E-textbooks can check out coursesmart.com, the new E-book site created by a half dozen of the nation's biggest textbook publishers.
Typically for 30 to 50 percent less than the sticker price of the print version, a student can download an E-Book. A year's access to the online version of the single most popular introductory psychology textbook, David G. Myers's Psychology, sells for $55 on Coursesmart. It retails new on Amazon for $83. (Used print versions were available on Amazon for less than $60.) Coursesmart students can highlight and type notes on electronic copies of a book, copy small sections, and print out a few pages at a time, but they won't get access to CD-ROMs or other extras, and don't get to keep a book permanently because the files have digital expiration codes.
E-books, textbook rental services, and new laws could help students save money. Textbook prices, which have nearly tripled in the past 20 years, may finally start to decline thanks to some new laws, technology, and upstart companies. Undergraduates who take advantage of the new alternatives could easily slash their textbook costs in half this coming academic year. That means the typical student could save more than $300. There are new laws that are being put in place where congressional negotiators spent closed door sessions hammering out bipartisan agreement on a proposal designed to rein in skyrocketing book prices. The proposal requires publishers to provide more pricing information to professors who, in the past, often assigned books without knowing how much they would cost students. In addition, the new law would require publishers to "unbundle" the increasingly common and expensive packages of textbooks, CD-ROMs, workbooks, and Web tools so students could buy whatever part they need and not have to spring for the parts they don't need.
Using E-Books, students who don't mind studying a computer screen instead of a paper-and-ink book have several free or low-cost options. The growing number of free E-books archived on sites like Project Gutenberg (which has jumped to 28,000 from 5,000 free E-books since 2002) and four-year-old Google Books is especially helpful for students assigned older, out-of-copyright books such as literary classics.
In addition, many students are accessing free texts from E-book sharing sites such as scribd.com or bitme.org. But publishers charge that many of the sites are too much like the original Napster--allowing illegal sharing of copyrighted material. Such allegations led to the mid-July shutdown of textbooktorrents.com. Those who want legal access to up-to-date E-textbooks can check out coursesmart.com, the new E-book site created by a half dozen of the nation's biggest textbook publishers.
Typically for 30 to 50 percent less than the sticker price of the print version, a student can download an E-Book. A year's access to the online version of the single most popular introductory psychology textbook, David G. Myers's Psychology, sells for $55 on Coursesmart. It retails new on Amazon for $83. (Used print versions were available on Amazon for less than $60.) Coursesmart students can highlight and type notes on electronic copies of a book, copy small sections, and print out a few pages at a time, but they won't get access to CD-ROMs or other extras, and don't get to keep a book permanently because the files have digital expiration codes.
Monday, May 3, 2010
TIP OF THE WEEK- MAY 4, 2010
Is it okay to double deposit at colleges?
Article by Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post
It’s April 1st, and many high school seniors across the country are learning today which colleges accepted them and which did not. Those students who applied to a range of colleges are likely to receive more than one acceptance, and for many, a difficult decision lies ahead. For some, "double depositing" becomes attractive. What's that?
I asked a college administrator and a college admissions counselor to explain it from their different perspectives--one representing a school and the other the student. Below is a post written by Bruce Vinik, president of Vinik Educational Placement Services, Inc., in Cabin John, Md.
“Double depositing: Two words that strike fear in the hearts of even the most seasoned college admissions officers.
Now that high school seniors have received the news they have been anxiously awaiting for the last few months, the time has arrived for them to make one final decision.
If they have been fortunate enough to gain admission to more than one college, they must decide where they intend to spend the next four (or more) years. And that decision must be made by May 1st, the national reply date for all admitted students.
For many students, this is an easy decision; they have a clear first choice and know exactly where they want to go to college. To guarantee themselves a space at their favorite school, all they need to do is send a non-refundable enrollment deposit check. At some colleges this may be as little as $100, while at others it can be as much as $500 or $1,000.
For some students, the final choice is not so easy. They have two or three colleges that they are considering and aren’t sure about what to do; they love all of their schools for different reasons. And though they re-visit their colleges and look to teachers and friends (and even parents) for guidance, they are racked by indecision. So what do they do? They postpone the inevitable by sending checks to two colleges – that is, they double deposit.
What many of these students and their parents don’t know is that double depositing is a violation of their responsibilities as established by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). The reason many of them don’t know they are in violation is that they have never heard about this or any other “responsibility” and have no idea who or what NACAC is. But students need to understand that double-depositing is wrong.
Colleges dislike double depositing because the practice creates an enormous amount of uncertainty about the size of their incoming freshman classes. They can’t be certain about the number of students who are going to show up for the fall because they can’t be certain that each student who has made a deposit will attend.
Since many colleges don’t require payment of the first semester’s tuition until shortly before the start of the academic year, schools can be left with beds to fill and budget shortfalls that they did not anticipate. Some colleges may find themselves over-enrolled and with a shortage of housing for students. Neither situation is a happy one. In order to prevent double depositing, some colleges actually check enrollment lists at other schools for offenders.
A college that discovers a double depositor is within its rights to withdraw that individual’s offer of admission.
Equally important, double depositing hurts other students because it wreaks havoc with waiting lists. Colleges cannot offer admission to students on their waiting lists if they are uncertain about the number of depositors who will actually matriculate. Since schools are hesitant to do anything that will lead to over-enrollment, some applicants who would normally be admitted from waiting lists are not. As a result, double depositing prevents deserving students from being admitted to their favorite colleges.
Although many students struggle to make that final college choice, the decision is not a life-or-death matter; most of them will be happy wherever they spend the next four years.
Double depositing may allow those with a tendency toward procrastination or indecisiveness to delay the inevitable, but eventually even they will have to make a decision. Students should do the right thing and make the choice by May 1st.”
Article by Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post
It’s April 1st, and many high school seniors across the country are learning today which colleges accepted them and which did not. Those students who applied to a range of colleges are likely to receive more than one acceptance, and for many, a difficult decision lies ahead. For some, "double depositing" becomes attractive. What's that?
I asked a college administrator and a college admissions counselor to explain it from their different perspectives--one representing a school and the other the student. Below is a post written by Bruce Vinik, president of Vinik Educational Placement Services, Inc., in Cabin John, Md.
“Double depositing: Two words that strike fear in the hearts of even the most seasoned college admissions officers.
Now that high school seniors have received the news they have been anxiously awaiting for the last few months, the time has arrived for them to make one final decision.
If they have been fortunate enough to gain admission to more than one college, they must decide where they intend to spend the next four (or more) years. And that decision must be made by May 1st, the national reply date for all admitted students.
For many students, this is an easy decision; they have a clear first choice and know exactly where they want to go to college. To guarantee themselves a space at their favorite school, all they need to do is send a non-refundable enrollment deposit check. At some colleges this may be as little as $100, while at others it can be as much as $500 or $1,000.
For some students, the final choice is not so easy. They have two or three colleges that they are considering and aren’t sure about what to do; they love all of their schools for different reasons. And though they re-visit their colleges and look to teachers and friends (and even parents) for guidance, they are racked by indecision. So what do they do? They postpone the inevitable by sending checks to two colleges – that is, they double deposit.
What many of these students and their parents don’t know is that double depositing is a violation of their responsibilities as established by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). The reason many of them don’t know they are in violation is that they have never heard about this or any other “responsibility” and have no idea who or what NACAC is. But students need to understand that double-depositing is wrong.
Colleges dislike double depositing because the practice creates an enormous amount of uncertainty about the size of their incoming freshman classes. They can’t be certain about the number of students who are going to show up for the fall because they can’t be certain that each student who has made a deposit will attend.
Since many colleges don’t require payment of the first semester’s tuition until shortly before the start of the academic year, schools can be left with beds to fill and budget shortfalls that they did not anticipate. Some colleges may find themselves over-enrolled and with a shortage of housing for students. Neither situation is a happy one. In order to prevent double depositing, some colleges actually check enrollment lists at other schools for offenders.
A college that discovers a double depositor is within its rights to withdraw that individual’s offer of admission.
Equally important, double depositing hurts other students because it wreaks havoc with waiting lists. Colleges cannot offer admission to students on their waiting lists if they are uncertain about the number of depositors who will actually matriculate. Since schools are hesitant to do anything that will lead to over-enrollment, some applicants who would normally be admitted from waiting lists are not. As a result, double depositing prevents deserving students from being admitted to their favorite colleges.
Although many students struggle to make that final college choice, the decision is not a life-or-death matter; most of them will be happy wherever they spend the next four years.
Double depositing may allow those with a tendency toward procrastination or indecisiveness to delay the inevitable, but eventually even they will have to make a decision. Students should do the right thing and make the choice by May 1st.”
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