Student Loan Blog : Freshmen

2010 College Enrollment Numbers May Not Be So Bad, Survey Reveals

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:51:00 GMT

Although school administrators across the nation are reporting an increase in applications, they’re worried about just how many college students will actually enroll in their institutions this fall as families continue to tighten their budgets amid this recession, reports Inside Higher Ed (“Parents’ View of the Economy,” March 30, 2009).

However, a new survey of parents of college students indicates that while administrators’ concerns are valid, the economy may not have affected parents’ finances as much as educators originally thought, particularly among parents whose children are entering their freshmen year. Eduventures, an organization that tracks higher education trends, surveyed 7,000 parents with college-age children at a mix of 19 public and private colleges and universities.

Eduventures found that a majority of parents with freshmen — about 66 percent — said the downturn won’t affect how they will finance their children’s education this upcoming fall.

Overall, relatively few parents told Eduventures that they would not enroll their children in college due to lack of funding, although some parents indicated that they might choose to enroll their children in less expensive institutions to cut costs.

Of those parents with students at private schools, less than 12 percent indicated that their children were considering transferring to a less expensive school, and nearly 7 percent said they would encourage their children to take some classes at a community college. Of these same private school parents, less than 3 percent indicated that their students wouldn’t be returning to college in the fall, and less than 0.5 percent said that their children were considering dropping out of college permanently.

The numbers were only slightly different for parents whose children attend public colleges, with almost 9 percent saying that their children may have to consider transferring schools and less than 3 percent who believed that their children would need to look at dropping out of college. Nearly 6 percent of these parents thought that their children would need to live at home instead of on campus this fall.

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Nebraska State Colleges Extend Free Tuition Offer to Freshmen

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:31:00 GMT

Beginning this fall, incoming first-year students attending any of Nebraska’s three state colleges — Wayne State College, Peru State College, or Chadron State College — may see their dreams of a college education come true with a little help from the state, the Omaha World-Herald reports (“3 Colleges to Waive Tuition for Some Freshmen,” March 8, 2009).

Nearly one-third of all students in the Nebraska State College System receive federal Pell Grant funding, but only Pell-eligible first-year students will have their first year of tuition covered under the new Nebraska State College System Advantage Program. The state college system will pick up the tab for these students’ tuition expenses where their Pell Grant funding leaves off.

“With the recent economic downturn, access to college has become more challenging and this program will assist first-time freshmen in their pursuit of earning a degree,” said Bill Roskens, NSCS board chairman (“Nebraska State Colleges Offer Free Freshman Tuition,” KCUA-TV, March 3, 2009).

Students must meet five criteria to qualify for the NSCS Advantage Program:

They must be a Nebraska resident
They must be a recipient of a federal Pell Grant
They must be a first-time first-year student attending a NSCS school during the 2009–10 school year
They may not be a transfer student
They must be enrolled in at least 12 on-campus credit hours

Students can continue to receive this tuition assistance throughout their college career as long as they remain eligible to receive federal Pell Grant awards and as long as they continue to enroll in at least 12 credit hours.

“We are attempting to remove the financial barriers many [of our students] face,” said NSCS Chancellor Stan Carpenter, by only requiring students to pay for textbooks, supplies, and room and board.

College officials believe the Nebraska initiative also has the potential to increase enrollment and encourage more students to remain in the state.

Lois Brunnert, a first-generation college student who relies on financial aid to attend Wayne State, agrees.

“It’s going to allow [students] to have more time to save up money,” Brunnert said. “And it’s going to probably help students continue with their financial aid.”

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‘Frill-Less’ Campuses Shave Thousands Off College Tuition

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:24:00 GMT

At a time when parents and students are finding it increasingly challenging to get the money they need for college, some schools are coming up with creative options to cut thousands of dollars off annual tuition bills, The Boston Globe reports (“Students Forgo Frills to Save Thousands,” Feb. 3, 2009).

Offering savings of up to approximately $10,000 to $15,000 annually, these colleges are gambling that parents and students — worried about layoffs, getting student loans for college, and an unstable economy — will go for these less-expensive satellite campuses that forgo the traditional college campus amenities of lavish food courts, fitness centers, and dorms.

Students Find Value In Commuter Education

Twenty miles south of its main campus in Manchester, Southern New Hampshire University has established a no-frills sister campus in Salem, New Hampshire.

Freshmen and sophomore students attend classes taught by some of the same professors found on the Manchester campus and study subjects as diverse as Greek tragedy, the Roman Empire, and business statistics.

The school believes that many students will be willing to pay considerably less, $10,000 as opposed to $25,000 in tuition, for the same quality of education that students receive on its main campus.

Daniel Webster College, another small private school located in Nashua, New Hampshire, intends to extend a comparable tuition break for freshmen students who live at home and commute to the main campus — $15,000 a year in tuition versus $26,000 for those students who live on campus.

And in Pennsylvania, the public university system is contemplating whether to move forward with plans to create four-year colleges without dorms, athletics, or extracurricular activities in order to lower the price of a bachelor’s degree.

Cheaper Model as Effective?

While many parents may relish the savings that these new frill-less colleges represent, other people question whether the less expensive, commuter-based model of higher education is as effective as the traditional campus-based model, the Globe reports. Research indicates that those who live on campus are, on average, more likely to graduate on time, get better grades, and be happier in college.

However, Richard Ekman, president of The Council of Independent Colleges says, “A no-frills approach is better than nothing, but it’s very difficult to achieve the same thing as having a total educational experience that comes with living on campus.”

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Colleges Step Up, Help Students With Extra Financial Aid

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:13:00 GMT

If recent data is any indication, families are struggling to come up with the cash they need to send their children to college, and schools across the country are doing something to help those who’ve come up short, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Colleges Offer Extra Aid to Strapped Students,” Jan. 9, 2009).

During the first few days of the new financial aid season that began Jan. 1 — the first day college students could submit their FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), the application required for students seeking federal aid — 40 percent more families over the previous year had already sought out financial assistance (“Families Face Fierce Competition for Student Aid: Season Starts With Sharp Increase in Demand,” Business Wire, Jan. 6, 2009).

“The demand for student aid has been climbing as the recession batters family budgets, parents’ jobs are eliminated, and self- employed parents experience business downturns,” said Craig Carroll, CEO of Student Financial Aid Services, a financial aid advisory company.

Schools Create New Aid Programs or Beef Up Existing Ones

In response to the growing number of families facing limited options to pay for college, some schools are offering families an extended grace period to pay tuition bills, and other schools are meeting the growing demand for aid by expanding existing financial aid programs or creating new ones.

At Northern Illinois University, for instance, school administrators recently introduced the Huskie Advantage, a new aid program that meets tuition costs not covered by state and federal aid. The program, which the school will subsidize by shifting financial funds away from upperclassmen to underclassmen, who usually don’t qualify for as much federal aid, is only available to freshmen who qualify for Pell Grants and need-based state grants, according to Brent Gage, the school’s assistant vice provost for enrollment services.

Agnes Scott College in Georgia also recently announced a new program, the Agnes Solution, targeted at students who are eligible for the state’s Hope Scholarship. The school hopes that by providing qualified students with a $13,500 Agnes Solution scholarship and a $3,000 grant each year, combined with the $3,000 Hope Scholarship, the program will be able to cut the cost of attendance almost in half.

As part of a Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota plan to lower the cost of attendance for low- and middle-income students to match the average cost of the nation’s Big Ten universities, the school is expanding its Brother James Miller Program for Access. The program originally only covered students who met certain academic qualifications and whose families made less than $75,000, but due to the economic downturn, the institution has raised the income qualification to $100,000, and is currently collecting private funds so that it may provide aid for the school’s most financially needy students.

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California State University System May Turn Away Up to 10,000 Qualified Students

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:21:00 GMT

At the same time that the nation’s largest college system, California State University, is experiencing soaring admissions — up 10 percent over last year — the college system has announced it may begin turning away qualified students due to a state budget shortfall that could reach $24 billion by 2010, The Los Angeles Times reports (“CSU May Cut Future Enrollment by 10,000,” Nov. 18, 2008).

In anticipation of a possible $66 million midyear budget reduction, the Cal State system will be moving up application deadlines and increasing the academic standards for admission to help weed out some students. Cal State University system chancellor, Charles Reed, has said the school system needs to pare back its 450,000 enrollment at 23 campuses by 10,000 students for the 2009–10 school year.

Since the university system has never had to limit enrollments before, university officials aren’t exactly sure which students — freshmen, sophomore transfer, international, or out-of-state — will be most affected by the rollbacks. But the enrollment-cut proposition has left some administrators thinking that California high school graduates will perhaps be the hardest hit.

If the school system cuts just 5,000 students, first-year admissions, which typically reach 50,000 students, would take a 10- percent cut.

“These are going to be kids who have done everything they’re supposed to do, and told year after year they’ll have this opportunity,” said Kathy Rapkin, chair of the counseling department at California’s Arcadia High School. “These kids are not going to get a place.”

Other Institutions May Be Affected by the State Budget Shortfall

Schools in the California State system are not the only institutions in the state that may be impacted by the $24 billion state budget shortfall. Administrators for the University of California system have said they may have to limit admissions to their most popular campuses and send students to the system’s less-populated campuses, UC Riverside and UC Merced. They have not issued statements regarding enrollment cuts.

Officials at California’s community colleges don’t anticipate having to reduce their enrollment numbers, but they may have to limit students’ access to certain classes.

Diane Woodruff, chancellor of the California Community Colleges System Office, said, of the 2.7 million students currently enrolled in California community colleges, some 250,000 students, or nearly 10 percent, could be driven away.

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Wilkes University Puts Freshman Recruits Front and Center and Billboard-Size

Student Loan Girl — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:56:00 GMT

Wilkes University, a small, private school in northeastern Pennsylvania, is using a quirky new in-your-face $120,000 ad campaign to get the attention of today’s media- and marketing-savvy students.

The university is plastering personalized messages on billboards, pizza boxes, gas pumps, and even on MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central to students it wants to make a part of its freshman class, reports Michael Rubinkam in a story by The Associated Press (“Pennsylvania College Woos Students by Putting Them in Ads,” April 30, 2008).

The “trendsetting and forward-thinking” marketing campaign appeals to the “look-at-me generation,” teens comfortable sharing all-things-personal on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, says Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association.

The Message: Personalized and Not for the Shy

Wilkes features applicants in its ads who have a “mix of talents and determination” and who live in markets where the university wants to promote itself, says Jack Chielli, the school’s director of marketing. Students must also consent to having their names used.

The ads, writes Rubinkam, are meant “to convey the message that the school gets to know its students personally and pays close attention to their needs.”

To get messages with the right personal touch, 160over90, the Philadelphia marketing firm contracted by Wilkes, interviews participating students and their friends and families, uncovering likes, dislikes, hobbies, nicknames.

The agency uses the information it gleans from these in-depth interviews to design the highly personalized ads that have turned some college-bound seniors into quasi-celebrities in their high schools and communities:

“Lake Lehman senior Greg Heindel: You give your time at the soup kitchen, the firehouse, and your church summer camp. Wilkes University would like to give you something — a top-quality education.”
“Hey Kristen Pecka. Only your closest friends at Central Catholic call you Pecka-lecka-lecka. Choose Wilkes University and add 2,362 more people to that list.”
“Scranton High senior Nicole Pollock: Our goal at Wilkes University is to be as much a mentor as your mother has been. (Now, if we could only make her ravioli.)”

Each ad includes an invitation to “call a Colonel” (the school’s mascot) and provides a phone number that plays a recorded message from a current Wilkes student.

It’s the Thought That Counts

Even if targeted recruits end up choosing another school, says Chielli, he considers the ads successful as long as they continue to grab attention and get other students to think about Wilkes.

But besides drawing more students to apply, the school wants to help make it possible for them to actually attend: Nearly all students receive some form of financial aid apart from student loans to help cover the $25,000 price tag. Wilkes awards $22 million in financial aid each year.

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Study: College Courses Taught by Part-Time Faculty Lead to High Freshman Dropout Rates

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:39:00 GMT

College freshmen are more likely to drop out of school before their sophomore year when they take introductory-level courses taught by part-time, rather than full-time instructors, a recent study suggests.

Increasingly, part-time and adjunct instructors are being assigned to teach first-year classes, also referred to as “gatekeeper courses.” Less than one percent of the students enrolled in these courses are continuing on to earn their associate’s degree, writes David Glenn of The Chronicle of Higher Education (“ ‘Gatekeeper’ Courses Should Not Be Assigned to Part-Time Instructors, Research Suggests,” March 27, 2008).

With the number of part-time and adjunct professors teaching introductory classes having more than doubled in the past 35 years, the study poses significant implications for the impact of first-year instruction on degree-earning rates, say the study’s authors, Audrey J. Jaeger, an assistant professor of higher education at North Carolina State University, and M. Kevin Eagan, Jr., a graduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The Dropout Effect

Jaeger and Eagan’s paper, which will appear in the New Directions for Teaching and Learning journal later this year, was discussed at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in March.

As part of their study, Jaeger and Eagan analyzed transcripts of 30,000 students who were enrolled in introductory classes at four public four-year universities in a southeastern state between 2002 and 2005.

The researchers found that when the colleges assigned part-time faculty, lecturers, and postdoctoral fellows to teach these introductory-level courses, students were significantly less likely to return to school their sophomore year.

There was no such dropout effect, on the other hand, in gatekeeper courses taught by graduate assistants or full-time, non-tenure-track instructors.

Personalized Attention Often Absent With Part-Time Faculty

Jaeger, the paper’s lead author, says that the chief reason for such high dropout rates among freshmen taught by part-time instructors may be attributed to the fact that adjuncts tend to have limited office hours, restricting their ability to communicate face-to-face with their students.

As a result, Jaeger speculates, students often become frustrated or disengaged with the course material.

This theory would seem to be reinforced by data pulled from the National Survey of Student Engagement.

In a review of this data, Paul Umbach, a professor of higher education at the University of Iowa, found that part-time and other contingent faculty tended to spend less time interacting with students and fewer hours preparing for class than their full-time counterparts.

Increasing Teacher Support Is Key

Jaeger and Eagan emphasize that their analysis is not intended as a criticism of part-time faculty. In fact, they urge university officials to better support their part-time professors, and propose specific courses of action administrators could take:

Assign part-time professors to smaller courses less vulnerable to dropouts
Allocate larger office spaces where part-time faculty can better interact with their students
Provide resources that facilitate interaction and support outside the classroom

A less sympathetic member of the AERA conference panel offers an alternate, if extreme view of what should be done instead: Stop hiring part-time faculty.

Asked Leonard L. Baird, executive editor of The Journal of Higher Education, “Could administrators be shown a cost-benefit analysis that might demonstrate that the money they save by hiring these people is outweighed, or even overwhelmed, by the revenue they lose when students drop out?”

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Gaming Industry Giving Back to Its Girl Gamers

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:51:00 GMT

As big-name video game companies in the multibillion dollar gaming industry search for ways to expand their market share and find new audiences in an increasingly saturated marketplace, some of them are turning to a segment that’s oft-ignored in the gaming world: Females. Working moms and stay-at-home moms, college girls and school girls are poised to embrace this technology-as-entertainment trend, and gaming companies want to find ways to tailor their products and services to this up-and-coming demographic.

Christa Phillips, one of Microsoft’s “goodwill ambassadors” who monitor player behavior in the corporate giant’s Xbox Live online gaming communities, estimates that females already comprise about 10 to 20 percent of their seven-million-strong audience, according to an L.A. Times article by Alex Pham (“A Refuge for Women in a Hostile Game Space,” Sep. 3, 2007).

And Microsoft is looking for more.

Some hardcore male gamers, flocking to the online worlds of popular, male-dominated games like BioShock, World of Warcraft and Halo, have raised their controllers in objection to female intrusion, engaging in sexually charged greetings and hostile game play.

“American society has evolved since the advancement of women’s rights in the 1960s,” writes Pham. “But the world of video gaming has been largely stuck in a time warp with its frat house culture of sexual insults and put-downs.”

Despite some male gamers' negative reception of their female counterparts, gaming executives are beginning to recognize the benefits of welcoming more women into the traditionally male industry and of creating a supportive environment for female participation.

Changing the Face of Gaming

Whereas male gamers will spend hours immersed in virtual combat zones and first-person shooting expeditions, female players tend to be drawn to games that involve puzzles, social interaction and strong story lines.

At a panel at the 2005 Game Developers Conference focusing on female gamers, a British researcher unveiled a study that found that

more so than men, women in the UK like strong plots, rich characterizations, choices in goal-attainment strategies, freedom of self-expression, novelty, immersion in atmospheric environments, games they can immediately pick up and play, flexibility, and social interaction.

A games analyst for market researcher NPD Group presented his findings that 93.9 percent of Nintendo’s female base “prefers card, puzzle, arcade, or word games” (“GDC Panel Charts Trajectory of the Female Gamer,” March 10, 2005).

Gaming companies trying to build their female player demographic are striving to recruit more female programmers and writers to create games like these, with more female appeal.

But these companies find themselves in a catch-22: They want more female developers in order to design games that entice more female players, but they need more games that appeal to female players in order to entice females into the gaming industry. Considering that women working in the gaming industry dropped to 11.5 percent in 2005 from 17 percent the previous year, according to Gamasutra.com, the companies might be facing an uphill battle (“Soapbox: ARGs and How to Appeal to Female Gamers,” Nov. 29, 2005).

Yet not all industry analysts attribute the fledgling female gaming market to a lack of females in the business. Some cite greater competition among entertainment sources for female attention.

A panelist at the 2005 GDC, for example, “hypothesized that the explanation for why women don’t prefer games as strongly as men may be the result of men watching less television (as they shift to interactive entertainment), and television programs more aggressively recruiting female viewers.”

Another panelist suggested that gaming companies should take these entertainment preferences into account and focus on cultivating the status of many female gamers as “secondary” or “nondominant” gamers instead of trying to recruit or convert women to become primary gamers, who tend to be mostly male.

Females Virtually “Go to the Mattresses”

Besides custom-tailoring their game design and marketing approach, gaming companies working to expand their female customer base are beginning to realize they must show care for their female gamers who venture into male-dominated virtual worlds.

This realization has led to strategies like Microsoft’s recruitment of monitors like Phillips, to help defuse the sometimes heated environment stirred up by veteran gamers in some Xbox Live communities.

Phillips has run her online group, GamerchiX, since June 2006 and drew her inspiration from PMS Clan—that’s Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers—an online gaming group of female competitive players.

GamerchiX, Pham explains, “functions as a virtual Grand Central Terminal for women and girls who tread into the testosterone-steeped world of console gaming.”

Phillips says she wanted her fellow gamers to have a place to turn and feel supported when they experience the trash-talking, the naysaying, and the come-ons.

“I wanted to create a safe place for all women gamers,” Phillips says in Pham’s article. “It’s a place where you can go to socialize and not have to worry about being harassed or hit on.”

Phillips’ role as TriXie in the gaming world mirrors her role as a mother of two in the real world, as she oversees her GamerchiX like a mother hen. She holds the power to revoke Xbox Live playing rights from male gaming bullies when and if she receives complaints from one of her girls of stalking or harassment.

And the hassling female gamers experience can run the gamut.

“I’ve heard it all,” says PMS Clan founder Amber Dalton in Pham’s article. “They tell you to go to the kitchen and get them a sandwich. Or they ask you if you’re hot. You can also be targeted just because you’re a girl. They all just start shooting at you the second they find out you’re a girl.”

But GamerchiX doesn’t protect its members just from male badgering; the girls must also abide by a code of ethics Phillips calls a “manifesta,” which prohibits them from engaging in virtual cat fights or trash-talking each other.

Gaming Doesn’t Make the Grade

With gaming and gaming recruitment on the rise, concerns may surface about what effect gaming will have on college students, their study habits and their grades.

A study conducted in 2001 by Todd Stinebrickner, an econometrics professor at the University of Western Ontario, and Ralph Stinebrickner, a math and computer science professor at Berea College, found that the presence of video game consoles in dorm rooms can have a detrimental effect on study habits and grade point averages (“The Causal Effect of Studying on Academic Performance”).

The Stinebrickners analyzed a randomly chosen sample of two groups of college freshmen comparable in academic ability, preparation and motivation, but separated by whether or not their roommate brought a video game console to school.

Of those with roommates who brought game consoles, 24 percent were female and 53 percent were male. On average, the group of female students with access to their roommate’s game console studied about 46 percent less and finished their first semester with a statistically significant 0.128 lower GPA than those female students whose roommates didn’t bring a game console. The male students with console-toting roommates studied 66 percent less and finished their semester with a 0.239 lower GPA.

The study was initially designed to measure how study time affects grades, but in the process resulted in these significant findings on how much distraction video games can cause for those students just beginning to develop their college study habits.

The gaming industry may be starting to exhibit more responsibility for its female players as it becomes more cognizant of their needs, but young female—and male—gamers have a similar responsibility to themselves when it comes to their gaming practices.

As the Stinebrickners’ study shows, student gamers must be careful not to let themselves get too carried away in their virtual worlds and risk throwing away their opportunities for education.

Like mom and dad always said, study hard, and then play hard.

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Seeing the World as Generation WWW: Mindset List Zeroes In On What It Means to Be 18

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:54:00 GMT

Who needs a time capsule when Beloit College does all the work for you?

The college in Beloit, Wis., doesn’t squirrel away any buried nostalgia, but it will help remind you of the world you came from. Its popular mindset list, which runs down the trends, figures and events that have defined each year’s 18-year-olds, aims to encapsulate the historical perspectives of its annual freshman class.

Think you’ve got a handle on the generation gap? Beloit’s Mindset List, now in its 10^th annual version, will help shed some light on how the world has changed for the average freshman.

So to help you unearth the worldview of today’s Class of 2011—most of them born in 1989—here’s a rundown of what we feel are the list’s top 25 standouts.

Beloit College’s Mindset List^® for the Class of 2011

1. What Berlin Wall?

2. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.

3. They never “rolled down” a car window.

4. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

5. They have grown up with bottled water.

6. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.

7. Rap music has always been mainstream.

8. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.

9. They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.

10. Women’s studies major have always been offered on campus.

11. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks and Bart Simpson.

12. Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.

13. Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.

14. U2 has always been more than a spy plane

15. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.

16. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.

17. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.

18. They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.

19. Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.

20. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympic venue, not the scene of a massacre.

21. MTV has never featured music videos.

22. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.

23. They’re always texting 1 n other.

24. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.

25. Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

Talk to the education finance advisors at NextStudent. They have all the information and advice you need on student loans. Check out www.nextstudent.com.

Student Loan Girl

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Failure Is for Freshmen, Success Is for Seniors: What I Learned at College

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:14:00 GMT

College students who show up to school expecting to get straight As, maintain a perfect reputation, and never fail at any endeavor are in for a major awakening.

Unfortunately, many are taught from an early age to “be perfect” and never make any mistakes, spending a lifetime avoiding the painful specter of failure. Oftentimes, these values and beliefs are “leftovers” or “carry-overs” from parents’ own beliefs and values, and not actually those of the student. College represents the first time that many young adults can stretch their wings, experiment and formulate their own values, and find out what’s important to them.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you encounter this ever-present ogre and what you can do to overcome it.

· Failure is a normal part of life and something to be learned from. The person who has avoided failure his or her entire life likely may be someone who has not grown much, emotionally, spiritually or mentally. So, if you fail that important test, yes, it is regrettable, but it is not the end of the world, regardless of what your parents think.

· Welcome mistakes in your life and watch your successes grow. It is all about perception. Someone who thinks that mistakes are a normal part of life and welcomes, even accepts them will have a much higher aptitude for overcoming challenges in life. And when you are open to growing through failure, success will become an everyday habit.

· Accept responsibility for failure. If you are confronted about cheating, for instance on an exam and you are guilty, confess your error. When you do so, you are released to deal with the issue appropriately. When you refuse to accept responsibility, you increase the likelihood of repeating the mistake in the future and becoming known as someone having undesirable character qualities.

· Seek to understand why you failed and how you can change next time. If you really were desperate to get a date for Friday night and you came on a little too strong, you may want to consider changing tactics. When you keep repeating the same behavior and getting the same results, this may be your wake-up call. Examine what you said or did, then formulate a plan for what you could do differently next time. If you get different results, you know you are on the right track.

· Do not punish, condemn or judge yourself. And do not let anyone else do so either. Believe me, you probably will give yourself a hard enough time when you fail—and you do not need anyone else joining in. Condemnation and criticism are not welcome devices for change. Simply acknowledge the mistake, accept encouragement from others to correct it, and filter the rest out. Certainly do not dwell on it—that only will make you miserable.

· Visualize your way to success. As silly as it seems, picture yourself succeeding instead of dwelling on your failures. Cut out images that represent your dream and what you want to accomplish. Then, spend several minutes during the day experiencing the wonderful feelings and self-confidence that come with walking in success.

The Education Finance Advisors at NextStudent can help you figure in all your college expenses so that you get the student loan that best suits your needs. Don’t get caught short. Go to www.nextstudent.com for all your student loan needs.

Check back here next Friday for my next blog on Campus Life.

Student Loan Girl

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