The best way to find a good school that will actually teach you the things you need instead of giving you a piece of paper for money is to ensure your school is an accredited university. Meeting with (either by phone or in person) an admissions counselor will also help build your confidence in the school. You can also try talking to other students through message boards to see if they enjoyed getting their degree and would recommend the university.

This website doesn’t just show you online schools like University of Phoenix. It also includes traditional campuses that offer distance learning programs. There is also other information for those interested in going back to school after working. There are helpful articles and links to other resources. As a bonus, there are articles about telecommuting jobs, which is something that I have. Working from home doing customer service is a great, flexible job for any student.

To enter the blogging scholarship, you simply have to have a blog (an ongoing one or you can create one) and write a post about credit or identity theft. The requirements are very simple and straightforward. As long as you stick to the topic, you can write anything you want. How it has personally affected you, how to protect yourself, or even how you find it scary that nearly every company you do business with has a database full of information on you. You have to be 18 years old and a full or part-time student at an accredited university. The deadline is December 1st and the winner gets paid on January 1, 2009.

For more information about this $2,000 blogging scholarship sponsored by SPENDonLIFE.com, you can visit their website. SPENDonLIFE is a member of the National Scholarship Providers Association so you know this is a legitimate scholarship. SPENDonLIFE also offers ten scholarships per year for students who have been denied loans because of bad credit.

I’ve been using Quizlet for about two weeks now and it’s my favorite online study tool. I’ve created twelve different vocab sets for four different classes and it’s worked wonders. My favorite option is the exportation…I can pull the words into a Word document to print out or print flashcards. The website is very fast and works great. I haven’t had any problems. You can import words (copy and paste only right now, which makes it easier if you already have your words typed up. One trick I’ve learned is when typing words, you can tab to the next word if there aren’t enough boxes and it creates a new box for you instead of having to push the button…makes it much easier and quicker to add words.

I tried it out and got an art book for the fall semester for only $50. Used ones even from Amazon were quoted at over $90. Chegg sometimes orders the books from resellers (such as Amazon) and has them sent directly to you (in the case that they didn’t have any on hand). You can do some light highlighting, but no writing in the books. It’s a pretty good service and I’m happy with it so far. The book arrived about four business days after I placed the order.

In all seriousness, Halloween is my favorite pointless holiday and searching for the perfect costume starts very early. This year is going to be themed for me and my boyfriend. We’re going as Padme and Anakin from Star Wars. And this year I’m actually going to buy my costume instead of try to make it. (That failed miserably a few years ago.) BuyCostumes.com has over 15,000 costumes for various holidays, but mostly for Halloween. Their costumes are all new and are usually much cheaper than you would find in a regular costume shop. My Padme costume is going to cost me $50 from them, but when I found one in the costume shop downtown, they wanted $100 to rent it.

There are multiple online printing websites that offer everything a specialty print shop would, but at internet prices. If only some of the student organizations were as cost-conscious as a small business owner, then my tuition and fees would go down (seriously, my university pays for everything the student orgs do!). This is just another way for smart students to cut back their spending.

Another benefit of ordering from online printing websites is that you can often design your product right on their website. Some of them have a lot of templates for you to go through to build the perfect flier or business card, with stock images and clipart for you to choose from. This all just makes professional printing much easier for the student or small business owner.

What I did to have my personal email sent to my phone was have that forwarded to a gmail account I set up (so I don’t give my personal email password away and so I can retain a copy in my regular email program for when I’m online). You set up gmail’s pop access and allow for emails from certain people to be forwarded to your cell phone. The only charges you incur are regular text messaging charges, which varies by provider (or free like me if you have an unlimited plan because you can’t keep your fingers to yourself).

So far I’ve been using this service for a few days and have emails sent from my closest friends forwarded as well as anything important for work. Everything has been smooth and no spam has gotten through. I’m very impressed with the quickness of the forwarding (almost immediately). I do, wish, however, that there was an option to forward all emails, not just from certain people because for certain accounts, I want everything, not just from certain addresses. It is still in beta, however, so maybe this will be an upcoming feature.

Web Apps

Flashcard Exchange is the world’s largest library of printable flashcards, according to their slogan. A free membership will allow you to create unlimited flashcards and share them if you choose. Without an account, you can study with the millions of flashcards available the public. A one-time membership of $19.95 allows you to use images in your flashcards, print them out and use the Leitner card files as well as export cards to Word or Excel. The free membership is fully functional and unless you want to print, is a great way to study.

Flashcard Machine is a great way to create, study and share flashcards online. With free registration, you have the ability to create unlimited flashcards and share them with others (even non-registered users). You can separate flashcards into multiple subjects and groups and include images and audio. The website isn’t as polished as Flashcard Exchange, but it does offer a few more options and is free.

Software

iFlash is a Mac shareware program designed to help you study with virtual flashcards. There is a free trial and for $14.95, you can purchase the program. It allows you to print, edit and share your flashcards easily. You can create multiple card faces (word, definition, example, etc.) and export flashcards to your ipod.

Genius is another memorization software for Mac that I’ve already posted about here. It organizes info using the “Leitner “learning cardfile” system, and it quizzes you using a spaced repetition method.” It’s also free and my favorite way to study.

Memory Lifter is a free Windows flashcard software. It’s a pretty basic flashcard software and since it’s PC only, I haven’t been able to test it, but the features seem nice from the website

1. Hulu has a large number of TV shows and movies, as well as video clips. It’s missing a lot of episodes and series/movies, but it has most of the popular ones.

2. Surf the Channel is a similar website that has pretty much the same content, but it does have a few that Hulu does not.

3. Most of the major networks have their recent episodes available for online viewing.

4. Torrents. Because I don’t want the MPAA cracking down on me, I’m not saying that I do this. It’s just one possibility.

5. YouTube, which is not supposed to have copyrighted content, actually has plenty of it. There are a lot of series uploaded to YouTube. This is how I watched season four of Grey’s Anatomy actually.

All I want is a couple posts per week, related to college life/student productivity. If you’d like to guest blog, that works, too. Compensation will be dependent on quality of posts, not length nor quantity.