If you’re looking to do any post-graduate education, the odds are good that you’ll need to take the GRE, a standardized test that can best be approximated as the SATs for grad school. Everybody will have their own way of studying for the exam, but whether you’re looking for a Master degree in healthcare administration or a Master of Arts, there are a few pointers that can help anybody looking to do well and improve their chances of getting into the graduate program they want.
Start Early
The earlier you start the more time you have to study. Also, the earlier you start the more time you have to ease into it. As soon as you know that you want to get into a graduate program make sure that the GRE is the exam that they’ll require and then start gathering study materials and begin working on your studying.
Know the Exam
Knowing the parts of the exam will allow you to study in a more effective way. There’s no use in studying biology when it’s not on the test. Math, vocabulary, and analytical writing skills are at a premium to focus your work on those areas of study to maximize your time.
Create a Study Program
There’s no standardized study program you should have, but having some sort of regimented program will definitely help keep you focused on the task at hand. Whether you study in the morning, after dinner, or just on the weekends, create a program that not only works with your study habits, but with your life.
Take Practice Tests
There are numerous practice tests available to those that want them, and it’s best to start taking them as soon as possible. Not only will this get you familiar with the layout of the exam, but you can time yourself to make sure that you’re completing all parts of the exam within the allotted time. Leaving a section blank because you didn’t have time means you don’t even have a chance of being right and getting credit for the question.
Don’t Forget to Rest
Our brains don’t process information as well when we’re tired to be sure to get some rest. Not only will this help you retain the information better, but if you’re well rested you’re more likely to want to study in the first place.
Balance Your Time
This goes hand in hand with starting early and having a study program. Both of those things will allow you to balance your studying with your life and will prevent you from cramming at the very end as you lead up to the exam. We don’t learn as well when we cram so giving yourself enough time to do the studying you want is crucial to learning the material.
Know Your Weaknesses
If your vocabulary is strong you might not need to spend as much time on it as you do your math and analytical writing skills. Be honest with yourself when assessing your weaknesses and adjust your study program accordingly to maximize the time you have to study.
Guest post written by Olivia R Solis, a teacher with a masters in education.
With the increase in global business ventures, knowing other languages is becoming a requirement for some careers. If you happen to know more than one language, there is a career opportunity you might not have considered: translation and interpretation.
First, what’s the difference? Translation deals with the written word, while interpretation deals with the spoken word. Both are similar in that you are taking ideas and concepts from one language to another, opening up barriers between cultures. You can do one or both.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job prospects are much better than average because of the increase in global commerce. Earnings depend on experience, language skills and other factors like most careers. There are many different places you can work from large international companies to schools, hospitals and courtrooms.
There are many translation agencies around the world, from Washington D.C. to London to Beijing so you have different opportunities for where to live. A career in interpretation or translation will offer many incredible opportunities for travel and exploration of the world.
One of the best things about this career path is that the flexibility: you can be full-time with a translation company or you can freelance and be self-employed. Flexibility in an industry allows you to make your own choices and find what works best for you and your future.
College is not for everyone because it is demanding in every aspect of your life, but it is also extremely rewarding for most people. Here are five reasons why you should get a college degree.
Some people think they can’t afford college, but with financial aid available, almost everyone can go to college. If you need help with financial aid, the Department of Education is a great resource.
5. Better Salary
There is no doubt that if you get a college degree, you will make more money every year. There is an upfront cost to going to college, but think of it as an investment you will make back.
4. More Opportunities
In addition to making more money, you will be open to more opportunities. College is a great place to network and make contacts for future job opportunities.
3. Better Candidate
There are many jobs that require a college degree, but there are also jobs that don’t. Having a degree opens up your choices to a much larger pool of companies and positions and makes you a better candidate for a company to hire.
2. Increased Knowledge
You will learn an incredible amount of things in college, even if you don’t give it your best shot. By being around other people who value knowledge and learning, you will pick things up even if you don’t mean to.
1. It’s Fun!
One of the best reasons to go to college is that it is incredibly fun. You get to meet all kinds of people with different lives and customs. You get to experience new things and live as an adult while still being protected by your school. It’s a great transition between being in high school and being a full-fledged, bill-paying adult with heavy responsibilities.
Choose a location that fits you, like a Miami college or Colorado – you can go anywhere you want to have the experience of a lifetime.
True Cost of College
Online universities used to be few and far between, but now they are pretty common. Two of the biggest benefits of getting an online degree is cost and flexibility. You are able to stay home while getting your degree from an accredited college, saving you time and money. You are also able to study and take classes on your schedule, so you can work and enjoy free time. There are plenty of resources to find the best online degree for you.
It’s much easier now to pursue an accredited online degree than it was just a few years ago. And it’s much more cost-effective, especially when you are working part-time or full-time. This infographic explains how much more you would spend pursuing a degree from a traditional university compared to an online college. Between tuition, housing and textbooks, you’re looking at a $60,000 difference, not including any student loans you have to take out.
In addition to tuition and textbooks, online colleges generally don’t have lab or other school-related fees. At some universities, you have to pay for club activities, sports, libraries and computer labs. These fees are usually as much or more than actual tuition costs.
Something else most students forget is that you can still get financial aid for online colleges and universities. You can still apply for grants, scholarships and student loans even though you aren’t attending a traditional college or university. You still fill out the FAFSA and apply for any grants and scholarships you can find on your own. Most online colleges have a financial aid department that can help you find additional funding.
One of the biggest concerns for college students and their parents is how you’re going to pay for your higher education. While some parents pay for their kid’s college, some students are on their own and resort to taking out students loans or trying to find scholarships and grants. The best thing about grants and scholarships is you don’t have to pay them back and there are so many scholarships for college students.
There are many different types of scholarships for all types of students. A common misconception is that you have to be an outstanding athlete or have very good grades. But, there is a scholarship out there for you; you just have to know where to look for financial aid information.
The internet is filled with a many resources to find scholarships for college or technical school. There are scholarships available for athletics, academic achievement, minorities even religious or organization affiliation. You can also find grants for engineers or physical therapy student grants and scholarships.
By researching online or visiting your school’s financial aid office, you open yourself up to many scholarships. Don’t discount a scholarship or grant because it’s small. Many small grants or scholarships add up very quickly. One $100 scholarship will buy you a book this semester.
College is the perfect intersection of freedom and young adulthood: Never again will you be allowed to have that much fun while being responsible for so little. But as generations of students have learned the hard way, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by that freedom and go, well, a little overboard. Students who’d never had a problem doing homework find themselves tanking tests when there’s no one around to push them to attend class. People who’d always managed to have a thriving social life discover they’re about to become hermits. It’s a fun but intimidating time, and the best way to get the most out of freshman year is to remember a few key things.
Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan
Spoiler alert: You can’t do it all. Not even close. There will always be one more party, one more trip, one more event, one more night out, one more friend who needs a favor. College is about learning to prioritize and tell the difference between what you can do, what you want to do, and what you need to do. The biggest mistake freshmen make is taking on too much, whether in terms of course load or social commitments. If you want to get ahead, you’ll have to scale back.
Set up a schedule to follow each week and stick with it. (That’s the important part.) It doesn’t have to overly detailed or break down your life into 10-minute chunks. But you should be able to look ahead each week and know basically what you’re going to be doing every day and every night, from attending class to studying or just taking some time off to be with friends. If high school is juggling, then college is juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle: It can be done, but it takes a lot more planning.
You should also plan for free time, too. That might sound counter-intuitive or just plain impossible, but it’s not, and it’s absolutely worth it. It’s a bad idea to skip through college without any kind of planning or time management, but it’s equally as bad to overschedule yourself. College is work, yes, but it’s also supposed to be a fun time of exploration and self-discovery and all those other fuzzy terms that basically mean “figure out what kind of person you want to be.” As you build time for study and class, leave open chunks for hanging out, eating, wandering the dorms, or just seeing what comes up. Seriously. That way you maintain a schedule and your sanity.
Avoid Credit Cards
Bankers have sent their own kids to college on the fees they collect from freshmen who make the mistake of signing up for credit cards without understanding the responsibility required. Every incoming freshman finds his or her mailbox clogged with seemingly awesome offers from lending agencies dangling the promise of easy credit and a life of luxury. What a lot of freshmen forget is that they don’t have any money, or jobs, or the ability to do anything other than buy a cheap sandwich in the cafeteria. That makes getting a credit card an almost suicidal risk.
Building credit is important in the long run. It shows banks that you’re trustworthy, it gives you access to better interest rates on loans, and it generally makes you feel like an adult. But it takes years of controlled work to do that, and college isn’t the time to start. Managing credit means using cards wisely, and only to make purchases you could buy with cash at that moment. Credit cards aren’t for making big buys that aren’t in your budget; they’re for showing banks you’ve got enough cash and maturity to pay your debts in full. Getting into credit card debt while you’re still in college means you’ll be under the thumb of major lenders before you’ve even gotten your degree, let alone found a job that will give you the money to start paying those cards off.
There’s plenty of time to be an adult and work with the complicated payment structures that come with credit cards. College is not that time.
Establish Your Independence
In other words: Don’t go home too often. College is a crucial part of the development process as students make the often rocky transition from childhood to young adulthood, and it’s tempting to make frequent trips home in an attempt to recapture the safety of the nest. It’s understandable, too. Many freshmen spent 18 years in a perfectly welcoming environment (typical dramas notwithstanding), and after only knowing one home environment, it’s a shock to be placed in a world with thousands of other students all going through the same basic emotional crises. You want to escape to a place where you know the rules.
Unfortunately, that’s detrimental to your long-term success as a student and a rounded human being. Independence is usually hard-earned, and that means getting used to being bored or rejected or even alone on campus. It means meeting people and making friends. It means shaking up your established routines and coming up with new ones. It means staying away from home.
Need to get your laundry done? Look for change. Hungry for a home-cooked meal? Organize a get-together with students at a professor’s house. Your parents are going to be there to support you as you work through the challenges of college, but you actually have to do the work on your own this time. (And if they’re like most parents, they’re probably happy to help you as much as possible but reluctant to have you extend your childhood. They’re ready for you to start growing up.) College teaches resourcefulness and problem-solving, but you won’t be able to learn those skills without first relying on yourself.
Don’t Rush the Big Choices
Freshman year can feel like a barrage of life-or-death questions: What’s your major? What do you want to do? Where do you want to live? Do you want to go out sometime?
Those are all, to be sure, pretty big decisions, but the good news is that you’ve got more time than you’d think to figure out how to make them. For instance, you don’t have to commit to a major when you begin your freshman year, and many schools don’t push you to declare until you start your sophomore run. That doesn’t mean you can slack off your freshman year — you should still take your school’s required courses, usually speech, English, math, an elective, etc. — but it does mean you’re free to explore topics that interest you and get a feel for where you fit in at school.
Your major will be a guiding force in your education and career, and it’s not a choice to be made lightly. One of the worst things you can do is select a major because you don’t want to weigh any other options, or if it’s something you don’t like but are betting you will come to love in time. (The odds are slim.) Take your time on this one. Take a month, a semester, a year. Don’t just leap; look carefully. This is a great opportunity to get to know your guidance and career counselors, as well as professors in fields that grab your interest, to find out what’s required by students in your prospective major. Check out employment prospects with seniors or counselors. Do some Googling.
The real lesson in picking a major is to learn how to examine yourself and figure out what you want, then take the steps to get it. That’s not something you can knock out overnight.
Get Some Sleep
Really, do it. Get some good sleep as much as you can. Your mental and physical health depend on it. A 2009 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that only 30% of college students surveyed got more than 8 hours of sleep a night, while more than 68% percent (!) had trouble sleeping because of stress related to their academic or personal lives. As a result, students with poor sleep habits turn in greater numbers to over-the-counter drugs to regulate their sleep cycles and moods. This, if you were wondering, is not good.
Robbing yourself of sleep means relying more heavily on medical cheats to get some rest, and it also has a negative affect on your performance during waking hours. Sleep-deprived students tend to perform worse in class and on tests than their more rested counterparts. Your body becomes sluggish, your brain has to operate through a thick fog, and your moods become more erratic. Basically, depriving yourself of sleep is a shortcut to having a terrible time at college.
So what do you do? It’s related to the time management issue that confronts so many freshmen. A lot of students stay up too late the night before an 8 a.m. class, or they simply try to live on less sleep out of a fear they’ll miss something amazing if they go back to their dorm to rack out. The “fear of missing out” is a real one, and it leads to some hectic and damaging hours. Don’t cheat yourself out of some healthy sleep. It’s one of the best things you can do to stay healthy.
Moderation
If there’s one overriding piece of advice freshman should heed, one thing that feeds everything else, it’s this: Strive for moderation in all things. Party, but party responsibly. Work hard, but leave time to relax. Make new friends, but give yourself time to recuperate. Don’t shy away from big choices, but don’t rush into them, either. Lean on your folks, but not too much. Freshman year is like nothing else. If you do it right, you’ll never forget it.
Article supplied by the writing team from AccreditedOnlineColleges.com.
Guest Post: Madison Hewerdine is an author who writes about health insurance attorneys and has a passion for dancing.
Picking out your college classes can sometime be just as stressful and hectic as picking from the many different health insurance attorneys. You have to first figure out which classes you are required to take, these are normally called general classes. The general classes are required but you still have to figure out the timing to fit them into your schedule. You then have to figure out what classes you want to take each semester for your major and minor. Only after you have finished these can you figure out the classes you want to take for fun or for extra help.
Here are some tips to help you as you’re figuring out your class schedule:
- Use the required classes as a base. As you are going through trying to pick out your classes, pick out and map out the classes you are required to take first. These include your generals and the classes you need for your major.
- Map out a four year plan. Before you sign up for classes you should map out a four year plan. Then each year after you originally map it out you modify it each semester you sign up for classes. You modify it to make sure it is accurate in what you are required to take and what you have already taken.
- Make a list and prioritize. Make a list of the classes you want to take and put it next to your list of required classes. Prioritize the classes or rank them according to what classes are most important. After this you will be able to figure out where you can make sacrifices as far as your classes and scheduling goes.
- Ask around. Once you have figured out what classes you need and want to take you have to figure out the scheduling and the teachers. Sometimes you will not be able to pick a teacher or a time that you want but you should try to make it work the best you can. However, when you can choose your teachers and the times of classes, ask around. Ask others about the teachers you have and what they think about them.
- Go to class. Go to more classes than you need the first day. You will get to see all the different classes and teachers and be able to choose better what you want for yourself. After you decide, you can drop the classes you don’t want to keep.
