Jungle Blogiversity

With confirmed college places now in the hands of the fortunate, it’s likely that your mind will be awash with thoughts of your impending study, of friends yet to meet, and of an exciting new city just begging to be explored. College life could never (and should never) be described as all work and no play, but having an awesome social life (or even a halfway decent one) does not come cheap. Believe it or not, your student loan is not actually intended to be spent on beer and wild nights out. Rather it’s meant to cover expenses like rent, food, and text books. You could always take advantage of free online textbooks (Bookboon offers over 800 textbooks which can be downloaded for free), but unfortunately we can’t point you in the direction of a similar site for free digs or free food. There’s only one thing for it. You're going to have to brush up your money-management skills. In the plainest terms - you need to create a student budget. Don’t worry - it’s not as painful as it sounds. You’ll be able to really enjoy student life without having to suffer the burden of unnecessary debt, plus you’ll learn some skills that you can put to use throughout your post-college life (it might seem a long way off, but it’s really not).

If you’ve applied to start college this fall, it’s likely that you’ve been waiting for this past week to arrive for quite some time. You’ve probably imagined the moment that fabled envelope plopped onto your doormat (or appeared online) a million times over. It’s likely that this imagined scenario involved a big fat whopping yes. All of your hard work has paid off and you’ve secured your place at the college of your dreams. Full steam ahead into adulthood! If all that’s gone to plan, then a huge congratulations to you. If, on the other hand, you received an invitation to join the waitlist or, even worse, an outright rejection, and that bubble of imagined success has well and truly popped, don’t despair - there are still things you can do to pursue your dreams of being part of a graduating class of the future.

The 2012 Social Job Seeker survey from Jobvite makes for interesting reading. The main takeaways? Over 90% of companies use or plan to use social media as recruitment channel, while more than 70% have already done so. With those figures in mind, it makes sense for you to spend some time smartening up your Facebook profile to make it stand out to potential employers. Here are a few quick tips to help get you started. 

If you’re heading off to college this fall, there’s going to be one hundred and one things that need doing (not to mention the need to pick a fabulous outfit for your prom). When you arrive at college, you’re likely to step headlong into a whirlwind of places to go, forms to sign, and parties to rock. It’s undoubtedly a fun time, but one that needs a pretty significant amount of preparation if you want to be in with a chance of a smooth transition period. You’ll probably be making a final decision on which school to attend next month (if you haven’t done so already), so the time you have to prepare for college is decreasing rapidly. Hopefully you will have made significant inroads into finalizing your financial aid package by now too, so let’s take a look at the other preparations you should be making.

There was once a time when the majority of business schools would interview every applicant to their course of study. In recent years that approach has changed, with many MBA admissions officers issuing interview invitations primarily to those applicants they are most interesting in having enrol on the course. Indeed, being invited to interview for an MBA course is indicative that you stand a good chance of being accepted onto the program. That is assuming you don’t blow it of course! Here are five quick tips to help you sail through your MBA interview with flying colours.

With the cost of college tuition rising at a seemingly relentless rate, there’s more reason than ever to seek out some sort of financial assistance. Applying for relevant scholarships is just one way that students can bring down the cost of attending college. There is literally thousands and thousands of dollars available, so it makes sense for you to at least check out the possibilities. Here’s a list of 10 scholarships you might consider applying for. 

Imagine this. You’ve walked away with a good degree from a good university (it might even be great on both counts). You’re ready to get to work in the career of your dreams. You’ve had your eye on one or two roles that you just know would be perfect for you and you’re feeling pretty confident that you’ll be in the running. What if you weren’t in the running though? Whether the potential employer didn’t even bother to get back to you or whether you got to the interview stage, for whatever reason you didn’t get the job. Could it be a lack of soft skills that’s the problem?

There’s no getting away from the fact that college is expensive. The 2012 College Board report “Trends in College Pricing” puts the average annual tuition and fees for out-of-state students attending a public four-year institution at $21,706. By the time additional costs are factored in, that already significant figure reaches $30,911. When that figure is multiplied by four, you're looking at a serious outlay (like $30,000 plus wasn’t serious enough). Parents can reasonably expect to contribute half to two-thirds of the total cost of college, so for all but the very wealthiest of families, it makes sense to think of saving for college as a necessity. Here are five tips to help parents succeed. 

The benefits of an online education are easily understood. The cost factor is the one that immediately comes to mind, but there are many other advantages to pursuing an online degree. With the exception of perhaps a handful of online colleges that require a student to login at certain times, the majority of online courses offer a degree of flexibility that courses taught at traditional bricks and mortar campuses just can’t match. Not only can students choose when they study, studying online allows students to “attend” pretty much any college of their choosing without geographical limitations or concern for pre-existing work or childcare commitments. It all sounds wonderful, and for most students it is. That doesn’t mean it’s for everybody though. Just like a decision to attend college in person should be made carefully, so should the decision to study online. Here are some factors that students should consider before deciding to pursue an online education. 

There’s a lot to be said for online education. There’s the flexibility, the open scheduling, the lack of commute, not to mention the cost savings. It’s an attractive proposition that has seen more than six million students step up to the challenge. One of the few downsides to online education is often identified as a lack of opportunity to socialize with other students and build a professional network. Does that really have to be the case though? If you choose online education, are you really signing up for years of isolation? Not necessarily so. As the old adage goes “no man is an island,” and never does that ring more true than when you are studying an online course. 

Bold typeface, italics, fancy layouts .... there are plenty of tried and tested methods of making your resume stand out in the crowd. The only problem is that in the modern digital landscape, they're about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Why?

Because the chances of a real person actually reading your resume at the initial application stage are becoming increasingly remote. When the time comes (and for the graduating class of 2013 it is nipping at your heels), the chances are that many of the jobs you apply for are likely to be posted online. What that means in practice is that your resume has to be good enough to impress a sophisticated software application before it is ever glanced at by an actual recruiter. 

When it comes to student debt, there’s a statistic, opinion, or unusual fact about pretty much everything. Here is a small selection of the more interesting ones. 

1. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that almost 20 million Americans attend college or university each year, close to 60% of whom cover the cost with annual borrowing.

2. According to CNBC, the average college student from the graduating class of 2011 had a total of $26,600 in student loans. This represents a five percent increase from the comparative average debt in 2010. 

3. Only one third of college students will graduate completely free from the burden of student loan debt repayments.

No matter how well respected a college or university may be, most college students will be fully signed up to the fact that it’s incredibly important to “read around” a subject to order to gain a deeper understanding of differing viewpoints.

With questions being asked as to whether colleges are fully preparing marketing majors for modern-day marketing, it’s never been more important for college students to keep themselves in the loop. Thanks to the internet (and the growing importance of content marketing) there are several blogs that will provide marketing majors with an insight into the fabulous world of marketing that they might not get from college alone. 

It’s that time again. A new year; a time for fresh starts and new beginnings. No doubt many of you will have made several resolutions - exercise more, party less, study harder? 

Some of you may even have decided to start a blog. 

You’d be in good company. According to NM Incite, there were over 181 million blogs by the end of 2011. Blogging is undoubtedly big business and it’s likely to get even bigger as consumers the world over demand increasing amounts of informative, relevant, and timely content. 

You might have been thinking that your blog would be a channel for personal satisfaction; an outlet to express personal musings. While that’s a decent aim, and one that according to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2011 is shared by 60% of bloggers, there is so much more you could be using your blog for. 

Business News Daily, a site aimed at startups and small businesses, suggests that internships are on the rise. 

The concept of internships is hardly the sole premise of Capitol Hill. Industries from utilities to cosmetics offer hundreds of thousands of internship placements each year. The suggestion that they will become ever more popular is a view that is shared by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) whose 2012 Internship and Co-op Survey reported that the number of internships was expected to increase by 8.5 percent in 2012.