Performing and Visual Arts College Fairs

If you're thinking of pursuing a college degree in music, theater, art, dance, and other related disciplines, you should attend one of these Performing and Visual Arts College Fairs.

Portland, OR
Wednesday, Nov. 1, 7p-9p
Portland State University, Portland, OR

Seattle, WA
Thursday, Nov. 2, 7p-9p
Seattle Center Pavillion, Seattle, WA

Washington, DC
Sunday, Nov. 12, 1p-3p
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Find out which colleges are attending each fair.

Fall 2006 College Fairs

It's not too late to shop for a good college. College fairs can save you lots of time on research. You get lots of colleges in one place and the opportunity to speak directly with college representatives about what the college can offer you. Here's a list of college fairs set for this Fall.

Boise, ID
Tue., Oct. 31, 10:00am - 2:30pm, 4:30pm - 6:30pm
Boise Centre on the Grove

Atlantic City
Thu., Nov. 2, 9:00am-12:30pm, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Atlantic City Convention Center, Atlantic City, NJ

Seattle
Fri., Nov. 3, 9:00am-12:00pm
Sat., Nov 4, 12:00pm - 4:00pm
Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle, WA

Portland
Sun., Nov. 5, 1:00pm-5:00pm
Mon., Nov. 6, 9:00am-12:00pm
Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR

Spokane
Tue., Nov. 7, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Spokane Center, Spokane, WA

Ft. Lauderdale
Wed., Nov. 8, 9:00am - 12:30pm, 5:00pm - 8:30pm
Greater Ft. Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Greater Washington
Thu., Nov. 9, 9:30am- 12:30pm, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC

Baltimore
Wed., Nov. 15, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Thu., Nov. 16, 9:00am - 12:00pm
Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD

Find out which colleges and universities are attending each fair.

Don't forget to bring a list of the things you are looking for in a college--

• 2-year or 4-year college?
• Single-sex or co-ed?
• Sports or Arts?
• Majors or recognized departments?
• Location?
• Financial aid?
• Housing?
• Class size?
• Career services?

Are Free Textbooks Worth the Price

Freeload Press, a Minnesota startup, has begun offering free college textbooks and study aids. The web-based company offers 20 titles on topics from Accounting to Psychology. Students can read the books online free of charge. All they have to do is register online and...suffer through some ads.

Freeload Press takes a page from the book of just about every web-based business--offering ad-supported content free to users. Freeload's content is not volumous at this point (20 titles), and their customers are not legion (fewer than 40). But, the company's website promises that they are adding titles as soon as they can.

Freeload Press has taken a beating from critics thus far. Basically, folks (academics and traditional book publishers) doubt the model will--or even should--work. The argument is two-fold: (1) No advertiser should be able to hold students' minds captive while they are in an impressionable learning state and (2) Textbook authors will not give up lucrative arrangements with traditional publishers for an iffy deal to give away their work in exchange for a percentage of ad sales.

Freeload Press is, of course, ignoring the critics and pressing on. They are also hedging their bets, offering print versions the textbooks for $35-$40, plus shipping. The print versions also contain ads.

When I first heard about this idea, I thought it was a great one. Then, I tried the service and found that it's too early to tell. Most of the books I need for my classes are, as predicted, not available. And, after taking a look at the lists of required textbooks for several colleges, I found that many of those books were not available either. I also noted that many of the textbooks required for most classes were written by the professors teaching the classes. It seems that Freeload Press should be going after professors to offer versions of their books via this service.

Freeload Press certainly cannot ask traditional textbook publishers such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill. These companies publish a large chunk of the books used in most colleges and high schools, hundreds of titles between them. Both Pearson and McGraw Hill offer electronic textbooks for online reading as part of a subscription service. The electronic books are not available for download or print, but they are availabe for half the price of the print version.

Here's a quick guide to free and low-cost textbooks online:
SafariX (Pearson & O'Reilly) -Thousands of titles. Purchase a subscription for up to $80. The subscription buys you 150 days of online viewing of a single book. If you need to use multiple books, you'll have to buy multiple subscriptions.

Primus Online Bookstore (McGraw-Hill) -Books on Business, Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences and Engineering available half-price for online viewing or for download.

Textbookrevolution.org -Student and volunteer-run, About 300 titles available free from their authors or copyright holders. Books can be downloaded or viewed online free of charge.

Big Name or Small Wonder: Choosing the Best College For You

There are countless reasons to choose a college--reputation, location, majors, financial aid and sports to name a few. For many years students and parents have based their college decisions on rankings and reputation, instead of on criteria that were important to individual students based on their academic needs, career aspirations, talents and the way they learn.

Students have been made to feel that going to state schools, public universities, community colleges, small colleges and lower-tier schools was somehow undesirable. The truth is that Ivy League and top-tier schools are great schools that offer many advantages to students and graduates. Their reputations and resources afford students access to world-class professors, jobs with top employers, money for business and big-name social connections (a few presidents that's all). And while I just made that sound irresistable, there are reasons to resist the temptation.

First, a study by the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that students who are accepted to but do not attend Ivy League colleges earn as much money as those who graduate from Ivy League schools. Greatness won't be denied. Students who are intent on being successful, and who are clear about their criteria for selecting a college, should feel free to choose colleges that offer them what they want and need, regardless of rank or reputation.

Here are 10 reasons to choose non-Ivy, lower-ranked schools:
1. Smaller colleges offer smaller class sizes and lower student:teacher ratios
2. Smaller colleges offer specialized, unique majors
3. Community colleges allow students to pay less for lower level classes, then transfer to 4-year colleges
4. Do well in your first 1-2 years and you can transfer to an Ivy later (if you still want to)
5. Local or regional colleges may have deeper relationships with local businesses and enjoy a great reputation
6. Top-performers may be offered amazing financial aid packages to attend
7. More hands-on experience in preparation for work or graduate school
8. Classes taught by actual professors, not grad students
9. More well-rounded admissions criteria
10. Better chance of getting in

Check out these great books on college selection:

Harvard and Princeton End Early Admissions

(PRWeb Oct. 25, 2006) Harvard and Princeton announced that they would discontinue Early Admissions beginning after Fall 2007. They were the first Ivy League colleges to do so, and it appears that none of the others are ready to follow.

Early Admissions allows students to apply before the regular application cycle and to find out if they have been accepted before the regular decision students have even begun to apply. If a student is accepted, s/he must commit to attending the college. Students send a good-faith deposit to show their commitment. Colleges fill as much as 40% of their classes with Early Admissions students.

Early Admission is mostly the realm of "advantaged" students, those who have prepared well for college and those who can afford it without benefit of financial aid. Disadvantaged students generally do not apply Early Admission because they cannot commit to a single school without first waiting to compare financial aid packages from several schools.

Harvard and Princeton reportedly based their decision to end Early Admissions on these facts. Both schools cited a desire to level the playing field between advantaged and disadvantaged applicants by allowing only regular admission and decision.

See full press release

CommonApp Uncommonly Easy Way to Apply to College

For those students looking to apply to multiple colleges, but lacking the will to write multiple essays and lacking the funds to write multiple checks, the CommonApp is a saving grace.

The CommonApp is a single application that allows students to apply for multiple colleges using a single application and essay. You'll still have to pay multiple fees, though some of the schools will waive the fee if you apply online. Others will let you pay less or submit a receipt for a charitable donation instead of paying the regular application fee. Application fees range from $25-$100.

If that's not enough reason to apply using the CommonApp, there's more...

The CommonApp saves students tiime on researching colleges. Generally, the CommonApp can be used to apply to a group of member colleges. The original CommonApp can be used to apply to 298 independent colleges, including 6 of the 8 Ivy League colleges.

Other commonapps allow you to apply to colleges based on geography and/or type of college. Collegefortexans.org allows students to apply to Texas schools. EDUcated! allows students to apply to 34 historically Black colleges and universities for a flat fee of $35.

Download a sample CommonApp

100+ Scholarships

I've attached a downloadable list of more than 100 scholarships ranging in value from $500-$25,000.

Can Free Admissions Test Help You Score?

Number2.com offers free online admissions test preparation help for students preparing to take the SAT, ACT and GRE. The service includes test prep materials, practice tests and questions, test-taking tips, a personalized test prep plan based on your needs, progress reports, vocabulary builder, a personal homepage (where you'll find all of your test prep info) and individual coaching.

Besides its attractive price tag (FREE), Number2.com offers a few other novel features. The most interesting is the personalized prep plan. Instead of using a diagnostic test to determine where you need to start and what you need to work on, Number2.com bases your plan on how you answer the practice questions and exercises on the site. If you easily knock out the first few questions, the site will then give you harder questions until you start to routinely knock those out. It's kind of like a low-end CAT (computer adaptive tests) like the kind higher-end counterparts Princeton Review and Kaplan use and those used by the test developers.

The other interesting feature is the SAT and ACT companion guides, a free tutorial guide that helps you maneuver through the question types and content. The guide contains questions created or contracted by Number2.com. The practice questions are not real SAT or ACT questions; they are based on the types you will find on the real tests. The rest of the materials for Number2.com's test prep programs are created by the test creators. Number2.com recommends that you purchase test guides from The College Board (SAT), ACT and Educational Testing Service (ETS). The recommended books contain real tests from prior testing periods.

Finally, Number2.com's most interesting feature is the personal coach. The personal coach is not actually provided by Number2.com. You have to provide the name of a coach that you would like to work with. Here's how it works: You sign up and name a coach. You ask your coach to sign up. The coach can access you test prep homepage and monitor you progress on your plan. The coach uses this access to help cheer you on and provide you with any additional help you might need. Number2.com recommends that you select a teacher, a community leader or other adult volunteer as your coach.

So, is Number2.com's free service as good as the expensive ones? It depends. If you are disciplined enough to manage your own test prep without the structure of haviing set class days and times and a teacher, then this option may work for you. It is certainly as good as using self-help guides to prepare. And, it may be better than going it completely alone.

I'm not sure that completely answers the question, but it's the best I can do given that Number2.com doesn't have a long enough track record or enough independent reviews to truly tell the tale of how it compares to the expensive test prep courses. For my part, I tried the service and found it better than no prep at all, a great value for the price (FREE) and helpful overall. I studied for the SAT on my own and got into top-tier schools. I am currently studying for the GRE using self-help guides. I will try the GRE guide and let you know how I score.

Future Heads of the State?

NASHVILLE, TN (August 9, 2006) - Fifty-five student government presidents from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from across the country participated in an innovative leadership program on the historic campus of Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi.

The Annual Nissan Student Government Leadership Program, now in it's second year, is intended to help students learn leadership lessons that will help them to be more successful in student government leadership roles, raise their interest in socio-political issues and hopefully build skills they will be able to use long after graduation.

The program featured four days of leadership training sessions rendered by a cadre of nationally recognized speakers on topics such as the leadership challenges and "Practices in Team Development".

For more information on For more information on the Nissan Student Government Leadership Program visit www.NissanSGLP.com or contact:

Stephanie Valdez-Streaty, Nissan North America at 615-725-3460
or Nicole Brinson, Nissan North America at 615-725-1451

18501 South Figueroa Street
Gardena, CA 90248-4500

Full story

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The Official SAT Question of the Day™ OCTOBER 10, 2006 Part of the following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A. Using it both for culinary and medicinal purposes, fennel is one of the oldest of all cultivated plants. Using it both for culinary and medicinal purposes, Using it both for culinary purposes as well as medicinally, They use it for both culinary purposes and medicinally, and Used for both culinary and medicinal purposes, Used both for culinary purposes, also medicinally, © 2006 The College Board. The College Board, 45 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY, 10023-6992. College Board, SAT, and the acorn logo are registered trademarks of the College Board. The Official SAT Question of the Day, The Official SAT Online Course, and The Official SAT Study Guide are trademarks owned by the College Board. To unsubscribe, reply to this message with the word "unsubscribe" as the subject line. To ensure that collegeboard.com email is not incorrectly identified as spam by your email program's filtering mechanism, please add @reply.collegeboard.com to your Address Book. All other questions or comments: please send a separate email to feedback@collegeboard.com. Quick Links SAT® Registration SAT Preparation Center™ SAT Dates The Official SAT Question of the Day Page-Per-Day Calendar · 365 questions · Free online explanations and hints More Info

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