Joe Emerson

Forbes says 2020 set a record for student debt, with 45 million Americans collectively owing $1.6 trillion. That’s second only to home mortgage balances. If you want to be able to afford a home once you leave college, minimizing the balance due on your postsecondary education matters. One way to minimize college debt is to maximize your college cash flow and, when possible, pay college costs as they accrue. And there are 3 ways to improve your college cash flow: proactively, in real time, and reactively.

Successfully advancing from high school to college isn’t easy. It gets particularly difficult when a highly infectious disease becomes one of the risks of communal life on campus. That’s the new reality, but incoming freshmen will find they only need to adapt and overcome to successfully transition from high school to college during COVID-19.

Teachers long have known that the critical step in delivering knowledge is to engage the student. Teacher-student interaction is the essence of that. Students teaming up to problem-solve is the holy grail of the student-teacher interaction, with smart instructors leading the way and then stepping back to witness learning in action. It’s why classmates matter, and it’s why students determined to maximize their e-school experience should know these 5 ways to connect with peers in an online class.

Online courses can be a great way to juggle work, social activities and academic priorities. That is why nearly 67 percent of USF’s undergraduate students take at least one online course each academic year. But there is a difference between choosing to take a single online course for convenience, and suddenly finding yourself taking all your courses virtually. There’s no shortage of advice on how to adapt to online learning. With a few caveats, those same tips apply when a pandemic jams virtually every college student into the fast lane of digital learning. Here are 10 tips to help students succeed in online classes.

A psychotherapist was kind enough to give Business Insider three common reasons your New Year’s resolutions often fail: You aren’t being specific enough. You aren’t framing them positively. They aren’t about you. Got that? Now check out our New Year’s resolution ideas for college students, and pick a few to adapt to your needs. When you make them yours, remember to be specific, focus on the positive aspects of your goals, and be sure they are things you really want.

If you’re considering the benefits of accelerated college programs, it’s a good bet you’re familiar with success, know what you want from academia, have been working to get it, and want to get it done as soon as possible, to the best possible effect.

“Elections belong to the people,” Abraham Lincoln said. Sure, you say, but you’re not going to bother with elections because you don’t know how to vote while you’re in college. If that’s the case, consider the rest of Lincoln’s quote: “If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

Starting college is a series of firsts for students and their parents. Research, campus visits, and the all-important orientation offer data points and examples of what being a freshman means. But there’s no dry run, no drill, no simulation that can fully put a student in a freshman’s shoes and parents in that all but helpless mode of waiting and wondering from afar. There is, though, a simple, free, and effective way for parents and students to prepare, and that’s talking about the college transition.

It’s a safe bet that someone somewhere is writing a doctoral thesis or medical journal article on why there are so many labels these days for overprotective parents: helicopter parents, bulldozer parents, snowplow parents, to name a few. Here’s one likely takeaway from that article: Tips for parents on teaching college-bound students how to be independent should be informed by a vaccine analogy. A shot of responsibility now can give your student enough confidence to survive the independence of freshman year.

What you do the summer before you start college can help you decide what you want to do with your life and what to focus on in college. If you’ve already chosen a major, you may already have a career path; if not, examining options can at the very least help you rule some out. The choices are yours, and smart decisions can come from knowing how to use your summer to explore careers.

Winter break is perfectly timed for college-bound high school seniors who need a respite from classes, some time with family and friends, and relief from the college hunt jitters. ’Tis that season, so here’s a gift that can ease those jitters and help seniors maximize holiday cheer: winter break tips for high school seniors preparing for college.

Determining the optimum college class size is akin to finding the best setting on a residence hall thermostat. Satisfaction and results vary, and they depend on the class (residence hall) and the participants (roommates). That’s because one person’s comfort zone can be where another finds misery. There are, however, a number of good answers and supporting arguments for those who ask: What are the benefits of smaller class size in college?

College Board’s SAT has been a source of test day jitters for aspiring college students since 1926. The test and testing methods have evolved, but the jitters and the best ways to cope with them haven’t: Study until your confidence level tames those nerves, and know what to expect on SAT test day.

Applying to a single college, or just a few, means running a risk of being rejected by your target school and having to start the process from scratch with less time. That’s the short explanation for why you should apply to multiple colleges. The long explanation has several parts.

Few people face the beginning of college life without some degree of anxiety. That’s a given. After all, the experience is akin to staring at the deep end of the pool from the highest diving board you’ve ever seen. You know you can swim, but you’re afraid you’ll land the worst possible way. Take a deep breath and make the jump, because you can successfully transition to college life with these tips.

Starting college comes with some radical changes. You’re in a new environment surrounded by new people. Sure, you’ll get a rush of exhilaration at all the new faces and places, but the upheaval will likely take its toll on you. The good news is that there are simple and effective tips for dealing with homesickness.

Studying is learning, and learning leads to success, which is why it’s so appropriate that USF calls its college study hub the Academic Success Center. It’s not just named well, it works – if you use it. Why people don’t use study centers or wait too long to use them is a study in human nature. This article is about academic excellence, so we’ll simply look at how Academic Success Centers help you make the grade in college.

College is a matter of dreams and the academic and career aspirations born of those dreams. Sleep problems can turn those dreams into nightmares, causing physical and emotional problems that spiral out of control and land GPAs and hopes of graduating in the trash bin. That’s why the importance of sleep for college students can’t be overstated.

College students need more time. In fact, college becomes a study in how to save time while getting things done. The answer, too often, is eating on the run. If you’re trying to get by on vending machine snacks and Red Bull gulped on the way to class, your health and grades are doomed. If you want to burn beneficial calories without burning too much time, try these easy microwave meals for college students.

Beginning college usually means heading off to unfamiliar territory to live among strangers while facing significant academic and social challenges – typically while still a teenager. So it would be unusual if people facing day one at college didn’t have issues with stress. The good news is that millions of people have done it, and their legacy is a mountain of information on coping with the stress of going away to college.

Nearly one-third of rising college freshmen are first-generation college students. The status should be a point of pride, but many students who hope to be the first in their immediate family to attend college don’t take credit for being trailblazers. They either don’t realize it’s a plus in the eyes of admissions officers or think it’s a mark of shame. To set the record straight, here’s our first-generation college student guide.

In a perfect world, everyone would start college knowing what they would love to do for a living. Students would already have a plan to apply their interests to career challenges and curriculum choices. They’d intuitively know how to use college as a stepping stone to a career that makes them a productive individual, as well as financially and emotionally fulfilled.

If you are a college-bound high school graduate, change is coming this fall that will have storylines involving friends, family, and new academic and geographic horizons. Adapting to this radical life transformation will haunt you less if you learn how to prepare for college during summer. This includes vital social, academic, relocation, and health tips that can make or break your freshman year experience.

If you are still in high school, learning good study habits will pay huge dividends now, in college, and beyond. If you have finished high school and have the grades you need to get into college but never got the hang of studying, congratulations: You definitely are smart enough to graduate with honors, and it’s not too late to learn college study habits.

Defining why a college education is important involves more than just identifying the superficial benefits of more career opportunities. At a deeper level, college is where you will map a path through life that can take you to places you never expected to go.

Dealing responsibly with the basics of staying healthy needs to be at the top of your daily checklist once you hit campus, because you can’t do your best if you aren’t at your best. So be ready with these top five tips for how to stay healthy in college.

Community college can be your first, best, and final step in a post-secondary education, or it can be a lifesaving way to rescue a derailed plan to attend a dream college. Junior college serving as an academic lifesaver is a fairly common story, but there are also many no-drama reasons why starting at a community college might be right for you.

People who work their way through the mountain of tips on how high schoolers can use summers to prepare for college will see a pattern emerge. There are a lot of summer tips for high school students preparing for college. Typically, the experts focus on five areas: jobs and internships, volunteer work, well-chosen summer courses and programs, college admissions prep work, and extracurricular activities that identify, hone, and display personal skills and talents.

Starting college can be a tricky time for both students and their family. Use our top five college facts for families of college-bound high school seniors to help ease the transition and the anxiety.

One word in that headline is weighing heavily on college-bound high school seniors. Let’s capitalize and bold it: How to Get Ready for College NOW.

If you’re a high school senior, you may be at the stage of the college application process where staying very organized and planning way ahead can have an upside. Think lists and calendars. You need to be aware of what must be done and by when. With the holiday break just around the corner, you can get even more ahead of the game with these 5 tips for using holiday downtime to make the college process easier.