All you have to do is see if you’re a match:

1. OP Loftbed Scholarship
Amount-$500
Deadline-July 31
Quick fact-High school seniors through doctoral-level students can apply.

2. Lincoln Forum Scholarship
Amount-$250-$1,000
Deadline-July 31
Quick fact- This scholarship is available for enrolled college students.

3. Family Travel Forum Teen Travel Writing Scholarship
Amount-$200-$1,000
Deadline-August 1
Quick fact-To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must sign up to be members of the MyFamilyTravels.com community prior to application.

4. Shut Up and Sweat Scholarship
Amount-$2,000
Deadline-August 1
Quick fact-This is the perfect scholarship for student athletes!

5. AFSA Second Chance Scholarship
Amount-$1,000
Deadline-August 24
Quick fact-5 awards will be granted.

Want more scholarship matches? Make a profile on Cappex!

Before you take a looksy and get all choked up because your dream school costs $40,000 a year, remember that doesn’t mean you can’t apply for merit aid and scholarships to lower that price by whole lot.

Without any further delay, here are the top 10 most expensive private colleges:

1. Connecticut College
Tuition and fees 2010-2011: $43,990
Cool fact: Chartered in 1911, the founding of the college was a response to Wesleyan University’s decision to stop admitting women.

2. Columbia University
Tuition and fees 2010-2011: $43,304
Cool fact: Columbia is the oldest university of higher learning in the state of New York.

3. Vassar College
Tuition and fees: $43,190
Cool fact: Vassar has a student organization called The Barefoot Monkeys, which is aCircus Arts, Firespinning, and Juggling Club. You will not only be paying for a multidisciplinary education, but also some old school entertainment.

4. St. John’s College (MD)
Tuition and fees: $42,592
Cool fact: Founded originally in 1696 as a preparatory school, it received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest colleges in the United States.

5. Trinity College
Tuition and fees: $42,420
Cool fact: Trinity has a student to faculty ratio of 10:1.

6. Bucknell University
Tuition and fees: $42,342
Cool fact: The sixth president of the university, David Jayne Hill, had an epic mustache.

7. St. John’s College (NM)
Tuition and fees: $42,192
Cool fact: Both St. John’s College campuses are known for their Great Books Program where student-led discussion is the basis for most classes and teachers take a non-directive role.

8. Wesleyan University
Tuition and fees: $42,084
Cool fact: Wesleyan offers a BA/MA Program in the sciences leading to a Bachelor’s degree in the fourth year and a Master’s degree in the fifth year. Tuition for the fifth year of the Master’s degree is waived.

9. Bard College at Simon’s Rock
Tuition and fees: $41,990
Cool fact: Simon’s Rock is an “early college”, designed for students to enroll immediately after completing the tenth or eleventh grade, rather than after graduating from high school.

10. Carnegie Mellon University
Tuition and fees: $41,940
Cool fact: John Forbes Nash, the subject of A Beautiful Mind and winner of the 1994 Noble Prize in Economics, was a 1948 graduate.

How much does tuition price affect your college decision? Leave a comment!

Part of the college search, that is supremely helpful if you start early, is the scholarship quest.  We’ve made list of 8 great scholarships for juniors that they can apply to now!

1. The Discus Award
Every month, there’s a new $2,000 scholarship winner.  The Discus Awards recognize well-rounded, versatile students following their passions.

2. National Peace Essay Contest
Over 50 scholarships will be awarded between $1,000-$10,000.  What do you have to do to win? Write a killer essay.

3. The Gen and Kelly Tanabe Scholarship
This is a merit-based program that helps students fulfill their dreams of a higher education.

4. Avar Press Literary Essay Scholarship
Avar Press is seeking to recognize, encourage, and reward scholarships to high school students who read a specific book and write an essay about it.

5. Abbot & Fenner Scholarship
This $1,000 scholarship is for a student who writes a 500-1000 word response to specified question. Easy!

6. Castle Ink’s Green Scholarship
Applicants must generate awareness of recycling by writing something inspiring and posting it online, including a link to castleink.com.  Not too difficult and good for the environment!

7. B. David Scholarship
College-bound juniors have the opportunity to win one of three $1,000 scholarships.

8. Win Win Plus Scholarship
Scholarships between $500 and $25,000 will be awarded to college-bound students who make a difference in at-risk kids’ lives.  It’s a win-win situation.

Looking for more scholarships? Go here!

Fewer and fewer undergraduate students are saying “Hello” to the Romanic Language majors.  According to The Chronicle of Higher Education college undergraduate majors in German and the Romance languages have been vanishing from American higher-education:

In the 1970-71 academic year, Romance-language majors were offered by close to 76 percent of American four-year colleges. But by 2005-6, only about 59 percent offered them. German programs saw a similar decline: In 1970-71, about 44 percent of colleges offered the major, but in 2005-6, just under 27 percent did so. Leaving aside “secretarial science,” those are by far the largest relative declines discovered by the Riverside scholars.

Would you ever study the romantic languages?

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This post from the Uloop blog gives college students 5 easy ways to network and make friends in college:

Switch It Up
Although it is very easy to be a part of the same organizations that you have been a part of for your entire life, it is more beneficial to branch out to various organizations that have different backgrounds, connections, and client bases than your own. For example, even if you are not politically driven it may be rather prudent to join Young Republicans, Campus Democrats, etc. Or on the flip-side, if you have been a part of a politically affiliated organization for a long time, then maybe you should switch it up and join the Adventure Club or Fencing Club. By doing this, your face and name gain recognition across demographics.

Approach the Unfamiliar
Oftentimes people get so wrapped up in their own lives that they forget that there are six billion other people on the planet. Yes, friendships are amazing, especially the lifelong ones. However, someone that you have known since pre-school will not vanish if you do not hang out with them for a couple days. Be approachable and approach those that you don’t know. For example, if someone is wearing a shirt that says “Combat Airsoft” you may feign interest in order to spark a conversation which could lead to a friendship. No one ever got anywhere by staying in their shell, and neither should you.

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It’s time for, drum roll please, a crazy college story! College and university life is definitely the time for trying new things, but where does it go too far? Would sticking a camera in your skull suffice to say the experience has “gone too far”? At New York University, arts professor Wafaa Bilal, recently implanted a camera in the back of his head only to realize his body did not want it. According to The Huffington Post, “[Bilal] underwent surgery on Friday after his body rejected one of the titanium posts anchoring the device to his skull.”  The article goes on explaining:

Late last year, Bilal had the digital camera inserted into a two-inch hole drilled into the back of his head. According to The Chronicle of High Education, the body-modification artist who performed the surgery also installed three posts between Bilal’s skin and skull to root the setup in place.

Bilal intended to wear the camera around for a year as part of an art project, titled “The 3rd I,” commissioned for the opening of the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, reports the AP. “But the setup caused constant pain, because his body rejected one of the posts, despite treatment with antibiotics and steroids,” The Chronicle now writes.

The troublesome post has been removed, but the other two remain. “I’m determined to continue with [the project],” Mr. Bilal said, according to The Chronicle.

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Here are 5 things every college-bound senior needs to do before Spring Break ends:

1. Visit Your Schools in Question: If you’re unsure about which college or university is the right match for you, you might to avoid simply flipping a coin. “Heads? Okay, State it is!”  Make an informed decision, not a random one.  If the schools in question are in close proximity to you, take a mini trip during Spring Break to remind yourself why you liked them in the first place, or even, why one school might actually be a better fit.

2. Contact Current College Students: By Spring Break your senior year, you’ve probably done considerable college research already.  But since the deadline to making a decision is approaching, finding out about nitty gritty stuff might help your decision-making. Send an email or a Facebook message to a friend, or a friend of a friend, or person you had gym class with junior year who’s already enrolled and attending a school you’re interested in. Ask questions about the social life, how much homework they have, where they like to hang out on campus.  For many, college is a passion and they’d be more than willing to chat with you about it.

3. Find Scholarships!!!!: A break from a school gives you the perfect opportunity to dig up as many scholarships as you can.  If you’ve already received your financial aid award letter, you’ll know how much more of your tuition you’ll have to cover.  Finding scholarships is a great way to cover a big portion, if not all, of your tuition.  There are easy-to apply-to-scholarships out there, especially on Cappex.com, so get going!

4. Talk with Your Family or Guidance Counselor: Flesh out your college or university options with people who are looking out for your best interest and education.  Go over your choices, the different tuitions, locations, and find out what your biggest advocates think about your college choices.  Since higher education is such a big and important decision, and a costly one, listening to input from people who want to see you succeed can help you make the right choice.

5. Avoid Going Crazy Waiting for an Acceptance Letter:  The final word of wisdom we hope to instill in you is to avoid mental breakdowns over an acceptance letter.  Many acceptance letters arrive over Spring Break, so try to avoid biting your nails off or freaking out your friends with your anxiety.  Getting into a school or not will not make or break you.  No matter where you land, you are in charge of making your college career what it is. So relax ,and enjoy your Spring Break.

A new report written about in The New York Times higher education blog The Choice illustrates that more minority high school students are making the grade on AP exams, but still remained underrepresented overall in the nation’s AP classroom.

More than 853,000 public high school seniors in last May’s graduating class, or 28 percent of the class, took at least one A.P. exam. Some 59 percent of those who took the tests earned a grade of 3, 4 or 5, which are required for college credit.

Trevor Packer, vice president of the Advanced Placement program, said that while the report shows that more students across the country enroll each year in classes to prepare them for the exams, there are some signs that improvement is not consistent among some groups and in some subject areas.Over the past decade, the number of minority students graduating with a successful A.P. experience has more than doubled, according to the report.

“A focus on access and equity is resulting in greater percentages of students going into college with A.P. scores that qualify and result in higher college performance,’’ he said.”

But the gap between how those students performed, compared to nonminority students, is still great in most states in the country.

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U.S. News writes about the 15 most wired college and university campuses and how many computers there are on campus per college student:

U.S. News surveyed more than 1,700 undergraduate programs last year, and 1,280 schools reported data on both their total student body (combined graduate and undergraduate population) and the number of computers available to students on campus. Of those schools, the average number of computers per student on campus is .14. That means, on average, there are roughly seven students per computer on college campuses nationwide.

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Probably the last thing on your mind while you’re searching for and applying to colleges is who your roommate will eventually be.  But, the reality is that after the admissions process,  in most situations, you’ll have to live with a stranger your freshman year in a college dorm room.

Whether you wind up becoming best friends with your roommate or cordial acquaintances, here is some advice from ULOOP.com on how to maintain a good relationship with your college roommate:

Do have roommate nights. Grab a bowl of popcorn, sit on the couch, or your extra long twin bed, and put in a chick-flick. My roommates and I always have Gossip Girl Mondays. Having these nights keeps your bond strong; it’s an easy way to break away from some of the stress of school, especially when it’s midterm week and you don’t say a word to your roommate because you’re cramming for your Chemistry test.

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