October 1 is right around the corner. This is the day the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will open up for the 2017-18 school year. In the past the opening date has been January 1, but now there are new guidelines including using the information from your 2015 taxes instead of having to file your taxes quickly to get you FAFSA filed. This program, called Prior-Prior, will open up financial assistance opportunities for many who have had difficulty making the tight timeline of previous years. [read more]
James Lang writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education posts an article discussing the value of attending a residential liberal arts institution as a “practice for life.” Much of his article highlights a new book entitled Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College, out this month from Harvard University Press, authored by Lee Cuba,Nancy Jennings,Suzanne Lovett, and Joseph Swingle. “Becoming liberally educated,” they write, “is a complex and messy process involving making decisions and learning from them . . . A residential college is excellent practice for reflecting on what home means and finding one as an emerging adult.” [read more]
July is an excellent to work on college applications, the only problem is that most 2017 applications do not open until August. However last fall, CommonApp announced a new rollover feature. This feature allows the student to put in the data portion of the application now and have it roll over to the new application after August 1. Students who take advantage of this feature can start their applications now, saving valuable time at the beginning of school. If you need assistance call CollegeBound Solutions for professional assistance. [903.526.6930] [read more]
March, May, and June have seen thousands of high school juniors and seniors study for and sit for the new redesigned SAT. Along side the students were many professional test-takers with the primary goal of understanding the changes to the test so that they can develop better testing preparatory materials for those very important high school students. It is these professionals who lay the claim of gender bias. [read more]
May 1st was the universal response date for students to respond to college admissions decisions. Many people think that means that most colleges are now full for the fall. This is not true! Check out this list of colleges/universities that still have openings for incoming freshmen for the fall semester.
An editorial column from the Los Angeles Times takes a look at the admissions factors suggested by the Harvard School of Education Graduate program and provides some good insight on the practicality of the suggestions. [read more]
The next big wave of automation came to light last week in a rather quiet way as a Google-owned computer system, Lee Sedol, a champion of one of the world’s most complex board games. As the world of artificial intelligence continues to advance millions of jobs and ways of life are going to change.
Some 10 percent of all American jobs involve driving vehicles, and most all of them will be lost, said Moshe Y. Vardi, a professor of computational engineering at Rice University. “What are we going to do with these 3.5 million people?”
Christof Koch, president and Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science warned “This is a real issue of our time, and none of our politicians right now is even mentioning it. I’m not sure anybody even knows about this, which is rather depressing.”
Miles Brundage, a doctoral student at Arizona State University who has been studying AlphaGo, believes the far more urgent need is a real and comprehensive examination of how society and its economy will function once artificial intelligence begins wiping out millions of jobs. [read more]
According to a The Chronicle of Higher Education analysis of data released on Friday, 160 degree-granting private colleges failed the U.S. Education Department’s financial-responsibility test, which seeks to quantify the financial health of proprietary and nonprofit institutions, for the 2013-14 academic year. That’s two more than failed the year before. Of the 160 failing institutions, 94 are nonprofit and the rest are for-profit. For the previous year, 108 of the 158 failing institutions were nonprofit. [read more]
Parents of college students often forget to consider college expenses as part of their tax return. To help parents navigate the often complex considerations involved in claiming the American Opportunity Credit, the IRS has issued an informative guideline “Tax Benefits of Education.” This tax credit is not the sole tax credit program to consider, especially for parents of students not yet in college. Edvisors has published a noteworthy article to help parents understand the advantages and pitfalls of various programs.
