College Scholarships, Grants & Loans

Sunday, March 26, 2006

With all the talk about college costs going through the roof and kids graduating from college with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt, it's nice to hear of a few who were able to come up with creative ways of handling their college costs.

First up is Joe Bailey, who was able to turn a toy train that he didn't get and a calf that he did, into his college education. Read the rest of the story at http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=215700&pub=1&div=Opinion .

Next read about Alex Tew, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, who decided to try and pay for his university by selling 1 million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each. You can see the results of his efforts at http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ . And be sure to check out his blog where you can read about the entire adventure.

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Saturday, March 25, 2006

The College Board, the Educational Testing Service and Pearson Educational Measurement

As most of you have already heard, on March 8, the College Board announced in a press release that over 4000 students who had taken the October 2005 SAT Reasoning Test did not receive proper credit for some correct answers due to humidity expanding the answer sheets. Though the average was less than 100 points, there were some who lost more points.

On March 22, another press release mentioned that another 1600 tests had been rescanned and 18 further tests were found to have errors. So a grand total of 4411 students received lower scores than they should have.

While the College Board has paid back the registration fees of all those affected (big deal)and will implement measures that should prevent a similiar occurence in the future (how many other times has it happened that noone knows about?), the real impact is still being felt by those students who may have received rejection letters from colleges based on these erroneous results or those who were accepted, but received less merit aid than deserved. To be sure, the updated scores have been sent to all the colleges and financial aid offices affected. Some colleges will go back in and try and right the wrong, but in many cases acceptance, rejection and financial aid decisions were made based on the lower scores and won't be able to be fixed.

Somehow the fix seems less than adequate.

From the College Board press release:

If school counselors have any questions, they can call the counselor helpline at (888) SAT-HELP.

If College admissions officers have questions they can contact their College Board regional office.

Students can call a special toll free number at (866) 387-2594 if they have any questions.

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Sunday, March 05, 2006

$40,000 Scholarship Raffle

What'll they think of next? Here is a new twist on fund raising that will certainly pique the interest of parents everywhere. The Munster Band Backers of Munster, Indiana, have started a raffle that will pay a $40,000 scholarship to the grand prize winner. The scholarship will be paid to the school of the winner over four years.

Other prizes include:
  • 2nd prize - $10,000 scholarship
  • 3rd prize - $5,000 scholarship
  • 4th-20th - $1,000 scholarships


There will be a maximum of 1500 tickets sold at $100 each and they must sell at least 1000 tickets for the raffle to take place. Winners will be drawn on April 11, 2006.

If you are interested in buying a ticket or getting more details, you can contact the People's Bank at

MunsterBand backers
c/o Peoples Bank
9204 Columbia Ave
Munster IN 46321
(219)836-1964

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