Healthy Kids Tip #14

Why Is Persistence Important?

How Can You Tell if Someone Has Truly Succeeded?

How Can You Stop Yourself from Freaking Out?

Why Is Working Together Better Than Working Alone?

Guest Blog Post: College Scholarship Tips for Grandchildren

This time last year, I had a discussion with Deborah Dian, a friend and the host of Baby-Boomer-Retirement.com. We were both surprised and displeased with the number of seniors raiding their retirement accounts to  help their grandchildren pay for college. We know, although there are more than $46 billion in scholarships available for college, there are no scholarships or grants for retirement. She asked me to write a guest post for her blog, telling parents and grandparents how my book, Free College, can help families avoid needing to take out student loans, by earning more scholarships.

I did write the blog post for her, and have provided a link below, so you can read it easily. Spending retirement savings to pay for college is not only dangerous, but unnecessary. Just give them a copy of my book. It certainly costs a lot less than any college textbook. You can buy it by clicking on the image of the book in the upper right hand corner of this page.


To read "College Scholarship Tips for Grandchildren" on Deborah's blog, click HERE.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

What Does Raising Healthy Kids Have to Do with Free College?

Recently I received a message from a doctor friend I met on Twitter. We follow each other, and share an interest in improving our health, and that of others. Here’s what she wrote, “You have a lot of good tips for making eating healthy easier. You should share them on a blog,” Dr. Kristie Leong.

Another friend, one I’ve known offline for several years, sent me this message shortly thereafter, “I agree with Kristie. Your healthy eating tips go well with your theme of helping kids do well in school and earn scholarships,” Deborah Dian.

I respect both of these ladies, but didn’t want to start a second blog. As an alternative, I’ve added a page of simple ways to raise healthy kids to my roadtofreecollege.com blog. I’ve titled the page, Raising Healthy Kids. I add tips to the page to encourage children to eat right and stay fit, so they’ll be able to follow the sixteen defining habits of successful scholarship winners and earn lots of free cash for college.

Every so often, I’ll write an entire blog post about one of the tips. I’ll go more in depth, and show parents what they can do to help their children stay healthy by eating right, sleeping enough and staying fit. There will also be suggestions of ways parents can build their children’s self-esteem, which is so vital to success in school, college and beyond. I’ve included some of the tips I’ve posted already below.

Easy Tips:

Adding one more veg to dinner, and reducing the size of your meat portion is a simple change every family can make to improve health.  

We should all adopt a physical activity we enjoy. It could be a sport, hiking, dancing, swimming, or something else. Share it with your kids, so they'll grow up with this healthy habit. 

Look at lists of healthy plant slant foods and recipes, and make your shopping list from the foods they contain. @BlueZones post them often on Facebook and Twitter. 

Let kids pick one new veg at the supermarket or Farmer's Market to try each week. They're more likely to try a "special" food they selected. 

Write down everything you ate and drank and hour before you had digestive issues. Do this for your kids too. Playing detective helps identify food allergies and intolerances. 

Recently I learned exercise keeps our arteries flexible, which is a good thing. That’s reason enough to make sure your kids get up and move around the house or outside every thirty minutes or so. No more playing video games without breaks. 

Gardening is a great family tradition to establish. Teaching kids where food comes from makes them more likely to eat their vegetables.

Poor health is a good reason to stop buying foods that contribute to it. Filling up your shopping list with healthy fruit, vegetables, beans and whole grains leaves little room for junk.

Did you know pistachios contain resveratrol, just like red wine? So your kids can snack on pistachios while you enjoy a glass of your favorite cabernet. You'll both benefit from this healthy compound, which fights damage to our bodies on a cellular level.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

What Is The Value of Ability?

Which Is More Important, Being Clever or Being Kind?

What Does Notre Dame Mean to You?

To me, Notre Dame represents a promise made, and a promise kept. In the late 1980s, I left a school district where the student population was dwindling. I took a job in a lower socioeconomic minority high school with only two foreign language teachers. They taught first and second year French and Spanish. When the French teacher retired, I took his position.

The graduation rate at this school was low, and the number of students going on to college was even lower. I believed the way to help these students reach their goals in life was through higher education. So I set out to make sure my students fulfilled the A-G requirements for college acceptance. I told them they were mine for four years, unless there was a more beneficial course for them to take in their senior year. The six new foreign language teachers we hired over the next few years followed my lead. The counselors knew what we were doing, and backed us up.

As I worked to make taking French or Spanish the “thing to do” at the school, several students asked to study German. Since I’m degreed, credentialed and experienced teaching German, we added it to the master schedule. District administration thought offering three languages was beyond the abilities of students at this school. We proved him wrong by giving students reasons to take the classes, and to stay with them until graduation.

One such enticement was language trips to countries where the languages students were studying were spoken. The first group we took was small. Most people at the school didn’t really believe we would go. But a dedicated group of students was not about to give up. One boy caught the measles. His doctor told him if he scratched, the sores would not heal in time for the trip. His brother told me it was awful watching him resist the urge to scratch. But he made it. He’s on the right in this blurry photo. 

So is Denise. On our first trip, we visited Paris. On the first full day, we went to see Notre Dame Cathedral. We wandered around inside. Each looking at whatever he or she found most fascinating. Then I saw Denise. She was standing about two feet from an interior wall. It was made of stone, and brown with age. I suggested she touch it. She was horrified. So I took her hand and placed it on the wall. I then named several historic figures who had also, perhaps, touched the same wall. This was a student who hadn't been anywhere. She could only come along because we sold everything we could get our hands on. She lived thirty minutes from the sea, but had never seen it.

Here she was in Paris, France, with her hand on the wall inside Notre Dame Cathedral, crying. She realized the significance of being where she was. She could set a goal in life, work hard, and realize it. I promised these kids I would take them to Paris, help them get into college and reach their goals in life. To me Notre Dame is a promise made to students who had dreams, but not the courage to fight for them. It’s also the realization of the promise kept. All five of these trip kids went to college. So did every other student who travelled to Europe with our school, and thousands of others who cheered them on and believed they too could reach their dreams. This is what Notre Dame means to me. 

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

How Should We Look at Conflict in the World?

Don’t Let Your College Acceptance Turn into a Nightmare

Going to college is only a dream if you have a plan to pay for it, and you continue to work your plan. Far too many families think money for college will magically appear, but it doesn’t. Students who go to college on a full-ride did a great deal to earn their award. The most important thing they did was to apply for scholarships and/or grants over and over, until they had enough free money to pay for everything.

Paying for college entails having enough money for more than just tuition. There are books, fees, room and board to consider as well. Students whose families are extremely well off, and have put away enough money for retirement, may be able to help. Most families probably won’t be much financial help, however. Of course, if you live at home, room and board won’t be an issue, but transportation might be. I lived at home when I went to college. My family bought me a very inexpensive car, and I drove to campus and work daily. Tuition then was minimal and books were inexpensive. My job paid enough to cover it all.

A simple financial plan to pay for college might include looking for scholarships and grants while children are still in elementary school. At this time, parents are doing the searching and applying. As children mature, they should take over. In high school, they should be applying for scholarships at least three times each week, and more over holidays and vacations. A major mistake many students make is they stop applying for scholarships once they’ve been accepted to college.

Acceptance is an important step, but most of the time it has nothing to do with paying for college. If a college provides financial help through grants, scholarships or a work-study program, that’s great. It does not mean students should stop looking for more free money. When they do, they often realize too late, they can’t pay their bills. Taking a job might help pay for books or some fees, but it won’t cover everything, not by a long shot. Scholarships and grants are the best way to avoid needing to take out student loans.

The only time a student need not continue to apply for scholarships is if he/she has received a truly free ride. This must include tuition, fees, books, room, board and travel for all four years. These awards exist, and are wonderful. But every scholarship is not a free ride. Some only cover part of tuition or tuition for the first year. Many do not include books, or room and board. There are thousands of college students who are homeless and food insecure. There’s money out there to pay for all of this, but it won’t come looking for your student. Someone has to find it.

Parents who have purchased my book, Free College, know I provide a place in the book to record scholarships and grants. If you don’t have my book, be sure to purchase a calendar and notebook to keep track of all scholarships you've applied for over the years. If you don’t, you’ll become confused and miss something important, like a deadline. You can buy my book instead by clicking on the book cover in the upper right hand corner of this page. Continue applying for scholarships until your student has graduated from college debt free.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

Take Babe Ruth's Advice about Fear

Will Sweeping Changes to College Admissions Help or Hurt Your Child?

This depends upon who you are and where you live. If you’re an alumni or a donor living in California (this is where the changes are starting), your child will no longer be given preferential treatment in college admissions. If you aren’t, then the proposed changes may help your child. They also make learning the sixteen defining habits of successful scholarship winners even more important than before. (To learn about these habits, click on the image of Free College, to the right of this post.) Although these modifications are proposed in California, they're likely to spread.

State colleges and universities in California don't presently award legacy or donor admissions to students, but some private institutions in the state do. The state legislature is looking into removing Cal Grants from colleges who continue to do so. I’m sure there will be a fight in the courts over this, so be aware everything about admissions is in flux. You can no longer count on your children being given preferential treatment.

They're also considering eliminating standardized testing such as the SAT and ACT from the admissions process. This will make other considerations, such as which courses are taken, their difficulty level, and the overall GPA even more significant. So if you aren’t involved in your high school student’s course selection already, you’ll want to look into them in the future. It would also be wise to read progress reports and report cards before signing them.

Another development is the regulation of admissions consultants. In the past, anyone could open an office, and do whatever they wanted to help parents place their children in the colleges of their choice. This led to the recent admissions scandal, and perhaps to people going to jail. Students who were implicated in the fraud will be inspected on a case by case basis. Those already enrolled may be expelled. Some who applied, but have not yet been admitted, have already had their applications rejected.

Many of the fraudulent admissions involved coaches. Some parents faked a history of participation in sports, and their children were admitted. In the future, it’s proposed that any student awarded “special admissions” for athletic, musical or other talent, be approved by an oversight committee of at least three staff members. This should level the playing field for students with exceptional talents.

It’s hard enough going through school, knowing you’ll need a college education in order to enter the field of your choice, without less qualified students sneaking in front of you. The proposed changes should eliminate this. However, if students who have been given preferential treatment in the past no longer have these benefits, parents will find other ways to help them. They’ll hire tutors to make sure their grades are high. They’ll give them private lessons in music or sports, all in order to give them a leg up in entering the college of their choice.  

In order to compete, learn what honest families do that results in both college acceptance and lots of scholarships. After doing extensive research, I found sixteen defining habits of graduates who won the most scholarship money for college. They’re in my book, Free College. Click on the image of the book cover in the upper right hand corner of this page to be taken to my book on Amazon. Do what other people don’t, and your children won’t have to worry about college admissions or scholarships. Both will come to them without cheating.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

Why Where We're from Doesn't Matter

How You Can Satisfy Your Curiosity about Free College

Recently I was interviewed for The Southern California Writers Showcase. This is a group of over 2,000 writers from Long Beach, south through Orange County, to the Inland Empire and even to the East Sierras. You can read the entire interview by clicking HERE. The interviewer was one of their writers, Jeanette Fratto. She’s a published author of a series of fascinating novels whose main character works in the probation department in Orange County, California. The questions I was asked in the interview were insightful, and I tried to keep my answers informative and succinct.

One question she asked was a first for me. She asked me to share a success story of one of the students who used all the tactics contained in my book, Free College. I told her about Mia, one of my students who was offered full-ride scholarships by Harvard, Yale and MIT. When she came home from a free trip to visit Yale and MIT, she was confused.

I asked her five questions about the colleges so she could focus. Were they accredited? Did they teach what she wanted to study? Were they well known in this field? Did they offer her the same amount of money, and/or would she have debt left to pay? Did she like the people she met there? She answered yes to all of them. I told her she was in luck. There was no bad decision. She could flip a coin. She was relieved.

Then Mia came back from visiting Harvard, again on their dime. She was confused all over again. I asked her the five questions once more. She answered the same for all of them. So I asked her where she felt the most comfortable. It was MIT, and she graduated from there with honors four years after her high school graduation.

It’s fun doing interviews. The questions allow me to zero in on what people want to know. Then I can advise them better. When I taught, my goal was to help students reach their goals. To do so, most students needed to go to college. I learned how to assist them, and later, when college costs soared, I showed them how to win lots of scholarships. I continued after my retirement. I did extensive research on how students earn the most free scholarship money, and wrote Free College. 

I hope all families learn the sixteen defining habits of successful scholarship winners I discovered and included in my book. By following the step-by-step guide I created, their kids can graduate from college debt free too. Everyone should be able to start their lives after college with no debt and a bright future, like Mia.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

How Do You Break Down a Difficult Task?

You Don’t Need to Bribe Your Way into College

Plenty of students do it the old fashioned way. They fulfill all the admission standards, complete the  A-G requirements, earn a high GPA, score well on the ACT or SAT and apply, all without the aid of “admissions consultants”. For many decades the über-rich have given massive endowments to prestigious universities resulting in special treatment for their children. This is not new. Recently, however, it wasn’t the universities which received massive “gifts”, but counselors and coaches. Now people are going to jail. Both methods of gaming the system are, in my opinion, unethical.

Instead, learn what successful, honest students and families do, and follow their lead. Successful students fulfill all the admission standards listed above, of course, but they don't stop there. Often students take extra courses in math, science and foreign languages instead of focusing on just one of the three subjects. Families have their eye on the prize early, and don’t need to resort to extreme or illegal measures. They send students to summer college enrichment courses beginning as early as elementary school. Since these are in subjects the students enjoy, it’s fun for them and not a burden.

By following the step-by-step guide in my book, Free College, families learn the sixteen defining habits that have allowed thousands of students to not only go to college, but to do so with scholarships. Many of them received far better scholarships than those “purchased” illegally by celebrities. Most students don’t need help from outside professionals, honest or otherwise. They rely on the expertise of their local high school counselor. Every high school should have at least one counselor who is the go-to expert on everything college. If your school doesn’t have such a person, follow the suggestions in my book to find a mentor.

Students researched for the writing of my book paid no specialists or bribes. They went to the colleges of their choice, even USC, and with scholarships. Your children can too. Click on the image of my book, Free College, at the top right corner of this page to buy it from Amazon. Start now, and do all the right things. No one needs to go to jail.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images

What's More Important than Knowledge?

You Can Prevent Your Children from Needing College Loans

Hundreds of thousands of high school graduates sign up for student loans each year because their families didn’t know the defining habits of successful scholarship winners. It wasn’t their fault. They did they best they could, but their efforts fell short. No one told them about my book, Free College. Or, perhaps their children grew up before I finished writing my book. For that, I apologize. If you’re intrigued, you can stop right here, click on the image of my book in the right hand corner of this page, and buy it right now.

The last decade or more of my teaching career, all of my seniors went to college, all with scholarships. Many were awarded a full-ride. While I was thrilled for them, I was disappointed more hadn't earned enough to pay for all four years. These students ended up taking out student loans, and are still in debt today. I wondered if there was some “secret sauce” that allowed the most successful to win so much free money for college. I was too curious to let it go, and conducted extensive research to discover exactly why some students earn a full ride scholarship, while others are awarded just a few thousand dollars. I discovered there are sixteen defining habits shared by the most successful scholarship winners. Those who do only some of them earn less cash .

How would you feel if you knew there was a way to prevent a terrible mishap, but didn’t have the information needed to avoid it? That’s how you’ll feel if you don’t learn the simple steps to help your children earn a full ride scholarship. When you spend a few dollars to buy my book, you’ll learn how to help your children qualify for more college scholarships. Once you do, tell family and friends about Free College, and where to buy it. Billions of dollars in scholarships go unclaimed every year. It’s tragic and avoidable.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Google Images