Student Loans : News, Updates and Blog Posts

It’s 7:30 on a monday morning and your alarm clock goes off. You turn it off and roll over for 5 more minutes of sleep. When you finally roll out of bed and look at the clock, it’s 11:30 and you’ve missed your class. Not a big deal, right? As it turns out, skipping class might cost you more than you think.

According to the recent infographic from StudentScholarshipSearch.com, skipping just one class is a waste of $20 if you attend a public college, or $50 if you’re at a private school. This may seem like it’s not a big deal, but wasted money can add up fast! If you’re paying for college with loans, you’ll be paying interest on that class’s cost too!

Still not convinced you shouldn’t skip class? What if i told you that “those who wasted time in college are 3x more likely to be unemployed”? That got your attention, didn’t it?

To find other ways skipping class can hurt you, check out the True Cost of Skipping Class infographic.

Student loans can be a crucial part of paying for college, but don’t forget there are other options that should be exhausted first- like scholarships. Many students know they should apply for scholarships, but either don’t have the time or get frustrated when they don’t win. We want to help, because let’s face it, free money for college is better than high-interest money for college.

StudentScholarshipSearch.com has developed an awesome infographic to help students win money: The Top 5 Scholarship Application Mistakes. Learn about some of the most common reasons why students are unable to snag a scholarship, and what you can do to turn your luck around.

While you may not win all of the scholarships you apply for, hopefully the tips from this infographic will get you on your way! And remember, apply apply apply!

For seniors, graduation is quickly approaching! Unfortunately, so are those pesky loan repayments, yikes! Take a few seconds to vote on our most recent poll to let us (and all those soon-to-be-graduates out there) know how much debt you’ll be graduating with, and see where you fall on the scale!

View Student Loan Debt Survey Results summarizing the results (as of May, 15)

If you’re graduating with loans, make sure to look into loan consolidation to help with repayment!  Still in school?  Find a better way to pay search for scholarships or compare student loans.

So you’ve gotten your financial aid award package from your schools but you didn’t get as much federal aid as you had hoped. Now what? Well, there are some other financial options for you to consider.

Scholarships

Scholarships can be a great way to fill the gap between the aid you received and the aid you need. ScholarshipPoints.com gives away monthly $1,000 scholarships, and the best part is, it’s open to all students enrolled in college! There are none of the restrictions that most other scholarships have, if you participate, you can win! The program is pretty simple too- you earn points by completing surveys, or reading blogs, then you can enter these points into our monthly drawings! Easy as pie. PLUS, there are quarterly $10,000 drawings, so there’s really no reason no to join.
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It’s tax season again and one of the most common questions from students right now is whether or not they have to claim their financial aid (grants, loans, or scholarships) on their taxes. So to clarify, students have to claim on their IRS tax forms any money gained from services for which they received payment, investments, and self-employment income. Generally, amounts spent on education, scholarships, grants, and loans are non-taxable, though there are some exceptions. To note, most tax-free treatment of income, credits, and deductions require the student to be a degree candidate, but not all. (more…)

ScholarshipPoints.com, a free college scholarship rewards program, will draw the winner of their next $10,000 scholarship on December 15th.

ScholarshipPoints  (http://www.scholarshippoints.com), an Edvisors online education company, recently announced that its final $10,000 scholarship of 2010 will be awarded on December 15th. The December drawing will mark the fifth time this year that ScholarshipPoints has awarded a $10,000 scholarship to a single student and brings the total amount awarded to over $115,000 in 2010.

Read the entire article here…

Did you know that November is National Scholarship Awareness Month? National Scholarship Awareness Month was created to raise awareness of the importance of scholarship money in our society. Everyone deserves the chance to pursue a higher education, but with the cost of college rising every year it becomes harder and harder for students and their parents to foot the bill. It is important to make families aware of the fact that hundreds of thousands of scholarship dollars are available every year to help students finance their education.

ScholarshipPoints knows how crucial scholarship money is in the quest to better educate the world. That is why we award scholarship money every month, partner with organizations who are also committed to awarding scholarship money to students, and make an effort to introduce our members to other great scholarship offers. This month, as an active participant in scholarship programs, do your part make your friends aware of all of the scholarship opportunities that exist through ScholarshipPoints.com and other organizations.

Finding scholarships can be a daunting task. Because of this, students often wonder if paying for college with scholarships is even possible. With so many different kinds of scholarships out there it can be difficult to figure out where to find the right ones and how to approach the application processes. To break through some of the clutter, ScholarshipPoints has recently added some new resources about various types of scholarships, where they can be found, and who should apply for them.

Read the entire post here…

If you’re like me, you probably took one look at most scholarships’ requirement to write an essay and groaned. 500 or 1,000 words are perhaps a small price to pay for free money for college, but not all of us are so gifted with the writing gene.

Thankfully, there are other options. Have you ever checked out ScholarshipPoints?

Their model is pretty different from other sites I’ve seen in that they,

1. Don’t charge for their services (it’s free!), and,
2. Don’t require you to write a grueling essay just for the chance of winning.

Instead, you complete different activities to build up the site’s currency — scholarship points. These “points” become the raw entries into their monthly and quarterly scholarships (up to $10,000!) and the more points you use, the better chance you have of winning.

As far as the activities go, none of it is particularly intensive. Reading a blog is a common one or filling out a simple opinion survey. All in all, much less frustrating and stressful than having to pump out words you probably don’t care about or want to write.

Check out ScholarshipPoints »

(If this doesn’t sound like it’s for you, they also have a scholarship search engine called StudentScholarshipSearch.)

ScholarshipPoints.com, a free college scholarship rewards program, plans to draw the winner of its next $10,000 scholarship on September 15th.

QUINCY, MA (August 16, 2010) – ScholarshipPoints (www.scholarshippoints.com), an Edvisors online education company, recently announced that its fourth $10,000 scholarship drawing of 2010 will be awarded on September 15, 2010 and sponsored in part by Student Loan Network. Through their free scholarships program, ScholarshipPoints will help students of all ages achieve their dreams of a college education by awarding scholarships on a monthly and quarterly basis. To ensure funds are used for educational purposes, awards are sent directly to the student’s financial aid office.

Read the full story…