Private Student Loan Verse

Private Student Loan—Gives Wings to High Dreams

It is not possible that everyone may get the financial benefits of government’s scholarship policies and plans. And, it does not mean that those who wish to avail higher education may have not to face the burnt. The lending authority has equipped various lenders across the country with the provision of private student loan. This loan is a great way to finance the education of any student that needs financial help. The requirement of private student loan is usually less strict and has affordable repayment options for young professionals.

Indeed, private student loan has their advantages. There is no application deadlines, rather prospects that are enrolled halftime or more, or are planning to enrol halftime or more, at any accredited higher educational institutions may apply at any time. More so, private aid is awarded not on need- based criteria like governmental aid, rather on creditworthiness.

A reputable private loan source purport, private student loan is only valuable when filling the gap between total college expenses and a borrower’s awarded financial aid. To use private student loan as substitution to governmental aid, rather than a supplement is short-sighted on the part of the borrower. Researching affordable methods of securing college financial aid is a short-term investment of time for a long-term return.

The private student loan gives the following benefits:
* A student who is 18 years or above in age, can apply for a private student loan.
* Most of the private student loan is deferred for repayment until the student completes the education or leaves the school.
* Private student loan can be used not only to pay the fees but also for lab fees, dues for associations and housing.
* A student can have an educational loan even though the tuition is covered by a grant.

It is not difficult to find a right lender for private student loan, because most of the financial institutions offer some form of private student loan. Always take the time to investigate lenders in your immediate area and find out exactly what kind of loan they offer. Compare the different loan quotes, and terms and conditions to get the best offer available for private student loan. And, give your dreams with the flying wings to achieve your aspirations.

Richie Morgan is offering loan advice for quite some time. Apply For Online Loan has a vast network of lenders who provide loans to the borrowers at lower APR. To find private student loan, online loan, unsecured online loan, payday loan online, easy online loan, personal loan online visit http://www.applyforonlineloan.co.uk.

To Choose A College Ode

How To Choose A College

Your child is ready. He's kept up his grades and he has decided that he wants the benefit of a college education. It's decision time. With over 4,000 public 4 year colleges in the country there are a lot of decisions and choices you will need to make.

You can make your decision based on numerous factors, and their importance ranks differently for everyone. What is most important to you? Location? Academics? Sports Programs? Financial considerations?

The first thing that needs to happen is that the student needs to look deeply inside himself/herself and ask "what do I want." Everyone the student knows will have some sort of opinion or recommendation. These opinions can be helpful, but in the long run the student must make the decision.

Every college is different and offers a different experience.

Some students want a college with an artsy feel. Others want a college with an emphasis placed on sports. Others prefer academics pure and simple and are looking for an academic challenge. Class size and campus size is a factor for some. Do you prefer a large university campus or a small intimate university setting? Some colleges are located in sleepy college towns, and some near bustling cities. Some students prefer to stay near home.

The college location is another huge factor when choosing. Perhaps the student is looking forward to the excitement of a move out of the house and the independence associated with college and is choosing to study out of state. Is the student ready to share a dorm with a total stranger? It is a fact that 90% of college freshmen have never even shared a bedroom - something that can make the concept of "sharing space" and compromise more difficult.

Finances also come into play when decisions are made about college. Most states award their residents with substantial savings if they attend in state colleges. The cost of an out of state college education rapidly escalates when room and board expenses are added. The student and parents must also consider food and transportation costs for out of state education.

Please don't forget when choosing any college that there are billions of dollars a year available in scholarships, grants and other forms of financial aid available to the parents and to the student to help offset college expenses.

Kelly Gillis, Article courtesy of http://www.degrees-online.net.

Training is Not Exercising Opus

Training is Not the Same as Exercising

What it takes to GROW!

In almost every workshop we deliver, we try to teach the principle that the mind is a muscle. What does this mean? Well, your mind and really your whole life operate on the same growth and strengthening principles as any muscle in your body, and almost everyone misunderstands what it takes to make a muscle grow. Pay attention, here.

I always ask my students "what do you need to do to make a muscle grow stronger or larger?" They always reply with great enthusiasm, "You need to EXERCISE!" That is totally incorrect. You can exercise your muscles all day long and they will never get one iota stronger. To make a muscle grow, you must TRAIN that muscle - work it and tax it beyond what it's ever done before, and then you must FEED that muscle with the right balance of nutrients so it can recover and grow. In fact, muscles don't grow while you're working out. They grow as a RESULT of your workout, but the growth actually happens while you are resting. I'll suggest that your mind and your life are exactly the same. You've got to have both "intense workout" time and proper recovery time in your life if you want to see growth. How do you do this?

"Life Workouts"

The main key here is that in your professional life as well as your physical life, you must push beyond what you are comfortable with. Working a muscle in a growth-inducing manner requires some discomfort, even pain. Apply this principle to the rest of your life. Set goals that are out of your current reach. Think big! Go someplace you've never been. If you're a salesperson, make more calls or appointments in a week than you ever have. PUSH yourself to new levels of focus and effort. Will this require some discipline? Absolutely! In fact, it will actually hurt a little. But that kind of pain is temporary and if you'll work through it, the growth in your life and your pocketbook will make you forget that pain quickly.

"Life Feeding"

If all you do is push with no recovery, growth does not occur. Quite the opposite, in fact. Once you've stretched your limits, it is important to feed your mind and your life just like you eat to replenish your strength. Some "recovery tips" for your Life:
- Celebrate your victories. When something goes right, when your "pushing beyond" actually gets the results you desire, enjoy it for a little while! Reward your wins and you get charged up to want more of them.
- Take time for yourself - by yourself and with those you love. Quiet time alone for a little bit each week is absolutely necessary to recharge your batteries. Just as important is quality time with family or those you care about. This is often the first thing a busy professional sacrifices, which is why so many are burned out. It doesn't need to be tons of time, but it has to be some.
- Feed your mind systematically. The practice of reading an inspiring or uplifting book for 15-30 minutes daily is absolutely the most refreshing and life-changing habit you can develop.

If you want to grow, you must have BOTH the workout and the recovery time. Find the balance and growth is inevitable. Not easy, but inevitable.

Be Free!

Roger Seip is a nationally known memory trainer. He has helped thousands of students across the country improve their memory as well as study habits. His new program, The Student’s Winning Edge - Memory Training, teaches students how to train their memory to study more effectively and get better grades. For more information on how your student can have a more powerful memory visit
http://www.memorytrainingforstudents.com.

Study Environment Poem

Studying Your Study Environment

How familiar is this scene, “Sweetie, have you done your homework? Yeeeees Mom, I am finishing it right now!” You peek around the corner only to find the TV on, dim lighting,, and your student plopped on the couch, eyes glazed over, half asleep, but sincerely holding on to that vocabulary list or calculator, as if trying to channel the information into their mind. If your student isn’t quite old enough to realize the comfort that comes with studying this way, careful, it’s probably coming. If this scene is indeed familiar to you, don’t worry. It’s familiar to many families all across the country. The problem is that most students are never taught the practical and necessary study skills required to succeed in studying, test taking, and retention.

While there are many issues we could raise with this scene, we’re going to discuss what’s probably the most overlooked study skill that will help your student improve the way they study, and in turn improve the way they perform in school, setting a study environment.

The most obvious problem with our student’s study habits is that it, in no way-shape-or-form, mimics that of their test-taking environment. Your memory uses triggers to recall information, whether it is words, pictures or noises our minds naturally make mental associations between information intake and the environment in which it is taken. It’s similar to when you hear a song that makes you remember high school, or see a painting that reminds you of a vacation you once took. You never purposely made those connections; your brain did it automatically. It’s the same with studying.

Many students will put forth an effort to actually make triggers in order to remember information, like using acronyms or word associations. But there are many of other connections our minds make and we don’t even realize it.

Studies have shown that if students could study in the exact environment that they test in, performance would rise drastically. Why? It’s because our minds remember environment. Using this information, we can deduce that if in class you are sitting up straight, at a desk, with no distracting noises or voices, this is how you should study. While it is very rare to be able to study in the exact same environment you take tests in, every effort should be made to make it as close as possible. This may mean turning off the television, sitting at a table or desk instead of sitting on the couch, and even turning off the television. (Unless music is classical, which has shown to be beneficial when played softly in the background, music should be omitted too.)

Improving your study environment can almost guarantee better performance. Sometimes the smallest effort to improve any aspect of studying, whether it be environment or something else, can make al the difference on test day and even contribute to remembering it long after.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books written on study skills, promising improved performance. Chances are each and every one has something good to say, but all the books and tips in the world can’t help a student that studies in front of the television eating cookies. So often all we need is that small incremental step in the right direction to drastically improve results in the end. It’s much more effective to attempt small or practical study goals. Improving your study environment is a seemingly common sense improvement, but is overlooked by many parents. By making this effort you will be setting your student on a track for improved study habits that will stay with them and yield results for years to come.

Roger Seip is a nationally known memory trainer. He has helped thousands of students across the country improve their memory as well as study habits. His new program, The Student’s Winning Edge - Memory Training, teaches students how to train their memory to study more effectively and get better grades. For more information on how your student can have a more powerful memory visit
http://www.memorytrainingforstudents.com.

Electronic Publishing Future Serenade

The Future of Electronic Publishing

UNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is:
"Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers".

The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace, the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.

Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights management"). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouraging the dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally more successful.

Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform, the Internet, has been transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.

From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less friendly towards independent (small) publishers, the backbone of e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle from considering the Internet to be the next big thing in New Media delivery - to frantic efforts to contain the red ink it oozed all over their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.

But were the now silent pundits right all the same? Is the future of publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined with the Internet?

The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information (with precious few exceptions, like the "Wall Street Journal"'s electronic edition). Moreover, the Internet, with 3 billion pages listed in the Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible" databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product, no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models. But this is besides the point. Whether in the form of subscription (Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and pay to buy the physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) - the public refuses to cough up.

Moreover, the advertising-subsidized free content Web site has died together with Web advertising. Geocities - a community of free hosted, ad-supported, Web sites purchased by Yahoo! - is now selectively shutting down Web sites (when they exceed a certain level of traffic) to convince their owners to revert to a monthly hosting fee model. With Lycos in trouble in Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier this year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion lists). Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content authors) effective January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of category editors. With the ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed is the only content aggregator which tries to buck the trend by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.

Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its ostensible adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers actually tried to limit the access of library patrons to e-books (i.e., the lending of e-books to multiple patrons). But, libraries are not only repositories of knowledge and community centres. They are also dominant promoters of new knowledge technologies. They are already the largest buyers of e-books. Together with schools and other educational institutions, libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and introduce generations of pupils, students, and readers to the possibilities and riches of e-publishing. Government use of e-books (e.g., by the military) may have the same beneficial effect.

As standards converge (Adobe's Portable Document Format and Microsoft's MS Reader LIT format are likely to be the winners), as hardware improves and becomes ubiquitous (within multi-purpose devices or as standalone higher quality units), as content becomes more attractive (already many new titles are published in both print and electronic formats), as more versatile information taxonomies (like the Digital Object Identifier) are introduced, as the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot, and cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish.

This renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source scholarly publishing. The publishing of periodical content and academic research (including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may be already shifting to the Web. Non-fiction and textbooks will follow. Alternative models of pricing are already in evidence (author pays to publish, author pays to obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish, buy a physical product and gain access to enhanced online content, and so on). Web site rating agencies will help to discriminate between the credible and the in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and screaming - online.

Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com.

Ethics Business Verse

Ethics? How To Take the Measure Business

When asked to write a small piece pertaining to ethics and integrity in the business world, my first inclination was to draw on personal experience.

Everyone has bad experiences to relate. We deal with a business, determine that we were treated shabbily therefore that business has no integrity. Or perhaps we disagree on the implementation of a refund, hence the business or owner has no ethics.

Rather than using ethics or integrity to describe business practices, a better definition might be "character".

My dusty old copy of Webster's New World Dictionary provides the following definitions for use in this context:
- ethics...the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment; moral philosophy.
- integrity...the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity.
- character...an individual's pattern of behavior or personality; moral constitution. moral strength; self-discipline, fortitude, etc. reputation.

If you will look at these definitions you can see that ethics relates to standards of conduct. Period. Ethics are...no good or bad comes into the mix. Integrity either is or isn't. Sound moral principle is relative to the observer or end user.

It stands to reason, therefore, that the best measure of good or bad practice falls to basic "character".

Okay, so what does all of this have to do with business. Well, I wish I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me the following questions:
"How do I tell if a business is good or bad?"
"How do I know where to shop?"
"Are they a good business?"

My response is always the same...check the fruit on the tree. What is the pattern of behavior? What is the company's reactive personality? Is the moral constitution flexible rather than rigid? Check the reputation.

The offline world provides numerous resources to determine the patterns and trends of businesses. Trade associations, chambers of commerce, better business bureaus etc.

In the online world, however, we are still treading murky waters when it comes to measuring the "character" of a business. By far, the best route to take are testimonials.

Testimonials on your website are powerful. But, they must be honest and sincere. Don't just make them up. Add a link back to the provider and it will increase your credibility TENFOLD!

Now I know what you're thinking, "Who wants to be answering tons of email for ME?" Nobody. That's why you use the technology available at your fingertips. With the permission of the author, use a line or two of their testimonial on your site with a link to an autoresponder for the full message.

Now, sit back and watch your credibility soar!

Patty Baldwin is a former Better Business Bureau executive and the owner of several online businesses. A successful net marketer, she invites you to visit her site at: http://www.allbizservices.com.

Customer Talk Ode

Does Your Customer Talk Back To You?

What is your customer saying about you? Do you really know? Does your customer really know who you are?

If you don't know what your customer thinks about you, your business, your product and your services, then you might as well close shop!

A customer is the lifeblood of every business and you must always strive to be in tune with what your customer thinks and how they feel. Don't leave your customers unattended and in the dark. Invite feedback. Add a feedback form to your website or a simple "mailto:" link that looks something like this:
"Questions? Comments? Send email to info@m..."

People love to give their opinion especially if they decide that your product or services, which they have purchased, needs improvement. How will you know this if you don't provide a means to communicate with your customers?

A customer's independent review of your site or product carries far more weight than your own ravings about how great your site is. Sure you know that your products and services are great or you wouldn't be selling them, but you will be more convincing if you can get honest endorsements from people who have tried them.

Oh, what are you thinking now? Yeah, Yeah. I know. Yahoo! Has already given you special attention. Even Wired Magazine has profiled your entrepreneurial skills. That's all good! But Yahoo or Wired Magazine doesn't know anything about your business because they haven't actually tried your products or services.

People should endorse your business not because they think it looks good but because they know it is good. If they have problems with your products, they can be a great source of objective advice to you on how to make improvements and if you allow a customer to critique your product or services, they will be happy and proud to endorse it.

Satisfied customers are another great source of endorsement. Approach your customers for testimonials about your product or services. If you don't yet have satisfied customers, ask someone to use your product for free or offer your services for free, then ask for their comments. If they are satisfied with using your product or services, ask permission to use their comments on your site.

Make your site interactive for your customers. Give them a reason to return to your site and especially to tell others about your unique product and/or services.

Here are some suggestions:
- Provide a help number - give people a number to call if they have questions about their order or your site.
- Return an acknowledgement that you have received their payment or their email.
- Create a feedback form as previously mentioned.
- Create a "tell your friends about this site" form that enables visitors and customers to email information about your site, directly from your site to others telling them about how great your site is.
- Create a guest book and invite customers and visitors to sign it so you can know who visited your site and you will be also able to send follow up emails to them.
- Be sure your site has contact information or contact link - too many sites forget to include such important information.
- Be sure to have an "About Us" link that includes information about your business as well as a mission statement.

OK - Now you are saying you have all that!! Now What? Well, if you have done all that, you are on the right track but there are many more things that can be done to create awareness and a liaison between you and your customers. You have to be very creative and design new and unique ways that you can continue to interact with your customers.

One of the proven methods that have worked consistently for me is sharing my expertise, especially through this medium - writing articles. The article you are reading suggest that I have knowledge of certain topics and you can use this to enlighten your readers and gain their respect. Put a link on your site that lists all the articles that you write. This is a very good source that will provide "inside tips and goodies" to your customers that they wouldn't be able to get anywhere else and will also bring new customers to your site.

Another way is to provide a "Tips Corner" on your website or a discussion board that your customers can find helpful and valuable information. They will develop trust and respect for you and this will bring you success in no time.

Every business person wants to attract a wide range of customers and as an Online business owner, you have a greater advantage when it comes to how far your business reaches but it all depends on how the effect you have on your customers. The web can be a lonely place. Find ways to let your customers talk back to you.

Cheryline Lawson, Webmaster of Startbiz at http://internet-home-employment.net newsletter publisher of Homebiz4U and Freejobs4U.