How to Use Certificate of Deposits As Part of Your College Savings Strategy

The cost of college education increases at a rate that far exceeds inflation. It is also much greater than the average rate of return your savings and investments are getting, which makes it difficult to save enough money to keep up with the ever-increasing costs of higher education.

Saving for your child's higher education is a challenge faced by most families regardless of their income levels - but the money you save now will help prevent your son or daughter from graduating under a mountain of school loans they will struggle to pay for many years after leaving college. If you want to help your child graduate in something other than debt, here are some tips for developing a strong college savings strategy that includes certificate of deposits:

Start Saving for College As Early As Possible
The key to saving for college is to start when the children are young. The earlier you start saving the more time your money has to grow. Many people invest in riskier options when their children are young in an effort to increase their earnings, and figuring they have more time to recover if their risks don't pay off financially. As children get older and approach their college years, your choice of savings and investment vehicles are likely to move to less risky options in order to prevent the loss of money.

Risk Free Savings Strategy: Certificate of Deposits
Once you've saved up a sizable amount of money for your child's education, you might think about using fixed-rate certificate of deposits to give those savings a chance to grow risk-free until you need to use them to pay for college expenses.

When you open a certificate of deposit with your college savings, you will earn interest in exchange for agreeing to leave your money alone for a specific period of time. Once the money is in a CD, you don't have easy access to it. It's not completely impossible to withdraw money from a certificate of deposit before it matures, but it's certainly not recommended to take it out early because you will pay penalty fees and lose money in the process.

Depending how many years your child has before starting college, you can select a certificate of deposit with as little as three months to five years (or more) until it reaches it's maturity date. The longer the CD term, the higher interest your savings will earn. You may find using certificate of deposits as part of your college savings allows you to diversify and increase the amount of money your savings earns. While your saved money is held in a certificate of deposit waiting for it to reach it's maturity date, you can continue saving money in money market funds, high interest savings accounts, 529 plans, or Coverdell Education Funds to increase the amount of money you have when your child approaches their college years.

CD Laddering Increases Saving Potential and Access to Funds
Creating CD ladders may be a reasonable college savings strategy, as well. Once you have saved enough money through other means, you can withdraw it and open multiple certificate of deposit accounts with different maturity dates. By staggering the maturity dates of the certificate of deposit products you open, you can gain access to the money at pre-determined intervals. Plan it right, and you can have certificate of deposits maturing right before each of your college semesters begin, and gain access to money to pay for tuition and expenses right as you need it each semester.

Debra Dragon is a freelance writer for DepositAccounts.com. She writes about how to make your money work better for you through various deposit accounts, including savings accounts, interest checking accounts, IRAs, and money market funds.

Accredited Distance Learning - An Option For the Gifted Child

Whether your gifted child is enrolled in a traditional school or a homeschool, finding enrichment to meet his individual needs can be a challenge. Many traditional schools simply cannot meet the individual needs of a gifted child and parents end up scrambling to try to find enrichment opportunities. Many homeschool parents find it an overwhelming challenge to try to meet the extraordinary needs of their gifted child. One viable option for many gifted students is an accredited distance learning program.

A variety of distance learning opportunities are available for your gifted child. In evaluating these options, take some time to first define what you're looking for in a distance learning program. Most gifted children have specific areas of interest or expertise. Be sure to identify those areas of interest and look for programs with strength and depth in their course offerings.

Look for distance learning opportunities that are more than just courses that require a student to acquire a bunch of facts. Gifted learners thrive in environments that require higher level critical thinking skills and encourage exploration and experimentation. You'll want to find a distance learning course that provides your gifted learner the opportunity to interact with his teacher to a large degree. This can be through email or through the distance learning website, but it should also include real time interactions, whether through instant messaging or by phone. You'll want to see that the teachers are flexible and encourage independent thought and action. These are important when dealing with gifted learners.

Be sure that this distance learning course offers students the ability to interact with each other. Gifted students often thrive in settings where they can collaborate with other students and where they can learn from them as well. Courses that offer large degrees of interaction and encourage community building can create meaningful learning communities that are exciting for your gifted student to be a part of. This sort of atmosphere and encouragement can be so important to your gifted student. They may not have been able to find that in a traditional school environment or in a homeschool environment. This might afford them their first taste of finding a learning community where they not only fit in, but also thrive.

Be sure that student interaction is monitored by the course teacher or by the school. You'll want to know that a teacher is overseeing community message boards and virtual classroom sessions and that the rules of the school are being adhered to. Understand the policies set forth by the school for proper etiquette in using these boards and in interacting during class time. You want to ensure that this learning environment is safe for your child.

You'll need to make sure that the distance learning school you choose for your gifted learner is an accredited institution. Schools are accredited through a governing body, such as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WACS). In order to achieve accreditation status, the schools must provide information about their school and submit to a monitoring process. Taking courses from an accredited distance learning school will ensure that your child will be able to use those courses in the college admissions process.

To learn more about a quality, distance learning program for the gifted and talented, please visit Laurel Springs School. Laurel Springs School is an accredited, college prep private school offering distance learning programs and teacher services for students in grades K-12. Laurel Springs uses web-based communication tools, a standards-based curriculum, and personalized instruction to offer students the highest quality home education experience based on your child's learning style.

Want a Nursing Degree? What You Should Know Before Applying to a Nursing School Program!

Admission requirements for colleges vary, and so while applying for nursing school one has to be very vigilant. It depends mainly upon whether you are applying to a private school or a public institution; whether you are applying for a 2 years course or for 4 years course; and if you are applying through common application or not.

Admission requirements of an institute vary from the values and even the size of the institution. The students applying for nursing schools are generally accessed with their grades in academics, their intended major grades, class rank, personal statement, ACT or SAT marks and what the high school counselor has to say about them.

Preference to students

While applying for nursing school remember, that the institutions give preference to those students who are from the same state. Some institutes prefer SAT qualified students while some want a proof to immunization of certain diseases.

Emotional stability individuals who have the ability to make decision are preferred. They have to be physically fit and should be able to speak, read and write English in a proper manner. The colleges also check for any kind of past criminal background. Also, many students applying for nursing school get early enrollment because of their scholastic excellence in their initial high school years.

Requirements of nursing schools

Each school has certain requirements that each applicant should be able to meet. These requirements include having chemistry and biology as subjects initially. Also, the applicant should have English as his subject and should be able to manage the attendance criteria profoundly.

Armed with these facts, one can easily fill the common application for a nursing degree. The applications must be filled with the required date. When applying for nursing school, along with the application form, one has to attach high school transcripts and needs to pay a non refundable fee of application, which may anywhere between $25-30. You may also use internet services, for applying for nursing school.

Click here for tons of information on Nursing School Programs!

Finding the Perfect Student Organization For You

Looking for a way to meet people in college? Think about joining a club. There are tons of student organizations on most college campuses and all of them have something different to offer members. But choosing which group is right for you can be challenging for a new student on campus. Try the following techniques to find the best fit.

Ask around

If you're new on campus, you probably won't know about any student organizations unless you're from the area. This means you'll have to do your homework on campus clubs. It's a good idea to learn all you can about a group before you commit to joining. Ask upperclassmen about which student organizations are most active on campus and which ones might be best avoided. Your resident advisor is a good resource for this sort of information.

Attend activities fairs

Most colleges hold some sort of expo the first week or two of school to introduce new students to the different groups on campus. If you want to join a club, it would be silly for you not to go to this. All the organizations on campus will be there with information about what they do and how to get involved. Club members will be there too, so you can see what kind of people are involved in each organization and determine if you'd be compatible.

Stop by a few meetings

Student organizations' general meetings tend to be open to anyone. If you're thinking about joining a specific group, find out when they hold meetings and drop in. Especially if it's a larger group, this shouldn't be a problem.

Look online

If you know what type of organization you'd like to join but aren't sure what exactly is out there, check your school's Web site. Most colleges have a department in student affairs that's dedicated to managing student programs; check their Web site for a list of groups on campus. For example, you may know you want to join an art group but aren't sure what is available. You should be able to find the names and contact information for all art groups online.

Think about club sports

Sports groups are great options for people looking to make friends while being active. You don't have to be very athletic to join a club sport; most groups will train new members, and some club sports, like ultimate Frisbee, are made up of people with varying skills levels. If you know you want to get involved but are unsure of which group to join, club sports are a good choice.

Extend your high school clubs to college

Some high school groups have college equivalents. If you enjoyed being in a certain organization in high school, do some research to see if there's a similar college group out there for you. For example, student government is an organization that's always around in both high school and college. And high school service organizations sometimes have college counterparts.

Remember: if you don't like a club that you join, you can always choose to leave it. So you've really got nothing to lose. Get out there and get involved on campus!

Tawan Perry is a dynamic speaker and award-winning author. He is author of College Sense: What College and High School Advisors Don't Tell You about College. He topics range from student leadership, college access, college success, and diversity. Visit him online at http://www.tawanperry.com

Professors - Use Timers in the Classroom (For Your Students and For Yourself) - Increase Focus

When you teach in the college classroom, it's hard to keep track of the time. This is true during lecture, Q & A portions, learning activities with your students, student presentations, and yes...even breaks during long classes.

I got started using timers when I was still teaching at the university. Since nearly all of my classes met for three hours at a time, we always had a break mid-way through the session. It was easy for me to lose track of time because I was talking with students, answering questions from individuals, or handling concerns of groups who were working together.

To help keep *me* on track (and of course, to make sure students were getting their money's worth from me by having a full class session), I started using timers created on PowerPoint. Originally, I just created "break" timers but then later, I found other ways to use timers in the classroom. Students responded well because they knew exactly how much time they had remaining. It also helped me feel more relaxed about taking the time with students that they were allowed rather than frantically looking at my watch and trying to remember what time the break had started.

I tended to use numerous cooperative and collaborative learning experiences within the class time and wanted students to stay focused on their tasks (instead of veering off into chit-chat, which could happen if they felt that had all the time in the world to complete their tasks). Using a timer that was displayed at the front of the room helped them feel a sense of urgency and to begin to bring their learning responsibility to a close as the time "ticked" by. This eliminated the frantic, "Wait, Dr. McIntosh! We're not finished yet." I was able to move smoothly between and among the student groups, glancing at the timer as needed. If I sensed that not enough time had been allocated for the task, then it was easy enough to go to the computer to readjust the time remaining.

A third use for timers are the using them during tests. It's rather jarring to students' concentration if you are booming out every few minutes, "30 minutes remaining," or "You have 10 more minutes," and the like. By creating a timer that displayed the time beginning at 1 hour, then showing it by ten-minute increments until it gets to the final 10 minutes, it helped students to glance up periodically and keep themselves on track.

You may create any number of different timers for yourself or feel free to access the ones.

that are available at no charge on http://meggin.com/DownloadsTimers.php

We might as well all keep sharing and investing our time where it makes the most sense. Enjoy these and enjoy your students and your classes!

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(c) 2009 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., "The Ph.D. of Productivity"(tm). Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do. Sound interesting? It is!