All posts by Suzanne Shaffer

admissions, college guidance, college planning

Evaluating Admission Decisions

admission decisions

It’s that time of year. Students who applied ED and EA have already heard from the colleges regarding their admission decisions. Students who are applying regular decision will be sending off those applications this month and hearing early in the spring. What happens next?

Colleges will provide your student with one of four responses: offered admission, wait-listed, deferred, or not offered admission. Today, students hear as the notices are posted online. The days of waiting for the letter are over. We live in an instant gratification world. You can expect, however, for your student to be hitting that computer refresh button on the day notices are posted!

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scholarships

Frame My Future Scholarship

Is your student tired of writing essays for scholarships? Are they creative and willing to share their vision for the future? This scholarship is a great one to work on over the winter break. Check it out!

FRAME MY FUTURE SCHOLARSHIP

scholarship

Any legal U.S. resident who will be a full-time student at a U.S. college or university in the 2022–2023 academic year is eligible. See Official Rules

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college housing, parenting

Purchasing Off-Campus Housing for Your College Student

off-campus housing

As a parent of an incoming college freshman, you’re likely feeling the stress of how to provide your child with the best housing. While most students choose to live on campus, some parents make the decision to purchase a home near campus for the sole purpose of housing their student while in college.

I had a friend that purchased housing near the campus of Texas A&M. Freshman housing was limited, and they factored in the cost savings over the years of on-campus housing and food. Once their student graduated, they kept the home as rental property and still rent it out to college students each year as off-campus housing.

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college safety, parenting

Keeping Your Student Safe at College

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safe at college

Sending off your child to college is something to be so proud of. But this can also be something that’s anxiety-provoking.  You’ll be worrying about whether or not they’ll make friends, if they’ll have good grades, if they’re responsible enough to take care of themselves and if they’re going to stay safe. Safety tends to be the biggest concern for parents.

It’s completely understandable why. A lot of things happen on college campuses, but even outside of campuses. You’ll hear about lockdowns, muggings, alcohol poisoning, assaults, car accidents, and much much more happening on these college campuses if you look on the news. It’s scary, all of it is very scary. But the chances that your child is going to run into one of these events is quite slim. Here are some tips to ensure that your soon-to-be college freshmen are going to be safe at college.

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life lessons, mom approved tips, parenting

Pitfalls of Raising a Teenager

teenager

Childhood is a time of significant change, and your teen may find themselves facing new challenges. You want to be there for them during these critical years and offer guidance as they grow up. One way you can do this is by understanding the four common troubles your teenager may get into. 

Motor Vehicle Crash

A car accident is the most common cause of injury among teenagers. Statistically, motor vehicle crashes are responsible for about one-third of teen deaths every year. Yet, despite these facts, many parents are unaware of the presence of risk factors among teenagers.

Teenagers are at a greater risk for car accidents than adults because their brains have not fully developed yet. Therefore, parents must talk to their children about driving safety before they get behind the wheel themselves. Additionally, it would help if you had a car accident lawyer on speed dial to help you to maneuver through any situation. 

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college costs, college planning, financial planning

5 Reasons why College Costs So Much

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college

There is one thing you can be sure of in life: college tuition will rise every year. Prices rise and fall all around us, but tuition never seems to go down.

College tuition prices are a lot higher today compared with two decades ago. For instance, the average cost for tuition and fees among ranked public and private National Universities – schools that are often research-oriented and offer bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees – has risen significantly since 2001, according to U.S. News data.

From the 2008 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings to the current 2022 edition, in-state tuition prices among public National Universities grew by almost 79%. Experts say state schools have typically had more room to increase tuition levels compared with their private counterparts, and finding a bargain price at the state level is becoming harder.

The economic downturn resulting from the coronavirus pandemic may also affect tuition costs in the years to come.

In just comparing the 2020-2021 school year to the current 2021-2022 academic year, tuition rates at both private and public National Universities have increased by at least 2%, according to U.S. News data.

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college health, student health

4 Self-Care Tips for college freshmen

self-care tips

One of the biggest obstacles when starting your freshman year of college is figuring out how to manage a healthy balance between your academics and social life– but don’t forget that practicing self-care is a key piece to that balance. Making yourself a priority during the hustle and bustle of your first year of college will help you create and maintain healthy habits for the rest of your schooling to come. 

Imagine being on an airplane, you get your luggage stowed, you buckle up and the video in front of you starts to play informing you of all the safety measures to take in the event of an emergency. One of the biggest tips they stress is when the oxygen masks come down, always put yours on before helping the person next to you. You cannot help someone if you cannot get air yourself! This goes for life, and even freshman year. If you do not make time to take care of yourself, everything else will start to fail too. But you know the best part of that? It is easier than it sounds!

Here are a few self-care tips for you as you take on this new journey!

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college guidance, parenting

Why Grandparents Make The Best College Mentors

grandparents

Grandparents are a fantastic resource for college-age students. They have a wealth of knowledge that allows them to provide perspective as young people go through education and get professional careers. But the benefits go beyond this. Grandparents tend to have a greater perspective on life that allows them to put everything the student does into context. 

In this post, we take a look at some of the reasons why grandparents make great mentors and how you can use them. 

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homeschooling, parenting

Expert Homeschooling Tips

homeschooling

Nowadays, more people are educating their children from home because of the advantages of flexibility, productivity, and bringing out your child’s unique talents. But if you haven’t homeschooled before, it might be difficult to know where to start – read the expert tips below. 

Stick to a routine 

Whether you home school your children part-time or full time, it’s important to stick to a routine. Traditional schools are excellent for creating formal structures and routines for students to follow, which frames their psychology for learning. However, when you don’t have a strict routine to follow, there is a tendency to cut corners and take breaks here and there – this doesn’t make for the best homeschooling environment. 

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college health, parenting, student health

Teaching Your Teen Healthy Habits

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Healthy habits are the best way to take care of your body. After all, our body is a gigantic system with so many different processes, each of them working in harmony to create a strong and healthy body. However, when one of these systems or processes is interrupted, it can slow everything down to a crawl. This is not where you want to be, hence why it’s important to take a holistic approach to health and also why it’s important to educate your children on this.

So what can you do to encourage your child to take a full body approach to their health? Here are a couple of suggestions.

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