One of the most discouraging things about college can be finding useful information about college. One of the biggest things that happened to me, which lit a fire under me was when I was accepted into college and NEEDED help with financial aid, scholarships, grants, etc. The person I turned to was the financial aid adviser of the university which accepted me and I was soon frustrated as I felt I received little or no help with financing my college education. I turned to the financial aid office feeling very scared and alone after receiving my acceptance letter thinking I would receive answers about how to finance my college education. Because my parents could not help me financially with college I was left to financing my education on my own. I figured that if I could turn to anyone it would be the financial aid adviser who was being paid by the university I planned to attend.

I was absolutely clueless about how the college process worked and thought that I would be able to receive help when it came to financing my education because I was left to do it on my own. It seemed as though the more questions I asked my financial aid adviser, the more aggravated she got, and she began treating me as though I should already know the answers to the questions I asked. The only reason I was there was to find out how I would be able to finance college, and as a paid professional of a university I assumed she would do everything in her power to find a solution for me. When I asked about grants and scholarships she simply said that I didn’t qualify for anything and quickly tried turning my attention toward student loans to fund my education.

Leaving her office I felt smaller than I’ve ever felt before as I receive no help funding my college education. I was forced to turn to student loans to fund my education as my tuition bill deadline closed in. Basically the information that I’d spent a year researching had failed me and only led to dead ends when it came to receiving aid to finance my college education. Because my parents weren’t willing or able to cosign my student loans I was subject to many student loan rejections, followed by finally being accepted for qualification subject to inflated interest rates. My student loans continue to haunt me to this day because of the amount needed to fund my education and the outrageous interest rates.

The goal of SMB College Life is to inform students about college life as much as possible by providing pertinent information about college searching, planning, funding, and so much more all in one place. I do not want you to feel as clueless or as helpless as I felt after graduating high school nor do I want you to spend more money than you need to fund you college education, especially if your parents cannot or will not help you. This is what drives the research and development which goes into building SMB College Life. At SMB College Life you will not get turned down, you will not find information leading to dead ends, and I will not make you feel as though you should already know this very important information. SMB College Life thrives on helping college students find the information that they need to succeed in college.

I would like to talk about some recent additions to SMB College Life that should greatly help you in your college life journey. Recently added to SMB College Life is our Grants page which will provide you with all the information you will need to search, find, and receive grants to fund your education. We also offer additional resources to turn to which list most, if not all of the available education grants in the United States, which you can use to help fund you college education. Our Apply To College Section offers all of the information that you will need to apply to college as well as PDF college applications which you can download and fill out for free. We also provide additional tips to help waive the cost of traditional college applications. We have added music videos to our entertainment page which will be updated weekly and will grow into a database which you can use to view your favorite music videos.

As our partnerships grow we continue to work on our shopping section behind the scenes. We are currently compiling a list of partners as well as coupons presented to us to offer directly to you for savings on things that you may need throughout you college life. Not only do we want to pay as little as possible for tuition, we also want to save you money on the products you may need throughout your college life. Once we have a good, solid shopping section we will update it all at once for you to receive the maximum savings through merchants, distributors and retailers which you are accustomed to.

The one section that we are having trouble bringing together is our scholarship page and our student loan page. What we need is CREDIBLE information that we can offer to you. Our research is turning up very little CREDIBLE information to offer you so we are asking for professional help. We need the help of financial advisers, professional experts, and government officials to collect the most CREDIBLE information to our users about scholarships and student loans.

If you are one of the people mentioned above, know someone mentioned above, or have any CREDIBLE information that you would like to share with thousands of other college students then please contact us at contact@smbcollegelife.com and tell us more. We are currently working setting up appointments with financial advisers in our area as well as government officials but could use your help in developing these pages.

Thanks for your help and thanks for using SMB College Life!

SMB College Life Blog

Christmas comes only once a year. It is time for us to get together and spend quality time with family and friends. Christmas is a very special time for college student because not only do we have get a break from the sleepless nights of homework and projects, cramming for exams, and ultimately busy schedule of college life, we also have the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with the ones we love the most.

I wanted to take some time today to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and I hope that you are all enjoying time away from school and work to be with your loved ones. I want to keep this short and sweet because I would like to get back to spending time with my family but Merry Christmas everybody and thanks for accepting the launch of SMB College Life as well as the Official SMB College Life Blog. I appreciate the individuals who have taken the time to visit the site and the people who continue to return for information, entertainment, savings and more. Since the official launch of the SMB College Life website and Blog you guys have been very supportive and responsive to all of the information that I’ve provided. If all goes as planned I intend to continue providing new information, resources and savings in an attempt to lower the debt of most college students in America.This Christmas season I found myself thinking about all the people that have been important to me throughout my college life. I can’t begin to express my gratitude for the friends and family members that have stuck by me through thick and thin this year. My college life has taken its toll on many relationships of mine simply because of my work ethic, focus and dedication which is required of me through my major. This Christmas I am thankful for all the friends and family members who have continually supported any and all of my actions and shortcomings this year. I realize that there will be people in life who let us down and claim to be there through thick and thin and tend to fall short of their claim. This is life and Christmas provides us college students with a great opportunity to be thankful and to acknowledge the people who stick to their claim and have stayed by our side through the good times and the bad this academic year.

Today I send out a special Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family who were there for me and stuck by me this year! I recommend we all take this time off of our hectic college lives to acknowledge our true friends and family members. Thanks to all the family and friends who have been so supportive through our college lives this year!

Thanks for using SMB College Life.

SMB College Life Blog

A big question comes to mind early this morning as the search continues for credible scholarship information to provide to you on SMB College Life. In my previous post I offered the 2008-09 Student Financial Aid packet which is a publication from the US Department of Education. My relationship with the US Department of Education is fairly new when it comes to finding credible information to provide to you, but has been a long, and very expensive relationship when it comes to money provided by them for my college education. The thing that really perplexed me when researching the US Department of Education is that they will provide exceptional information about tax credits, government grants,receiving student loans, managing college finances and so much more, but I have yet to find any scholarship information provided by them. The big question that comes to mind as I sort through pages of information provided by the US Department of Education is why they don’t give any information about scholarships. Searching through their database I cannot seem to find anything about scholarships provided to students to help them pay for college.

You can see for yourself by going to their Web site and clicking on Apply For Scholarships & Loans under the Find & Pay For College section. In this section they provide links to receiving government student loans for college as well as information about paying for these loans, financing college through federal student loans, federal student consolidation information for student loans, but nothing about scholarships.

What really puzzles me is that this is THE government paid and controlled agency for United States Education, yet they do not provide information about receiving free money for college. Instead they direct you through links which take you to information about receiving loans through them, paying for your loans, and consolidation your loans through government consolidation programs. All of these things are making the government MORE money!

There are two logical explanations that I can think of which could be reasons for this lack of information. One reason is that there are too many scholarships available that they do not have enough time to dedicate to organizing and providing them on one of the most used college resources ON THE INTERNET (currently ranked #3,788 out of hundreds of million, if not billions of websites on the internet today).

From this idea comes my second justification for the US Department of Education not providing scholarship information in their college information database. Could it be because they want to make as much money as possible from college students by making us think that government loans are the only way to finance our college educations? Why else would they only provide information on every possible way for students to finance college, in which the government profits from?

One would think that they US Department of Education would capitalize on their internet rankings and help millions of student reduce their debt substantially by providing information about receiving free money through scholarships to finance college. I guess by doing this it would reduce their ability to profit from the millions of college students who use federal student loans to pay for college.

Through SMB College Life I want to offer as much useful information as possible that will benefit college students financially. The idea of SMB College Life is that the average financial debt for college students is ridiculously high and we will focus our efforts on finding information to help college students reduce this debt. There are few resources available which offer free information that will financially benefit millions of college students. We hope to fill the need of information about grants, scholarships, and other forms of free money, as well as savings on your college life needs through our corporate sponsorships and partnerships. We need to help each other save money, because it seems as though the ones who are trusted to do so aren’t delivering the most beneficial results that they could. So who is left to turn to??

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SMB College Life Blog

The US Department of Education has recently released its student financial aid packet for 2008-09. This packet will be helpful to graduating high school seniors this year as it just about everything you need to know about the financial aspect of preparing for college. This 58 page powerful resource provides information that students should know before they apply to college, tips on reducing the cost of your education, federal grants available, and so much more. Parents can find important information about income eligibilities and special tax credits that you and your soon to be college student will receive for 2008-09 school year. If your are graduating from high school this year and are looking into a college education than you must read this free guide provided by the US Department of Education. There is a ton of information that this booklet covers and is too much to list here. The table of contents alone is four pages! Be sure to grab this guide from any of the following pages at SMB College Life:

• College Costs
• College Search
• Financial Aid

I hope this helps you in your search for college life answers!
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SMB College Life Blog

Some great news has come to my attention and I needed to alert all college students as soon as I possibly could. The news is that top private schools have devised a program that will allow them to eliminate, yes ELIMINATE!, student loans for college students with families with a combined income of less than $100,000 per year. With this program they will also decrease the need for student loans for the ladder college students by 10%. These top private schools plan to replace student loans by offering grants in their place. So what does all this mean?

It means that the students and parents no longer have to worry about the price of tuition when they are searching for colleges. Average families can now have the opportunity to receive the highest level of education that used to seem like it was only offered to the wealthy. The new program initiated by top private schools offers students the chance to break free from the chains that financial giants used to hold college students back and allows college students to now focus solely on their education. Most financial institutions were “striking gold” so to speak as they were enjoying yachts, high rise suites, and beach front mansions paid for by poor college students who needed student loans to pay for college. They may now be forced to give a piece of the pie back as they will loose earnings from the high interest rates they once charged college students.

This program will be in full affect in September 2009 by top private schools such as U Penn, MIT, and Harvard to name a few. What does this mean for other universities and state schools that aren’t private schools? Well, most universities strive for excellence and do what it takes to get their name as close to the top private schools as possible. This means that it may only be a matter of time before they adapt their own version of the Student Loan Elimination Program.

Thanks to top private school like U Penn, MIT, and Harvard, which have initiated the move forward, tens of thousands of students will now be able to afford better education through college. This will also lift the burden off hundreds of thousands of college students who’s education and college life will continue through the year 2009. As most college students know, one of the biggest stresses in college comes from our financial situation, and particularly our growing debt due to student loans. This new plan will alleviate much of this stress for the majority of college students, allowing us to perform at a whole new level. Imagine the possibilities of the future that could come into play because of this simple act of eliminating student loans.

Make sure you pass this big news onto your friends, family, brothers and sisters and anyone else who could benefit from it! News like this can’t go to waste!

For more information on the story check out the following sources:
NBC News
The UPenn Financial Aid Fact Sheet
The Star Tribune in Minneapolis

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SMB College Life Blog