If you are going to be attending college soon you have a lot of things to consider and some key decisions to make. First, you have to research the schools that you might attend and schedule site visits for the most promising ones. There are lengthy college applications to fill out and winning personal essays to write. After you have filled out the financial aid forms, you'll have an anxious period of time where you wait to hear if you are accepted or not. Finally, that big day arrives and you get your first acceptance letter in the mail.
After the celebration there are even more decisions to make, including where you will live at the university and most importantly how you will pay for your education. Each college that accepts you will send a detailed offer of student aid and a full explanation of the annual costs of your education. From there, it's up to you to come up with the remaining balance owed for the upcoming year's education.
Determining How to Pay for College
Once you know the full cost of attending school for the year, you can begin to address how you are going to pay for everything. Many colleges will provide some financial aid in the form of scholarships, grants or work study programs. They may also offer some federal loans that will help. You'll need to finance the rest of the annual amount. One of the best ways to finance your undergraduate degree is to take out private student loans. When you are researching loan scenarios, it's helpful to use a student loan repayment calculator to estimate what your monthly payments will be. You'll know what to expect to pay and be able to find a solution that works well for you.
Starting a Tech Business During Your College Years
It's tempting to treat college as a time for partying and a reward for all the years you've already spent in school. If you follow that path before you know it your time in college will be over and you'll graduate and slot into a low-paying entry-level job. There's a far better way to approach those key years as you pursue your undergraduate degree. Universities are hotbeds of research, creativity and ideas. Rather than just muddle through college, consider starting a tech business during those four years. You'll find you are surrounded with great resources in school, and you may find some kindred entrepreneurial spirits who'd love to join you in creating a tech startup. Best of all, when you graduate, you'll have a successful entrepreneurial business already up and running.
Going for the Gold
Billionaires flock to Silicon Valley, and the tech industry has created more millionaires than you can count. If you can come up with a winning concept and start to take it to market, you'll find a pot of gold waiting for you in the form of a future IPO or a buyout. Imagine how it would feel to go through college and emerge as a multi-millionaire. If you focus on innovation and disrupting existing markets, you'll find ideas that can truly change the world. For instance, look at online shopping today. E-commerce dominates that landscape now but it's still basically an inefficient solution. It would be possible to design an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine that does the price checking and shopping for you. If you create an app like this, you'll be able to take a small percentage of every shopping order placed through your service.
