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by Emily

More material continues to be added to the debate over whether sites like Facebook help or hurt undergraduate students.  Last month, preliminary research by a graduate student at Ohio State University caused a stir by suggesting that the use of social networking websites was somehow connected to lower college grades. Now, a new study published by researchers at Northwestern University, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania suggests that if anything, Facebook users have higher grades than students who do not use social networking sites.

While both studies are very preliminary, their findings have sparked a great deal of discussion and debate.  Many professors and some students regard sites like Facebook as distractions from coursework and assaults on students' attention spans.  Others see no harm and a great deal of benefit from being able to connect with peers and share ideas and information more easily online.  Some instructors have even incorporated social networking into their curricula and have encouraged students to friend them online.

Social networking sites are becoming an increasingly large part of the lifestyle associated with attending college, and are increasingly being used as tools in college admissions, as well.  Do you use any of these websites?  Have you seen any connection between your internet habits and your grades?

This weekend is San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest event of the year for fans of comic books, graphic novels, online comics, and virtually anything else related to comics or the surrounding culture. While no one in the Scholarships.com office is making the trek to Comic-Con this year, we are looking at ways to help students who love comics pay for school. If you're looking for something to do while all your favorite webcomics are on hiatus, consider applying for some of these scholarship awards.

If you're interested in reading comics, you may also be interested in writing or drawing them, and creative writing and art scholarships are both widely available. Even if you're less interested in art and more interested in science fiction (comic conventions are nerd meccas, after all), there are scholarship opportunities for you. We encourage you to take a few moments to do a free college scholarship search and check out our information page on unusual scholarships, which features some interesting awards that may work for you. To give you an idea of some of the scholarship opportunities available for comics enthusiasts, here are a few examples.

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards: Aspiring artists and writers are asked to submit portfolios of three to eight pieces in this annual scholarship contest. Winners receive up to $10,000 in college scholarships.

L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests: Amateur illustrators and writers participating in the quarterly L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest can receive awards of up to $5,000 for creating an original illustration or short story with a science fiction theme.

Starfleet Academy Scholarships: Any active member of Starfleet, the official Star Trek fan club, is eligible for a Starfleet Scholarship. Members can be attending community colleges, four-year colleges, most technical schools, junior colleges and universities or graduate school.

by Alexis Mattera

Do your Facebook posts gain numerous likes within seconds of sharing? Can your Twitter followers keep up with your updates easier than they can keep up with the Kardashians? Are you the person your friends and classmates turn to for what’s hot, what’s not and what’s on the verge on campus and beyond? If so, we want you...to be a Scholarships.com Campus Insider!

Since our debut in 1999, Scholarships.com has become a go-to site not only for high schoolers in search of financial aid but for college students living away from home for the first time, trying to balance limited money for food and fun, and adjusting to postsecondary academic expectations. We have plenty of information on those topics and more but we want to hear from you – our users – about what’s going on in real time at the campuses you call home for the majority of the year. From parties to politics, from housing to hazing, and from class registration to commencement exercises, let us know what’s trending at your school and your musings could be featured regularly on our blog.

If you're interested in becoming a Scholarships.com Campus Insider, please submit your resume, a 300-word writing sample detailing a campus issue and links to your personal blog, Facebook profile and Twitter pages (if applicable) through our Website Content contact form. Looking forward to hearing what your unique voices have to say!

by Suada Kolovic

Having too many friends on Facebook seems like an unlikely problem for the president of a major university to have, but R. Bowen Loftin, the president of Texas A&M, isn’t your average administrator. Mr. Loftin not only has a Facebook account but accepts friend requests from his students. And while you’d assume students would cringe at the thought of friending such an authoritative figure, it’s in fact the exact opposite: He’s so popular that he’s hit Facebook’s max of 5,000 friends.

Diana C. McDonald, the college’s director of social media and marketing programs, says the Mr. Loftin likes the personal interaction of having a Facebook profile rather than say a Facebook fan page. “Our president is definitely not in the ivory tower,” she says. “We definitely don’t want to put him there.”

Mr. Loftin is so distraught that he’s solicited advice on what to do via – what else? – his Facebook wall. He asks his friends, who are mostly students, “I have a lot of friends requests pending, so I am asking for your advice on how best to keep connected to all of you.” And suggestions are pouring in. Some propose Mr. Loftin seek other social networking sites, possibly defriend those who weren’t his real friends or even start a Twitter account. With all the issues students are facing – crippling debt, soaring unemployment rates – is this really an issue a university president should focus on? Would you friend your school’s president?

by Agnes Jasinski

Yale  University is playing on the popularity of the tween classic "High School Musical" with a new spot from its admissions - a peppy, somewhat cheesy music video that offers would-be applicants the answer to "That's Why I Chose Yale."

The video, which clocks in at around 15 minutes, starts off safe, with an admissions official discussing what makes Yale stand out above the rest as potential students and their parents look on. That same admissions official, while thinking of an answer to a prospective student's question with a wry smile, breaks out into song. What follows is campy, but it does make the Ivy League institution seem a little less stuffy. There's choreographed dancing in addition to the singing, along with a cameo from NBC news anchor Brian Williams, whose daughter attends Yale. The administrators love it, saying that an effort by students (only current students and alums participated in the making of the video) captures the spirit of the school better than any marketing professional could do. Many students love it, saying that the cheesiness of it makes it cool.

Not everyone has had a positive response to the video. One blogger described the video as "That's Why I Chose to Ram a Soldering Iron into My Ears" instead, calling the effort too earnest. The Yale Herald, while it admitted that the musical romp was fun to watch, especially for those currently at Yale who may recognize familiar faces, suggested the video may do little to entice new applicants not already interesting in the school.  Comments on the story about the video on the Yale Daily News range from "this is so embarrassing" to this: "Next year's class is going to be devoid of any serious academic talent. What a huge sap on our prestige."

What do you think? Are there any Yale students out there who like or dislike the video? Most would agree it's at least better than the effort from Harvard University last year, "Harvard by the Numbers." Let us know what you think, and whether these kinds of efforts hurt or help admissions.

by Alexis Mattera

If you have a Facebook account, you have probably been tagged in at least one photo. It could be an image of you participating in an extracurricular activity, attending a sporting event with friends or maybe even elementary school you sporting bangs that Mom cut with kitchen scissors but people looking at the picture will know who it is they are looking at. Many universities, however, haven’t had that same luxury in tagging their archives but a Dartmouth College professor is aiming to change that in order to make years of information more accessible to all.

Mary Flanagan, a professor of digital humanities who’s also an artist and designer, has created Metadata Games, an experiment in harnessing the power of the crowd to create archival metadata. Since many schools don’t have the resources to tag their archives as thoroughly as possible, Flanagan’s program turns what could be a tedious process into a game that invites players to tag images. Interesting, right? What’s more exciting is that this tagging process is working: During the pilot phase, players generated 6,250 tags and more than 90 percent of the metadata was useful. “Games are becoming more and more part of what people want to do,” Flanagan said. “What you’re doing in games matters. Games are meaning-making machines.” Plus, it’s a lot of fun!

You can learn more about Metadata Games here but based on what you’ve read so far, do you think this program is a useful one?

by Alexis Mattera

Summer breaks vary from college student to college student. Some work multiple jobs to help defray tuition costs, others intern or volunteer in their field of study and a select few sit by the pool and do absolutely nothing. Regardless of what they accomplish this summer – a semester paid in full, a professional reference or a tan – this student’s “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” essay is going to be way more impressive.

Twenty-two-year-old Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, an undergraduate intern with a team at Monash University's School of Physics, recently confirmed she had found part of the universe’s “missing mass.” For those not majoring in science or aerospace engineering, this basically means that scientists had previously detected matter present in the early history of the universe but it had disappeared. Astrophysicists had been stymied by its absence for decades...until advanced technologies and Fraser-McKelvie came along. "We don't know where it went. Now we do know where it went because that's what Amelia found," said Monash astrophysicist Dr. Kevin Pimbblet. Pretty amazing stuff!

Now we have to ask: What are you doing over your summer break?

by Suada Kolovic

Are you a poetry ninja? If so, then we’ve got the scholarship for you: Scholarships.com’s Haiku Ninja Facebook Scholarship!

The Haiku Ninja Facebook Scholarship will go to the Scholarships.com fan that creates the best haiku detailing how our site is helping them combat the college admissions process and score some serious financial aid. Love our scholarship search? Tell us why! Is our financial aid section really helping you out? Send us an example! Think our college prep section is the best? Give us a shout out! The trick is you must convey your feelings in only three lines and 17 syllables – five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line and five syllables in the third line – and post it on our Facebook page. We always love hearing from our users so get creatively concise and you could earn $1,000 for college!

Step 1: “Like” Scholarships.com on Facebook.

Step 2: Post a haiku on our wall about how Scholarships.com is helping you prepare for and afford college. Once you do this, you are automatically entered to win a $1,000 scholarship.

Step 3: You may enter as many times as you want but please limit your haiku entries to a reasonable amount per day. From there, the Scholarships.com Team will determine which haiku best exemplifies what our site is all about and which applicant is using our resources most effectively. You must also adjust your privacy preferences to allow Scholarships.com to message you should you win.

This scholarship competition is offered by Scholarships.com and is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

Starts: June 1st

Ends: June 30th

Amount: $1,000 for one first-prize winner; Scholarships.com hats and t-shirts for second- and third-prize winners

by Suada Kolovic

With winter in full swing, it seems like the “winter blues” are upon us. Shorter days and colder nights culminate into millions of Americans suffering from mild depression, lack of motivation and low energy during this cold season which ironically is known as SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. But you’re in luck: Here are the top dos and don’ts to keep those blues at bay.

• Do Exercise: Exercise is a great stress reliever and a great way to keep your spirits up. And during those cold winter nights, releasing those “feel good” endorphins is an ideal way to increase your energy throughout the day.
• Don’t Oversleep: We’re all tempted to sleep in during the winter months for obvious reasons: there’s no sunlight when you wake up in the morning. But it’s essential to fight that urge to hit the snooze button for a 12-hour sleep session because you’re really doing more harm than good. Try to stay active and keep a schedule to avoid oversleeping.
• Do Enjoy the Season: Sure, talking long walks in your neighborhood may not be an option in freezing temperatures, but that doesn’t mean you can’t embrace the season in other ways. Try something new like skiing and snowboarding or keep things simple and go sledding and ice-skating – after all, these options are only around for a limited time, so take advantage.
• Don’t Keep your Room Dark: There’s a direct link to the “winter blues” and the lack of sunlight during the winter season and sulking in a dark environment will only exacerbate symptoms.

For even more tips, click here. And don’t forget to let us know what you’re doing to combat the winter blues.

by Agnes Jasinski

Michigan's ABC School of Bartending and Casino College has been capitalizing on out-of-work career-changers with classes in training potential new employees for new casinos planned across the border. Unemployment rates remain significant in Ohio, the site of the future casinos, despite a more positive economic outlook for 2010, and those looking for jobs with earning potential - casino dealers may make up to $60,000 a year - and a change of pace are learning to deal cards and count poker chips, among other tricks of the trade, at the casino school.

Many at the school hope to leave the school prepared for the more than 7,500 potential jobs at casinos to be built in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo. A recent article in the Chicago Tribune says nearly 200 Ohio residents have come through the school's doors over the last two years. Students pay the base price of $1,000 to get through nearly 300 hours of training for a dealer certification, spending about 40 hours a week with current and former professional dealers. (The tuition increases if the students wish to learn more beyond properly counting chips, managing a game and dealing blackjack and basic poker.)

While the certification isn't a requirement of casino jobs, the students at the school feel their participation in the program could give them a leg up in a hiring process that will be undoubtedly competitive no matter the state's job outlook. The college has been so successful that it plans to open locations in Cleveland and Columbus next spring. In the Tribune article, John Pifer, who directs the Sacramento, Calif.-based Casino College, described the gaming industry as a field that "survives all economies."

The schools are good examples of certificate programs tailored to prepare residents of a community or state for local employment options. The Midwest has a number of technical schools specializing in automotive fields that have both suffered and thrived depending on changed in the auto industry. Other places offer certificates for those, like many of the students at the casino school, who have lost their jobs or are looking to build up their resumes. The Chicago Botanic Garden offers a horticultural therapy certificate program through a partnership with Oakton Community College. The focus of that program is on-site education with hands-on training in the field of horticultural therapy. Northern Essex Community College offers a certificate in sleep technology, a program that focuses on teaching students how to diagnose sleep disorders.

Many community colleges offer certificates in accredited programs that could help you land a job in even the toughest market, or to specialize a degree you may already have in your chosen field of study. If you're interested in adult programs or returning back to school to learn a new skill, consider your local options, as they may cost you less and even have ongoing relationships with local employers that hire a large number of applicants from those schools.