Over the past 4 years you’ve been through a lot. You’ve lived away from your parents for the first time, you’ve been in charge of your own finances for the first time, you’ve taken responsibility for your academic performance and have asked the multi-layered question: What do I want to do with my life?

There are some people who just instinctively know what they want, but I think many of us need some time to reflect, consider our options and decompress from the ordeals (and fun ) of college life. As you’re in this transition mode, there are a few options standing in front of you:

[click to continue...]

You might believe that going to school is enough to keep you crazy. But there are many people who not only go to school but hold down full time jobs as well. But what I find even more impressive is those few folks who manage to go to school and run successful businesses. I can think of a few people who have managed to pull this off. Ben Bleikamp is one of them. He managed a busy design business all the while attending Ohio State University.

The key thing in my belief is start a simple business. A simple business might be a drop shipping business, or a small web design firm.

In reality its about keeping things simple and managing your time well. Knowing what type of business to start is key. The business does not need to be in your field of interest. Although that would be awesome if you plan to use your GradSkills to build your own business.

In the next part of this article we will focus on how to build an online profile.

For someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time in front of a computer I find myself multitasking often. I have yet to find an ideal online note taking tool.

I find myself using Google Documents a lot as far as taking notes goes. However lately since I am working on a book I have found Wordpress.com to be a great tool. You can create a blog for each class, then using the WordPress.com Dashboard you can switch from class to class.

There are a number of tools to keep your WordPress.com blog up to date, but personally I love the web interface. Having a blog is also cool in that you can rapidly search through your notes on the fly, remember assignments, and if your professors offers videos embed them right into your notes.

Consider WordPress.com not only a great publishing platform but the webs best note taking platform as well.

Trust me on this–when you’re a student who is constantly on the go. You desperately need a dependable laptop. Thus I have scoured the internets to find you the best and most affordable portable laptop for your classroom needs. It needed to be powerful enough to take notes, and browse the web. Since most of my work is done on the web instead of the desktop I found it pretty easy to find a laptop that was both affordable and web friendly.

The Asus 901pc is roughly 500 dollars but comes fully equipped with XP which will run great on this portable laptop.

Its affordable which rocks my world. And its lightweight. I can pretty much do anything I want on this lightweight and yet affordable machine and it handily fits into my backpack without feeling like I am carrying around a 10 lb brick.

Producitivy is something I struggle with at times. Calculating your church will determine if you are busy and unproductive or busy and productive.

By calculating your own churn rate, you can determine, precisely, how effective you are and how this effectiveness changes over time and different types of projects. The details of this calculation are as follows:

1. Make a list of active projects that are important to you to complete. These should not be projects that have deadlines. Instead, make them the optional work that would really help you get ahead if completed. Each should require around 1 – 2 weeks of fairly regular attention to complete. If it requires more, break it up into smaller chunks. If it requires less, don’t include it — it’s a task, not a project. Overall, you should have between 4 – 8 projects on this list.

2. Over the next 3 -6 weeks, try to work only on the active projects on your list. You’ll still have to complete deadline-driven work, of course, but don’t get seduced by a new idea and add it to your list until you’ve completed what is already there.

3. After around 3 weeks you can start calculating your churn rate as often as you like. The formula is as follows:

CR = [(number of completed projects from list)/(days elapsed since start of list)] * 100

Source

Found this great article over on Tumblr of all places. Hits on about every point I have thought about recently when it comes to grad school.

A little bit of powerpoint fun for those of us in need of humor.

I am extremely fond of using Twitter to network with others in my potential field and in the job place. I recommend for any grad school student to setup a personal blog over on WordPress.com as well as setting up a twitter account.

Create a strong blog, and utilize twitter to share in the conversations already present about the topics you are passionate about.

Find people who are interested in the topics you are passionate about by utilizing Twitters built in search technology.

I stumbled on a great new website for students. It is called College Crunch. While not really aimed at Grad School students it appears this site is going to be a great resource for original content aimed at college students of all kinds.

With great tips on degrees,lifestyle, and technology I really look forward this to being one of those sites I visit on a daily basis.

Students taking the Graduate Record Examination and applying to graduate school should expect to face more competition.

Increasing numbers of graduate school applicants have raised standards for graduate schools, making it one of the most difficult times to get accepted.

This year, the University’s Graduate School’s number of students admitted increased by 5 percent, and overall enrollment has increased by 4 percent, said Dean Tsantir , director of admissions for the Graduate School.

As the economy crumbles we can expect a lot more pickiness on behalf of grad schools.

Source

Here is a list of my top used Web Apps.

Remember the Milk might just be the tool that will keep you on track. And to make things even easier, Remember the Milk also integrates nicely with Google Calendar, so you can manage everything in one place.

Meebo is my most used web app mostly because its a bad habit to flip open a window using Meebo instead of a desktop application. I can have all my messages in one place rather than utilizing various services.

Google Docs is by far the most powerful document creation tools online it makes for easy collaboration in work groups and teams in various classes. This is by far my most used tool for sharing information online.

Grade Guru is a great application that i just started using to share notes, and find out information that I happen to miss in class.