If You Are A Student At An Accredited College Or University And Would Like To Attend: Fill & Download for Free

Here are a few strategies.Attend a public high school that has a "grade 13" arrangement with a community College or public University that allows high school students to defer graduating one year, to about age 19, while taking the freshman year college curriculum for free.http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2015/05/04/13th-grade-offers-some-teens-an-easier-transition-to-collegeTake as many AP courses as possible. You may be able to get credit for up to a full year of courses at an accredited college or university.Your high school guidance or college counselor can explain the AP program to you.Take a gap year after high school and earn money for college. In parallel use self-study and group study to prepare for and take CLEP exams (College level entry placement ) exams. Make sure your intended college accepts them for credit.CLEP Exams | CLEPExcel at a 2 year community college and transfer to a four year school for your degree.Tips on Transferring from a 2-Year to a 4-Year CollegeIf you have a lot of life experience, such as would be typical for an older student, attend an accredited distance program like Exelsior College that allows college credit for documented life experience.Prior Learning Assessment BAttend one of the military Service academies, like Annapolis or the Air Force Academy. These are free to attend but admission is not easy and involves first being nominated, usually by your senator or representative in Congress.Congressional nomination, keys to earning your nominationsIf you're a top student, attend one of the elite colleges that are completely free to all students. The best-known is Cooper-Union in New York City. Here are some others:8 Colleges Where Students Attend For FreeIf you are fluent in a foreign language, you may be able to complete a fully accredited degree at a foreign university for free. Germany in some cases offers free higher education to all, including non-Germans.How US students get a university degree for free in Germany - BBC News

It already does, you’ve just got to work for it. It’s been an option from WWII on forward. Most US states augment that program (Texas is particularly generous) if you serve. Now, I get that this isn’t what you’re after. You’re probably looking at something in line with what France or Germany does. My answer to that is “yes” but with conditions and a lot of them.But I have very strong opinions on this and I’m exhausted with the idiotic shit people keep saying:College in the US isn’t particularly expensive if you do it correctly. My husband has a bachelors degree (BSN) for less than $60,000 all in and he absolutely muddled through a BS in psychology for the first two years. He could’ve saved $20,000 if he’d have gone in for nursing from the beginning.You can get a degree through any community college and your local university partnership. Again, this is what my husband did.99% of all jobs out there just don’t give a shit where you went to school. I want to be very clear about this so you don’t misunderstand me, there are amazing universities that provide superlative education and they should charge a premium and those students going there (if they need the money down the road) should be studying a critical field.The rest of us do not need that education or anything even remotely close. I’m a recruiting leader at Facebook. I have been there for 18 months. We never EVER even look for your degree. We don’t care. A few sub-organizations at FB care about that degree because it’s very relevant (the same way a degree is relevant for a surgeon or engineer). Outside of those teams, all we care about is what you do. And we’re one of the biggest players in technology.You and the rest of the companies out there, you don’t need to go to a name university. I’ve recruited executives (C-Suite) with Facebook, Key Bank, Huntington Bank, PNC Bank, McKesson, M-Modal, Goodyear and Progressive Insurance. I’ve recruited managers, engineers, scientists and programmers for those companies as well as Amazon, American Greetings, Verizon, AT&T, FirstEnergy, Walmart, Kohl’s, ManpowerGroup, Swagelok, Rockwell Automation, Lubrizol (Berkshire Hathaway), Chase, Kroger, US Steel and I’m probably forgetting a dozen more. None of them ever asked for a top level university. Only one (Goodyear) ever asked for an accredited MBA from a brick & mortar university (and that was for a very specific C-Suite leader). Stop investing in an expensive brand of school when you’re not likely to need it.I think that a good program across the US would look like this:I think funding student education should come with costs to the student and that they should have to work for it.I think there’s a reasonable argument for considering the first two years of college (“jr. college”, “community college” or a trade school) to be paid for out of taxes for everybody the same way it works for High School.After the first two years, students can elect:to have their entire education paid for (with any degree they choose, regardless of how marketable the degree may be) with two years of public service thereafter.pursue an “in demand” degree in (determined by whatever organization the government uses) which is paid at 100% cost with B-grades or higher. C-grades get you 50%.cover the costs on their own after the first two years.This would only apply to state run, public colleges and universities.I’m generally opposed to all concepts of “student loans” and would tightly limit any student taking them and force it back on the university to justify taking tuition on credit. No loans at all for undergraduate programs. Loans available for graduate ones and those with limitations.I hate that clinicians of any variety have to take out massive loans. Not only am I generally opposed to the gargantuan years people in the US have to go to college, but I’m against the bloated programs clinicians have to take, especially physicians. I’d have a recompense program to help defer costs to critical graduate programs for medical and psychological professionals.I’d give students the right to:write off loans from any predatory university, sticking the banks with them (i.e.—loans for those universities would disappear over night).write off any loan to any “for profit” university with a bankruptcy.write off graduate and post-graduate degree loans for doing public service, teaching, going into medicine, being a police officer, etc. after 12 years of service in a public institution.Lastly, because of how dangerous loans are, I’d require serious hours of counseling, repeated counseling/education for any student taking them. They’d have to go through two days of finance and accounting along with explanations of just how much their lives would be destroyed.

Harvard College vs University of Neverheardofit…unless your future boss hates Harvard or went to the University of Neverheardofit, I’d pick (and recommend to others) Harvard.Unless your parents are wealthy enough that paying for Harvard isn’t a big deal, it’s unlikely that you’ll pay very much to go to Harvard; in fact, you’ll likely pay more to attend a state university than you will to attend Harvard.The average grade at Harvard is an A-, which means that an average student at Harvard College is already making the same grades as most “stellar” students at other schools.Most employers have no interest in your GPA—they only care about the degree and the school. In all honesty, most employers only care that the school is accredited.That said, if two people are applying for the same job and one went to the University of Neverheardofit (a school the employer will literally have to google, because they’ve never heard of it) and one went to Harvard…draw your own conclusions. Of course, be aware that every time anyone makes the above statement there are a dozen people who jump in to comment that they would never do this and that it’s bunk that Harvard grads are more likely to get a job over someone else. All I can say is: look at the statistics—how many Harvardians have trouble finding a good paying job after graduation?Lastly, and this is for the educational purists: there really is a difference between a good state school and Harvard, in terms of the education you receive (and a stark difference between Harvard and an unknown and statistically mediocre school). Admissions stats strongly suggest that the average Harvard College student was already both well-educated and a high-performer; having attended Harvard, I can tell you that the classes are rigorous (though that’s merely subjective). A common sense conclusion suggests that the average Harvard graduate is almost always better prepared, intellectually, than almost anyone else.