In North America, students can apply for credit when they attend a post-secondary institution, even without verifiable income. The credit available to them ranges from low limit credit cards to education loans that can reach into the tens of thousands. A person can use this to their advantage, credit decisions made as a student can make a…

Imagine a darker age when students had to use the archaic pen and the notebook — a tool some may remember as the descendant of the scroll before it was made obsolete — and had to use “cassettes” in a “tape player” to listen to music they actually paid for. While these times have passed…

Over 40% of Americans claim not to have read any books in the previous year. The survey was last conducted in 2002, and noted falling reading rates from previous years. I’m sure if you’re reading through lifehack.org that you probably don’t expect reading to stop after you graduate. Yet, with such dismal…

Is it better to get an A or an A+? Most people instinctively react with an A+. As I’d like to show in this article, that isn’t always the case. Being perfect can cost far more than good enough. Also, as I’d like to demonstrate, the habits that might get you…

Just about everyone these days knows how useful a USB thumb drive can be for moving files from place to place. For people on the go, who may find themselves sing a variety of different computers, a thumb drive offers more than just portable storage. With very little work and no money aside from…

A while back, I recommended that students get to know their professors. I realize, though, that many students are intimidated or put off by their professors. This is especially so when students need something — a favor, special help with an assignment, a second chance on a test. It doesn’t need…

Note-taking is one of those skills that rarely gets taught. Teachers and professors assume either that taking good notes comes naturally or that someone else must have already taught students how to take notes. Then we sit around and complain that our students don’t know how to take notes. I figure it’s…

It’s back to school time, and it’s time to make good on the promises you made yourself last year to be more organized this time around! One of the stumbling blocks I see most often in my students is taking — and keeping — good notes for their classes. Ideally, you’d like to have…

No assignment save the comprehensive final exam seems to engender such fear in students as the research paper, especially the open topic research paper. Faced with the prospect of writing 5, 8, 12, or more pages on a topic of their choosing, a lot of students panic, unsure what to write about and how…

When I think back over a lifetime of learning, I realize that there were certain times I was a great student, and others in which I was just going through the motions, reaping relatively little from the effort. My schooling was a period of time when I learned pretty intensively because that was simply the overall…

I had a chance recently to review mynoteIT, which comes off as a kind of Backpack for students. But what’s great about it (and where I think Alex and Justin Weidmann have hit a home run with this product) is that they’ve specialized the program. It’s truly built for students. Listen to some of these…

Christopher S. Penn does the impossible: he records a daily podcast about financial aid and student loans, and he makes it interesting. The most recent episode I listened to (#331 by the way) had a really great list for college students heading back in a few weeks to their next semester. The list is interesting…