Starting the First Steps

Well, I finally got back to the blog. Life, work , and homework had me occupied. Ok back to the subject at hand. The first thing you need to do in order to start attending college is to register? No! The first thing you need to do is go see what grants you qualify for. You will need to do this in plenty of time before you start attending since it will affect your tuition and out-of-pocket expense. There are usually two or three grant programs which can be utilized. The Federal government has a Pell Grant and your state usually has some grant programs also. You can apply for both I believe, but each has it own stipulations and qualifications so you will have to read and search and find out which grant would be best for you to apply for.
If you are not in a lower income bracket and plan to attend college you might want to consider a student loan. This information can be obtained at the college of your choice. And can usually be found online at their website also. If you are taking out a student loan please remember after you finish school it will be time to start paying all this back so I hope you choice a loan which has a low fixed rate. I am not too educated on the loans since I opted for the Pell Grant and fall into the low income bracket but the Student Counciling service at the college should be able to help you more in this matter. Don't forget there is nothing like doing a defined web search and finding out more information on this also. Don't settle for just one opinion.
What I did first was go online and sign up for the Pell Grant and see how much I qualified to receive. After you get approval for this you will then need to go and sign up for admission to the college of your choice. I did all this online as most likely everyone can do these days at every college.
Now that you have completed all this it will be time to contact the highschool you graduated from and get a copy of your transcripts sent to your selected college. They usually will require that you either visit their Highschool adminstration office or do like I did: I went to the highschool website and found the link to request transcripts and downloaded their form and filled it out and sent it to them. You may have to end up calling them like I did to make sure they got it. I think they had tossed my mail to the side thinking it was junk mail. You can also download the form and fax it but I didn't have a fax machine and setting up microsoft fax after disabling so many services on Windows Xp turned out to be too much trouble at the time for me.
Everything is falling into place now and what else is there to do? Ok , so you took the ACT test 20 years ago or even so you didn't. It probably will not matter. They probably will want you to take it again since it has been so long since the last time you had taken it. The college of your choice will usually have the ACT test available at least once each month and it will cost you a little depending on the college. It will usually cost around 30 to 60 dollars but just depends on the college. Ah , but there is another option. You can take an accuplacer test, which is administered for free and on the day of registration. I have opted as of now to take neither one.
I know you are probably wondering how can you attend college without taking the ACT test or the Accuplacer test? Well as long as you don't have any academic subjects to take you may be able to weasel your way around this but eventually I will have to take the ACT just like everyone else, as it is hard to avoid the academic parts forever.
Just remember if you are planning on attending college it will not be just like you can do it next week. It will take a little planning and time to get ready for that first semester. You should start like 6 months or more in advance, but you might be able to manage to get by with 3 months if you are lucky.
All the above I posted should be started in this time frame to insure you do not have to rush and try to get everything done at once. Also apply for Financial aid as early as possible since there is a possibility that funding may run out and you would not get funded.
Ok now that you have finished all the above sit back and figure out what you want to major in if you haven't done so already. And if you have already decided, second think it, and think about it some more. Selecting your major is an important part of planning for the next steps you will take to further your education and future career.
Next time I will discuss registering for college and getting ready for the first day of college, and everything that should be done and the bookstore and so on. Until next time.