Ferguson Career Resource Guide to Grants, Scholarships, and Other Financial Resources

Abstract

Ferguson Career Resource Guide to Grants, Scholarships, and Other Financial Resources, Volume I & Volume II 2007. New York, NY: Ferguson Imprint of Infobase Publishing, 710 pages, $125, Hardback Intended Audience(s): A, F, H Major Headings from the Table of Contents: Volume 1: Introduction and Overview; Essays; Directory of Financial Aid by Major and Student Profile-based Aid; Indexes Volume 2: Continuation of Student Profiled-Based Aid; Other Types of Financial Aid; Further Resources; Indexes How Is the Book Most Useful for Its Intended Audience? These reference books are most helpful to high school students (freshmen to seniors), college-bound individuals, and professionals seeking financial assistance for higher education (undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs). The Top Five Things You Learned from Reading this Book: Obtaining grants is an excellent means to pay for college without having to pay anything back. Employer tuition-support programs and how they can be beneficial for the employee and the employer. That it is never too early to start taking AP (Advance Placement) courses in high school and how these certain classes can be exempted from your college curriculum. In order to become better equipped to write a worthy college application essay, it is best to read samples from past applicants, and that many of these samples are available on college sites and in print. The difference between federal, state, and private loans. The Career Resource Guide to Grants, Scholarships, and Other Financial Resources is written in plain language and is logically organized. The book is an excellent resource manual that provides essential information in a user-friendly manner. As a professional who used to work providing college students with internship/co-op placement, I heard all the many woes about struggling to pay for college. If this resource book was around five years ago, I would have highly recommended it to my students, along with their parents. I would also recommend this book for high school guidance counselors and teachers who have identified college-bound students. These books do an outstanding job in revealing a multitude of ways to finance higher education. The two-volume books are broken into four parts: 1. An Introduction and Overview, 2. Essays, 3. Directory, and 4. Further Resources. Each section is exceptionally organized in a manner that will not confuse the first-time browser on this subject matter. The author begins with a very valuable and logical timeline geared for the high school student who is interested in attending college. What clearly stands out in this college planning timeline is that if you want to go to college you need to take your high school years seriously, start taking college preparatory classes (especially any course that will improve your writing skills), get involved in extracurricular activities (colleges pay a lot of attention to this), start researching careers that are of interest to you and begin job-shadowing someone in that field of interest, research colleges and universities, and get a part-time job to start saving money. The message to begin saving money is an incredibly important task because the sooner you learn how to do this, the better prepared you will be in the future. This detailed timeline would serve as a wonderful wall chart in the guidance counselor's office, as well as the homeroom class of any school. Students need to start thinking early about what they need to do to improve their chances of getting into a college of their choice. …