Saving money on textbooks will ease your budget as a student. As grants respond to your tuition needs, there are also ways of decreasing textbook expenses.

Book exchange

You can start a book exchange with friends and classmates. In a book exchange, you will pool together your current textbooks. This will work well for students who share most courses. Members can get textbooks they need for the particular day, and return them after use. The problem with this is that you will be sharing textbooks. So, you may not have enough time for each of your texts.

Borrow

If you want to borrow your textbooks from the library, make sure that you get your reading list early. Head to the library as soon as you get the list to borrow your needed texts. You have to move quickly because libraries may have limited copies.

Buy online

Buying via the Internet may sound high-tech, but you can actually save if you know where to look. Visit sites, such as Ebay, for discounts. Even major online stores, such as Amazon, offer discounted books. You can also download electronic textbooks for free from reputable sites. Just make sure that you only download materials that are not copyright protected.

Buy used

Used books are always cheaper. So browse through stores that sell used books; you may just find your needed texts. It may not work if professors insist on you having the latest editions. However, for instances when you are using an old edition, you can even buy from someone who is at least a year ahead of you in school.

Rent

You can also rent textbooks. Textbook rentals will let you use their textbooks for a long period of time, perhaps even for the whole term. Prices are usually less than half of the textbook’s retail price, maybe even lower at 80% off.

Share

If you have a friend or neighbor using the same textbook, you may each pay half for the same textbook. You have to make sure though that you do not share the same class hours. You do have to adjust to the fact that like in the book exchange, you will not have as much time with the textbook as when you are the sole owner.

Time is up…

If you do decide to buy your textbooks, used or brand-new, you can sell them after the term is over. This way, a portion of your money comes back to you.

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You’ll find tons of self-help articles for students who are having a difficult time just trying to get by every single day in school. So instead of giving you tips on how to breeze through college and graduate school, what we’ll give you is an idea on what makes a student inefficient and how not to fall into the trap of becoming one. If you find yourself falling under any of the categories below, it’s time to re-evaluate your current studying habits and turn them into more productive ones.

* Unsuccessful students revel in mediocrity.

This is a common tendency among students especially when school work starts piling up. The aim is no longer to ace an exam or paper, but merely to get a passing grade. Because you’ve already turned down a night out with your friends to write a paper, might as well maximize the time by writing it the best way you can. If you get an A for a well-written report, at least you can say that the Friday night spent all by your lonesome was time well spent. In the academe, you will be surprised to find out that mediocrity is the norm, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be a mediocre student. There are plenty of opportunities for you to shine, so you might as well grab these opportunities – whether they be in your homework, your essays, and your extracurricular activities.

* Unsuccessful students act on impulse.

Hasty decisions almost always lead to complications and bring an even bigger hassle than what you were originally dealing with. This is not to say that you should forego spontaneity in all cases. Rather, learn to distinguish between decisions that need to be thought through and those which you can make on the go. For example, submitting a thesis topic proposal about something you just thought of two minutes ago can have problematic repercussions. Take the time to consult your teachers, counselors, and parents or guardians in your decisions. Their inputs on your academic plans will be invaluable in the long term.

* Unsuccessful students procrastinate to no end.

Yes, there are students who work best under pressure. But there are also those who use this excuse just to slack off and procrastinate. If you’re having an “off” day and cerebral activities are the last thing on your mind, there are still tons of productive things you can do that require minimum brain exercise. Remember those handouts you were looking for last week? Chances are, they’re somewhere in that pile of files and handouts you’ve left on the floor of your room. Rearranging your files, and making them accessible, is a non-cerebral, productive activity which will help maximize your studying time. Do you have a very important paper due next month, why not head to the library and take a few minutes just browsing through resources that you can consult when you make your draft. You may not read through them, but at least you already have a short list of your references.

* Unsuccessful students dwell on failures and negativity.

If you easily get discouraged and dwell on your self-perceived incompetence, this may translate to even lower grades in the future. This is because negativity gives rise to feelings of resignation in doing your school work, which will consequently result in poor academic performance. What you should do is use your failures as a jumping off point for improvement. Take them as lessons and vow to avoid committing the same mistakes in the future. For example, if you turned in a hastily done essay last semester and your teacher called your attention on your carelesness, spend a few minutes re-reading your future essays, correcting simple grammatical lapses, and refining your output.

* They employ short-term thinking and don’t see the bigger picture.

A clear example of this would be not studying for an exam, thinking that one failed exam couldn’t possibly drag down your entire GPA. Another example would be seeing one’s studies as an end in itself. Especially for those in graduate and medical school, some students think that getting good grades doesn’t matter as long as they graduate. If you’re in high school, bear in mind that getting good grades, not just passing ones, are your ticket to getting into the best colleges. This is true for college students who plan to go to graduate, medical, MBA, or law schools. When you apply for college, you will be submitting your academic records, which reflect how you did in high school.

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The ambition to become a medical doctor is a goal that must be steadfastly followed. Medical school itself, with its demands on one’s physical and mental abilities, may already be too stressful for many. The end of it, however, is still not the end of the road for some.

If you want to be part of the medical community, you still have to apply to medical school. Medical schools will be looking at your GPA and your personality when you apply. Even if your grades are not as high as most top medical schools in the country require, give yourself points by completing requirements that are needed. These requirements include credits in the natural sciences and the social sciences. You will also need to submit a personal statement. If you have observed examples of personal statements written for medical schools, they give accounts of community involvement or other instances that support your medical school bid. These examples of personal statements will also shed light to characteristics needed in order to become a fully-fledged doctor.

Being in medical school

When already in medical school, be prepared for long hours of studying. The first two years are mostly spent inside the classrooms, listening to lectures, and being exposed to the basic disciplines of medicine such as human anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology, and medical ethics.

Many students, especially those who did not major in the sciences in college, have difficulties in subjects like biochemistry and pathology, so having a rich background in the sciences is essential.  It is also much difficult to cram in medical school, so you do have to keep up for every lesson.  Second year may already find some students experiencing burn-outs while third year becomes a temporary reprieve because it is more clinical than theoretical. Many medical students in their first and second year pull all-nighters to study for an exam. These years are also the time when being sociable becomes a plus factor because many medical students join study groups so that they can perform in their exams better.

At this stage of their medical training, medical students begin making supervised rounds in hospital wards. However, your responsibilities also increase when you reach fourth year because you will be have surgical rotations.

The difficulties of becoming a full-fledged doctor

The road to become a full-fledged doctor is very long and stressful. You need to have a bachelor’s degree, which usually takes 4 years, to enroll into medical school. Then, after four intensive years in medical school, you have to take three more years of residency (at the very least) to earn a specialization. Residency is much more difficult than the already stressful medical school because you will put your knowledge to practical use while earning several hours of sleep debt every night you are on-call. The number of years of residency will depend on the specialization, which can range from 3 to 7 years. If you still want to get a higher rank or receive more specialized training, you have to go through a fellowship after your residency, which can last for two to three years.

Rewards and challenges

The challenges are not over after you become a full-fledged doctor. You still have to go through regular stressful situations and may get sued for malpractice. However, if you love your job and do well in your specialization, the financial reward may be as high as more than a million dollars annually. Of course, there are also specializations that can only reward you around $100,000 annually. To earn more, you need to choose more complicated specializations such as neurosurgery.

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The ranking of law schools in the United States depends on several criteria, including both qualitative and quantitative data. Some lists focus on only one criterion. However, after putting together the results of surveys, the top ten law schools turn out to be schools that are consistently making the lists of the best. If you want to become a successful lawyer one day, acceptance into one of these schools gets you closer to your goal.

The top-ranking law schools in America as of the year 2008 are:

1. Yale University
2. Harvard University
3. Stanford University
4. Columbia University
5. New York University
6. University of California-Berkeley
7. University of Chicago
8. University of Pennsylvania
9. Northwestern University
10. University of Michigan

Some information about the best American law schools: the top 5

Yale University Law School claims top place as the best law school in the United States (2008). Its intimate classes, with one of the lowest student-to-teacher ratio in the country, contribute to its healthy learning environment. It has also not forgotten the less-privileged, with its scholarships and outreach programs.

Coming in close to Yale Law School is Harvard University Law School. It prides itself with its ability to provide a broad selection of legal subjects and degrees, from a Bachelor in Law to a Doctor in Juridical Science.

The current third-placer, Stanford University Law school established its law department in 1893 and its law school fifteen years later. It is a good place to do research because it boasts of a library that contains more than half a million books.

Meanwhile, New York University’s School of Law goes further back to 1835. It is known to be one of first law schools to accept female enrollees. Columbia University Law School also makes it mark by employing professors who have established private or public practices.

And the rest of the top 10

Berkeley Law of the University of California – Berkeley tries to make itself stand out with its intellectual property program. The University of Chicago Law has its own brand of making students and faculty active, through its six published journals. The University of Pennsylvania Law School’s cross-disciplinary studies enables students to understand other fields in order to later on function as fully developed citizens. Finally, Northwestern University Law School promotes its accelerated JD program while Michigan, although tenth over-all ranks five for the number of law professors.

Your move…

Knowing the top ten and their best qualities should motivate you to start preparing for your application to meet the stringent requirements of these law schools. There are many available examples of personal statements specific to law school. These examples of personal statements will familiarize you with what law schools are looking for. If your grades are not that high, your best chance to be accepted in a top-ranking law school is a personal statement that conveys a personality compatible to law school.

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