BreakDrink

Hi I’m Julie Larsen and this is the BreakDrink Daily Dose for Thursday, January 26th.

MTV Wants to Help You Find a Scholarship

MTV has launched a Facebook app called “My College Dollars” which uses information from your profile to auto-fill a form, and then suggests potential scholarships based on that data. The app will also help students fill out the FAFSA, and has a few how to videos featuring celebrities. Jason Rzepka, VP of Public Affairs for MTV believes that the app is a great way to meet current high school students in a “native environment”, and hopes the app will allow MTV reach students who don’t have access to this financial help otherwise. Rzpeka also says the app was not designed to make revenue for MTV, and no information will be shared with, or sold to third parties.

Is Your State Keeping it’s College Grads?

A Washington Post report shows that New York and New Jersey are the highest exporters of college bound students. An important difference between the two states, is the fact that many college graduates flock to New York, while few want to cross the river and head south. By combing the how many students arrived to attend school, and subtracting the number of students who left once graduated, the report showed the top five states experiencing “Brain Drain” are New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Maryland, and California. The top five experiencing “Brain Gain” are Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Washinton D.C.

Today’s First Year Students are More Tolerant, and More to the Middle

According to The American Freshman: National Norms, a study published by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), first year students from the Fall of 2011 are more moderate on social issues, while less are entering with a strong liberal leaning. The biggest shift for social issues was on the position of same-sex marriage. 71.3 percent of students either agree somewhat or agree strongly that same-sex couples should have the right to marry. This is up 6.4% from two years ago. John Pryor, Director of CIRP, believes that hard financial times are evident in some of the survey results, including a drop in the number of students who say they drink wine, beer, or party on a regular basis, as well as the number of students who choose to attend their first choice college. Pryor says, “Usually the reason why you’re not attending your first-choice institution is because you can’t afford to go there, because you didn’t get the aid you needed to be able to go there.”

The 10 Cheapest Private Colleges

Finally, our friends over at the Huffington Post have created a list of the 10 Cheapest Private colleges. I’ll let you be the judge of their list, but notable is the fact that the average cost of tuition and fees for the 10 schools listed is $6,115. Based on the 829 private schools which reports to U.S. News for a 2011 survey the average cost for tuition and fees at private school nationally is $27,340.

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