Offers for credit cards for college students deserve close scrutiny!

Everyone knows that their credit rating can significantly impact their lives. A good credit rating results in better lending rates, when you need to apply for a loan and can even make a difference in your employability.

Just thirty years ago, credit card companies were handing out credit cards like candy. You'd receive credit card offers with low interest rates and a sky's-the-limit line of credit. At the time, credit cards for college students was a primary target group. Such offers were mass mailed and all you needed to do was sign on the dotted line. Almost everyone jumped on the bandwagon, buying those desired items they couldn't pay cash for, but could make a monthly payment. How convenient!

If you're a college student and receive such offers of credit cards for college students, talk to your parents. See what their experience was, so many years ago. It's likely you'll hear that, when they 'took advantage' of their own credit cards for college students offers, they bit off more than they could chew. The generous lines of credit tempted many to live beyond their means. Eventually, the cardholder ended up with too many credit cards and just as many minimum payments they couldn't come up with at the end of the month. The final result? The cardholder spent years paying it all off. Not a good plan!

Unless you were raised by an accountant or tax man, if you're young, you may not have a good handle on your finances. If you see a great pair of shoes or a video game that's on sale, it's likely that plastic comes out of your wallet and you walk away with the goods. However, the bill does come at the end of the month.

It's unbelievable, but nonetheless true, that offers for credit cards for college students are as abundant as they were thirty years ago, but such offers no longer have what you'd call an attractive APR. Fees are substantial for late payments. A single late payment most often results in an even higher APR.

Some credit card companies may not require much information from you before issuing that card. It's up to you to read all of the fine print before you accept the card. Such agreements are printed in a very small font and are several pages long. These little brochures are designed to be of little visual interest, stuffed in the envelope along with glossy four-color offers for other services. They're hoping you won't read the agreement!

Be smart when you shop these credit cards for college students. Read the cardholder agreement carefully. Don't regard that card as a windfall of cash. It isn't. Be prepared to pay it off each month. If you must max it out for emergencies, make at least three times the minimum payment, to avoid having your balance increase instead of decrease. If you're smart, a credit card can be a good thing!

For struggling students, it seems there is nothing that can be done, that there are no answers or solutions for assuaging the angst or minimizing the malaise that is adolescence. For struggling students, the outer world of adults, expectations, demands, and disappointments is as alien and alienating as the popping and firing of synapses and hormones as they evolve in ways that bring depression, frustration, and fear. And with the contradictions and complications of social, familial, and political problems engulfing them, it is no wonder that many are at risk academically.

But numerous facilitators, teachers, counselors, and others do care and do go the extra lengths to help struggling students. Some spend their lives devoted to the cause of seeing students at risk into programs that empower and ensure at least a modicum of success. One such program is the outreach program. Another such program is like the one that was televised for a season (though I don’t know what happened to it) on reality TV: kids’ boot camp. And another such program for struggling students is the academic acceleration program.

The latter enlists a small number of at-risk learners from a select number of feeder high schools, and enrolls them in a community college summer program. The students come with histories of imprisoned parents, parents on drugs, divided families, and/or mental and social problems they themselves have but have no “cause” for… Their grades are way below average and their attendance and participation in their respective high schools is limited, giving way to truancy and absence.

But in the summer program—college for teens—the students come to enjoy a freedom of campus attendance, donated supplies, lunches, and sponsored field studies, and college-level studies. It seems arbitrary or awkward to enroll a flunking high schooler into a college course, but it almost immediately proves the worth and capabilities of the students who are at best bored with coursework in high school rather than incapable of grasping high school level concepts and strategies.

The students, that is, show up for classes, produce powerful products (journals, poetry, videos, CAD and Photoshop art, math projects, career boards, and counseling platform projects…and earn college credits legitimately and surprisingly. They start the summer with mothers in jail, fathers who have abandoned them, gang members who have indoctrinated them. They start the summer with actual or threats of criminal records, F and D transcripts, and acne and anger and animosity. They “graduate” the program with smiles, hugs, creative discoveries, skills, and goals. They have found, then, that returning to their senior years at high school, is, as one successful student said, “aint sh*t.” And they get back to college—taking night classes or transferring the following year—choosing the freedom and respect (self-respect, especially) they had first found missing or non-existent in their lives.

Struggling students, then, should know there are alternatives to the kinds of struggling they have to experience. They can struggle with fighting against a system or strain in positive efforts towards goals of working within a system—that has their best interests and best practices at the center. Search

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