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I have been attending college for about four years now and have never taken a semester off. The thought used to make me shudder – how could someone even think of taking time off from school?! – but after this semester, it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

Some of my friends took semesters off to travel and learn more about themselves, while others were lost and not sure what they wanted to do in life. Some have experienced the loss of a family member or friend and others fell so ill that it interfered with their everyday lives. But me? My situation has been a combination of flying squirrels, bad landlords, health issues and money problems. Stress from school has skyrocketed to its worst level ever and I am planning to take the summer off, since I cannot afford to withdraw from spring classes if I want to stay on track. (I did consider attending part-time but found it could create problems with financial aid.)

If you’re considering taking a semester off, do NOT just drop off the face of the Earth. Let your adviser know your plans and keep the lines of communication open so that the process of coming back to school is easier when you are ready to do so. You may be taking time off from school to destress but I’d also recommend doing something related to your major – picking up an internship/job, volunteering or studying for LSAT, MCAT, GMAT or GRE – to stay somewhat involved in your field.

Lots of college students take time off for one reason or another; if external factors are competing with school to the point where your grades are suffering, take a break – you’ll return to school more motivated to succeed.

In addition to being a Scholarships.com virtual intern, Michigan Tech student Kayla Herrera is a media coordinator for the Michigan Tech Youth Programs and is a writer for The Daily News in Iron Mountain, Mich., Examiner.com and WHOA Magazine. She love a tantalizing, action-packed video game and can't get enough of horror movies (Stephen King's books always have her in their grip, though she prefers the old over the new). Writing is what she has always done, and that is what she is here to do.

When an acceptance letter arrives from your dream college, your first instinct may be to scream, cry and jump on your couch with Tom Cruise-caliber flair. Feel free to give in to those urges – hey, you earned it! – but realize you will soon have to figure out how to pay for your education. Can you really afford this school, not only while you’re attending but after you graduate as well? A new list from Kiplinger says your dream school could be a reality after all.

The list, which rates how well colleges actually do in making themselves affordable, includes schools with students who graduate with less than $20,000 in student loan debt on average. The Washington Post’s Daniel de Vise also weighed in, supplementing Kiplinger’s findings with data from the Institute for College Access and Success. Here’s what he found were the most affordable institutions based on the average amount of debt graduates carry:

• 1. Princeton University
• 2. Williams College
• 3. Howard University
• 4. Harvard University
• 5. Claremont McKenna College
• 6. Hampton University
• 7. Rice University
• 8. Pomona College
• 9. CalTech
• 10. Stanford University
• Honorable mentions (less than $20k debt): Amherst, MIT, UPenn, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Bucknell, Wellesley, Boston College, Duke

What is your vision for yourself after college? Church Hill Classics and diplomaframe.com want to help you frame your future and attain your dreams. So, show them what your future looks like! They’ll be awarding $6,000 in scholarships - five $1,000 winners plus $1,000 donation to the grand prize winner's school.

To enter: Submit a creation that shares what you want to achieve in your personal and professional life after college. Your entry can be a photograph, collage, poem, drawing, painting, graphic design piece, short typed explanation, or anything YOU can create in an image! Your entry should communicate: This is how I "Frame My Future." Make sure your entry layout will be easy to view and read online.

The top 24 finalists will be announced by Church Hill Classics in April. Then, the top five scholarship winners will be chosen by popular vote on our website (more details about the voting process to come as we get closer to that time).

For more information on this scholarship and other scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search today!

Here at Scholarships.com, we make a point to advocate the importance of funding your college education the right way – for free! – and while financing your higher education solely from scholarships is an amazing feat, there is a factor to consider: scholarship displacement.

If you don’t know what scholarship displacement is, you’re not alone. Believe it or not, winning a scholarship may not be the end-all be-all when it comes to paying for school because they can complicate the financial aid package offered by your intended university. Why? When a student wins a scholarship, the college may reduce the student’s need-based financial aid package to compensate. For example, say a university offers a student a $15,000 grant and an additional $15,000 loan to cover the cost of attending. If the student were then to win a scholarship for $15,000, the college could retract its $15,000 grant. Colleges call this an over-award and the scholarship providers call it displacement.

Although this may seem discouraging, it shouldn’t dissuade you from applying to scholarships altogether. Instead, do your homework, speak with your admissions counselor and know where your intended college stands when it comes to their scholarship policies. If you’re brining a lot of scholarship dollars to the table, you have options. Every college is different and has their own guidelines when it comes to outside scholarships. If one university doesn’t allow you to put those scholarship dollars to other costs – loans, books, room and board, etc. – enroll at one that does. You could also enlist the help of the scholarship sponsor: Some scholarship providers may have a lot of clout with the college, especially if their scholars make up millions of dollars of funding to the college.

If you have any additional questions about scholarship displacement, don’t hesitate to ask us!

We powered past midterms, made it through Thanksgiving and are in the home stretch toward finals. That’s right, it’s the end of the semester and before you know it, winter break will be upon us. Many people go home to spend time with their family and friends, eager to veg and enjoy doing nothing.

Not everyone looks to do this with their break, however: If you’re feeling doing something radically different, here are just two awesome ideas...far, far away from your couch and/or reality television.

• Volunteer Abroad: You’re used to volunteering at home but there are many programs out there that allow high school and college students to go abroad and help others, too. There are opportunities anywhere in the world and, in many instances, it’s much cheaper than any vacation would cost. Adding a stamp to your passport while making a difference can be a worthwhile way of spending your time off.
• Intersession Abroad: For those who have thought of studying abroad but aren’t sure how comfortable they’d feel being gone for an extended period of time, this is the perfect opportunity for you. There are many study abroad programs open to students who are looking to change locales during their winter break. It is also less expensive than studying abroad for a longer period of time, which may make more financial sense for some students.

It’s usually during the coldest months of the year that we’re looking for a little bit of escape. While these options might not be how you were thinking of getting away, they can actually be better than what you had imagined. Spending the holiday season on a path to a better you could be the best gift you give yourself (not to mention those in need) this year!

Angela Andaloro is a junior at Pace University’s New York City campus, where she is double majoring in communication studies and English. Like most things in New York City, her life and college experience is far from typical – she commutes to school from her home in Flushing and took nearly a semester’s worth of classes online – but she still likes to hang out with friends, go to parties and feed her social networking addiction like your “average” college student.

If you need to find money for college and know how to create and upload a video file, have we got a scholarship opportunity for you.

The Dr Pepper Million Dollar Tuition Giveaway gives students age 18 and older the chance to earn up to $100,000 to fund their college educations. Thirsty for more details? We bet you are! To enter, all you have to do is submit an original video explaining why you deserve tuition through the Dr Pepper website by December 31st. Hey, it’s easier – not to mention less dangerous – than describing what Dr Pepper tastes like!

Full guidelines for submission and answers to FAQs can be found on Dr Pepper’s website. To learn more about this award as well as additional scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search today!

Not-so-breaking news: College is expensive and the costs associated with it show no sign of stopping their steady climb. What’s a college hopeful to do? Consider a school that’s finding ways to bridge the financial gap, like UC Berkeley.

Beginning next fall, Berkeley will amp up its financial aid contributions for middle-class students. School officials reported that while the number of low-income and wealthy students has increased over the last several years, the number from middle-class families has remained flat. Berkeley hopes to regain the interest of middle-class applicants by becoming the first public university to promise families earning between $80,000 and $140,000 a year will contribute no more than 15 percent of their annual incomes toward tuition.

This news – released just one day after Gov. Jerry Brown announced a $2.2 billion budget shortfall and another severe round of cuts to state colleges and universities – has already been dubbed a game changer by Terry W. Hartle: The senior vice president of the American Council on Education also believes other colleges will channel their competitive spirits and do whatever they can to offer similar programs. Learn more about Berkeley’s plan here then tell us what you think.

The Federal Pell Grant program as we know it has been in jeopardy in recent years but an agreement reached last night will keep its funding intact. While college students will still receive the maximum award amount per year, the number of eligible recipients is a quite different (and unfortunate) story.

The Chronicle reported congressional leaders agreed on a spending bill for the remainder of the current fiscal year that would increase funds for the National Institutes of Health by 1 percent, thereby maintaining the maximum Pell Grant amount of $5,550. To make this $300 million increase possible, however, eligibility for the award has been restricted. Under the bill, Pell Grant funding will only be available to each student for six years instead of nine, high school diplomas or GEDs will be required (no more ability-to-benefit tests) and the income cap for receiving an "automatic zero" expected family contribution will be lowered from $30,000 to $23,000. The interest subsidy on undergraduate student loans during the six-month grace period after a student graduates would also temporarily end.

Yes, the changes are significant but they are far less severe than an earlier bill which would have lowered the income cap to $15,000 and reduced the amount of income working students could exclude when applying for financial aid – changes that would have negatively impacted thousands of college students, especially those attending community colleges. We want to know what you think about the news. Is there a way to maintain federal funding without decreasing eligibility or do you think this bill is the best option?

James "Rhio" O'Connor was a remarkable man. He was diagnosed with a deadly cancer (mesothelioma) and given a year to live. Instead of giving up he found his own path to health and outlived his prognosis by more than six years. This path to health included creating his own treatment protocol which consisted of: vitamins, minerals, vegetables and fruits components, essential fatty acids, amino acids, enzymes, herbs, a healthy (primarily vegetarian) diet and mind-body medicine. This protocol along with Rhio's optimistic spirit, belief in something greater than himself, and the ability to make tough choices helped him beat his prognosis and live with a cancer considered "incurable" for many years.

Undergraduate students at colleges and universities in the United States are invited to honor Rhio's spirit of self-determination and intellectual curiosity by writing an essay about what they would do if they faced the same challenges that Rhio faced. For example, why are alternative therapies used by cancer patients when they are not FDA approved? Should cancer patients and doctors be able to use whatever treatments they like in treating cancer? Should medicinal medicine and folk knowledge have any relevancy in cancer? It is estimated that it costs over $400 million to bring a new cancer drug to market. Does that establish roadblocks for the testing and approval of alternative therapies?

Applicants must be 18 years of age or older and currently enrolled in a U.S. college or university. High school students are ineligible unless they are 18 year of age or older and are also attending a college or university. For more information on this scholarship and other scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search today!

So you’re a high school senior and you’ve just applied early to the school of your dreams. With those decision letters starting to roll in, all sorts of questions are probably running through your mind. What happens if you're accepted, deferred or – horror of horrors – rejected?

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. If you receive a rejection letter, remember that it’s not the end of the world. Politely try to find out why you were denied admission and begin working on improvements. You’ve got a whole semester of high school left to study hard and enroll in challenging courses that show you’re a dedicated student. Don’t give up on your dream school, even if it means you must attend another college first. If you reapply after you have some college classes under your belt, admissions officers will see you are capable of doing college-level work. It’s also a really good idea to apply to more than one college in case you are not accepted into your dream school.

The same principles apply if your admission is deferred until a later date but the good news here is that you still have a shot at being accepted! Most likely, admissions officers just wants to review the entire pool of applicants before they make their decision. What you need to do now is update your resume as you win new awards or enroll in new clubs or activities and have someone write a new letter of recommendation. It will strengthen your chances of getting in!

If you do get accepted to the college of your dreams, don’t relax and get comfortable just yet! Take advantage of any AP or college-level courses available to you during this last semester of your senior year or over the summer. Explore your financial aid options to ensure you can afford to attend – new scholarships are announced every day! It’s also important to establish connections with the college by talking to your adviser and meeting your RA as soon as possible. If you plan on getting involved with student groups or clubs, contact the faculty advisers and let them know you are interested. That way, you will already have an edge your first day on campus!

This summer, Kara Coleman graduated from Gadsden State Community College with an Associate of Arts degree. She is currently studying communications with concentration in print journalism at Jacksonville State University Kara's writing has been featured in Teen Ink magazine and she is a children's author through Big Dif Books.