Why Girls Should Consider Engineering as a Profession

Are you a girl interested in creative design, solving problems, and changing the world? Maybe you’re an engineer at heart. Forget what you might imagine about engineering: It’s only for guys, it’s boring, it’s nerdy. How about helping a Native American reservation save money on energy or developing household products that are easy to use or designing a bridge that cuts down on noise pollution? Those are just some of the accomplishments among women engineers we found on Engineeryourlife.org, a collaboration of the National Academy of Engineering; corporations like Boeing and Northrop Grumman; the WGBH Educational Foundation and the Extraordinary ...

Why Study a Foreign Language?

Perhaps you dream of ordering tapas in a cafe in Barcelona or actually standing on the Great Wall of China. Perhaps you want to collaborate with a researcher on the other side of the world. Or perhaps you are committed to working in a refugee center, either here or overseas. But did you know that studying a language can make you smarter and possibly help you do better in other school subjects? And if you’re in high school, your brain is on fire right now. It’s going through a growth spurt equal only to that of very young children, except ...

You’re Not Dreaming: A $5,000 Scholarship & Free Scholarship Search Tool

Who would be crazy enough to pass up free money for college? But that’s what you might be doing if you’re not taking advantage of scholarships and grants. This type of aid covers about 30 percent of college costs for the average student, according to How America Pays for College 2015, a report published by Sallie Mae, the nation’s saving, planning, and paying for college company. But, in the rush of school, test prep, applications, sports, and all the other things you are doing, it’s hard to make time to search for those opportunities. So November - National Scholarship Month ...

Make the Most of Your Gap Year with a D.C. Internship

Oonagh Cavanagh grew up in a small Vermont town, hiking, camping, skiing, and loving anything that had to do with the outdoors. So when she was looking for a gap experience before college, she looked for a program where she could put her passion about protecting the environment to work. The answer was American University’s Gap Program. AU offers gap students a chance to spend a semester or year in Washington, D.C., both studying and working as an intern. “I was ready for a change of pace,” says Oonagh, who spent a semester interning at the Earth Day Network and ...

How You Can Unlock STEM Funding for Schools

Use your phone and your Sherlock Holmes sleuthing skills to solve a mystery, enter a contest for a $10,000 scholarship, and help a classroom spread the message of STEM. Why’s everyone so worried about science, technology, engineering, and math? For starters, STEM occupations are projected to grow by 17 percent from 2008 to 2018, compared to 9.8 percent growth for non-STEM, according to the U.S. government. But it turns out gender has lot to do with who might be filling those jobs. When the National Science Foundation asked fourth-graders in 2007 if they liked science and math, 68 percent of ...

Why You Should Study the Arts in London

It’s the land of Shakespeare, Shaw, Pinter, and, most recently, Agbaje. Why wouldn’t someone interested in the stage want to study in London? We asked the experts at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama why American students might pass on New York or Los Angeles to head across the pond. Central has 17 different full-time undergraduate courses covering not just acting but every aspect of technical theater, theater education and writing for performance. It accepts students from all backgrounds and nationalities and actors train in a community that mimics what they will experience in the industry. (Pinter, by the ...