FAP628: Facebook owns your life, private student loans, Rebecca Loebe

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Student Financial Aid News
+ NASFAA: “Kimberly Cummings remembers last spring when a young women walked into her office at Montana State University, concerned about having $40,000 in private student loans and an interest rate of 19 percent,” reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “‘What is going on?’ wondered Cummings, who works for the nonprofit Student Assistance Foundation, counseling students on college loans. What’s going on is an explosion in private student loans. And that has people who advise MSU students on finances very, very worried. Private loan companies are selling a growing number of students on easy money for college. An unknown number of private loans go directly from the lender to the students’ pockets. Some analysts predict that at the rate they’re growing, private loans could someday surpass federally guaranteed loans, which total $60 billion nationally.”
+ Reminder: borrow federal student loans before private student loans
+ A lot of companies, with the recent legislative changes, will be pushing private student loans MUCH harder - and because they’re unregulated by the Department of Education, there are fewer limits about what you can and cannot do in advertising them
+ Opinion: Ultimately, the problem starts with out of control tuition. Federal student aid hasn’t kept pace with 7% annually increasing tuition, and private student loans fill that need for better or worse
+ Until tuition costs are addressed, lending will continue to be aggressive, whether it’s federal, private student loans or other equivalent forms of financing
+ Your strategy? To pay for college with as few costs as possible - combining scholarships, working if necessary, federal student aid, and yes, private student loans like those at Act Education Loans

Scholarship Update
+ Castrol Outperformers Scholarship
+ $7,500 award
+ May 31 deadline
+ Contest is open to legal U.S. residents who are between the ages of 16 and 25 who are or planning to pursue an education in preparation for a career in the automotive industry. This contest requires the submission of an essay to participate. All entries will be judged equally on the following criteria. Your essay should cover as many of the criteria listed below as possible. Passion (65%)
+ Unusual or unique automotive related activities
+ Participation in automotive related groups, clubs or organizati
+ Automotive related honors.
+ Creative Projects or ideas that demonstrate love of performance Uniqueness of Individuals Talent ( 35%)
+ Breadth of automotive skill set
+ Unique projects performed
+ Persistence in overcoming obstacles
+ Ability to diagnose/fix problems
+ Character and attitude towards accomplishing goals. The essays will be judged by a panel of brand and technical professionals who will determine the winners.
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

Cover Your Assets
+ Chronicle: Earlier this month Facebook made an announcement that, at first glance, seemed fairly innocuous: The social network decided to make “limited public search listings” available to people who weren’t using the site.
+ What that means, essentially, is that search engines like Google and Yahoo will now be able to locate Facebook users who haven’t designated their pages as “private.” Philip Fong, a Facebook engineer, wrote on the company’s blog that search-engine links would only show only the names and thumbnail photos of Facebook users: “We’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.”
+ But even that information is too much, according to the editors of The Cornell Daily Sun. In a fierce editorial, the newspaper accuses Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, of invading the privacy of his site’s faithful patrons:
+ At an age when most of us are just trying to enjoy college, it’s unfortunate that we have to be so conscientious about our every move — and that Zuck feels the need to play the role of Main Cop. It’s the latest in a string of indications that Facebook isn’t the plucky upstart of a cultural phenomenon it was three years ago.
+ The Daily Sun worries that Facebook’s new policy will make it easier for employers to scrutinize students’ Facebook pages, and that could be a valid concern.
+ Think carefully always about what you publish online. There is no such thing as a private social network.
+ Have you actually read Facebook’s terms of service?
+ When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
+ Short version: those drunken beer bash photos you posted? Facebook can sell them without your explicit permission (because you’ve already granted it in the terms of service) to Girls Gone Wild or any other information broker

Podsafe Music
+ Rebecca Loebe, Over Again
+ Live at the Lizard Lounge

Reminders
+ Add the show to your iTunes by visiting http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/itunes/
+ Register for PodCamp Boston for free
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

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