In an attempt to raise or maintain their U.S News & World Report rankings, University admissions departments are enlisting a new pool of individuals to attract top candidates: student bloggers . Universities are hiring their own students to create, update, and upload blogs on their admissions’ pages. Universities are hoping to attract upcoming generations of internet savy high-schoolers to their Universities by giving them a real and uncensored look into the lives of their own students.

The first few blogs I read were quite disappointing, however. These blogs consisted of boring accounts of the bloggers’ daily lives riddled with propaganda for their respective Universities, constantly reminding the viewer that their tuition was well spent. These bloggers don’t drink or party, are never overwhelmed with schoolwork and happily spend more time doing their homework than on Facebook. A Dartmouth student raves: “I have always been really impressed with the spirit of volunteerism at our school!!” These bloggers appear to be modern brochures in disguise and my guess is that they’re not fooling teens.

The last few blogs I read were honest, uncensored, and refreshing. MIT allows student bloggers to upload unvarnished videos directly to its admissions page. Matt McGann , an admissions officer and blogger at MIT notes:

“We see blogs as a way we can say, ‘This is what a university really is.’ There’s some good and some bad. There is no perfect university, so we want to show a little bit of what makes MIT interesting and unique.”

One MIT blogger shows pictures of herself in a tuct taped tube top for an “Anything But Clothes” party. Another blogger shows a video of his dorm room equipped with strobe lights and techno music so that when the “party button” was hit the room would turn into an instant rave. A third blogger detailed herself as growing sick, skinny, and depressed from the stress of finals week.

While parents may raise their eyebrows at the latter group of bloggers, I suspect prospective students would trust a school they think is willing to show them real campus life and feel much more connected to its students. An MIT applicant writes:

“Before I started reading the blogs, MIT was just this thing. Then I saw these real people, people I would be friends with. It makes you feel included, and it made me like the school a whole lot more.”

Looking back, that MIT blog would have absolutely inspired me to apply as a senior in High School (that and another 1,000 points on my SATs).

I ended my tumultuous relationship with the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) in September of last year after three years of anxiety and strife. I swore that the 57 bus line conspired to get me fired, always arriving exactly 30 seconds too early and waiting another 30 minutes to arrive again. Traumatized, I finally bought a car.

I discovered NextBus.com about 8 months too late. Nextbus uses satellite technology and computer modeling to track the timing of each vehicle in its system. The system tracks the distance of public and private transportation vehicles from your location down to the second. Furthermore, the information is available on the Web, meaning that all you need is a Smartphone to have the information in the palm of your hands. Though the accuracy of predictions varies depending on many factors including traffic patterns, accidents and internet traffic, the company claims to have a margin of error of less than two minutes for predictions of 10 minutes. Considering most buses don’t adhere to their respective schedules whatsoever, that margin of error is a drastic improvement.

Washington DC’s WMATA (Washington Metropolican Area Transit Authority) has provided a useful tool via its website called the Trip Planner. Trip Planner adopts NextBus technology to help commuters figure out the best way to get to their destination via the Metro and surface buses. This tool provides accurate predictions for any 12,000 stops in the DC area. For more information, go here

New York city is also embracing NextBus technology in a unique way. The Alliance for downtown NY has installed NextBus LED signs at many transit stops downtown n to provide more predictability for bus riders. The new technology is also now available on free bus lines for the Lower Manhattan community.

If your experience getting to work or school is as similar as mine was or if you just want to spend less time waiting in the cold or rain for your bus, visit NextBus!

The 83rd Academy Awards will air on February 27. The Oscars reward the previous year’s greatest cinema achievements as determined by some of the world’s most accomplished motion picture artists and professionals. The Academy’s roughly 6,000 members vote for the Oscars using secret ballots, which are tabulated by the international auditing firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

How many of the nominations have you watched? It’s not always easy to make it to the theater to see all the nominations. Luckily, AMC has come to the rescue. On Saturday February 19th and then again on February 26th you can take the whole day to catch up at your local theater. You will have the option of a 1 day or a 2 day pass. Although no outside food or beverages are permitted at this event, admission price includes your FREE $10 AMC® Gift Card for each day attended, which can be used for concessions at the event. Get all the details on this great deal!

Want to make sure you don’t miss any of the 2011 movies for next year’s awards? You can save up to 40% OFF pre-paid tickets at AMC with your Student Advantage Card.

Are you passionate about film? Well, Amtrak® is pulling out all the stops in search of the most creative, innovative student movie makers in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Upload an original train travel-related video by February 28, 2011. The top 2 finalists are selected by travel and entertainment industry experts. America will vote to select the winner in April. The winning video will be featured on National Train Day and in future Amtrak promotions!

How to Enter

- Submit an original train-related video
- Complete entry form
- Upload video by February 28, 2011

Enter at www.amtraktrainsportationvideocontest.com

Heading home? Returning to school? Visiting your friends? Planning a Spring Break? Amtrak makes it easier than ever to get together. With more than 500 destinations and service in 46 states, save everywhere you go. Be sure to reserve your tickets 3-days in advance to SAVE 15%* on rail fares!

Enroll today and start saving on travel.

Today Cosmopolitan Magazine is written to “help women achieve their personal and professional goals”, but (according to Wikipedia) the original 1886 publication had a family focus, transformed into a literary periodical and eventually became a women’s magazine in the late 1960s.

In the late 1800s, Paul Schlicht purportedly told his readers that the publication was a “first-class family magazine”. When owenership changed hands in the 1890s, Cosmo became a leader in the market for fiction, eventually offering a free correspondence school:

“No charge of any kind will be made to the student. All expenses for the present will be borne by the Cosmopolitan. No conditions, except a pledge of a given number of hours of study.”

Over 20,000 students signed up immediately! With such high demand Cosmo started asking students to contribute $20 a year.

In the 1950s Cosmo ran less fiction and circulation dropped as paperbacks and television became more popular. The magazine evolved into a special interest publication targeting a specialized audience – young women.

Today featured topics include: sex, relationships, beauty, fashion and health and for a limited time students can get a one-year subscription for only $15 at StudentMags.com (a discount provider on the Student Advantage program).

Nowadays when you are at an airport you may be thinking about flying, but not through the airport by any means. Instead I’m sure you’re thinking of finding parking, long lines, random security checks, miniature bottles of shampoo (but is it mini enough?!), etc, etc. These things are not going to change anytime soon and while your frustration mounts, you remember it’s for your safety so you grind your teeth and bear it.

Well, American Airlines knows a thing or too about the airline industry, as I’m sure you can imagine, so they’ve created a mobile app for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad users that knows who you are, from where you are leaving, where you’re going, where your seat is and even where you parked your car. The parking reminder feature is a little dependent on you to take a picture of the section of the lot where you parked, but still convenient! The app also stores a mobile boarding pass, which we discussed in a previous blog post, which allows you to skip having to check in all together. This app also allows you to check the status of your flight, the gate, updates you on your AAdvantage and how close you are to achieving Gold, Platinum and Executive Platinum status.

Personally, I think the sudoko is one of the better features since this app doesn’t magically transport you to the front of the line, so there will still be a lot of standing around and waiting.

Check out the iTunes preview of this app to learn more about how this can make traveling a little less of a headache.

Hey fellow savers! If it is as hot wherever you are as it has been lately in Boston then you can relate to how quickly summer can go from being welcomed with open arms to being viewed as nothing more than a hindrance to your comfort. Simple tasks such as walking and sleeping that were enjoyable throughout spring have now turned into demanding tasks that may or may not require a change of clothes.

There is the simple, yet costly decision to buy an A/C, but that can have less than desirable impact on your electric bill not to mention the environment. So what else can you do to stay cool over the next few months? Well, there are a bunch of things you could do that keep you cool without breaking the bank. Becky from Care2.com proposes 14 methods to keep your cool throughout the hot summer daze, here are a few:

Keep the shades drawn during the day: This keeps your house cool throughout the day, so even though you’re not there your room and house are not heating up.

Let the cool evening air in: While the days might be unbearable, the nights aren’t always as sweltering, open your window and stick a fan in there and get the cool night air. And if you have a one window room, keep your door open slightly to keep the air flowing through.

Get rid of incandescent lights: While it doesn’t seem like they would, these little lights can generate a decent amount of heat – so switch to CFL or LED lights.

Make sure your ceiling fans are running counter clockwise: Clockwise in the winter to push the warm air down, and the opposite in the summer to circulate the cooler air.

Avoid the stove and oven: This one is a no brainer. This doesn’t mean you have to stop cooking though! Just cook outside on a grill or get imaginative with your culinary skills. Upside is you’ll learn to cook something new!

Check out the whole blog post at Care2.com for the rest of the ways to stay cool. Let us know what you do to stay cool and the person with the most unique method will win a $10 Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card!

Do you like to use your imagination and create videos? If so you could win $50,000 in airfare and your ad on TV! CheapTickets is running a really fun contest until July 13th. All you have to do is make a 30-second video ad for them. The clip needs to show how good it feels to save with CheapTickets.

The CheapTicket panel of expert judges will review and pick the top 6 clips.  Then the public is able to vote for their favorite!

Here are the three prizes:

• Top Prize: $50,000 in airfare, plus your commercial will run on TV!
• Second Place: $5,000 in airfare
• Third Place: $2,500 in airfare

Where would you go with your winnings? That’s a lot of airfare! ENTER NOW

Starbucks FINALLY launches a truly free Wi-Fi program on July 1, 2010!

In 2008, Starbucks launched a “free” Wi-Fi program through AT&T, which actually required a value card (one-time $5 purchase) for two hours of access, plus $3.99 for each additional session of two consecutive hours. If you already had an AT&T device and/or account, consecutive hours were free, but activating your Starbucks value card (which of course opens the doors for advertising) has always been a requirement. Although I consider myself a fairly savvy mobile user, this has always been very frustrating to me. So, when I want Wi-Fi access and a cup of coffee, I have always gone elsewhere, often to a local (smaller budget) business that offers Wi-Fi service for FREE. No gimmicks. I like that!

Free Wi-Fi is also readily available at many other establishments like McDonald’s, which has added a wireless signal to 11,000 locations. This week Starbucks FINALLY announced a truly free service, the kind where you’ll be able to walk in and access Wi-Fi for as long as you want with the click of a button, which is scheduled to launch in early July. Here’s hoping this announcement lives up to its hype and Starbucks’ new offer comes with less restrictions and complications this summer.

Also, iPhone and iPad users will have exclusive access the Starbucks Digital Network this fall. According to the Associated Press, the program will give Starbucks Web surfers free access to paid sites like the Wall Street Journal, along with exclusive content and free downloads from other sites such as iTunes, The New York Times and Yahoo!.

eBags.com reports that at the beginning of May, Apple had sold 1 million iPads. Some quick searches on Google show that people are definitely searching for ways to protect their new devices.

To keep your iPad protected and looking sleek, screen protectors and cases are crucial. Look for cases that protect your tablet without compromising the operation or appearance of the device. Check out the iPad cases, skins and sleeves available right now at eBags.com. Here are some of my top picks:

Brenthaven Switch Satchel iPad / Netbook Case

Brenthaven designs high-performance laptop bags to survive the rigors of everyday life… on the open road, at school, in the home or in the office. The Switch Satchel features a patent-pending reversible flap! Just ‘flip it and clip it’ for a whole new style. Features a custom fit compartment for iPad.

Hard Candy Cases iPad Sleek Skin

Hard Candy Cases combine new, attention-grabbing designs with outstandingly protective and innovative case features. The  iPad Sleek Skin is constructed of exceptionally shock-absorbing TPU rubber that won’t stretch or surrender. Easier cleaning AND snap-on integrated screen enclosure.

Case Logic 10.2″ Netbook/iPad Sleeve

Case Logic’s innovative organization solutions support your mobile lifestyle. Form fitting sleeve accommodates netbooks, iPads and mini laptops with up to 10.2″ screens. The Slimline design includes durable neoprene lining cushions that protects your device.

Higher Ground 10″ Flak Jacket

Higher Ground provides exceptional protection and value with the Flak Jacket. Shock absorbing foam (more advanced than neoprene) and corrugated plastic stiffeners provide complete protection for your iPad in a slim, lightweight solution. Becomes a lap desk when device is removed!

Nuo Chloe Dao for Nuo™ Envelope Clutch 10.2″

From Project Runway winner Chloe Dao – experience the best of fashion and function with the Chloe Dao for Nuo™ Clutch Style Netbook/iPad Envelope. Anti-scratch poly-cotton velvet lining and checkpoint-friendly design (device can stay in sleeve while going through airport security).

eBags offers a 110% price guarantee, free returns on all orders and savings of up to 70% MSRP. Plus, don’t forget that Cardholders get an extra 10% OFF and FREE Shipping at eBags.com. The Student Advantage discount can be applied to all the products listed above excluding Hard Candy Cases.