Get Undrunk and Open a Tough Jar with Your Half-Naked Dad - HackCollege Season 3, Episode 8

Chris and Kelly cover a myriad of topics this week, everything from sobering up to new iPhone classes at Vanderbilt. They also check in with Mom and Dad on tips on how to open a tough jar.

Topics this week:

• Digital textbooks will be hitting a few campus bookstores shelves this fall.
• Is Facebook contributing to lower grades?
• iPhone classes are catching on around the country.
• Kelly shows you how to sober up after you get back from a party.
• Mom shows you how to deal with a stubborn jar lid.

Bribe Your Stuff into Your Suitcases for the Summer - HackCollege Season 3, Episode 7

Chris and Kelly are back from spring break this week as they cover filing taxes as a student and how to hack your NCAA March Madness brackets.

Topics this week:

• Chris and Kelly break down Bonnaroo, Sasquatch! and Lollapalooza in this week's Opposable Thumbs.
• Chris chalks up how to bribe your way into a club.
• Kelly talks about the upshots of minimalism as he tries to downsize his lifestyle.

The Valentine's Day Episode - HackCollege Season 3, Episode 2

Chris and Kelly somehow manage to not even bring up Valentine's Day in the week prior to the nerd's dreaded holiday.

Topics this week:

• Blackboard pushes out its latest version and schemes up new ways to destroy the world.
• Students are footing more and more of the bill as tuition increases. Where is all of that money going?
• The Obama administration posts its goals for higher education
• Dad swings by to give you a tip about how to stop a leaking faucet in your dorm room.
• Chris and Kelly tear apart a girl who dropped out of school because of an operating system.

Hello, 2009. You Have Been Waiting - HackCollege Season 3, Episode 1

Chris and Kelly take the year of the Ox and the last year of the aught by storm.

Topics this week:

• Apparently Congress thinks it's business time when it comes to getting rid of the BCS tournament system.
• Schools suck at teaching Web skills, allegedly.
• RIAA chickens out. Students win?
• Kelly covers how to get a job with an in-class presentation.

Update to the GTD for Students Post

While perusing through our archives, I noticed a post that could use some refreshing. While Chris recently outlined GTD for students on Lifehacker, I still operate a much more barebones system.

In the past, I was using my old school cellphone and a PocketMod, but I've since then upgraded to Remember the Milk and an iPhone. Check out my update and let me know what you use in the comments!

A Slim GTD for Students: Keeping Yourself Organized

Building the Ultimate Dorm Room, For Reals

This is my setup. Note the second monitor and external keyboard.

So we here at HackCollege get emails every so often from companies pitching the latest product to make your dorm room the "ultimate dorm room." Whether it's Target trying to sell you Tupperware containers in your favorite shade or a Web app that helps you cram as much stuff into your 8' x 10' shared space, there's no shortage of messaging convincing you you need the "sickest" room. To them I say: go screw yourselves. There's been a culture of consumerism has recently uncovered this back-to-school-you-need-three-more-couches season.

This post will talk about what really makes a comfortable dorm living space and how to get by with the last amount of shit in your room.

Click to read more ...

The HackCollege Westwood Summer Bash

Mid-summer, we had a little party by UCLA. We gave away an HP dv2 and had another one hooked up to a VJ-ing station with a big flat screen, where guests could mix video to music. Right after the party, Kelly wrote about how people reacted to the dv2 at the party.

Stay tuned. This wasn't the last HackCollege party!

CampusCompare Does the Job

This is a post in our 2009 Back to School series. You can see all of the posts here.

So you get two weeks into your college career and you have a certain discomfort with your current university. By the end of the semester, you plan on hightailing out of there. While searching for a school online cannot replace actually going there to experience it, some can help a little bit.

CampusCompare is a service that allows users to search and catalog schools. The list is at 3,000 institutions and 4,000 more coming. If they don't have the school you're looking for, it's probably coming. Students can log-in via FacebookConnect, so that'll speed up that all to familiar website registration process. For the record, CampusCompare isn't just college students who are transferring but any person looking to attend a new college or university.

The search has six subject categories. They are, state, major, career, sports, ivy league and a simple A to Z. The state search was separated into regions where you can click one or more states. If you want to search for majors, it's going to get specific. Besides having a plethora of disciplines it also has more sub-disciplines than you'll need.

Other than search, CampusCompare has some services that aim to take the guess work out of college search. Their top three services are a financial aid calculator, a "what are my chances" calculator, and as per the name of the site, a college comparison feature.

The financial aid calculator shows you how much it'll really cost to attend school. This is cool because they actually averaged what the grocery, parking and other real life costs are. This should probably be called college budget calculator or something other than Financial Aid Calculator.

When I started to search for college, like many other high school juniors/senior, I thought: "What are the odds I can get into this school". Well, providing you know your vitals (SAT, ACT, GPA, class rank, etc.) you'll be able to figure out if it is actually possible for you to get into your dream school.

After you've compiled the schools that you can get into and are financially tangible, you can compare them to see which one you like better. As I've said before, nothing can really replace actually going and spending a day at a university.

One thing I would like to see CampusCompare do in the future is a Grad school version of their site. More and more students are finding they need to get a masters degree to get the job/salary they want. With that being said CampusCompare has done a great job of using Web 2.0 to provide a well designed college search service.

Did you use a service like CampusCompare before picking your school? Comment below to share!

Image Credit: CampusCompare.com