Our Top Posts From August

This guy knew what was important to pack. Photo by Flickr user mdowns and licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0Wow, what a busy month. When we weren't giving away iPads and $100 bills, we were churning out massive amounts of back to school content and dorm hacks to put you a step ahead of your classmates. Here were some of our most popular posts from the month that was.

• Double Your Text Skimming Speed with Three Simple Techniques
• Things Your New Apartment Needs That Your Probably Forgot
• How To Start Your First Week Off Right
• Use a Beer Can to Boost Your WiFi Signal Strength
• Replace Your Alarm Clock With These Apps
• College 101: Textbooks
• Get Your Papers Proofread for Free on Kibin
• Build the Ultimate Beer Pong Table: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Meet HackCollege's New Class of Writers

As a 100% student-written site, HackCollege sees writers graduate every year, and we have to restock our talent pool with a new class of bloggers. We've brought in two great ones this year from opposite ends of the U.S., so be on the lookout for their posts!

Deryck Wong

Deryck is a senior at UC Berkely majoring in Business Administration and Economics. He loves video games and Apple products, but he has plenty of experience with pretty much any platform under the sun. Deryck has been holding down the weekends for us with his OS Tips and App of the Week features, and he'll often chime in during the week too with some of his favorite life hacks. Feel free to get in touch with him at deryck@hackcollege.com

Sarah Feng

Sarah is a sophomore at NYU who keeps herself busy with a double major in Journalism and Economics, a minor in Computer Science, and a position on the school paper. She also dabbles in piano, figure skating, and app testing on her MacBook Pro, and she started for us last week with a few great back to school posts. You can reach her at sarah@hackcollege.com, or follow her on Twitter or Tumblr.

Guest Posting

Of course, you don't need to be a staff writer to get published on HackCollege. If you're interested in getting a guest post published and bolstering your writing portfolio, check out our guest posting guidelines and send in your best work!

Kelly Talks HackCollege at #140edu

If you're new to the site, you may not know that we've actually been around for nearly five years now. This little corner of the internet was carved out by Kelly Sutton and Chris Lesinski at Loyola Marymount, and now carries on under the direction of a new group of students. In this recent #140edu talk in New York, Kelly discusses the site and the lessons it can teach us. Sorry for the quality!

We're Looking for a Sophomore Writer

We're looking for a younger writer... Photo by Timlewisnm and licensed under CC By-SA 2.0

Many of the writers at HackCollege are getting along in years, and graduation looms, so we're looking for a younger student to give our tired old bones a break. This time around we're strictly looking for a rising undergrad sophomore. Sorry, no exceptions.

So if you like the stuff we post on HackCollege, and can spin a few words together yourself, send us an application. Here's what you'll need to send shep@hackcollege.com.

• Basic contact information (including Twitter, if you're on it)
• Resume
• A few recent writing samples
• A list of five post ideas for HackCollege, one of which you should flesh out into a full guest post

If we like what we see, you'll be hearing from us before too long. Good luck!

HackCollege-pocalypse is Coming to an End

Sorry about that! You may have noticed the site was down for a good part of yesterday, and may actually still be down in a few corners of the Earth. There was a screwup when we tried to transfer the domain to a new registrar, and the result was a lot of frustration. Here's a quick rundown of what you missed yesterday.

• Sean wrote about how to stop spending money like a freshman
• I gave my take on Amazon's new textbook rental system
• Laura told a harrowing tale of being overly-reliant on your smartphone

We don't anticipate any more trouble going forward, but Tweet at us if you notice anything amiss. Love you all!

We're Looking for a San Francisco-Based Writer!

We're expanding to the Bay area. Want to be a part of it? Image courtesy of Flickr user jdnx and licensed under CC by 2.0

Here at HackCollege, we write a fair amount about startups based in Silicon Valley, but we've never actually had a writer stationed there to cover them in person, hence this post. 

If we pick you, you won't just be writing about startups, but you will be our correspondent in the area as needed. The only criteria (beyond geography) is that you have to be a current college student (undergrad), and you have to be able to write. It's a paid gig too, so you'll need to have the free time and energy to commit to 2-3 posts per week. Everything else is negotiable.

Here's what you need to email shep@hackcollege.com if you want to apply:

• Basic contact information (including Twitter, if you're on it)
• Resume
• A few recent writing samples
• A list of five post ideas for HackCollege, one of which you should flesh out into a full guest post

If this piques our interest, we'll get in touch to find out more about you. Good luck!

Also, sorry to anyone who wants to write for us who doesn't live in the Bay area. We might have a more general call for writers sometime in the next few months.

Ask HackCollege at SXSW!

A few of us will be down in Austin from the 10th-15th for SXSWi. Send us any questions you have about student gadgetry or life hacks in the next few days on Twitter, in the comments, or by email at dear@hackcollege.com. We'll be filming some videos while we're down there to answer as many as we can. If you'll actually be in Austin next weekend, hit us up on Twitter and we'll get together. 

• @HackCollege
• @KellySutton (Kelly)
• @Lesinski (Chris)
• @ShepMcAllister (Shep)
• @Shevralay (Emily)
• @Lschluck (Laura)

Some Quick Site News

Check out our fancy new search bar!Last night, Kelly grabbed a 6-pack and set to work on his HackCollege to-do list. This morning, we were graced with a snazzy new search feature (just click the magnifying glass on our top banner), a HackCollege Tumblr account so we can reblog each other and complain about server downtime, and a less-aggravating RSS Feed, by popular demand.  Enjoy everybody!