Student Loan Repayment Calculator

The Undergraduate Student Loan Calculator is a free offering from the Hamilton Project (a project sponsored by the Brookings Institute). The calculator provides rough estimates of how long it will take to repay student loans. The calculator can be adjusted for academic major, earnings range (to account for location and other variables in earnings across a field), initial debt, interest rates, and loan length. You can use the Undergraduate Student Loan Calculator compare debt repayment plans across academic majors. For example, the repayment plan of a teacher is quite different from that of an engineer.

Applications for Education
Choosing an academic major shouldn't be based entirely on finances, but students should be aware of the potential long-term implications of their choices. The Undergraduate Student Loan Calculator could be a good tool for high school guidance counselors to share with students as they evaluate their college and career choices.

H/T to Lifehacker. 

Students Can Learn About Careers in Next Vista's Career Videos Collection

As many readers of this blog already know, Next Vista for Learning is one of my favorite video sharing sites for students and teachers. Videos hosted on Next Vista are created by teachers and students for the purpose of sharing good news and good lessons with other teachers and students.

The careers section of Next Vista is one that guidance counselors and anyone else helping students learn about careers should bookmark. The careers section of Next Vista contains 110 videos about a wide variety of career fields. Some of the videos are available in Spanish and most of the videos include interviews with people talking about their jobs. Two of the videos are embedded below.

Explore Careers in Science on Science Buddies

A few years ago I wrote about using Science Buddies to find ideas for science fair projects and science lesson plans. This morning I revisited Science Buddies and found that there is now a section about careers in science. The Science Careers section offers overviews of dozens of careers in seven different areas of science. Each career profile provides an overview of what a person in that field does, links to interviews with people in that field, the minimum education requirements of the career, career growth potential, and salary information.

Applications for Education
The Science Buddies Science Careers page could be a good reference for guidance counselors to bookmark. Students who enjoy science, but aren't sure of the career opportunities in science, could benefit from researching some careers through the Science Buddies Science Careers page.