College Roommates - 3 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Choose Your Best Friend

I know. You're excited. You just completed your last final in high school and you just received your acceptance letter from the college of your dreams. Now, to top it all off, your best friend in the whole world found out they got accepted to the same college too! Wow! Sounds like it's time to celebrate!.......but holdup just a minute. Before you immediately make plans to move into your first dorm room with your best friend thinking this is absolutely the most incredible fortune that could have ever happened to you......think again....

Reason #1 - You Can End Up Isolating Yourselves and Not Meeting New People - Think about it. How do you feel when you're with your best friend? Need any other people around? If your roommate also happens to be your best friend the tendency for the two of you will be to stick together, chill out and not make an effort to meet new people. This kills the number one reason for living in a residence hall - to meet new people and make new friends!

Reason #2 - Best Friends Don't Try as Hard to Get Along. If you were living with a total stranger you would be more inclined to put your best self out there, having greater concern and respect for their space and things. If you're living with someone you've known for a very long time and are extremely comfortable around you'll tend to abuse that freedom and are more likely to leave the room messy, use their stuff without asking and not follow the rules.

Reason #3 - Miss Out on Major Life Learning Experiences - If your roommate is your best friend you will be missing out on meeting someone new, learning about their different cultural background, how to communicate and compromise and how to deal with conflict. Nothing teaches you more about these life skills and about yourself than living in a situation with someone you don't know.

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Finding the Right Degree Online With Education Search Engines

Choosing which course or degree to take is one of the biggest decisions you'll ever have to make. Which makes it that much stranger that for so many years it was so difficult to research and compare the options available with just a handful of scattered brochures to pull together and compare.

Thankfully, though, these days things are a little different - with the arrival of online course and education search engines...

Find a Variety of Different Degrees and Courses Near You

Online education search engines allow you to explore a selection of courses and degrees - from education administration degrees to fashion courses - by location. Which ultimately allows you to filter out the ones that are either a long way away from where you live or otherwise aren't in your chosen location.

Obviously it's not just in the UK and the US, either: all around the world education search engines are springing up to meet the demands of students and professionals looking to take the next step in their career can browse degree and course options online.

Get the Specifics on any Given Course or Degree

But when weighing up the virtues of certain technical courses - like computer programming degrees, say - you need to be able to make sure that the one you go for is best suited to your chosen career path. And that's one of the most important aspects of what a good education search engine does: it lays everything out very clearly, from course specifics to prices and the dates a course runs.

Make a Meaningful Comparison

Only once armed with this information, of course, can you make a meaningful comparison of the course providers you were considering. Some online education search engines allow their users to rate the courses according to a variety of classifications - like attendee feedback, course provider score and the accuracy of the course description. And the end result is that you can compare the strengths of a particular course or degree according to how satisfied former students are.

Contact Course Providers

It doesn't stop there. Some education search engines even give would-be students the opportunity to get in touch with course providers before they make their decision. This way you can get answers to all those questions you've been dying to ask - straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

So, to recap: online education search engines allow you to find and compare thousands of degrees in any given destination; then some allow you to run any questions or concerns you might have by the course provider... Looking for a degree or course? It's hard to imagine how we ever managed to do it any other way.

As a former teacher and a travel writer and online marketer, Paul Collins tries to make it his business to keep up with the latest course and degree developments in everything from education administration degrees to computer programming degrees.