The Westmont Office of Life Planning Blog is a help website for people within the ages (or stages) of pre-college, college, graduate school, job hunting, and early career life. It provides articles loaded with tips, advice, and pointers for students and job seekers, complete with step-by-step procedures and articles written in a manner that is easy to understand.
Plus points of WHTNW
As of checking, the home page link of the website is not yet working. Instead, when you visit the home address, you would be welcomed by a message saying that the administrators are still working on the website and that there is still a lot to be done. Despite that, the blog is already up and running and is loaded with articles that talk about the most common and essential things that students and job hunters need to know and take note of.
The articles are well written and conversational, making them reader-friendly. The titles clearly state what the articles are all about, making it easier for readers looking for certain tips and information and articles that would address their needs. The blog entry titles are composed of the umbrella topic and the specific topic that the article is all about. For example, the article on graduate school financial aid is entitled: Grad School ? Financial Aid. Plain and simple. Because of these clear titles, it would be easy for information seekers to look for the right articles even just by browsing through the blog entry titles.
Downside of WHTNW
The main blog page provides an array of the most recent blog entries and links to each entry’s page. However, the array includes the entire articles instead of excerpts, which makes the page unnecessarily more cluttered. The website also lacks visual attractiveness due to limited pictures, graphics, and other materials that could make the website look more interesting.
The PHDs.org Engineering Science Blog is a blog especially intended for Engineering Science graduate and college students and practitioners. It is laden with news, tips, and feature articles that such an audience would find helpful and interesting.
What to look forward to when visiting PHDS
The site’s news and feature articles tackle various issues in the field of graduate studies and Engineering Science such as topics about risk aversion at the National Institute of Health (NIH). Interestingly, while it is an Engineering Science blog, there are also a number of articles for graduate school students and aspiring graduate school students in general.
There is a considerable number of articles about looking for and choosing graduate schools. One of the blog?s most interesting features that sets it apart from other blogs and websites offering the same kind of information and content is its unique mechanism for searching graduate schools based on your priorities. This mechanism helps you find the right graduate school for you. There are drop down boxes from which you could choose the type of graduate program that you?re looking for and the field or area of discipline that you wish to study. After that, you just have to click “search” and the schools offering courses in relation to your search would be listed in front of you. Should you wish to make a more customized search, you can use the third drop down box and the search results of the universities you?re looking for would be arranged according to which school offers the best program in the field of study that you chose. Fun and easy.
Areas for improvement
Besides that, the site also provides links to other websites that would be helpful to science graduate students and practitioners. The use of more pictures and videos would further improve not just the blog?s look but also the information and content that it can provide its visitors.
The Backward Glance is a blog written by Lincoln Mullen, a Brandeis University PhD student in American History and historian of religion. Mullen?s study and expertise are basically on early American history and the religious history of New England. His blog is composed mostly of tips and articles on education, digital humanities, religion, history, and the life of a graduate student. The targeted audience are graduate students and aspiring graduate students, history students and practitioners, and those who are interested in American history, religious history, and digital humanities.
The site’s strong points
Lincoln Mullen?s blog is basically what you would expect of a blog: an array of the latest articles on the main blog page composed of titles, excerpts or lead in paragraphs, and links to each entry?s page. The articles are mostly about Mullen?s field of expertise, though there are a lot of articles about being a graduate student. There are entries and interesting bits and pieces of trivia about America?s history and the religious history of England, religion in America, graduate school book reviews, and frequently asked questions about graduate school, among many others. There was an article providing a list of materials that one must read before and after applying for graduate school. It includes short descriptions for each book, along with short previews on what the books are all about and what a person could get out of reading it.
The site’s weak points
One good point about the blog is that it makes use of pictures to spice up the articles and make the blog more visually interesting. The articles are also written in a simple and conversational manner, at least the advice articles, which makes them easy to understand. The website also serves like a portal to other websites that the author is interested in, since it provides a number of links. Making use of more pictures, videos, and having a more interesting layout of photos and texts in articles would perk up the blog tenfold.
The Eduplan Blog is a collection of articles on tips, advice, and other important information on graduate schools, graduate school admissions, MBAs, careers, and job hunting. It targets graduate students, those planning to take graduate studies, job hunters, working people, and others concerned with careers, graduate schools, graduate studies, and job hunting.
What Eduplan offers
Simple as it is and with well-written and comprehensive articles on topics that its audience would commonly be interested in, the blog is a good find and a helpful friend. It has helpful articles on topics such as choosing a graduate school, how to look for online classes, school admissions, resume writing, handling interviews, and career development, among others. Navigation is easy because aside from links to the latest articles on the side bar and on the array of blog entries, there are also permanent sections containing links to most commonly searched topics: college admissions, MBA admissions, graduate school admissions, career coaching, resume writing, effective job search, and scholarships, as well as immigration, job hunting, and schooling in the United States.
One article that particularly took my interest was the one which tells the reader how to use Twitter for job search. Such an article is one good proof of how the blog keeps up with technology in terms of article content. It is good that the blog makes use of pictures to prevent it from looking dull and boring.
What Eduplan lacks
The blog, however, would do well with making excerpts from the links appear on the array of latest blog entries on the main blog page. The blog entries, which are lengthy by the way, appear complete on the blog array. There is no actual need to present the entire article on the main blog page when you can simply provide links to the entries. Simply providing an array of the latest titles along with excerpts or teasers will do.
Careernews provides news, tips, and advise about career and employment. Directed toward the labor force and those who are about to enter it, this website is a fine collection of articles and blog entries that are easy to understand and are very helpful to job hunters and working people alike.
What to like about this site
One of the first things you would notice about the website is its professional stance and simplicity. Its professional look gives it an air of credibility, allowing browsers to have considerable confidence in the contents of the website. The simplicity of the website?s layout, on the other hand, allows for easy search and navigation. With this kind of layout, it is not so difficult for the website to communicate to the reader what it is about and what it offers to its visitors. Visitors would hardly find it difficult to find the things, news, and advice that they need. On the left hand side bar, there are links to the latest and most popular entries, while on the right hand side bar are links to websites on job openings.
Entries range from news articles to tips and advice about various issues concerning career and employment. There are tips on getting MBAs, successfully and gracefully getting past interviews, making effective resumes, and many other things relevant to job hunters and the working population. There are also articles on issues such as career diversification, career warfare, and keys to success, among others. One article that took my interest was the one on changing jobs, which provides five tips and notes to remember when changing jobs. It includes comprehensive tips on how to go about the career change and on the things that should be considered when thinking of career change.
What to improve on this site
With the use of more pictures and videos, the website would be more effective as a tool for communication. With such interesting topics and well-written articles, the website could do better with a visual level-up.
