Saturday, February 29, 2020

Create-A-Greeting-Card College Scholarship Contest

With college costs on the rise, more and more families are looking for ways to bridge the gap between what they can afford to pay and the price of tuition and fees. Fortunately, a number of independent scholarships exist to help students attend their dream colleges. While securing these scholarships isn’t as simple as filling out the FAFSA form, students who are willing to put in the time and effort can often secure significant amounts of money toward financing their college education. Different scholarship opportunities exist to recognize students with various talents, skills, and interests. For high school students who are artistically minded, it might be worth considering the Gallery Collection’s Create-A-Greeting-Card College Scholarship Contest. The winner of this award receives a $10,000 college scholarship, with an additional $1,000 award going to the student’s high school. The Create-A-Greeting-Card contest invites applicants to use their innate talent and creativity to design a holiday, get well, or birthday greeting card. To apply, simply submit a work of art, computer graphic, or photo intended for the front side of a greeting card. Each image must be submitted in JPEG format and be two megabytes or fewer in size. Entries will be judged based on the following factors: Candidates can view current designs online at www.gallerycollection.com . To apply for this scholarship, you must be a high school, college, or university student who is currently enrolled in school. All applicants must be U.S. citizens. If you have additional questions or concerns about the requirements, feel free to contact the Gallery Collection online at scholarshipadmin@gallerycollection.com . Estimating your chance of getting into a college is not easy in today’s competitive environment. Thankfully, with our state-of-the-art software and data, we can analyze your academic and extracurricular profile and estimate your chances. Our profile analysis tool can also help you identify the improvement you need to make to enter your dream school. It’s not enough simply to hope you get a scholarship for college. Savvy students seek out a variety of contests and programs offering scholarships to reduce the cost of their degrees. Fortunately, you don’t have to look far to find lucrative opportunities. Not only do a number of high schools boast scholarship programs targeted toward college-bound students, but many community organizations offer contests as well. You can discover scholarship programs through your town or city, church, Lions club, or even businesses in your community. When deciding which scholarships to target, students often ignore contests with smaller awards. While you might be hesitant to invest time and energy into applying for a $500 scholarship, the truth is that these awards can add up quickly. After all, winning five $500 scholarships is the same as securing one worth $2500. Moreover, the number of applicants might be lower because of the smaller potential payout. So your odds of winning might be higher with these contests. Similarly, scholarship contests that require a lot of work tend to draw a smaller applicant pool. After all, busy high school seniors are often hesitant to invest their time in writing lengthy essays or shooting video submissions. According to one Money.com article , scholarships requiring 1000-word essays tend to receive fewer than 500 submissions. So don’t be afraid to put in a little extra effort to score some additional funding. Unlike student loans, scholarships represent financial awards that don’t have to be paid back. So it’s only logical to apply to a wide range of contests and opportunities. At , we created our Applications Program to help students gain admission to their dream schools and find the financing they need to make their dreams a reality. From creating a custom roadmap for the applications process to filling out FAFSA and scholarship forms, we help students best the competition. To learn more about our services, call today or contact our team online.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Sears changes again and again Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Sears changes again and again - Essay Example And since the top management of the organization are the decision makers, they have the power and capability to initiate strategic change. Strategic change affects the â€Å"... goals, systems, structures, work processes, values, mission and culture† of businesses (Jacobs, 2010). This means that such changes are far-reaching and they affect the entire organization over a period of time. There is always a reason for change. This is because top level management makes changes to attain certain ends. In this paper, the case refers to Sears, now known as Sears-Roebuck and Co, a U.S.-based chain of stores that provides consumer goods for the public. The paper will examine the strategic changes that occurred in the company over the past two decades. In attaining this end, the following objectives will be addressed: Normally, organizations have institutionalized cultures and systems. Institutionalism is defined by Poole and Van De Ven (2004) as the culture and structures that guide activities in an organization. As such, every organization nurtures a type of system that enables it to operate and maintain its unique identity. Sears had its own system and structures. The initial system was to produce household appliances and run departmental stores in the early 1990s. The institutional structures and systems of the company had survived through the 1980s to the 90s. This shows that they believed in traditions and systems. However, the company seemed to have priorities: maintaining Sears as a going concern. When this was threatened, they had to find ways of adjusting the institutional structures to keep the companys performance high. So they resorted to bringing in Martinez, who was from a completely different background. Gottschalk (2007, p.14) states that â€Å"outside successors are often selected when in periods of poor firm performance and when directors cannot locate a competent successor in-house.† In order for new CEOs to succeed, they will need to

Saturday, February 1, 2020

What Is The CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) And Of What Practical Essay - 1

What Is The CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) And Of What Practical Use Is It - Essay Example When the expected return of a security is determined using the model then it can be compared to the estimated return of security over a given time period. Such comparison will help the investor to analyse whether it is worthwhile investing into the security. CAPM was first conceptualised and pioneered by William Sharpe, Jack Treynor, Jan Mossin and John Lintner through their independent works (Focardi and Fabozzi, 2004, pp.86-87). The Capital Asset Pricing Model The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is popularly used to price individual portfolio securities. The CAPM helps to determine the expected rate of return for an asset relative to market risk. Using the CAPM model an investor can eliminate the unsystematic risk through proper diversification by estimating the required rate of return for a given level of non-diversifiable or market risk. The practical application of the model is that the individual investor will be able to modify their investment portfolio according to their r isk taking behaviour. The model also helps the individuals to analyse the risk-return profile in the portfolio (Gallagher and Andrew, 2007, pp.173-175). Assumptions of CAPM Investors are risk averse and rational No single investor can influence security prices No transaction cost or taxes Investors have access to all information at same time Expectation of the investors is homogeneous Mathematical Formula For individual assets, the relation between systematic risk and expected return can be estimated using the Security Market Line (SML). The significance of SML is that it can help the investor to calculate the risk-to-reward ratio for a given security relative to market. (Source: Financial Planning Body of Knowledge, 2010) The market risk-reward ratio is also known as the market risk premium. The systematic risk can be estimated using the Beta factor (?). Beta measures the sensitivity of excess expected return of security to the excess market return. Mathematically, ? = Covariance ( Ri, Rm) / Variance (Rm) Excess market return or Risk Premium = E (Rm) – Rf CAPM = Rf + ? x [E (Rm) – Rf] Where, Rf = Risk-free return Ri = Security Return Rm = Market Return Market Portfolio and Efficient Frontier The concept of CAPM encourages an investor to invest a portion of his or her wealth in risky asset and the remaining portion into risk-free asset. The proportion of asset allocation between risky and risk-free asset depends on the behaviour of the investor. According to this model, a rational investor will prefer maximum return for given risk or minimum risk for given return. The optimum portfolio is a combination of securities which yields maximum returns for lowest risk or volatility. The total portfolio risk can be measured and compared to market risk using beta. The optimum portfolio is derived from the efficient frontier curve that gives the relation between portfolio risk and return. The combination of securities that is formed at the tangency of indivi dual assets and the capital Allocation line (CAL) is called the optimal portfolio (Khan and Jain, 2007, p.16). (Source: krotscheck.net, 2008) The Significance of Beta Factor Beta indicates the stock volatility relative to a benchmark or market. The benchmark can be international index like S&P