SoFi Blog

After years in school, taking exams and spending countless hours studying, your residency is when you can put all the knowledge and skills you’ve accumulated to the test. A medical residency offers an amazing learning opportunity for a young doctor.

Who doesn’t love a great deal? Whether shopping for new shoes or an automobile, it seems like humans have an inherent desire to get the most bang for their buck. And when it comes down to it, shopping around can be a great way to protect yourself as a consumer, even when finding good stocks to buy.

For a novice investor, it can be difficult to decide where to put your money. There are so many options, it can be hard to answer the question, “what company should I invest in?”

If you’re a fan of a specific company—whether that’s Apple, Amazon, or Coca Cola, you may be wondering if you should invest in those. After all, putting your money behind a company you actually believe in seems intuitive.

Choosing companies you actually like to invest in is certainly a different approach than giving your money to a financial advisor who makes your investment decisions for you. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right call. Let’s look at the pros and cons of investing in a company you really like.

Housewives. CEOs. Titans of industry. Your favorite aunt.

It seems like just about everyone these days is trying to get their kids into elite colleges—by any means necessary. And certain elements of the wealthy and well connected don’t seem to mind going through the back door—or side door—as long as their child gets accepted.

You’ve probably seen a news story or two about admissions tactics that have gotten some high-profile parents in hot water recently. These approaches, the “side doors” as they were pitched, went well beyond traditional means of giving students a leg up in the college process.

For the rest of us, who can’t fund a building or get a coach to admit our son on the basis of a photoshopped water polo player, we have one option: the front door. And that just means helping your child get accepted the normal way—sans bribes.

After 19 years of education—12 years in primary school, four years of undergraduate study, and three years of post-graduate work—you’ve finally done it: You’re a lawyer. Well, almost.

Before any graduate can practice law, he or she must take the bar exam . After years of school and countless hours of studying, your legal career will come down to passing the bar exam. Typically, graduates walk across the stage in May, then take the bar exam in their state of choice the last week of July (although most states administer the bar exam during the last week of February as well).

Then, they must wait to confirm their bar results and start working as a first-year associate. And all that adds up to is a ton of time off with nothing to do between taking the bar and starting a job. Nothing to do but celebrate, of course.

What do students do while waiting on bar exam results? The time-honored tradition of “bar trips” takes place each year during those few weeks after the exam and actually receiving the results.