About to Graduate? BPL Has Free College Resources to Help You

High school graduation is around the corner, and the Birmingham Public Library (BPL) is available to help in your college search and preparation for the next step in your educational journey.

Maybe you’re getting ready to graduate, or currently working and looking to take your life in a new direction by boosting your knowledge.  It’s important to know all the resources you have available to you!

 One of the best free resources BPL has for patrons preparing for college is College Scorecard (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/)

 Collegescorecard.ed.gov can tell you a lot about a school – from its graduation rate and the earnings of former students, to how much debt you can expect to take on. The site has been recently updated by the U.S. Department of Education, adding new data, details and restoring a few statistics that the Trump administration had scrapped. 

The updated scorecard lets you compare schools based on graduates' earnings, then see how those earnings compare to workers without a degree. It even shows how well a school serves its low-income students.

BPL has free databases that offer practice tests on everything from your driver's test to your GED to college prep courses. We also offer databases with free online classes on everything from math to computer programming. In addition, BPL has databases bringing you news from Birmingham and around the world. 

We offer databases to help you decide what direction you want your life to go and to provide you the resources to get there. The future is spreading out before you; but no matter where you are going, BPL is here to help you. 

BPL tries to provide comprehensive services to all our patrons, no matter what their ages are! So go to our website, follow the link in the black bar to our databases, and explore yet another way that BPL is putting people first! 

By Jennifer Hancock|BPL Collection Management