(upbeat energetic music) - welcome to teen/kids news. i'm livia, let's begin with our top story for this week. (upbeat music) there are more than 4,000 universities, colleges and junior colleges across america. so the good news is that if you want to go to college, there's probably at least one that's just right for you. on the other hand, it might be pretty overwhelming to figure out just which colleges to apply to. have no fear, amelia is here, with some tips from an expert. - let's face it, applying to college can be a lot of work. and it can also cost a lot of money.

especially when you consider that many students apply to at least seven colleges. - i plan to apply to about 6 or 7 colleges. - i applied to around 7 or 8 schools. - i applied to about 9 schools. - i applied to 11 universities. - that's certainly a lot! so how do you go about deciding what colleges to apply to and how many to apply to? once again we turn to rob franek, a college prep expert from the princeton review. welcome back! - good to be here again, thanks for the invitation. some students are lucky. they know exactly what college they want to go to. but for the rest of us, it's not so easy. how do we start to figure out where to apply? - it's a question that continues to come up from students every year, so you're not alone and when you think about the universe of thousands of schools, how do you actually start to window down that list to something that's going to be usable for you in the next couple of years. the way that we've done it at the princeton review is say,

"okay, you should probably be thinking about schools in three ways, reach schools, match schools, and safety schools." reach schools being those schools that you are going to have to strive a bit from sat scores and act scores, along with your gpa to get into. those match schools will be right in your sweet spot, you're see yourself in, broken downt? right in that gpa as well as that sat and act scores.s y - the truth is that that most they want to study and it'sthes

that simply means for the first twho you'll be taking lots of t high school and you may have loved them, but likely you'rero take in hi s you're going to be sampling lots of different courses so that at the end of your sophomore year, after the second year of full time study at school, you can say with great confidence that you really want to study psychology. or you really love the business school courses that you took for your first two years and that's where you want to focus your time. that's the wonderful part about going to college, specifically to a liberal arts school. - so once you have the list of schools you're considering, how many schools should you actually apply to? - the perfect number of schools, and this is a national average as well, is between seven and nine schools so remember that list of schools you might be considering can be nine to 15 schools as we're talking about, but it could balloon up to 30 schools and that's okay because those are schools that you're considering to apply to. when you start to window down that list, it's that sweet

spot of those seven to nine schools which is the perfect number of schools to actually send your applications into. - got it. rob, i've got a bunch more questions for you. but they'll have to wait until after we take this break. don't go away, teen/kids news will be right back. closed captioning is brought to you by.

(upbeat energetic music) we're getting advice on how to choose the right colleges to apply to. with us is author and college prep expert rob franek.

he's with the princeton review. a few minutes ago we talked about having reach match and safety, schools on our college list. how many of each should we apply to? - let's just define again reach, match, and safety. those reach schools are those schools where your numbers, your sat and act scores as well as your overall academics from high school, might be a little bit or below their averages. those match schools are where you match academically and you're perfectly to the average student that's applied to that school before. safety schools you are well above those average numbers for academics as well as sat and act scores. the perfect amount of schools to apply to, i think again, is between seven and nine schools, and they should be pretty evenly divided between those reach, match, and safety. if we use nine, three reach, three match, and three safety schools is going to be perfect. - is there a way to tell if you have a real chance at getting into a school that's a real "reach" or is it just a hail mary? - it's a question that continues to come up and remember that these schools are only reporting out averages.

that's average sat and act scores as well as average high school gpa. there are students that are going to fall above as well as below those averages. so remember to feel confident about those schools that you're applying to even if they're reach schools because they're reporting out averages to you. the second part of it is remember that they're also going to see, and these are admissions counselors from those schools, are also going to see your full senior year ultimately. so your senior year is going to be incredibly important because each of those marketing periods are going to end up ultimately as parts of your application. so continue to do your best academically in high school throughout your experience because those are going to be using your application as well. - besides judging a school based on its academics, what else should you consider? - one of the things that we talk about with students is finding fit in that school. that's of course going to be an academic fit. are you going to be happy and challenged in the classroom? we have to think that most students are going to live at the school that they're choosing, college or university, and you

have to be happy and part of that community. so the way we focus on at the princeton review is asking students to give us, and these are current college students, great opinion about their lives academic or otherwise. we take that information back to students. i have a book called the best 380 colleges that captures that information and serves it up in narrative profiles as well as ranking list. - good to know. thanks again for sharing your advice, rob. see you again soon. - good to be here. thank you. - choosing what colleges to apply to isn't a decision you have to make on your own. your parents, teachers and of course your school guidance counselor are all there to help. but at the end of the day, remember they're not going to the school. you are. so you have to be sure you have schools you want on the list. for teen/kids news, i'm amelia. - we've got lots more to tell you about on teen/kids news. so don't go away, we'll be right back! is brought to you by the national

road safety foundation. - last week we showed you what it takes to turn a winning idea into a public service announcement. and now you get to see the finished product. - [narrator] 13-year-old max finch from atlanta is this year's winner of the "drive to life" psa contest. - and action. - [narrator] as part of his prize, max and his mother got an all-expenses paid trip to new york city. tv professionals worked with max to shoot and then edit his psa. - so we finished the edits and we're ready to show them. what do you think? - how many versions are we going to look at? - we're going to look at two. - [narrator] once the finished spot was approved by the producer and director. - nicely done, well done, very well done. - [narrator] the next step was to present it. - let's go. let's get ready to start our meeting so we can show you max's great work. - [narrator] max met with the contest sponsor, the national road safety foundation, and its partner scholastic. - we've been working on making this video for two days. filming it and editing it, so here it is

♪ humpty dumpty sat on a wall ♪ humpty dumpty had a great fall ♪ all the kings horses ♪ and all the kings men ♪ couldn't put humpty together again - wow! that is great. (applause) what a great message, max. - thank you - simple message, but it has a profound statement behind it. the music, even the humpty dumpty thing. it's so ominous. you thought about having that music, the humpty dumpty? - no i didn't think about, but when he told me about it, i liked the idea a lot. - yeah? ok, good, i love it - you know, making it, it's fun to make you know there's no

pressure, but today everybody gives their opinion, you know, if they like it or not, so a little bit more stress. - he did a fantastic job and we like the connection he made with the egg theme. - the message that he conveys is just, it's absolutely awesome. we've been trying to get this message across to people, because in the past year, from 2015 to 2016 there's been an 11% spike in pedestrian deaths. and so we're hoping that his message will be able to get across to, not only young people, but to adults also about looking up while you're walking. - i hope that there's a lot of kids in america who will watch my psa and they'll make smarter choices when it comes to intersections and texting and just i hope that i can influence people to not get hurt. - kids can learn more this fall about max's experience filming the psa in three of scholastic's magazines, junior scholastic, the new york times up front and choices. - it was fun to "egg-sperience."

- to enter the drive to life contest you would go onto the national road safety foundation's website which is at teenlane.org and there you can find our contest, the drive to life, as well as other contests that may interest teens. - [narrator] and now for the official tv world premiere of max's psa "just look up." for teen/kids news, i'm luke. ♪ humpty dumpty sat on a wall ♪ humpty dumpty had a great fall ♪ all the kings horses ♪ and all the kings men ♪ couldn't put humpty together again (upbeat energetic music)

- how american teens can help fight childhood hunger around the world. next, on teen/kids news. we'll be right back.

the things we use every day. but there are simple ways even teens can do to help make a difference.

eden tells us more. - what i'm about to tell you is very upsetting. a tremendous number of kids around the world don't have enough to eat. in fact, they're so malnourished, they're in danger of starving to death. and while governments and international organizations are working to end childhood hunger, they can still use our help. to tell us more about this is betsy teusch. her book "one hundred tools for empowering global women" gives information on simple things any of us can do to help people in the poorest areas of the world. good to talk with you again. - great to be here. thanks for having me. - the title of your book singles out helping women, but childhood hunger certainly isn't limited to just girls. - that's absolutely true. in a typical house, boys are usually better fed, but when you come to the level of children starving to death which is called "acute malnutrition" that's really, that happens to

both boys and girls. - how big a problem is childhood hunger? - well, it's an enormous problem, but there has been a lot of progress made in the last bunch of years. we don't have as many people dying from hunger as we used to and that's great, but there's still a lot of room as long as anybody is hungry. when i say hungry, i don't mean food insecure occasionally, i mean really just starving to death unfortunately. - and where is it most likely found? - it's most common, in agrarian cultures where they, people live on very small farms that would be in sub saharan africa, in asia, in central america where there's a lot of poverty. people live very, very hand to mouth and if something goes wrong, if there's a drought or a flood or a terrible storm and their crop is destroyed they really don't have anything

to fall back on. and that is when people have a hunger season and if it goes on too long, without anybody intervening and helping then it becomes acute and children begin to die. - so what tool are you recommending to help? - there's been a fabulous innovation called "plumpy'nut". and plumpy'nut replaces what used to be accomplished by an intravenous tube in a field hospital. a mother would have to take her very weak children far away and try to get there and then there were only so many kids that they could help that way and then they were in a hospital setting which is really hard on the whole family and they're away from the rest of their family. but this is a paste. it's based on peanuts and it was designed by a pediatrician that noticed that kids in france where he lived really liked nutella which is chocolate and he came up with a version of

it that is peanut butter with a lot of micro-nutrients added to it. so it's what children need to survive and heal. so if they eat a couple of meals of this a day, after about a month they have been cured of extreme malnutrition. and they're back on the road to health. - and how do they get these plumpy'nuts? - they're distributed through various systems. they're manufactured in the countries where they're most needed so they also provide jobs for local people which is great. you can't buy them over the counter. they have to be prescribed. they're actually a treatment. - well i'm sold. so what can teens do to help? - well hunger is a huge problem and there are many, many people working on it so one of. you can do a hunger walk, you can raise money, you can do a bake sale.

ironically you could be selling goodies that would help children have enough food, those that don't have enough food, and look online. look in my book. they are great opportunities to help feed people around the world. - terrific. once again, thanks betsy. - thank you. - the decision is now yours. you can conveniently forget all about those kids who live with hunger. or you can roll up your sleeves and do something about it. for teen/kids news, i'm eden. - a fun, healthy way to relieve stress and put a smile on your face. next on teen/kids news. we'll be right back.

ourselves sitting at our desks for hours. and that can lead to stiffness and loss of concentration. in this week's "yoga and you" report, emily learns an easy technique to deal with that. (calm music)

- brenda schnable is a yoga therapist. hi. - hi. - so when i'm sitting at my desk for a really long time studying bio and then spanish and then history. i start to get really tight what can i do for that? - it's very common to get a tight back and tight hamstrings when you sit for a long time. so the first thing you need to do is just get up out of that chair and gently stretch those muscles. what you can do it what i call rag doll. lift those arms up, bend those knees and just roll down through center. and then slowly roll back up. and then roll down to the right. and roll back up. and roll down to the left. and you can do this as many times as you'd like till you start to feel those muscles start to get unstiff and loosen up. and then you can come into a forward bend. keep those legs nice and straight and just fold forward for

that nice hamstring stretch. and you can bend one knee and the other. do this a couple times. and then we'll go into our twist for that low back. so come and sit down. with the legs crossed. and we're going to take that left hand to the right knee. and we're going to reach around and twist. and then we're going to do it to the other side. and then come back. how's that low back and hamstrings feel? - feels really good. i'll definitely have to keep these in mind for when i do my homework tonight. thanks, brenda. - you're welcome. - for "yoga and you", i'm emily. - whether you consider it a hobby or exercise we can probably agree that it's just plain fun! hula hooping. it became a popular craze all across america when, ready for this? our grand parents were kids! but as they say, "what comes around, goes around."

so it's probably not surprising that the simple plastic hoop is making a comeback with kids today. and it's the subject of our "hooplaha pick" this week. (guitar strums) - the hooping project is, it's a space for hoopers of all skill levels to come. and do their thing. there's no real rules, there's no expectations. it's just a place for people to be yourself. it's a good stress reliever, a lot of the time. if you're in school, you're really stressed out, you take a 10 minute break, hula-hoop for a bit. - i think that hula-hooping is, it's a life-long journey, similar to yoga. it's a hobby that you can do to connect with other people, connect with the moment. and, it's healthy for you. it's a good cardio workout, i got kind-of abs from doing it. with a really heavy hoop. i think it's for everybody.

when i'm doing the hooping the best. i'm totally channeled into the music and i'm losing myself in the moment and the feeling of my body, and that kind of zen oneness. with the environment is really the apex of the hooping experience. - the beauty of hula-hooping is there is no endpoint where you're like, "i'm the best, i know every trick." there's always more things that can be done with it. - you get elation, you get, you know, a cardio boost that gives you the endorphins that make you laugh, and a lot of things, but mainly centeredness, it's calming. - anyone can be a hula-hooper. you should come, try it out. see if it's for you. maybe it'll be your new favorite hobby. - that's our show for this week. but be sure to tune in again next week for more teen/kids news. bye.

(upbeat energetic music) - [narrator] write to us at, info at teenkidsnews.com.

alex: the following program contains actual video of real animal emergencies and is suitable for family viewing. coming next, a puppy falls into a deep hole. plus, a horse is stuck in a muddy trap. and saving ferrets. alex: this is "animal rescue."