What it is: An opportunity for Native American students to study at Harvard Medical School for eight weeks during the summer-with all travel, lodging, food, and studies paid for in full.

Application deadline: Saturday February 12, 2011

There are a handful of titles that inspire respect like nearly nothing else can. Among this handful are the following: "Harvard Graduate," and "Doctor of Medicine."

As you progress through your undergraduate studies and begin to look toward the future, it is important that you broaden your horizons and realize the breadth of options available to you.

Perhaps you hope to jump into the job market as soon as you complete your undergraduate studies; perhaps you are considering a graduate degree, and you feel most comfortable studying close to home; or, perhaps you have always dreamed of studying at a prestigious East Coast university where you can emerge with a graduate education that will open doors for you everywhere you go.

Many students discount such ideas as being "far-fetched" or "unrealistic," but the more you begin to understand about the options available to you, the more you realize that these dreams can become your reality.

Seventeen years ago, a handful of Native American Harvard Medical School (HMS) students decided to begin a program that would bring Native American students with an interest in Medicine and the Medicinal Sciences to Harvard for eight summer weeks of research, study, and learning. This idea took shape in the form of the Four Directions Summer Research Program (FDSRP), and since that time over 150 students have been given the opportunity to study for free at one of the world's premier universities.

What it is: LEAD-which stands for Leadership, Education, and Development-is an intensive, three-week residential program held at Dartmouth College and Stanford University in June and July of 2011.

Application deadline: Thursday January 20, 2011

As a high-school student moving closer to the finish line called "graduation," you begin to realize that getting a job entails more than just filling out an application and starting work, and going to college entails more than just filling out an application and going to the college of your choice.

As the economy continues to struggle and as more and more high-school graduates choose to pursue higher education, competition stiffens. As a high-school student, you need a leg up on the others around the country who are aiming for the same things you are aiming for: A good college education, and a good job afterward.

What you might not have realized, however, is that you have an advantage already. As a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO), you have opportunities available to you that students all around the country could only dream of, and one of these opportunities is the LEAD program.

The LEAD program began in 1979, when pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson approached the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business with an idea. During a recruiting trip to the school, Johnson & Johnson had discovered that a distressingly low number of minority students were pursuing a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree, and so, they told Wharton that they wished to fund a summer program to expose diversity students to careers in business.