September is an odd month for shopping, since summer has officially come to a close, and we're inching ever closer to Black Friday.

But September has its own deal virtues, including Labor Day sales!

So, we've mined the extensive dealnews archives of sales, coupons, and individual products from the past few summers to find out what are the best and worst things to buy in September.

Patio Furniture Deals Are Sitting Pretty

As we mentioned in our Labor Day weekend sales guide, it's finally a great month to buy patio furniture. September will see an increase in the sheer number of outdoor furniture sales and deals on seasonal outdoor items.

Look for discounts from retailers like Target and Sears, each of which took up to 60% off their stock of outdoor furniture last year. However, Kmart stole the show in 2012 by slashing up to 90% off its collection of outdoor items, including patio chairs and tables. Here's hoping the store offers similar discounts this year.

Get Your Caffeine Fix for Free

Are you a devout coffee drinker?

Then make sure to mark September 29 on your calendar, as several food chains will offer a free cup o' Joe in honor of National Coffee Day. In years past, Krispy Kreme, Waffle House, 7-11, and Caribou Coffee all offered special promotions to celebrate, and it's possible that other chains and local cafes will do the same this time around, too.

New Car Models This Month Mean Good Deals in October

Since many manufacturers release new car models in September, experts in the industry claim that dealerships will start slashing prices on older models.

These discounts start in September, but according to Forbes, they become substantially better in October and later. As such, you can save 10% to 20% or more on a 2013 car if you wait until October.

The summer is coming to an all too speedy end, which means college students will soon make the mass exodus from their hometowns, vacations, and internships to return for a new school year in the fall.  

For some students, however, picking classes and meeting new people are just part of the already jam-packed celebrity lifestyle. 

We've found the 15 most famous kids in college this semester. These celebrities are pursuing their college degrees, juggling class and exams with the responsibilities of public life.

They're musicians, actors, models and athletes who somehow find a way to balance their college careers with their professional ones—an impressive feat for such young people. They go to school all over America, from New York University to California's University of Southern California.

We've listed them here in alphabetical order. Let us know who we missed!

Callie Bost and Jennifer Polland contributed to this feature.

Justine Bateman

College: University of California, Los Angeles

Year: Sophomore

Though she's not exactly a kid anymore, the 47-year-old Bateman did get famous playing one on TV — the notoriously ditzy Mallory Keaton on "Family Ties."

Now, she's pursuing a degree in computer science at UCLA and even has a blog called "College Life" about the ins and outs of being an undergraduate in her 40s.  

Corinne Bishop

College: University of Southern California

Year: Sophomore 

Jamie Foxx's daughter shares both his original last name and his red carpet spotlight, appearing on her father's arm at multiple premiers, awards shows, and after parties since she was seven. 

Bishop, now 19, is a cheerleader and Public Relations major at USC. 

Justin Combs

College: University of California Los Angeles

Year: Sophomore

The son of Sean "P. Diddy" or "Puff Daddy" Combs, Justin Combs is attending UCLA —on a $54,000 football scholarship.

The son of a multi-millionaire, Combs faced a lot of criticism for accepting the scholarship, but the 5-foot-9, 170-pound defensive back defended his decision to accept the scholarship, tweeting that he "put that work in"and earned the scholarship.

Combs was red-shirted for the 2012 season and didn't see game time, but he has four remaining years of eligibility. 

As American contemplates limited military action in Syria, many people are bringing up the ghosts of Iraq.

So it's helpful to explain what those ghosts are.

America's rocky relationship with Iraq didn't start 10 years ago with the beginning of the war that would eventually oust Saddam Hussein.

It didn't even start in 1990, following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

In fact, the two countries began their modern relationship some 33 years ago, becoming entangled due to a violently deposed Persian Monarch and Washington's push to rein in an intransigent Iran.

Policy planners thought the key to maintaining control over the resource rich Middle East started with shaking Saddam's hand.

Things haven't exactly worked out as planned.

The year was 1980. America had just lost a key Middle Eastern ally in the Iranian Revolution.

US officials and media began publicly to consider Iraq as a new top ally in the Persian Gulf.

Source: Teicher, Howard. Twin Pillars To Desert Storm, William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York, 1993

Meanwhile Iranian calls for a Shia-coup in Iraq led to rising tensions and border skirmishes.

Last week, Nike celebrated the 25th anniversary of its ingenious "Just Do It" advertising campaign with a 90-second commercial voiced by Bradley Cooper, inviting viewers to step into the arena with sports stars ranging from LeBron James to Serena Williams.

We looked at the past two-and-a-half decades of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy's work to find the Nike ads that shaped the brand's history.

The Very First 'Just Do It' Ad (1988)

The first time the world heard "Just Do It" was in this television commercial featuring Walt Stack, a then-80-year-old running icon. In the ad, a shirtless Stack lumbers across the Golden Gate Bridge while telling the audience he runs 17 miles every morning.

"Just Do It" came to Nike at a pivotal time: the company was trying to reverse a mid-decade decline in which it lost its position as the United States' top-selling shoe brand. Needless to say, "Just Do It" was a step in the right direction.

Michael Jordan Teams Up With Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon (1988)

In 1988, Nike launched the first of a series of commercials starring Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, neither of whom had yet reached superstar status in their respective fields.

Mars Blackmon, Lee's over-caffeinated fanboy character, elicited laughs with his complete lack of self-awareness, and Jordan's comparative cool helped him win over a generation of basketball fans.

The iconic, black-and-white ads cemented the Air Jordan shoe's place in the national consciousness as both a fashion statement and a collectors' item. "Money, it's gotta be the shoes!"

Bo Knows (1989)

For a one-of-a-kind athlete, Wieden + Kennedy needed a one-of-a-kind ad campaign.

Wieden + Kennedy highlighted Bo Jackson's versatility as both a professional football and baseball player in a series of ads based on the premise that Jackson's skills extended well beyond his two sports of choice.

The "Bo Knows" series yielded one of the most memorable commercials of all time, which used special effects to treat viewers to a room full of Bo Jacksons clad in various ridiculous sporting outfits. More importantly for Nike, the ads dramatically improved the company's cross-trainer sales, helping it regain its position as America's biggest athletic shoe company.

Marc St. Gil was one of about a hundred photographers commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency to document American life in the 1970s as part of the DOCUMERICA project.

He traveled to the areas of surrounding Houston and San Antonio, Texas to document the water and air pollution crisis, but also captured what life was like on ranches and in small towns.

Woodrow Wilson, One of Leakey's Local Characters, in His Pickup. He Never Works, But Sits Staring at the River from 7 A.M until Sunset 06/1972

A Skinned Possum Shown by One of the Oldest Trappers in Texas, the Town of Leakey. Near San Antonio, 12/1973

Fur Skins of Fox, Raccoon and Bobcat Being Prepared for Market in Leakey, Texas, near San Antonio, 12/1973

China accounted for 70% of all counterfeit goods between 2008 and 2010, according to a report released by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime earlier this year.

But China doesn't just have a thriving counterfeit industry with fake luxury goods. The country has gone on to make life-size replicas of European towns.

In fact, Shanghai rolled out a "One city, Nine Towns" scheme with small towns built in a different international style.

We compiled 26 things that China ripped off, some of which landed the companies involved in hot water.

WAL-MART: A spokesman for Wumart said, "We dream about being the Walmart of China."

Source: The Economist

GROUPON: Groupon.cn is a rip-off, Groupon's China business is called Gaopeng.

Source: Technode

HARRY POTTER: China even ripped off Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings in one book: Harry Potter and the Leopard Walk-Up-To Dragon.

Source: BeijingTaiwan/11Points

While America celebrates Victory over Japan Day on September 2, let's not forget the suffering of about 110,000 Japanese Americans who were forced to live in internment camps.

Even at the time this policy was opposed by many Americans, including renowned photographer Ansel Adams, who in the summer of 1943 made his first visit to Manzanar War Relocation Camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Invited by the warden, Adams sought to document the living conditions of the camp's inhabitants.

His photos were published in a book titled "Born Free And Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans" in 1944, with an accompanying exhibition at MoMA.

In 1965, when he donated the images to the Library of Congress, Adams shared some thoughts on the project:

"The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair (sic) by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment," he said.

At the outset of World War II, the American government feared subversive actions by the Japanese American citizens and began moving them to relocation camps.

Source: National Park Service.

Manzanar was one of 10 sites where about 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced to live.

Source: National Park Service.

It was an abandoned agricultural settlement that was repurposed as relocation center.

Very few people can say that their entire careers were defined by their friends in high school, but these bands can.

See which artists have been working on their craft together since before they were legal.

U2 came together thanks to a message board.

U2 was formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1976, after Larry Mullen, Jr. posted a note to the Mount Temple Comprehensive School message board inquiring about starting a band.

They were first known as Feedback, then The Hype, and finally, with the departure of older member Dik Evans, U2.

Radiohead rehearsed on school breaks.

On a Friday, the band that would eventually become Radiohead, formed in 1985 after meeting at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, England.

Though the band members went to different universities, they continued to rehearse on weekends and holidays, and post-graduation signed a six-album deal with EMI in 1991.

Live formed for a talent show.

The members of Live, best known for their 1995 alternative rock hit "Lightning Crashes," first came together for a middle school talent show in York, Pennsylvania.

They tried out the band names First Aid, Club Fungus, Paisley Blues, Action Front, Body Odor Front, and Public Affection before finally recording their 1991 EP Four Songs under the name Live.

Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk left the band in 2009.

Humans have remarkable control over their own happiness.

In her book, "The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want," psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky says a person's happiness is 50% due to genetics, 10% due to circumstances, and the remaining 40% is "within our power to change."

But it takes work.

That's why we've compiled 25 different ways to boost your mood. Happiness is different for each person, but hopefully at least one of these methods will help you find your inner sunshine.

Draw pictures of unhealthy food.

Studies have shown that eating high-calorie comfort foods can make your happier. The downside is this will also make you fat.

As an alternative, a study published in the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science in May 2013 found that simply drawing pictures of foods high in fat, like cupcakes or pizza, and foods that taste sweet, like strawberries, can also boost your mood. The positive reactions were independent of subjects' weight and hunger level.

"These results extend a growing body of biobehavioral research on the positive impact of food images on mood by showing that this impact can be applied to enhance mood when expressing food images through art," the researchers concluded.

Be both an optimist and a realist.

People who have the positive attitude of optimists paired with the rational outlook of realists tend to be more successful and happy, according to psychology researcher Sophia Chou.

That's because so-called "realistic optimists" have the perfect blend of personality types to succeed. Unlike idealists, they are willing to face challenging situations with a clear view of reality, but will use creativity and a positive outlook to try to work their way out of the problem.

Get your hands dirty.

Breathing in the smell of dirt may lift your spirits, according to a study which found that a bacteria commonly found in soil produces effects similar to antidepressant drugs.

The harmless bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, stimulated the release of serotonin in the brain after it was injected into mice. Low levels of serotonin is what causes depression in people.

In a human test, cancer patients reported increases in their quality of life when they were treated with the bacteria.

The findings "leave us wondering if we shouldn’t all be spending more time playing in the dirt,” lead author Chris Lowry of the University of Bristol in England said in a statement.

As the housing market keeps showing signs of a strong turn-around, it might finally be time forbaby boomers and empty-nesters who want to downsize to feel confident again about selling their homes and relocating to some place sunny or near the water. Using data from Kiplinger's list of top states to retire -- based on special tax breaks for seniors -- AOL Real Estate zeroed in on cities or neighborhoods that provide easy access to the amenities and lifestyle that might fit the active older adult.

Absent from our list is any city in California. In fact, California topped Kiplinger's list as one of the least tax-friendly states for retirees -- given that it has the highest tax rate in the U.S. And only two on the East Coast made our list -- aside from, of course, Florida.

View the slideshow below to see which states we found to be the most friendly to retirees -- listed in alphabetical order, along with some homes for sale in each. What would be your pick be for the 10th state? Tell us in the comments, along with the state where you chose or would most like to retire.

ARIZONA: Linking Golf With Entertaining

With a low personal income tax rate that tops out at 4.54 percent, and exempt Social Security benefits, Arizona is a great place to retire, according to Kiplinger's.

Homeowners age 70 and up can apply to defer their property taxes if they meet certain residency requirements. That's extra money that can go toward hiking equipment.

This two-bedroom end unit townhome on a corner lot in Prescott features a great room with fireplace, a kitchen with pass-thru to the dining area. There is two car garage and a bonus side-entry golf-cart garage. It's priced at $249.900.

DELAWARE: Bike to the Boardwalk

With no state or local sales tax, Delaware can be a haven for retirees. Taxpayers age 60 and older can exclude $12,500 of investment and qualified pension income from state income taxes, reports Kiplinger. Whereas older homeowners may qualify for a property tax credit, up to $500.

Located close to the beach, this 1,350-square-foot condo with garage is in a gated community in Rehoboth Beach. The home, listed at $334,900, has access to a bike path into town for dining and shopping and the boardwalk. The community features a pool with wading area and a hot tub.

FLORIDA: A Relaxed State

There's no inheritance tax or state tax in Florida and retirement income is not taxed. Some 65 and older long-time residents of certain Florida cities and counties can receive an extra homestead exemption up to $50,000 and/or an exemption equal to the assessed value of the property, as long as the real estate has a fair market value of less than $250,000, reports Kiplinger's.

Walton Beach is a perfect place to retire. This luxury Gulfside condo with two bedrooms plus a bunk room comes furnished and is listed at $335,000. The Destin West community has a heated swimming pool, a "lazy river" pool, and large heated hot tub. There is also an elevator assisted sky bridge. The listing boasts that it is "seaside luxury with a toes in the sand location."

We're just about a week away from Apple revealing its next iPhone.

It's been almost a year since Apple released a new hardware product, so this event will be an even bigger deal than usual. 

If you like surprises, stop reading! If you don't care, then read on. 

We've rounded up all the major rumors about Apple's next big product release.

Apple will announce the next iPhones on September 10

As of this writing, it's not officially official, but it's pretty darn close to official. We expect Apple will send out official invitations to an event in the next day or two. 

The new iPhone is expected to be called the iPhone 5S, and it probably look just like the iPhone 5 on the outside.

The only cosmetic change to the outside? We'll get a light-gold version of the phone.

Facebook has often been regarded as one of the best places to work in the tech industry. After all, their interns make $25,000 more than the average citizen.

And famously, employees on Glassdoor voted Facebook the No.1 best company to work for overall.

Not bad, right?

Wrong, according to some Facebook employees, both past and present, in an open thread on Quora.

Skip straight to the list »

Various engineers, software developers, and anonymous sources from Facebook's front lines divulge the details about the worst things about working for the social network.

From the lack of office professionalism (tasked to fold the boss's laundry?) to complaints of Mark Zuckerberg's "holier than thou" attitude, we've rounded up some of the most interesting details. To be clear, we're not saying these complaints represent the average experience. These are just the opinions of a small number of individuals. Every large company has its detractors, including Facebook. Here's what they have to say.

"For six weeks out of the year, I'm on 24/7 on-call duty."

During on-call duty, engineers are responsible for keeping the service up and running, come what may."For those weeks I don't leave town on the weekend; make especially sure not to have 'one too many' at any social gatherings I attend; and most importantly, carry and immediately respond to a charged phone where I can be reached 24/7, including leaving the ringer on on the nightstand as I sleep." - Keith Adams, Facebook engineer.

"The wall does not exist at Facebook."

"At most companies, you put up a wall between a work personality and a personal one, which ends up with a professional workspace,"says a Facebook engineer who chose to remain anonymous on Quora. Because the culture of Facebook implicitly encourages employees to "be themselves," the company lacks the "professionalism" found at other firms, the engineer says.

"There is not a truly functional infrastructure."

Employees say that trying to figure out how to do cool things with a team of 4,000 people is much harder than doing them with a team of 500. 

"We're growing so fast and have never emphasized organization, polish, or stability."

Take the atmosphere of San Francisco's Bay To Breakers 12K run. Mix in the engineering creativity of the Burning Man festival. Put everyone on a bicycle.

Now add beer.

And you've got yourself a party, Fort Collins, CO-style.

Every year this normally sleepy little college town, home of Colorado State University, transforms into the wildest bike festival in the nation, courtesy of the New Belgium Brewery, headquartered here.

It's called the Tour de Fat, named somewhat after the famous Tour de France bike race and NBB's most popular flavor of beer, Fat Tire. All proceeds from beer sales are donated to bicycle-themed non-profits.

 NBB hosts a dozen Tour de Fat festivals in cities across the nation: Atlanta; Washington D.C.; Durham, N.C.; Nashville; Chicago; Minneapolis; Boise; Denver; San Francisco; San Diego and Tempe, AZ.  So there's still time to catch one. 

Mountain Ave is usually a quiet neighborhood street.

On Tour de Fat, men in motley and in gorilla suits start slowly start to arrive.

Soon more costumed people fill the town, riding in the bike parade.

In Riviera Maya, travelers can sunbathe and swim at beautiful beaches, snorkel in the world’s second largest coral reef, visit archaeological sites dating back to the 7th century A.D., go shopping, dine in great international restaurants, and party like a spring breaker—all in one day.

This stretch of coastline between Cancun to the north and Tulum to the south is lined with some truly decadent resorts with some truly decadent all-inclusive packages.

For an all-inclusive stay in beautiful Riviera Maya, you can't do much better than these gorgeous hotels. Check out our favorites.

Barcelo Maya Palace Deluxe

The Palace offers a high-end all-inclusive experience on a gorgeous stretch of white-sand beach 15 minutes south of Playa del Carmen.

It's the smallest, newest and most upscale of the properties in the Barcelo complex.

Excellence Riviera Cancun

This adults-only resort lives up to the Excellence name, offering the standard amenities of the luxury chain: multiple attractive pools, numerous dining options, dozens of activities, and a solid spa with beachside treatment huts.

El Dorado Seaside Suites

El Dorado Seaside Suites is an all-inclusive, adults-only resort located on a secluded beach halfway between Playa del Carmen and the famous Mayan ruins of Tulum.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and her husband, Zack Bogue, have bought a $30 million Tudor-style mansion in San Francisco, according to rumors in the city's real estate circles.

If the rumors are true, her new neighbors will include Oracle's Larry Ellison, Apple's Jonathan Ive, and Zynga's Mark Pincus.

But the new "Billionaire's Row" location would mean Mayer will leave her current house in Palo Alto, which features a giant model of a local diner in the backyard. And it would also extend her commute considerably, as San Francisco is further away from Sunnyvale than Palo Alto is.

Take a look at the house in these marketing photos published by realtor Steven Gothelf of Pacific Union International.

It recently sold for about $29.5 million.

It was designed in 1922 by the San Francisco architect Frederick H. Meyer for Stetson G. Hindes.

It has six bedrooms, five full baths, and two half-baths.

Fast food is all about convenience and affordability. 

But there are ways you can make a trip to the local McDonald's or Burger King feel like a VIP experience. 

Two Reddit forums revealed tips from fast food employees and savvy customers. We pulled out the best tricks that could enhance your next dining experience. 

From customizing your Taco Bell order to getting a cheaper "Big Mac," these tips could change your fast food orders forever. 

SEE ALSO: 18 Fast Food Menu Items That Were Sensational Failures

You can incorporate a Dorito shell into your Cheesy Gordita Crunch at Taco Bell.

It's just 30 cents extra for the delicious addition. 

Source: Reddit

You can get a cheaper McDonald's Big Mac.

"Get a McDouble without ketchup and mustard. Instead, ask for lettuce and big mac sauce on it. You have an almost-Big Mac for $1.39," an employee writes.

Source: Reddit

Get a real egg with your McDonald's breakfast.

"McDonald's uses three different kinds of eggs for their breakfast. If you want a REAL egg ask for the egg off the McMuffin," one employee said. 

Source: Reddit

While exploring New York City's terrifying past, we started to wonder how the city became safe again. New York's murder rate peaked in 1990. By the end of the 90s, violent crime in the city had dropped 56%.

We spoke with Berkeley Law School professor Franklin Zimring, who wrote "The City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control." He only gives "derivative credit" to former mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York's self-proclaimed savior, and instead, praises the police for the city's extreme turnaround.

"Broken Windows" Theory

Giuliani has suggested time and again that his administration saved New York City. During the 2007 republican primary debate in Orlando, he even said he "brought down crime more than anyone in this country — maybe in the history of this country" while serving as mayor, according to On The Issues.

The former mayor believes the "broken windows" approach changed New York City's streets for the better. This theory suggests police can make cities safer by cracking down on minor crimes like vandalism, which the Big Apple definitely did in the 1990s.

The broken windows theory stems from two criminologists George Kelling and James Wilson who suggested that minor disorder, like vandalism, acted as a gateway to more serious crime. By focusing on smaller offenses, often referred to as "quality of life" crimes, Kelling and Wilson thought violent crime and other less desirable issues would decrease.

"If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passersby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place," the duo claimed in their Atlantic Monthly piece.

Several academic studies, however, have questioned, and even criticized, the effectiveness of broken windows.

Criticism For "Broken Windows"

When University of Chicago professors Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig revisited broken windows, they reported criminologists knew very little about the theory's effectiveness. Even further, their paper found no evidence, outside of Kelling's work, to support that cracking down on minor offenses decreases more serious crime.

Aside from lack of evidence that cracking down on minor offenses reduced felonies, much of the new research found targeting minor crimes harms poor people as well as blacks and Hispanics.

A later paper, again by Harcourt and Ludwig, found that broken windows, albeit indirectly, led to a disproportionate number of drug arrests for blacks, The New Republic reported. From 1993 (the year that broken windows took hold) to 2000, misdemeanor arrests for smoking marijuana in public jumped from 10 per year to 644. At only 25% of the city's population, blacks accounted for over half of the arrests.

"It is definitely time for law enforcement to stop focusing on minor disorder and to target, instead, serious crimes involving guns and physical injury,"Harcourt wrote in Legal Affairs magazine.

Zimring, however, feels the police did just that, regardless of Giuliani's questionable ideas on crime.

"Derivative Credit" To Giuliani

"Years ago, we thought it was a myth that cops prevented crime," Zimring said. In theory, criminals could just commit crimes in corners of the city where cops didn't patrol.

"But crime is a heck of a lot more situational than we thought," Zimring explained. If a criminal wants to rob somebody on 125th and Lexington but sees a cop there, he'll probably just throw in the towel for the night, Zimring says.

When former Mayor David Dinkins came into office, he proposed a $1.8 billion plan to "fight fear" in New York and hired 8,000 new officers, the LA Times reported at the time. He also hired an effective new police commissioner, Lee Brown, who supported "community policing," the practice of having cops patrol neighborhoods to get to know people to solve problems — instead of just answering 911 calls. Crime's hold on the city really started to falter while Dinkins still sat in City Hall from 1990 to 1993. Data from NYC.gov shows the murder rate in New York City peaked in 1990 and dropped 30% by 1994.

To be fair, Giuliani also hired 3,660 new officers once he came into office, On The Issues found.

"The growth in police is a two-mayor phenomenon, and it really was extraordinary," Zimring told BI.

Other Theories

Other factors beyond the increased police presence could have caused crime to drop more drastically in New York than many other parts of America during the 90s. (The nation as a whole did get a lot safer then, too.)

First of all, unemployment dropped hugely in New York City — 39%  from 1992 to 1999, according to the National Bureau for Economic Research. Some researchers have found ties between low unemployment and a drop in violent crime.

Others credit an increased arrest rate for the improvement in New York City. Again, NBER reported that felony arrest rates rose 50 to 70% in the 1990s, which might have taken more criminals off the streets.

Regardless of other explanations on the table, Giuliani has stuck by broken windows.

"It worked because we not only got ... an improvement in the quality of life, but massive reductions in homicide," Giuliani told the Academy of Achievement, "and New York City turned from the crime capital of America to the safest large city in the country." 

Join the conversation about this story »

As the school year starts up again, the class of 2017 is heading off to college for the first time, and a whole crop of high-school seniors is beginning to consider where they'll go next year — or whether they should go at all.

College still pays off in the long run, but as tuition prices continue to climb, debt loads are higher than ever. And the first years out of school are extremely tough.

Some, like PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel, claim that college just isn't worth it in the age of startups. He's giving 20 bright young people $100,000 each to start a company instead.

Despite the fact that Thiel himself is a Stanford graduate, people who choose to follow his advice and drop out find themselves in pretty good company. Beyond Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, some of today's most successful businesspeople didn't graduate from college. Here are a few that prove a college degree isn't the only path to success.

Matt Mullenweg started WordPress, which now powers 16% of the web.

Mullenweg dropped out of the University of Houston in 2004. Even then, he was so precocious that he didn't bother with their computer classes. At 20, he had already developed the beginnings of WordPress and was fielding job offers from tech companies. He dropped out to work for CNET in San Francisco, with a promise that he could continue developing his side project 15% of the time. 

He left to found Automattic, the company behind WordPress. WordPress alone gets 140 million visits a year with a staff of just 140, and all of Automattic’s sites see nearly half a billion visitors.

Arash Ferdowsi is a co-founder of DropBox, which is now worth an estimated $4 billion.

Ferdowsi dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 after three years at the school. He left to found DropBox, which quickly grew from a tiny startup to a service used by hundreds of millions of people.

He's currently the company's Chief Technology Officer and became a multi-millionaire at the age of 27.

Aaron Levie started enterprise software company Box, which could IPO at a valuation as much as $3 billion.

When Levie was a sophomore at the University of Southern California, he was bouncing ideas back and forth with Dylan Smith, a friend at Duke. A marketing class helped Levie come up with the idea that became Box.net, a cloud content management system.

An unsolicited email to Mark Cuban got them $350,000 in funding, and they haven't looked back since. The company has its eye on an IPO some time this year. 

It seems like life on Wall Street is better on the buy-side.

People who work at hedge funds tend to get a bigger salary and better hours as opposed to investment banking.  Not to mention, they also have a more relaxed dress code.

That's not all, though.  There are some hedge funds out there that have some totally sick perks that come with the job. 

We spoke to some hedge fund sources who spilled about which funds have the coolest perks.  We also did our own research on the web to dig up other perks.

If we're missing any bigs ones, feel free to send an email to jlaroche@businessinsider.com. 

Marc Lasry's Avenue Capital has free ordered-in breakfast. Not a bad way to start the day.

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square has a state-of-the-art gym at its 888 Seventh Avenue headquarters. We hear that there's also a personal trainer who comes in.

Blackstone, a private equity/investment banking/hedge fund firm, has an in-house shoe shine person.

Source: Dealbook, William Alden

Football starts this week.

In the last seven months the draft, free agency, training camp injuries, and the emergence of a bunch of key players has shifted the balance of power in the NFL.

To make our Week One power rankings, we took into consideration NFL Draft grades, DVOA (an advanced stat from Football Outsiders), major free agency moves and the biggest preseason stories for each team.

Things will change once, you know, these teams play some actual games. But for now, this is where each team stands.

1. Houston Texans (12-4 last year)

2012 DVOA ranking: 11

Consensus Draft grade: B

Vegas Super Bowl Odds: 16-to-1

Biggest training camp takeaway: Rookie DeAndre Hopkins, who has a concussion but should be okay for Week One, looks like the impact No. 2 receiver that Houston needs for Andre Johnson to thrive.

2. San Francisco 49ers (11-4-1 last year)

2012 DVOA ranking: 4

Consensus Draft grade: A-

Vegas Super Bowl Odds: 6-to-1

Biggest training camp takeaway: They're probably the most talented team in the NFL, but injuries to Michael Crabtree and Chris Culliver will test their depth.

3. Seattle Seahawks (11-5 last year)

2012 DVOA ranking: 1

Consensus Draft grade: B

Vegas Super Bowl Odds: 17-to-2

Biggest training camp takeaway: Percy Harvin will miss at least half the season after hip surgery, leaving them without a game-breaking receiver to pair with Sidney Rice.