This year’s Common App went up today. Seniors should take a few minutes to a) register, b) link to colleges, and c) browse their supplements. Supplements, sometimes no more than glorified “Legacy?” check boxes, more often ask additional essay questions–usually, “Why Our School?”
Then go back to enjoying summer. And while you’re in the pool, your mind might wander to the question of why, in fact, you want to go to (this) college.
Indiana University is “the new Wisconsin.” [WSJ]
NYC toddlers are 34% more excellent than last year. [NYT City Room]
The SAT still discriminates. [Head Count]
This professor is 110! [Tweed]
The DOE has announced 31 new charter schools for fall 2010 and, not coincidentally, a shiny new (charter school) common app due April 1. [TheInsideSCOOP]. Not everyone loves charter schools. [NYC Public School Parents]
Columbia has switched to the Common App, just like U Chicago did. [Bwog] So have U Conn, U Mich, St. John’s College, and Yeshiva. [Common App]
School budget cuts–ouch! [GothamSchools] Also (more) excruciating (than ever): Harvard and Stanford tuition. [Daily Intel]
Constance McMillen’s prom case went before a judge today (with mixed results); her anti-discrimination suit is already having a ripple effect in Southern schools. [AP, GLSEN Blog]
Regular (non-early, non-rolling) admissions decisions will sweep in over the next few weeks. Collegewise says not to freak out over rejections:
“One of the best ways to get over a college rejection is to look ahead six months from now. This September, you will be moving into a dorm. You’ll be meeting your new roommate while your parents exact a promise that you’ll call home on a regular basis. You’ll be buying a sweatshirt bearing the name of your new college. You’ll go to your first college class, start making your initial college friends, and officially begin your life as a college freshman. Do you have any idea just how exciting that’s going to be for you?”
Application Boot Camp, sagely observing that “[c]hoosing your college is an important
decision,” says not to rush your decision process.
And The Choice is running one of those cute admissions human-interest series so that parents of college-bound teenagers can goof off at work.
Stephen Colbert was mildly hilarious about the Texas textbook debacle while interviewing historian Eric Foner last night. It’s toward the end of the episode. No word yet on whether New York schools will still teach the history of this cesspool of sin.
Two nice Times Q & As this week:
1. Clara Hemphill on NYC public school admission (3 parts):
“There is no quality control on the information the schools provide about themselves. It’s next to impossible to transfer schools, so you need to kick the tires and look under the hood of any school before you enroll.”
2. Mark Kantrowitz on the FAFSA and financial aid (7 parts):
“[Y]ou should submit the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE form even if you think you won’t qualify for aid[,] because many families underestimate their eligibility for need-based aid. This is especially true at the colleges that require the PROFILE, since they tend to be among the more expensive colleges.”
And check out this one from September.
My junior year roommates had one of those “For God, For Country, and For Yale” banners on the mantle of our drafty, ant-infested common room. My non-Yale friends thought the banner was ironic, and maybe it was, but not in the way they thought. It’s the same with the new admissions video. Carve out sixteen or so minutes and see what I went through.
News about Haitian schools is still horrible and scarce. There is, however, a morsel of minimally goodish news about some Haitian students in The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s otherwise mildly insensitive Haiti article (”The biggest challenge,” says a U Wisconsin study abroad official, “may be getting the [UW] students, who were scheduled to depart this Friday, back to Madison”):
“The Haitian Education & Leadership Program, a Port-au-Prince based university-scholarship program that provides merit scholarships to top high school graduates from Haiti’s poorest areas, reported that the organization’s center, located near the downtown district, has been destroyed…[and] four staff members have been injured. But there were no reports of any deaths among students, with nearly all of the approximately 60 students affiliated with the program accounted for.”
After taking action (if you feel so moved), learn about the crisis at the Times’s expansive Haiti site, which posts this excellent list for further reading about Haiti:
Whee! It’s Education Life time. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Highlight #1:
People want to major in “useful” subjects, defined narrowly. Some employers may see it differently:
“There’s evidence…that employers also don’t want students specializing too soon. The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently asked employers who hire at least 25 percent of their workforce from two- or four-year colleges what they want institutions to teach. The answers did not suggest a narrow focus. Instead, 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing,” 81 percent asked for better “critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” and 70 percent were looking for “the ability to innovate and be creative.””
Maybe because I uselessly specialize in reading, writing, and what happened before now, I take a dim view of choosing majors based on what you think there will be a lot of jobs in four or five years from now. This seems like a bad strategy for a few reasons: 1) people get better grades and learn more in majors they enjoy (the passionate business student will inevitably trounce the unenthusiastic one), 2) job outlook is unpredictable (a decade ago, finance and education seemed blessed with unlimited growth and Arabic seemed useless and esoteric), 3) most students change majors/interests halfway through college, and 4) many professional careers now require graduate degrees. Thus, I am pretty sure that any major that teaches critical thinking and writing, and that you LIKE and will excel in, could be considered “useful.” Harvard Law School agrees with me:
“The Harvard Law School faculty prescribes no fixed requirements with respect to the content of pre-legal education. The nature of candidates’ college work, as well as the quality of academic performance, is taken into account in the selection process. As preparation for law school, a broad college education is usually preferable to one that is narrowly specialized. The Admissions Committee looks for a showing of thorough learning in a field of your choice, such as history, economics, government, philosophy, mathematics, science, literature or the classics (and many others), rather than a concentration in courses given primarily as vocational training. The Admissions Committee considers that those programs approaching their subjects on a more theoretical level, with attention to educational breadth, are better preparatory training for the legal profession than those emphasizing the practical.”
Incidentally, I’m not sure what constitutes a Times-worthy education trend, but the paper wrote pretty much the opposite in April 2008.
The US News public high school rankings came out at midnight Wednesday. Meant to compete with Newsweek’s less-than-useful annual list (which ranks schools solely on AP/IB participation), the survey is based pretty much entirely on the same thing, plus state tests, with some attention to economic and racial parity.
12 NYC schools made the US News gold list: Newcomers High School in Long Island City (#6), the High School of American Studies at Lehman College (#19), Stuy (#31), Townsend Harris High School in Flushing (#33), Staten Island Tech (#34), the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Long Island City (#35), the High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies (#52), Bronx Science (#58), Brooklyn Tech (#63), NEST+M (#64), the High School for Law and Public Service (#75), and Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (#81). You can judge for yourself how arbitrary (or not) this list is, but since no NYC schools made the Newsweek top 100, I’m inclined to think of the US News rankings as an improvement.
Also newsworthy: Stuy and Bronx Science are good schools with similarities and differences.
On the silver list: Baruch, the Collegiate Institute for Math & Science in the Bronx, Benjamin Banneker, Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy, Eleanor Roosevelt, LaGuardia, Frederick Douglass, the High School for Health Professions and Human Services, the High School of Economics and Finance, the High School of Telecommunication Arts & Technology, Hostos-Lincoln Academy of Science in the Bronx, the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Manhattan International High School, Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School, Millenium, Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy (MS/HS 141), the Academy of American Studies in Queens, the Marble Hill School for International Studies in the Bronx, the Michael J. Petrides School in Staten Island, and the Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction. There’s also a bronze list, but you get the idea.
