I always wondered if college made me smarter. I know that summer right before college sure didn’t, but Baylor thinks otherwise. Does the SAT even measure how smart you are? Baylor University is paying students to retake the SAT. Great! You didn’t get into Baylor (probably for the best) so here’s your second chance and you get a prize at the same time! Sike. This offer only applies to admitted students. Students already admitted to Baylor get 300 dollars in bookstore credit just for retaking the SAT. If you improve by 50 points, you get $1000 a year via a merit award. That’s pretty nice of Baylor seeing as their median accepted SAT score range is 1140 to 1320 which is still towards the apex of the SAT score curve. Utilizing my commanding knowledge of statistics from a semester of kindergarten psychology statistics, that means that its easier to get those points in the 1140 – 1320 range than say the more competitive range of Williams College (1320 - 1520). Still, why would a school basically give away monies? To boost their rankings. Better rankings equals happier alums which means more monies for the school. Wouldn’t a better measure, one more true and useful, involve having students take the test after their first year at the school? Or hey, if you’re really worried about more students getting merit scholarships, why not include artistic ability, critical thinking, original thought not just an ability to get better with your calculator? My vote - you just bumped your score by 50 points or more? Go to a better school.
Read the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/education/15baylor.html
Library Organization
When you are on a campus tour, look at how the library is organized, it will tell you a lot about how students use the library. I know it sounds funny, but there are many ways to use a library (and no, I don’t mean that). Take a look at the Amherst College library above—all the students all lined up in a row. This place was dead silent, everyone in their own little world. There were very few spaces in this library that encouraged collaboration and interaction. While libraries should allow for quiet study, that is not the only way we learn. Plus, its no fun.
The New York Times wrote an interesting article this weekend about finance students at top at “top universities”. If you are interested in mathematics or finance, you may be rethinking your possible major in college. While I think it is good to keep your options open and get a well-rounded education, if you like finance, stick with it.
The key words here are “like” and “interest”. Too many people in the last 15 years went to college, then realized, “I can make a TON of money going into finance!” so these people major in econ and try to get a job at an investment bank or a hedge fund. And yes, a lot of them have made a TON of money.
But those times are over. If you have been following the news, there are fundamental changes happpening in banking and finance—and the people who got into it just for the money, are even more miserable than they were when they were working 18 hours a day.
Don’t choose a major because it seems like you’ll be able to make easy money with your degree. You won’t. Making money is hard, and will involve either hard work, or boring work, or both. If you do something you like, and are an absolute rock star at it, you will make money. A TON of money. Don’t be a lemming and just follow what seems like the easy road to success. Be extraordinary.
Academics are great. You go to college to get an education, but part of the education is learning how to interact with peers beyond textbooks and study groups. Here are three things to consider when choosing a college when it comes to social life:
The most successful people in gaining admission to the college of their choice do it because of effort.
We all hear about the football star who got into Yale because he runs a 4.4 40 yard dash and his dad donated a building. We hear about the slacker who had C’s in high school, but nailed the SAT and got into Princeton. We hear these stories of luck and lottery and it makes up mad, and hopeless at the same time.
But it shouldn’t. These people are the exception. Seth Godin, a brilliant blogger who writes about marketing and entrepeneurship (among many other things), wrote a great post about effort in business. His view about luck, however, applies to anything in life:
While luck may be more appealing than effort, you don’t get to choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is totally available, all the time.
If you really want to go to a specific college, and you aren’t a second semester senior already, there is good news. You can go just about anywhere you want, with effort. I know this may sound hokey, but its true, and you know it. The only catch is that it is hard.
In his post, Seth Godin outlines a way to make the effort, and I have adapted it here for you. Effort is a choice, you just have to decide if it’s worth it:
I could go on longer about all the things you could do with 90 extra minutes per day, but you get the point. If you make the effort to be an engaged, active person who is interested in the world, I promise you’ll stand out from the crowd.
I love literature classes that focus on one topic, like monsters:
Sarah Lawrence College: Ghosts, Monsters, and the Supernatural in Japanese Fiction
Semester: Spring
In this course, we will read translations of Japanese stories ranging from the ninth century to the present that feature ghosts, monsters, and other supernatural elements. We will explore various ways of examining Japanese fiction of the supernatural. For example, how do Edo period (1600-1867) tales of the strange and mysterious (kaidan) link urban centers with the countryside? What is the relationship between orally transmitted tales and written texts? We will consider both literary and psychoanalytical theories to help us analyze the boundaries between life and death, human and nonhuman, female and male, and the limits of time and space in these narratives. Readings include works by Ueda Akinari, Izumi Kyo_ka, Lafcadio Hearn, Akutagawa Ryu_nosuke, Edogawa Rampo, Enchi Fumiko, Abe Kobo, Murakami Haruki, among others. Several Japanese films will complement our reading of these texts.
