Congratulations to my extremely clever students who got into college!
whee!
February 4th, 2010q & a news you can use
January 25th, 2010Two 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.
cringingly accurate
January 18th, 2010My 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.
paying for it round-up
January 16th, 2010Filling out the (online) FAFSA is simpler this year.
Some parents make financial mistakes when planning for college.
And if you don’t want to take out loans, these schools won’t make you.
haiti schools & learning more
January 14th, 2010News 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:
- Haiti: The Breached Citadel. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, 2004.
- Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Leslie Desmangles, 1992.
- Avengers of the New World. Laurent Dubois, 2004.
- The Uses of Haiti. Paul Farmer, 1994.
- Voodoo. Search for the Spirit. Laennec Hurbon, 1995.
- The Black Jacobins. C.L.R. James, 1980.
- From Dessalines to Duvalier. David Nicholls, 1996.
- Haiti: State Against Nation. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 1990.
ed life recap: part 1
January 3rd, 2010Whee! 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.
what I read with students
December 29th, 2009I started reading Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Guillermo Martínez’s The Oxford Murders with math and science students, because both feature mathematician detectives. But it turns out that everyone, even alleged non-readers, likes these two books.
Students are also more-or-less guaranteed to read three times more brilliantly after breaking the following spines: Great Expectations (Dickens; a masterpiece of irony, laugh and it won’t seem long), Dracula (Stoker; gory, racy, intellectual), One Hundred Years of Solitude (García Marquez; starts slow and maddening, becomes brilliant and obscene, may take ages to read, which is fine), and Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)–or anything else by Murakami (who is going to win the Nobel Prize) or for that matter by any of these authors.
more on “why”
December 23rd, 2009If you’re still writing, here is the banging “why” essay (by my sibling, a little edited/altered by my hand) I promised you:
One of the most appealing aspects of University of Chicago is the way it is constructed. I’m not talking about its physical construction (although I do love collegiate Gothic architecture). I’m talking about the construction of your curriculum. There is the Common Core, which not only forms a sturdy foundation in all areas of academic study, but also creates a community where everybody has read the same books. Imagine: over 4000 people with a common intellectual language! Besides the core, there are so many exciting concentrations. I could create a double concentration in East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Economics, and combine my love of Japanese language, culture, and history with my interest in economic analysis. With courses such as Literature and Politics in Japan and The Economics of Globalization in East Asia, I would have the opportunity to study pan-Asian econo-cultural interactions and prepare to study abroad in Japan my junior year. Alternatively, if I concentrated in International Relations and Human Rights, I could learn how to address socio-economic problems like the tensions between the U.S. military and the Okinawan people, which I studied independently while on a Peace Scholarship in Okinawa last summer.
U of C seems like an earnest and playful place where serious boycotts of Taco Bell are sprinkled with protests against pants, and monuments to atom reactor inventors are adjacent to glowing purple dormitories. It is a place where intellectualism and creativity reign. As a very serious student who is also playful and creative, I think I would fit in very well! I hope I have the opportunity to be a part of the U of C community. [end]
Regarding further resources, my new favorite essay-writing book is Elizabeth Wissner-Gross’s Write Your College Essay in Less Than a Day. I hesitate to recommend it because, as with all of her books, about half is great and the other half exudes an obsession with competition that borders on the deranged. I mean, no, you should not mention your SAT Subject or any other test scores, even if they are good, in the first sentence of your essay. And also: scoring your essay according to some artificial 100-point weighted rubric no college would be caught dead using? What?!
Nevertheless, her chapter about the “why” essay is really worth reading. Some good tips:
-Research an academic passion on the school website. Pay attention not only to the description of the major but also to the classes, research opportunities, special subprograms, study abroad, and any co-curricular opportunities associated with that academic interest (which you are passionate about!). Mention these things.
-Use the school-specific wording; e.g., at Swarthmore people major in Religion, but at Harvard they concentrate in Comparative Study of Religion.
-Size, weather, and prestige are boring, boring.
Here is another good essay-writing resource.
Now, if you’re still working, wrap it in a bow and send it off. It’s the holidays.
“why not?”: parsing the “why us” essay
December 20th, 2009Most very selective colleges ask some version of “Why do you want to come here?” Think of this question as asking the following: Are you a good fit for this school? How do you know? How much do you know about our school? How much about yourself? Do you, in fact, WANT to come here?
It’s not a fair question. Most high school seniors are not sure where they want to go to school, or if their reasons for wanting to go to a school will impress (rather than disgust) an admissions officer. Even for first choice schools, the answer might be, “I don’t exactly know why. I just like it.”
That said, some pointers:
1) The best “Why us?” essays are sincere, thoughtful, and detailed; mention your visit and any other contact with the school/area; discuss academics; and could not be written about any other school, or by anyone but you.
2) They turn perfectly legitimate, not-so-flattering reasons (”I want to get far away from my parents, my friends, and New York winters”) into equally sincere positive ones (”I’ve lived in Brooklyn my whole life, and I think it would be exciting to live on the West Coast”), if you dig.
I’ll post a couple of samples later.
congratulations, you weren’t rejected outright
December 14th, 2009Getting deferred is disappointing. Without being too big of a Pollyanna, let me point out three upsides:
1. You didn’t get rejected. Brava. Lots of excellent applicants did. They like you. They’re still considering you. A deferral means, “Thanks, you’re a pretty good candidate, we think you’d probably do well here. It’s going to be sort of a competitive year, though, and also we are in a huge financial crisis, so God knows how many people we’ll be admitting/rejecting this year and for what if any reason, and try not to hold us to it. Also…can you send us your fall grades? Thx qt 
”
2. If you do get rejected in April, you won’t care as much. You’ll already be thinking seriously about other schools and getting accepted by them.
3. If you get accepted in April, you won’t be locked in. Former first-choice schools sometimes seem less attractive a few months later. Financial aid offers start to make a difference. Waiting until you can choose freely might be a good thing.
More advice and information on early deferrals later, but you should have three priorities right now:
1. Finish your applications.
2. Pick a second first-choice school.
3. Enjoy winter break.
