As high school seniors start their applications for college, the U.S. News and World Report's recent article might be helpful. They interviewed admissions officers about their pet peeves when it comes to admissions interviews and applications.
Some things to avoid during the college application process:
- Being rude to staff members
- Having unrealistic expectations
- Feigning enthusiasm to score points
- Allowing your parent to apply for you
- Missing deadlines
- Not following directions
Read more here.
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The Daily Beast reported the top ten trends that college admissions officers noticed during this year’s season of acceptances and rejections. Read in detail about each trend here.
1) 2011 Was the Hardest Year to Get into College—Ever
2) College Applicants Are More Interested in Southern Schools
3) International Student Applications Are Surging
4) Ivy League for Graduate School Is the New Goal
5) Applicants From Technology Havens Have the Admissions Edge
6) The Waitlist Is Huge This Year
7) More Applicants Are Interested in Creative Writing
8) Homeschoolers Are on the Rise
9) More Californians Are Applying Out of State
10) Public Schools Are Accepting More Out-of-State Students
In the fashion of WikiLeaks and branded with the catchy slogan, “Keeping Education Honest,” anonymous founders recently launched UniLeaks - a site looking for “restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance,” that is connected to higher education or an agency working in partnership with a college or university. The site details hyper-vigilant guidelines about how to submit very sensitive information.
The site is very particular in the information that it will use. UniLeaks journalists will use the documents that people send in as sources for their articles. “We absolutely do not accept rumor, opinion, other kinds of first-hand accounts or material that is publicly available elsewhere...It’s not news if it has been publicly available elsewhere first, and we are a news organisation.” UniLeaks also has a YouTube channel.
It’s hard to tell what kind of information the site will get, as the “repository” section only has one article so far, but from the precautions the site advises its contributors to take, you can tell they expect to make some waves and expose, expose, expose.
For example:
“Our drop box is easy to use but as yet provides no encryption – so if you’re not using a secure network we can’t be assured it’s not going to be intercepted.”Read more...
“If you post it to us, a good option is to encrypt the USB file/CD file and then contact us at a later date via live online chat with the encryption pass-phrase. That way if the post is intercepted, the data can not be copied.”
“If you suspect you are under physical surveillance, discreetly give the letter to a trusted friend or relative to post. On some rare occasions, targets of substantial political surveillance have been followed to the post office and have had their posted mail seized covertly. In this rare case if you are not intending to encrypt the data and if the police or intelligence services in your country are equipped to perform DNA and/or fingerprint analysis you may wish to take the appropriate handling precautions.”
Columnbia University students were recently warned by the Office of Career Services that looking at WikiLeaks information could jeopardize their eligibility for government jobs. The initial email sent to the student body stated that the information being released was still considered classified, and that reading, blogging, or tweeting about it could damage a student's reputation for being able to handle confidential information. Some students were very concerned after reading this email, as they had been instructed to research the WikiLeak information for course projects, reports the Columbia Daily Spectator.
After much noise about this move, Dean John Coatsworth of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, sent out a new statement in response, reassuring students that they can tweet, research, and blog about whatever they want.
“SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences. The WikiLeaks documents are accessible to SIPA students (and everyone else) from a wide variety of respected sources, as are multiple means of discussion and debate both in and outside of the classroom,” he wrote in his email.
Previous to Coatsworth’s statement, students and observers were surprised at the warning. The Guardian reports, “Observers... expressed alarm that the liberal bastions of academe in the US would be complicit in restrictions on access to the documents.”
Students and community members commented on the initial move under an article from the Columbia Daily Spectator. One person wrote, “Any law professor worth his salt should know that possession of stolen property is a legitimate crime. One could also suggest that proliferating stolen information is accessory to the original crime. Smart move by career services.”
In response to this comment, another spectator said, “Anybody outside the government or military who reads that information is not in possession of stolen property and has not broken any other law. Everyone should understand this. Even leaking classified information is not a "crime," per se. Its an administrative violation that can result in getting fired or discharged from the military. Its not a crime unless you leak the identity of an undercover operative, nuclear information, or provide the secret information to a "foreign power."
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In sharp contrast to the energetic student political associations on American campuses, it is illegal for students in Malaysia to join political parties, or campaign for political causes or candidates. Four political science students at the National University of Malaysia are putting everything on the line to try and get this law changed.
The New York Times quoted Bridget Welsh, an associate professor at Singapore Management University, who explained that the law was enacted in 1971, two years after violent riots happened. It was enforced against those who supported the opposing party. Apparently, the Prime Minister Najib Razak would prefer that students focus wholly on their studies, but might try to gain support from young voters by overturning the law.
As the Times reports, these four students claim that this law violates their constitutional right to free speech and association, as well as contradicts a student’s right to vote at the age of 21. The students want to take their case to the highest court in Malaysia. Their lawyers are acting pro bono. The students risk expulsion from the university, as well as being fined, and not receiving their degrees.
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A Board of Regents news release explained that USG institutions will verify the lawful presence in the United States of every admitted applicant out of concerns that academically qualified, legally documented Georgians were being denied admittance to institutions. Five institutions had to turn away qualified applicants this past year: Georgia College & State University, Medical College of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Georgia.
Regent James Jolly, who chaired the Residency Verification Committee, told the Board of Regents, “These new policies do strengthen our ability to ensure proper tuition classification for all students – a process and a commitment the System has undertaken and met since being formed in 1931.” According to Daniel Costa, Immigration Policy Analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, policies like these are likely to show up in states that have seen a drastic demographic change. “It’s hard to tell whether the policies are due to cost issues or xenophobia. It’s an educated guess to say that we will probably see these policies in states with large influxes of immigrants.” He said that in 1990, the immigrant population in Georgia was 7.9% and by 2008, had grown to 12.5%. Costa explained that the fiscal impact of the immigrant population is different on individual states than it is on the federal government. “The net fiscal impact of immigrants on the federal level is positive. However, at the local and state levels, immigrants are a financial burden largely because of the cost of education. This could be why states are more upset than the federal government.” In the long run, Costa sees policies like this one being a cost to the economy. “If you think about it, if many college-age students are kicked out of college, they will earn less and be less educated. The will contribute less to the economy and end up costing us more in the long run.” Read more...
Just because you’re on scholarship at school, doesn’t mean you are at the beck and call of the administrators. This is the lesson learned after ex-dean Cecilia Chang of St. John’s University in Queens, New York was recently accused of embezzling approximately $1 million dollars from the university. Stories emerged of forced labor and bribery, according to the New York Times.
Chang had previously served the university as vice president and dean of the Institute of Asian Studies. In this position, she granted 15 students scholarship money in exchange for 20 hours of work per week.
Instead of university related work, the students reported being forced to do things like driving her son to the airport in the middle of the night, bringing her cash at a casino in Connecticut, cooking for her, taking out the garbage, shoveling her driveway, driving her to the hair salon, and falsifying documents. The students were threatened with losing their scholarship money if they did not perform these tasks.
Chang was fired from the university in June.
By Anna Bloom and Maggie Fazeli Fard
The following was broadcast on KQED-FM.
The California budget crisis is affecting all levels of public education, and community colleges are getting pinched in a surprising way. Increasingly, students from elite four year universities like UC Berkeley are enrolling in classes at community colleges and bumping two year students out of their seats.
Check out the video to see how these new dynamics are playing out for one community college student, Jessica Martin. Plus, you'll get to watch Jessica discover whether she gets into her dream school, UC Berkeley!
Previously:
- UC Students Turnout for Budget Cut Protest
- Recession Affecting My Education
- A College Grad's Education Bailout Plan
Reporter Kelly Chau has taken a long look at California's budget crisis, a story she knows all too well as a student of San Francisco State University, and has put together this series of interviews and reports on how the Golden State managed to loose it's luster... and what it might take to win it back.
The (Not So) Secret Origin of the California Budget Crisis
In 1978, a measure called Proposition 13 was passed by California voters in a landslide. The purpose of this proposition was (and still is), to limit the taxation on property. Since the passing of this initiative, funding for public education and other public-funded services has decreased over the decades. Many in the state point ot Prop 13 as the source of California's budget problems. Despite this the law retains its reputation as the "electric third rail" of California politics. Read more about Prop 13's impact.
Ultimate Do-Over: Pushing for a Constitutional Convention in California
We spoke with John Grubb a spokesman for Repair California, the political group whose members and employees are currently out collecting signatures for a pair of ballot measures that could change California politics forever. In this interview, he describes how the organization came to be and what its plans are. Repair California was founded as a movement to help push for a constitutional convention in California in an effort to reform the State from poor governing.
Inside the University System
Last but not least, NPR's Madeleine Brand visited her alma mater of UCLA to report on growing class sizes and the difficulties students are having paying for their tuition. This report looks at the whole ecosystem of the university, from students who are juggling class fees and food budgets to professors who have watched time they could have spent teaching students get turned into time spent telling students why they can't fit into their already overcrowded classes. It's powerful reporting that brings the human impact of the budget crisis to the fore.
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(download mp3)Some colleges have begun requesting a YouTube video along with your personal essay. Tufts University is giving students the option to submit a one minute YouTube video along with their application. The student’s video should say something about the student. Only a fraction of students have taken advantage of this option so far. According to the New York Times about 1,000 of Tuft's 15,000 applicants have submitted videos.
Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions, told the New York Times the idea came to him last spring as he watched a YouTube video someone had sent him. “I thought, ‘If this kid applied to Tufts, I’d admit him in a minute, without anything else.’”
Students’ videos range in creativity. Some simply talk straight into the camera while others use it to show off their skills. And Tufts isn’t the only school that is taking videos. Dartmouth applicants are also submitting videos without it being required.
Check out one of Tufts applicant, Amelia Downs ,who shows off her “math dances” This one minute video racked up over 6,000 hits on YouTube before being featured in the New York Times (new total: 55,000 and climbing).
(via Switched and The New York Times)
