ThinkChina 2010 is Now Open for Applications!

After many weeks of hard work, ThinkChina Global Summer Internships is pleased to announce the release of our new website. Our new site has been redesigned with a fresh new look and has been updated with information about our newly launched 2010 summer program.

We invite you all to visit us at www.thinkchinagroup.com. This is, without a doubt, the best place to learn about the program and get the latest news about our offerings next year.

Stay tuned as we'll have more exciting announcements coming soon.

Hope you like it! As always, contact us with more questions or comments.

ThinkChina Squad

PS Remember, look for us on Facebook and Twitter!

Well Rounded Class versus Well Rounded Student

Was reading an interesting article earlier today and got around thinking about the concept of the well-rounded applicant. Colleges want well rounded students, right? Actually, the more selective colleges don’t want well rounded students, they want well rounded classes. So what does that mean and what are colleges looking for?

The more selective colleges actually want students who have a particular focus, or passion, in one or two areas. For instance, if a student is interested in soccer the selective college wants to see that they are on the soccer team. Ideally, the student would be the captain of the team to show leadership and might also be on a traveling soccer team. The competitive student could also volunteer helping younger students learn the game of soccer.

What the passion of the student is does matter as much as what the student does with that passion. The passion could be sports, theatre, music, dance, a particular instrument, whatever.

What the selective colleges do not want to see is the student that has tried 10 different activities but has no focus or leadership in any of the activities.

When making admissions decision the selective colleges take all of these “passionate” students and admit those who will make a well rounded class.

It is fine for students to explore their interests during the freshman and sophomore years of high school. However, by the time they reach junior year the student should decide what they have a particular interest in and start to focus on that passion.

Of course, grades and in many cases test scores, are the most important elements in the admissions process. But for those students considering the highly selective colleges the student with a passion will have a better chance of admission.

Rating Colleges by Their Contribution to the Social Good

A focus on social good never hurts anyone...

--

By Tamar Lewin

Washington Monthly

Washington Monthly magazine came out with its own college rankings today, naming the nation’s “best’’ colleges from a very different vantage point from that of U.S. News and World Report.

The Washington Monthly ratings try to measure which colleges do the most for the social good, by improving social mobility, producing research and promoting service.

The magazine’s College Guide Web site, looks at different indicators than most other ranking systems: the percentage of students getting Pell grants and their graduation rates, the institution’s research spending, its record of B.A. recipients going on to get Ph.D’s or going into the Peace Corps or R.O.T.C., and what percentage of federal work-study funds the institution spends on service.

By those lights, the top three universities in the nation are all part of the University of California system: Berkeley, San Diego and U.C.L.A. Thirteen of the top 20 national universities are public, while Harvard comes in at number 11, Yale at 23 and Princeton at 28. (In the U.S. News rankings, none of the top 20 national universities are public.)

Among the liberal arts colleges, most of the top 10 — Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Williams, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Carleton and Wellesley — are among the leading colleges in the U.S. News lists, too.

Women’s colleges are standouts by the Washington Monthly criteria, with four among the top 10. And historically black institutions do far better than they do on the U.S. News rankings.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings, the leader in the field and the one everyone loves to hate, are probably the best measure of a university’s prestige — so much so that some college presidents earn bonuses for getting their school to rise on the lists.

The U.S. News rankings have been widely criticized for giving greatest weight to a peer-assessment survey. And the critiques heated up after this spring’s revelations that Clemson University’s president rated his own university the best in the nation, ahead of the Ivies, and the University of Florida’s president rated his own as equal to the Ivies, and far better than all the state’s other institutions.

At a time when higher education is getting unprecedented attention — and tuition is reaching unprecedented heights — college rankings have become a growth industry, both in the United States and around the world. Each ranking system uses different criteria.

Forbes introduced its rankings last year, taking into account such factors as alumni listings in Who’s Who, and student evaluations of professors on Ratemyprofessors.com.

With the rapid globalization of higher education, the international rankings by the United Kingdom’s Times Higher Education and China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University now attract a wide following.

The Washington Monthly rankings, looking at the indicators of colleges’ social utility, are a different kind of effort, and an interesting one.

What would the world be like if college presidents worked as hard to improve their Washington Monthly rankings as they now do to keep up their U.S. News ranking?

Experts Point to 5 Emerging Majors

Great article on emerging majors for the future economy...

--

Experts Point to 5 Emerging Majors

By Jack Kadden

If you’re not sure that majoring in English is going to pay off in the current economy, The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a few alternatives – what it calls “five emerging areas of study” as cited by academic experts, business analysts, and economic forecasters.

The new majors are service science, health informatics, computational science, sustainability, and public health.

Some new majors arise in response to student demand, while other degree programs are meant to provide an industry with workers. Many cross disciplinary boundaries, such as combining environmental science with agriculture or bringing together chemists and computer scientists.

“Most of the interesting work today is done at the interstices of disciplines,” says Robert B. Reich, a former U.S. labor secretary and a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

The article suggests that while colleges and universities are paying more attention to these subjects, they are just beginning to offer them as majors.

Take the field of service science, which strives to study the service economy and “to prepare workers who can improve productivity and increase innovation in the field.” While the article says that 250 colleges and universities in 50 countries offer courses in the field, most of the offerings are for graduate students.

The exceptions are the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s bachelor’s of science in service management and the service-systems engineering degree at Michigan Technological University.

In the field of health informatics, however, which will work to computerize and analyze America’s health records, the Commission for the Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education, reports there are already 53 bachelor’s degree programs and hundreds more in development.

Similarly, the eco-friendly field of sustainability is gaining favor, with 70 institutions offering sustainability-related academic programs.

At Unity College, in Maine, the three-year-old program in sustainability design and technology has a practical bent. “We didn’t want to take an ivory-tower approach,” says Michael (Mick) Womersley, the program’s coordinator and an associate professor of human ecology. “We focused on jobs that are being hired for, now.”

The major is heavy on applied skills, like learning how to assess the feasibility of installing wind turbines, and is grounded by a core of physics, biology, and math. Mr. Womersley expects that his students—he has 12—will go on to become energy auditors, environmental-compliance officers, and sustainability coordinators, as well as enrolling in related graduate programs.