Thinking About Our Education System

There's an interesting article in the NYT today about the rising costs of colleges. However, thinking more deeply, its clear that schools are getting increasingly competitive. Admittance rates are falling drastically which means higher required GPAs and SATs. This, of course, means more time requirements from both parents and students. This in conjunction with the fact that schools are so expensive now! So that begs the question, is it worth it? Is Stanford really better than it was 10 years ago? Admittance rates are half of what it was. Tuition certainly was lower. But are the classes any better?

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Raising Questions About Why College Is So Costly

By Jack Kadden

An opinion article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this week raises interesting questions about why going to college is so expensive, and points an accusing finger at professors and their research work.

The article, titled “The ugly secret why tuition costs a fortune,” is by John Zmirak, who is editor-in-chief of “Choosing the Right College” and Collegeguide.org. (A similar article by Mr. Zmirak ran in The San Francisco Examiner last week.)

Mr. Zmirak opens by pointing out: “Tuition, room and board at Sarah Lawrence College just hit $53,166 per year. That’s like buying a C-Class Mercedes every year … except you never get the car.”

He goes on to cite a study by an Emory University professor, Mark Bauerlein, done for the American Enterprise Institute, that Mr. Zmirak says “explores the open, ugly secret that most professors are paid based not on the quality (or even quantity) of their teaching, but rather on the volume of scholarly articles and books they can produce.”

Indeed, prestigious professors frequently have little interaction with students at all, lecturing to hundreds at a time, consigning discussions and grading to graduate students. Meanwhile, the research these professors are turning out is increasingly obscure and often politicized. If they’re dealing with well-studied writers, they must pursue ever more oddball interpretations of the works in order to produce something original. Here’s Bauerlein again, explaining why: In the year 2007, literary scholars and critics published 85 studies of the life and writings of William Faulkner. Nearly all of them appeared in U.S. publications, and the total included 11 books and eight dissertations. The previous year saw 78 entries on Faulkner, and the one before that 80 of them.

Mr. Zmirak notes that few professors are interested in teaching composition or survey courses because they are not helpful in publishing articles or gaining tenure, and he closes with these thoughts:

That’s why it’s essential, when making the ever more costly choices required in education, to carefully scope out each college. Call the admissions office and inquire about the student/teacher ratio and the percentage of classes taught by graduate students.

Is there a core curriculum of solid classes in Western culture, American history and great works of literature? Ask a professor how highly teaching (versus research) is valued in tenure decisions. After all, the teaching is what you’re paying for. Leave the tab for all that research to those 300 people who actually buy the books.

The Choice would welcome your thoughts on Mr. Zmirak’s thesis. Please use the comment box below.

Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes (Sarah Lacy/TechCrunch)

Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes

by Sarah Lacy on August 23, 2009

It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place.

U.S. grad school admissions for would-be international students plummeted this year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools—the first decline in five years. The decline was 3% on average, thanks to increases from China and the Middle East, but some countries saw double-digit declines in interest in a U.S. education. Applicants from India and South Korea fell 12% and 9% respectively—with students turning their sights on schools in Asia and Europe instead.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Much of the world’s economic growth—hence, jobs—is in emerging markets, the schools are far cheaper and in many cases competitive academically, and then there’s the H-1B issue. If America won’t allow a PhD just trained in our top schools to work here and contribute to the economy—why come here and take on the student loans to begin with?

Make no mistake: This is a huge blow for the United States, and particularly Silicon Valley. It’s killing diversity in graduate schools at a time future business leaders most need to understand other countries, especially Asian ones. Xenophobic, anonymous cowards may leave as much bile in the comments as they want: The reality is one out of every four tech companies is started by an immigrant. In the tech industry, immigrants have created more high paying jobs than they’ve “stolen.”

And nearly every CEO will tell you how much added cost and hassle there is in hiring a foreign-born worker—they do it because they physically can not find enough appropriately skilled workers in the U.S. (Below is an interview I did with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman about this very subject a few months ago, and he wrote a guest post on TechCrunch discussing the issue as well.)

Indeed, a recent study by the Bay Area Council, the Campaign for College Opportunity and IHELP showed that we’d need a 90% upswing in people graduating with degrees in science, technology, math or engineering to keep up with all the new jobs being created in that discipline. What created Silicon Valley was a culture of openness and there is no future to Silicon Valley without it.

You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things. Money and talent are fungible assets that flowed to the U.S.—and specifically the Valley—because that is where they were supported and rewarded.

Some people have blithely dismissed growth in markets like China and India saying Silicon Valley will always be the hub for tech; that everyone will come to us. Wake up: Because the numbers are showing money and talent is increasingly going elsewhere.

Asia’s Recovery Highlights China’s Ascendance

Another great article by the NYT on the growing influence of Asia. To most people, there's little surprise about the increasing importance of China in our world economy but the arrival of its presence may be quicker than people think.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/business/global/24global.html?_r=1

Survey Finds That Many Families Don’t Borrow for College

Repost for an article from today's NYT. Interesting juxtaposition between education and the economy. Not sure how it makes any sense but as long as people are still going to college!

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August 24, 2009, 10:27 am

Survey Finds That Many Families Don’t Borrow for College

By Rebecca R. Ruiz

Tuition keeps going up and salaries aren’t keeping pace, but a lot of families, it seems, are able to pay for college without taking out loans.

A new study titled “How America Pays for College,” done by the Gallup organization for Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest provider of student loans, found that in the 2008-2009 school year, 58 percent of families did not borrow money for college.

As surprising as that figure might be, it is a decline from the previous year, when 61 percent of families paid for college without loans.

Student attitudes toward borrowing, however, seem to have changed, according to the survey, with fewer students saying they would rather borrow than not attend college.

According to this year’s survey, students who did not borrow for college got tuition money from their parents’ income and savings and from grants or scholarships.

The survey found that for the average American family, (including those that took out loans) such grants and scholarships covered 25 percent of a student’s costs. And of the subjects sampled — 1,600 students and parents across the country — more than half received such aid.

The contribution to total expenses made by grants and scholarships is up from 15 percent last year, suggesting that students have come to rely more heavily on such awards in a difficult economy.

For the average family, the survey found, the rest of the cost came from borrowing by the student and his or her family (23 percent), the parents’ income and savings (36 percent), the student’s income and savings (10 percent) and gifts from relatives and friends (6 percent.)

This year’s survey also identified a correlation between borrowing and the cost of education. Those who borrowed (42 percent of the survey sample), spent an average of 30 percent more on college than those who did not borrow.

And there were demographic distinctions between those who borrowed and those who did not.

Hispanic respondents reported borrowing to pay for 32 percent of costs, African Americans for 34 percent, and Caucasians for 22 percent. Hispanic respondents, the survey said, were also the most cost-conscious, while receiving fewer scholarships and grants than African-American and Caucasian students.

(According to the survey, Hispanic students received an average of $4,442 in scholarship and grant aid, compared to $5,268 for African-American students and $5,021 for white students.)

The survey also sought to gauge more subjective confidence levels of students and parents in meeting tuition payments.

Sixty-seven percent of parents were optimistic about their ability to finance a child’s education in years to come. But 31 percent were worried about dwindling personal assets, compared with 17 percent last year.

BYD - The Next China Revolution?

Our posts normally are geared towards education and career but occasionally, we'll throw up some posts that are just flat out interesting. BYD is a company most of us have never heard of before. However, remember the name - there are some really interesting things coming out of China! I'm not just talking about cheap clothes either!

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BYD to Sell Electric Car in U.S. Market Next Year

By NORIHIKO SHIROUZU

XIAN, China -- BYD Co., the Chinese auto maker part-owned by Warren Buffett's company, is finalizing plans for an all-electric battery car that would be sold in the U.S. next year, ahead of the original schedule, Chairman Wang Chuanfu said.

In an interview at a BYD factory here, Mr. Wang said the company aims to use money from a planned new-share sale in China to help pay for the U.S. push, as well as for a second production line for automotive lithium-ion batteries near BYD's Shenzhen headquarters.

He said BYD wants to build up its brand name in the U.S. by offering one of its most advanced cars, the five-seat e6, before eventually expanding its offerings.

BYD, which lists shares in Hong Kong, plans to sell up to 100 million new shares in mainland China ahead of a listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as early as next year. The offering, which still needs government approval, could raise up to $500 million based on current prices.

One source of Mr. Wang's confidence in attacking the U.S. car market is BYD's ties with MidAmerican Energy Holding Co., the unit of Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that paid about $230 million for a 9.9% stake in BYD.

MidAmerican Chairman David Sokol, who was also interviewed in Xian, said MidAmerican is ready to assist BYD's foray into the U.S. auto market in "any way we could be helpful." MidAmerican also might invest in BYD's new initiatives in the U.S., which, in addition to automobiles, could involve solar panels and battery technology for power utilities.

Mr. Sokol also said MidAmerican hopes to boost its BYD stake if the chance arises. "If in the future there is an opportunity for us to continue to invest in BYD, we will be happy to increase our stake over time, but we will do it in cooperation with BYD," he said. Mr. Wang said an increase is "negotiable."

The BYD e6 is a five-seat electric-powered passenger car. The company says it takes about seven to nine hours to fully charge when plugged into a regular home outlet. BYD already sells a plug-in hybrid car with a small gasoline engine to charge batteries that is called the F3DM. BYD began selling it late last year to fleet customers but has since failed to make it available for consumers. Some analysts have speculated that problems with the car's lithium-ion-battery technology might have dogged the car.

Mr. Wang tried to dispel the criticism, saying the delay is because BYD is waiting for government incentives for private buyers in China to buy "new energy cars."

Write to Norihiko Shirouzu at norihiko.shirouzu@wsj.com

Letting Students Know They May Qualify for Additional Aid

The Choice has a timely article about financial aid. Its a good read but the bottom line is you can never start too early on financial aid. Best of luck to the upcoming school year!

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August 21, 2009, 12:38 pm

By Jonathan D. Glater

The fall is shaping up to be incredibly busy for financial aid offices around the country, as more students affected by the recession seek money to help pay for school.

But even as more people are asking for more money, aid officials say many students and parents slammed by unexpected economic hardship do not realize that under a policy recently announced by the federal Education Department, they might qualify for more assistance.

The Obama administration is trying to get the word out, advising college aid officials to be flexible in responding to students’ changing financial circumstances.

The federal Education Department has already told aid officials that in calculating eligibility for aid, they may exclude unemployment compensation. (The policy was described in a “dear colleague” letter from the Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, to aid officials.

That makes it easier for students to qualify for federal Pell Grants, available to the neediest students, as well as other federal aid.

“We would normally have to use the unemployment compensation against them,” treating it as income available to help pay for classes, said Keith Cobb, director of financial aid at Cypress College, a community college near Los Angeles in Cypress, Calif. Now, he said, “For those students or parents who have a drastic decrease in income in 2009, the current year, we’re able to adjust.”

Aid calculations are generally made based on a student’s, or a student’s family’s, income in the previous year, Mr. Cobb said. But as more people lose jobs or suffer pay cuts or other financial difficulty, the greater flexibility allowed to college officials should mean more federal money reaches more students — if students know it is out there.

Students at community colleges, which generally charge relatively low tuition, may benefit the most from the change in government policy because the federal aid they receive could cover much or all of their costs.

“Particularly at lower-cost, open-enrollment institutions, students often do not realize that Pell Grants and Federal student loans are available not only for tuition and books, but also for transportation and living expenses that help make focusing on their studies possible,” wrote Jill Biden, wife of the vice president and a community college English professor, in a letter to community college presidents last month.

While students may not be aware of all their options, many more than in years past are seeking financial assistance, according to Mr. Cobb and financial aid officials at other colleges. This academic year, Cypress already has received more than 2,000 aid applications, compared to 3,300 applications all of last year, he said.

“We’re averaging seeing 400 students walk through our door daily,” Mr. Cobb said.

Here's a great article in the WSJ about schools becoming more aware of factors other than SAT and GPA when making admissions decisions. Personally, I think this is a fantastic idea ... implementation will of course be difficult.

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Link: http://bit.ly/lWgDpl

By ROBERT TOMSHO

For years, colleges have asked applicants for their grade-point averages and standardized test scores.

Now, schools like Boston College, DePaul University and Tufts University also want to measure prospective students' personalities.

Using recently developed evaluation systems, these schools and others are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity. Colleges say such assessments are boosting the admissions chances for some students who might not have qualified based solely on grades and traditional test scores. The noncognitive assessments also are being used to screen out students believed to be at a higher risk of dropping out, and to identify newly admitted students who might need extra tutoring.

Big nonprofits that administer standardized admissions tests, including the College Board, the Educational Testing Service and ACT Inc., are also getting in on the trend. ETS, for instance, which administers the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, recently unveiled a "personal potential index" designed for schools that want to replace traditional letters of recommendation for prospective grad students with a standardized rating.

"There is quite a bit of demand for these [noncognitive] instruments," says David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. Educators say the use of such assessments is likely to grow as some schools search for new tools to recruit more minority and low-income students. At the same time, budget pressures are forcing public institutions in states like California and Florida to find new tools for selecting incoming students.

Critics contend that efforts to quantify noncognitive traits are often unreliable. And, they say, as the new systems of evaluation become widespread, prospective students will figure out how to game the answers to their advantage. Some legal advocates also say the assessments could stir affirmative-action controversy if they are used solely to give a boost to minorities' admissions chances.

Many colleges have asked personality-related questions for years as part of the admissions process, but the results were seldom scored in a standardized, numerical way, says William Sedlacek, a retired University of Maryland education professor whose "noncognitive questionnaire" has been used by various colleges and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to award scholarships. He says such assessments are reliable and that if students and counselors figure out how to manipulate them they will have to be revised. "Right now, these things are useful," Dr. Sedlacek says.

Boston's Torch Scolars

Boston's Northeastern University uses noncognitive assessment for its Torch Scholars Program, which is designed to identify applicants who show leadership potential or have overcome adversity but probably wouldn't qualify for the university based solely on their high-school grades and test scores.

Torch scholars have average SAT scores about 200 points below the typical Northeastern student, says Philomena Mantella, senior vice president of enrollment management. Still, about 90% of them stay on from their freshman to sophomore years, roughly akin to the university-wide average of 92%. Nationwide, the so-called persistence rate for freshman at four-year schools is just under 70%.

Simona Vareikaite, 20, a Northeastern junior majoring in criminal justice, said her high-school grades were good but she didn't do well on the SAT. Although she found her college's personality assessment to be "weird," it gave her a boost in the competition for the Torch scholarship. "The whole process kind of opened a new opportunity for me," says Ms. Vareikaite, who after immigrating from Lithuania started cleaning offices as an 11-year-old to help support her family.

DePaul University, in Chicago, made one noncognitive assessment part of its application process for the first time for this fall's freshman class. Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president of enrollment management, says it was mainly used to make decisions about students who were just over or just under DePaul's typical admission requirements.

Of the 8,500 freshman expected this year, he estimates about 150 got in because of how they answered four personality-assessment questions. But "lackadaisical responses" resulted in the rejection of about 50 applicants who were being considered for admission. Among the questions, to be answered in about 100 words each: "Describe a goal you have set for yourself and how you plan to accomplish it. How would you compare your educational interests and goals with other students in your high school?"

At Oregon State University, every would-be undergraduate must now provide 100-word answers to six questions that are part of what the school calls its "Insight Resume." One question, designed to measure applicants' capacity to deal with adversity, asks them to describe the most significant challenge they have faced and the steps they took to address it. Another asks them to describe their experiences facing or witnessing discrimination and how they responded. Every answer is reviewed by two admissions officers and scored on a 1-to-3-point scale.

Michele Sandlin, OSU's admissions director, says the university implemented the assessment in 2004 in part to help it attract and keep minority, low-income and other applicants who don't quite have the grades and test scores OSU generally looks for. Low scores on the Insight Resume aren't used to disqualify students with adequate grades and test scores, she says.

Nonprofits also are developing noncognitive evaluation systems. A "student readiness inventory" created by ACT is being used by Northern Arizona University, Chicago's Wilbur Wright College and more than two dozen other schools to identify admitted students with traits that might make them dropout risks, which could result in their getting extra help. The students are asked to respond to 108 statements and are rated by their level of agreement with items such as "I turn in my assignments on time," and "I'm a patient person."

The "personal potential index" recently unveiled by ETS has been piloted over the past three years in an Arizona State University effort to get more minority students to take the GRE and attend graduate school. Applicants are asked to identify past professors, supervisors and other recommenders. These people are sent a form asking them to rank applicants from "below average" to "truly exceptional" on items such as whether they support the efforts of others or accept feedback without getting defensive.

And the College Board, which administers the SAT, is working with researchers at Michigan State University to develop a questionnaire designed to measure applicants' judgment and behavior by asking them how they would respond to various situations, such as a group research project where one student doesn't contribute. A College Board spokeswoman says the company has not yet decided how the questionnaire would be administered or to whom.

Gaming the System

Not everyone thinks such assessments are a good idea. Relying on applicants' writing about themselves won't always result in reliable information, says Howard Gardner, a Harvard education professor and author who has studied human intelligence. "There is a real danger in [applicants] gaming questions like that," he says.

And legal-advocacy groups that have fought racial preferences in college admissions say the new assessment systems could face court challenges if white and minority students are measured differently. "They can't apply them in a discriminatory fashion or adopt them solely for the purpose of increasing minorities in their classes," says Michael Rosman, general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights. The group represented plaintiffs before the Supreme Court, which in a pair of 2003 decisions upheld the use of minority status to boost the chances of an applicant in college admissions decisions, but ruled against points-based admissions formulas and said applicants should be considered case-by-case.

Write to robert tomsho at rob.tomsho@wsj.com

Open Source Textbook Company Now BMOC At 400 Colleges

What a great story. Sometimes good ideas take awhile before they take off. Everyone's gotta start somewhere! Our old fashioned way? One student at a time...

-ThinkChina

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Open Source Textbook Company Now BMOC At 400 Colleges: "What did you do this summer? Flat World Knowledge stayed busy on campus and now has 40 times as many students and more than 10 times the colleges using their freemium, open-source digital textbooks. And they did it the old-fashioned way — one professor at a time.

15 Secrets of Getting Good Grades in College

Here's a great article in US News about what it takes to succeed in school. I would argue that much of this is applicable to high school students too.

15 Secrets of Getting Good Grades in College

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Grades are the measure of college success. Like the salary at a job, the batting average in baseball, or the price of a stock, your grade-point average is an objective indication of how you're doing. And yet, there's surprisingly little good information—least of all from professors—about just what you should do to get good grades at college. Here are the 15 best tips from our Professors ' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College—with our best wishes that you get all A's as you start your college year:

1. Take charge of this thing. College isn't like high school. There's no teacher or parent to remind you every day of what you need to do. So step up to bat and take responsibility. What grades you get will depend on what you yourself do.

2. Select, don't settle. To get good grades in college, it's very important that you pick the right courses. Pick classes that you think you can do. And be sure to pick the right level in required courses such as math, English comp, sciences, and languages (in some colleges, there are five courses all bearing the name "college math"). Most of all, don't accept some "standard freshman program" from your adviser. Pick your courses one by one, paying careful attention that some fulfill distribution requirements, some count to a possible major, some satisfy some interest of yours, and at least one is something that somehow "sounds interesting." You'll do better if you've made the right choices.

3. Don't overload. Some students think it's a mark of pride to take as many hours as the college allows. It isn't. Take four or at the most five courses each semester. And, unless you are very special, don't take more than one major. Each major comes equipped with 10 or 12 required courses, and you can really kill your GPA if you're taking lots of required—that is, forced—courses in a major that you're only half-interested in.

4. Make a plan. Part of getting good grades is balancing off the various things you have to do, week by week. So get a calendar—electronic is good—and enter in all your classes, exams, and papers, and professors' office hours (more on that later). For the brave, also enter in the hours you plan to study each week for each course. That way, you'll have a plan for (or at least a fantasy about) what you'll be doing as the semester progresses.

5. Get your a** to class. Most students have a cutting budget: the number of lectures they can miss in each course and still do well. But if there are 35 class meetings, each class has about 3 percent of the content. Miss seven, and that's 20 percent. And, if you blow off the class right before Thanksgiving and the professor picks the essay question for the final from that very class . . . well, you can really do major damage to your GPA for the price of one class.

6. Be a robo-notetaker. In many intro courses, the professor's lectures form the major part of the material tested on the midterm and final. So you should be writing down everything the professor says in the lecture. Don't worry too much about the structure, and forget about special "note-taking systems" (Cornell Note-Taking System, Mind Mapping, or the "five R's of good note taking"). Just get it all down—you can always fix it up later.

4-Star Tip. Pay special attention to writing down anything the prof writes on the board and any PowerPoints he or she might use. Be sure to capture any explanations given, as you might have trouble understanding the code words provided without the professor's explanations.

7. Avoid do-overs. It's a really bad idea to plan to do things twice: recording the lectures with the idea of listening to them again when you get home, doing the reading three times, copying over your notes the day before the test. Focus as hard as you can the first time and do a really good job.

8. Study like you mean it. At college, you're expected to prepare an hour or two (sometimes more) for each class meeting. This means budgeting the time each week and finding an appropriate "study environment." No devices, no social networking, no friends, no eating—just your mind up against the work. We know this can be painful—but all students who get A's do this (no matter what they tell you).

9. Double up on tests. Before each test, take a practice test you make up, with questions similar to the ones you expect on the real test. Write it out under test conditions (no notes, limited time). Use handouts, study guides, homeworks and labs, old exams, and hints from the prof or TA to construct the test. If you get to a test and the questions look surprising to you, you haven't really prepared properly.

10. Don't be a Wiki-potamus. If your course has a research paper, make sure you use proper, scholarly materials. Look to the assignment sheet and/or instructions in lecture or section to see what the prof is expecting. Above all, forget about Wikipedia and blind Google searches: These typically do not yield the sort of content that is right for a college paper.

11. "Hook up" with the prof. The most underused resource at college—and the one most likely to benefit your gradeis the office hour, either in person or electronic. This is really the only time that you can get one-on-one help from a prof or TA. Find out when your teacher wants to meet and in what modality—traditional office hours, E-mail inquiry, Skype, or even Twitter or Facebook.

12. Join a community. Many students, especially in the sciences, improve their grades with "study buddies" or study groups—especially when their cohorts are smarter than they. Try to meet at least once a week—especially in courses in which there are weekly problem sets or quizzes. Students can improve their grades one level (or more) when they commit to working in an organized way with other students.

13. Play all four quarters. Most college courses are "backloaded": more than half of the grade is left to assignments due in the last month of the semester. Make sure you're not running out of gas just as the third test, term paper, and final are going on. Some suggestions? Pace yourself, keep up your stress-reducing activities, and don't forget to eat and sleep.

Extra Pointer. Avoid extensions and incompletes like the plague. Many students, when they fall behind, think the solution lies in asking the professor for more time—or worse yet, a chance to finish the course over vacation or even into the next semester. This is almost always a bad strategy since it's twice as hard to complete the work without the deadline in place.

14. Do the "extras." In some courses, there are special, end-of-the-semester activities that can improve your grade. Take advantage of review sessions, extra office hours, and extra credit work. Especially in schools where there are no pluses and minuses, even a little grade improvement can push you over the hump (say, from B plus to A minus—that is, to A).

15. Believe in No. 1. A large part of good grades is good attitude: believing—really believing—that you can do it (and then doing it). Do not let family myths—"you're just not that good a student," "you have trouble in math and science," "your sister is the smart one"—undermine your confidence. Your college took you because they thought you could do well. Prove them right.

Bonus Tip. Make sure you get at least one A each semester. Getting even a single A will change how you think about yourself—and your prospects for future semesters. If you're at all close, in even one course, work really hard to do it. It'll change things forever.

© 2009, Professors' Guide LLC. All rights reserved.

US News and Peer Assessment

According to our sources, the US News latest college rankings are due out tomorrow and our friends over at Inside Higher Ed has a report today discussing the peer assessment portion of those rankings. By now, most people are familiar with how US News ranks colleges. For those that don't, essentially, researchers from US News ask college leaders to rank similar colleges around the country. 25% of a college’s rankings are based on these peer review rankings.

The IHE report discusses specific rankings that were done by several universities around the country. The reports raising issues about college rankings, and US News rankings in particular, are becoming so common that they are hardly news.

Bottomline, please don't treat any of these rankings as the gospel. Go visit schools, talk to students, sit in on classes - those are the best primary research factors you can do as you you begin to settle in on your final choices!

-- ThinkChina

The Best Extracurricular Activities

Planning for your activities next year? Here's a great article on one thing to keep in mind - do what you enjoy? Trust me, you'll enjoy it and more importantly, you'll likely be better at it.

ThinkChina

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What is the best extracurricular activity for college admissions? This is another one of those questions that I constantly hear. The quick answer is that there is no one perfect extracurricular activity. But the full answer requires some more explanation.

It is true that colleges don’t care what extracurricular activities you are involved with in high school. What they are looking for is a commitment to a particular activity. This can be shown by years of involvement in the particular activity. Colleges need students involved with sports, drama, music and a myriad of other activities. Find what you like to do and start doing it.

Now it may be that the soccer goalie is about to graduate so the college needs a replacement. In this case, assuming you have the grades and test scores, you may be an attractive candidate if you are a soccer goalie. However, trying to plan your extracurricular activities years in advance to accommodate this type of situation is virtually impossible.

The best extracurricular activity for you is the one that you like to do.

Courtesy of Todd Johnson

Letter from China: Shanghai Is Sprucing Up Its Image

As the gang at ThinkChina begins to plan for next summer - its good to know that things are already being kicked for next year. If you thought '09 was crazy in Shanghai, wait till the expo next summer!

- ThinkChina

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Letter from China: Shanghai Is Sprucing Up Its Image

"The city is busy preparing for the 2010 World Expo, and is reportedly outspending Beijing’s vast Olympic preparations by a large margin. "

ThinkChina Tip! Boosting Your Note-Taking Skills

Students!

Summer is in full swing but its never too late to start dusting up those back-to-school gear and skills. Here's a great article on note-taking. Works for English and Chinese and definitely applies to ThinkChina Mandarin classes!

ThinkChina Squad

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If your note-taking skills are suffering from summertime rigor mortis, now's as good a time as any to throw a new technique into the mix. Let's take a look at some new and old tools for improving your ballpoint repertoire.

The Cornell method

This oldie is a highly-regarded, very common system that makes it especially easier to retain information. By reviewing things as you go, you might even get away with less studying.

Divide your page into two columns. The left one (which could also just be the back of the previous page in your notebook) is narrower. You're going to jot larger ideas in this column: the 5-dollar-words and big bullet points. In the right column, you're going to take down as much information as possible. The right column is allowed to be messy, have pictures and tables—it's not necessarily organized. To some students, it's just regular notes. But as you go, record the main corresponding idea in the left column.

Every so often, cover the detailed notes on the right and just examine the main points and new vocab. See how much you can recite and explain in your own words. Then remove your hand and see how you did. Depending on the teacher, you might do this during lulls in the discussion or after class.

Some versions of the Cornell system leave the last few lines on each page for summarizing the whole page. Since what's on a given page doesn't necessarily group together nicely, I don't recommend doing it. But summarizing can help you with wading through piles of pages when studying time comes.

For a more in-depth look at the Cornell method, take a look at our previous guide to taking study-worthy lecture notes.

Go visual

It's tough to enter a classroom with colored pencils and still expect your fellow students to take you seriously. But unless you try it, you'll never know if it works better for you. Forget the status-quo and try something visual. Color-code with different pens, pencils, and highlighters. You might not have seen a web-style map of ideas since elementary school, but mind-mapping is hailed as quite an efficient way to group data. It needn't even be a rigid classification system—anything is better than doodling in the margins.

Switch mediums

For how tech-savvy our generation is, I still see surprisingly few laptops in classrooms. Try it out a few times and see if you like it. Particularly, if you're the type who outlines, computers let you go back and organize information on-the-fly. Laptops also let you and your classmates AIM with real-time questions about the opposite sex the lecture. There are also programs made just for taking notes, sharing them, organizing them, etc. Wikipedia has a great table that compares them all, or you can take a look at Lifehacker reader's favorite note-taking tools.

On the other hand, if you already use a laptop, try the pen-and-paper route again. Let loose a bit and see how that goes. Try scribbling out mistakes and drawing arrows everywhere. Or try one of the visual techniques above, most of which are difficult on a computer.

Shorthand

Notes are probably the only place in the classroom where internet slang is commendable. Trying some new shorthand is a really geeky way to slightly tweak your engravings and get you amped about taking notes again. Here are a few resources to get you started:

A Guide to Alternative Handwriting and Shorthand Systems
Shorthand Shorthand Shorthand

My favorite method is called Teeline—anyone can look at this one and learn a few things. It's mostly based around removing unimportant letters and making complex letters easier to write quickly.

Instead of converting entirely to shorthand, you might try translating just some of your most-frequently used words into a shorthand 'language' that takes less time to write.

If you're taking notes on the computer, supercharge your repetitive typing with tools like our very own text-replacement application Texter (Windows) or TextExpander (Mac).

Don't

Oh goodness! Don't take notes? How controversial!

Well, it couldn't hurt to relax every once in a while. Especially in small classes and seminar situations, staying engaged through discussion and questions might do you better than scribbling every word.

Here's another way to avoid taking notes: Record your lectures. Digital recorders can capture hours of audio. Sit back and just listen. After class, you can play it back at double-speed and take notes in half the time. Take that, engineers!

2009 Charter Session in the Books!

That was an awesome summer!! It was great to meet all the students and on behalf of all the ThinkChina staff - we wanted to thank all the students, parents and definitely our internship corporate partners for making all of this possible.

As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words. In this case, maybe a million! :-) For more pictures, click here

Stay tuned for ThinkChina 2010!

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