Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
Any place that has the Banana Slug as its mascot will either attract or repulse. At the University of California Santa Cruz, for those who are allured, there is distinctly a countercultural element, initially signaled by the Banana Slug, that is better developed as one explores what the campus has to offer.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the inventor of the Internet, has a full portfolio of high-tech ventures from accelerating molecular discoveries for new medicines, coatings, and dyes to Adaptable Navigation Systems so users (particularly the military) can navigate should GPS based systems get jammed or are not available because of geography.
Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and a graduate of Harvard’s Law School and Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and outspoken conservative who lost his bid for the Senate in 2016, ran with 3 others for positions on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the college’s second highest governing body, under the banner: “Free Harvard, Fair Harvard.”
Getting into college is a major challenge. Yet, once in, prepare to work hard to uncover your capabilities and apply yourself. College can be a fabulous launching pad to a successful career or a series of careers.
However, if college plans are not set and thought through, a student can easily get derailed:
On average only 67% of students will return for sophomore year.
Only 19% of students finish a four-year degree in four years.
For the Class of 2015, only 14% had ‘career type jobs’ lined up after graduation, and the average student debt load for each was $35,000.
This year was filled with applicants applying to Yale University single choice early action (SCEA) and all were, of course, in search of information about how they might gain an edge in the application process. What this article intends to supply is as accurate a portrait of what Yale admissions is looking for in a candidate—most of which is taken directly off the Yale admissions website—
Ken Bain, a professor of history, and an ardent educator who never stops searching for a better way to educate students in how to discover the truth, published a book, ‘What the Best College Teachers Do.’ A key chapter deals with the expectations these best teachers have for their students. On page 85 he focuses on students’ ‘Intellectual Development.’ Bain actually captured this ‘inventory of reasoning’ from Arnold Arons, a physicist at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Critical thinking entails, at a minimum, a series of 10 reasoning and abilities and habits of thought:
As made clear in last month’s notes, the College Board administered in August 25th, 2018 a test that had previously been administered in China and Korea in June of 2017. Additionally, this is one of the exams that, apparently, got into the hands of many test taking companies and was intensively studied by students throughout Asia. By most standardized testing controls, if you have one set of students that have previously seen and studied the test, and another that has not, the results are in question, and the test is thrown out, and a new test issued.
In 1854 Commodore Mathew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay and began negotiating the opening of Japan to the World. This ended of the Edo period and the downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Japan, a xenophobic and proud nation, was not willing to be sectioned off into occupied zones, subject to the whims of European, or at the time, second rate powers like the United States. So, it set into motion a massive plan to reform all portions of its civilization with the intent of becoming a world power in as short order as possible.
Over 50 years ago UC Santa Barbara created its own wave of sorts. It took a former cramped Marine barracks located next to its library and turned it into the College of Creative Studies (CCS). Placed under the guidance of Marvin Mudrick, a professor of the English Department, and a prodigy having begun his college career at 15, CCS flourished and became an institution for undergraduate independent studies, beyond what many honors programs might offer.
