Wow. This is real.

Few things on Earth are as quotable as The Simpsons (except maybe Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy). And few characters on The Simpsons are as quotable as Malibu Stacy, the Barbie knockoff that little Lisa alternately loves and hates.  In addition to the post title above, Malibu Stacy has been known to say things like, “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” or my favorite, “Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl.”  (You can listen to fine selection of her quotes here.)

And while the vapid utterings of Malibu Stacy makes for giggles and seems like ancient history to most of the girls I work with, the very success of these same young women has had the unintended consequence of reducing the percentage of boys in college and creating a significant gender imbalance at many institutions.  So much so, it’s not uncommon to hear it regarded as a crisis.  An op-ed in today’s LAT lays it out all quite thoroughly:

After 17 years of concentrated effort to raise the academic achievement of girls, who in previous decades had often received less attention in the classroom and been steered away from college-prep courses, the nation can brag that female students have progressed tremendously. Though still underrepresented in calculus and other advanced-level science and math courses in high school, women now outnumber men applying to and graduating from college — so much so that it appears some colleges are giving male applicants an admissions boost. As a result, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is examining whether colleges are engaging in widespread discrimination against women in an effort to balance their male and female populations. Click here to read more »

In the future, we'll all wear lycra and name badges.

I couldn’t read this recent Bloomberg article packed with stats about the increase in applicant pools at most of the most selective universities, without being reminded of one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes.  In “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” a young woman in the future balks at undergoing a process that makes everyone in that society beautiful–and look virtually identical.  (And in a very Twilight Zone moment, aired exactly 46 years ago today!) Despite her protestations, she ends up undergoing it anyway and emerges looking like everyone else.  One of the classic lines in the show, gravely intoned, was “When everyone is beautiful, no one will be. Because without ugliness, there can be no beauty.”

And similarly, as every school continues to report increases left and right year after year, I fear we are moving past merely Groundhog Day, and into world where everything will eventually look the same.  I mean, even my beloved University of Chicago is reporting an unfathomable 42% increase in applications this year.  Maybe I’m old school, but I rather enjoyed the days when Chicago had smaller applicant pools than other universities because it’s applicant pool was different.  Nowadays, switching to the Common App and more marketing can beef up numbers to look good to a the board of trustees and U.S News rankings.  I just wonder what it’s doing for the kids themselves not to mention the personalities and quirks of colleges themselves.

Attention Students: This is what happens when your load is too heavy.

As high school sophomores and juniors wrap up this semester, many of them start taking an early peek towards their course load in the year to follow.  ”How many AP courses should I take,” inevitably and unfortunately becomes the guiding question to much of the decision-making.  I say unfortunately because of the focus on raising GPAs via the bonus points that are typically added.  (This is de rigueur in California.)  The idea of taking a course because it sounds interesting or challenging seems almost quaint now.  Some of the brighter students will even shy away from art and music classes for fear of lowering their GPA by getting an “A” in a regular course that’s “worth” only 4 points and thus pulling down their 4.0+ average.

Advanced Placement classes, once open to only a very small number of top high school students around the country, have grown enormously in the past decade. The number of students taking these courses rose by nearly 50 percent to 1.6 million from 2004 to 2009. Yet in a survey of A.P. teachersreleased this year, more than half said that “too many students overestimate their abilities and are in over their heads.” Some 60 percent said that “parents push their children into A.P. classes when they really don’t belong there.”

So yeah, saying it’s a mucked up system is an understatement.  The NYT steps up with nice series of short pieces from five different folks from the world of education and one shill from the College Board (birth mother of the AP program).  Most of them will leave you with a clear sense of how the AP program has deviated greatly from its original intent to give exceptional students a challenge within high school.  But since I’m trying to keep my focus on college admissions, the one piece I’ll direct you to specifically is by a Berkley researcher, Saul Geiser, who discusses the role of AP within the admissions process.  Says Mr. Geiser:

Click here to read more »

Looking at this picture, I'm not sure why exactly I loved Salisbury steak day in the cafeteria so much as a kid at old Waldo Elementary.

Yes, we all have that friend on Facebook whose status updates consist of nothing other than what they ate, what they’re going to to eat or “I’m hungry!”  (Really?  Because it’s lunchtime and that’s SO unusual.)  But oddly enough, with the recent changes to Facebook that makes profile information FAR more public than it was just a week ago, those folks might be onto something.  For users who don’t tighten the default settings, that means status updates, contact information, and even pictures can become part of the public domain.  And all just a quick Google away.

Most people could care less.  They’re not too worried about “My kitten Pookie sure loves his tuna. Lol!” finding its way into the permanent archives of the Internet.  But for teenagers, this could pose a unique problem.  It’s why I’ve asked all my students to keep their profile settings as private as can be.  There’s no reason a tech-savvy admissions officer really needs to see them whooping it up in Cabo over Spring Break as innocent as it might’ve been.  It’s all about context and sometimes, social networking sites like Facebook don’t provide much of it. Click here to read more »