3 of the top 12 All Time Most Viewed videos on YouTube are by Billy Ray's daughter. Come on, America!

For anyone who has seen the  rather epic battle of videos between Shoreline and Shorewood High Schools in Washington, it’s no surprise that this generation of high school students knows their way around technology pretty well.  (FWIW, my vote goes to Shorewood doing Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True.”  Shot entirely backward with even lips completed synced. See it to believe it.)  So, it was also no surprise when I recently came across this article about how Tufts has incorporated YouTube videos made by applicants directly into their decision-making.

I applaud any attempts to evaluate students on factors that don’t boil down to crude numbers like SAT scores.  At the same time,  I get nervous about this particular approach on account of two groups of kids out there.  First, there are many kids out there w/o the resources to do this.  And by resources, I don’t mean just computers and audio-video equipment.  I also mean TIME.  I watched more than a handful of these videos and several of them were flat-out terrific.  Props to those kids.  However, many of them also would have required dozens of hours of planning and production.  How many kids applying to an ultra-selective school like Tufts have that kind of time in fall of their senior year?  I certainly can’t think of too many from my own experience.  And while shooting just one might be a fun way to break up some of the drudgery of the process, I can’t imagine if a kid needed to do several of these, personalizing them for various schools.

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Maybe Diddy could do a recession remix, "It's All about the Hamiltons."

A school is already pretty awesome in my eyes when that school is one that once asked kids applying, “If you were reduced to living on a flat plane, what would be your greatest problems?”  But they just got a little more awesome when I caught a piece in today’s Inside Higher Ed that Hamilton College is going need-blind in their admissions process at exactly the time many other (and wealthier, ahem, Williams/Dartmouth) schools are now being a lot less generous.

“On Saturday, its board voted to become need blind for all domestic students — while continuing its commitment to giving all admitted applicants aid packages to cover their need.”

They deserve huge props for making such a bold move and going against fear and conventional wisdom.  It’s far more heartening to hear about increases to need-based aid than it is to merit-based aid which nearly universally tends to advantage the already advantaged.  (The 25 full-scholarship winners at Caltech one year I was there included 21 who had BOTH parents with advanced degrees. i.e. Dad with Ph.D./Mom with J.D., Dad with M.D./Mom with M.B.A. I can’t do the math but I’m pretty sure that’s hitting the tippy-tippy-top of statistical indicators for a child’s success.)  It’s unlikely, but I hope Hamilton’s decision will give pause to other elite schools of their caliber who were hoping to move away from being supportive of all students regardless of their socioeconomic background.

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 »

"Did Thom Yorke even go to college?"

Was catching up on some old email and came across a rather interesting tidbit in the Common Application’s October Counselor Update.   The 2010-11 Common Application will not go “live” until August 1st which is a full month later than the release date of July 1st in years past.  The Common App folks attribute the timing to a technical issue whereby the later date will allow high schools to submit final transcripts electronically which was previously difficult for some schools that ended the academic year late.

But as they note in almost an aside, “The later release date will also help combat the “admission creep” that concerns many counselors.” No, “admissions creep” is not your least-favorite admissions officer–though a few fit the phrase well.  Rather, it’s describing how a process that used to take place in the fall of the senior year and sometimes well into the spring, has moved all the way into the summer months before senior year in many cases.  The concern over the past few years is that kids are more focused on finishing their apps and getting decisions than being truly considerate of their best options.

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