Nerd News: Race-Based Admissions at UCLA

Professor Whistleblower.

Satire Alert: The Onion vs. College Admissions

Does this kind of savagely incisive truth-telling even count as satire anymore?

Question: "Will Asians Kill Race Preferences in California?"

KILL THEM WITH FIRE.  Schadenfreudelicious phrase in the story: "spontaneous Asian-American backlash."  Let me tell you something, people: Do NOT screw with Asians with it comes to getting a good education.  (But what do I know, right?  According to all the race-preference academic crowds, I'm just a white girl.)

Nerd News: UK University Admissions Service Sells Access To Student Data

Selling out to the tune of 12 million pounds sterling.

Nerd News: Failing Liberia's University Entrance Exam

That can't be good!

Chinese Nerd News: Exams, Cheating, and Riots, Oh My!

*facepalm*

Nerd News: When College Admissions Essays Go Viral

Do you really want people reading stuff you wrote when you were 17 and clueless?

Ivy League Admissions and Asian American Students

*Sigh.*  

RELATED: Entrance exam issues at Stuy earlier this year.

Nerd News: College Admission Bias and Asian-American Students

This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last.  When confronted with those "identify your race" survey questions, I always refuse to mark anything.

Nerd News: UCLA Mistakenly Congratulates 894 Students

Oh, that's just bad: "Congrats, you've been admitted to UCLA! ... Just kidding, sorry, my bad."  I also smell a lawsuit.

Nerd News: "Don't Identify Yourself as 'Asian' On College Apps"

Yet another depressing/infuriating story about stupid identity politics, academic stereotyping, and race-based bias in college admissions. It's always nice to be reminded that I'm just one of those "boring academic robots."  Yes, the story uses that actual phrase!

Nerd News: the Long Island Exam Cheating Scandal

UGH.

Nerd News: Cheating on the SAT

The infamy of this standardized exam is matched only by the history of cheating on it (and by the college admissions process that uses these exam scores).  Of course, every major exam system in history has had its history of cheating. (One of my favorite stories is from medieval China's bureaucratic entrance exams, during which some enterprising folks smuggled in answers inside steamed buns.)

Public Service Announcement: Reverse Discrimination Is Still Discrimination

I'm looking at you, University of Wisconsin!  And yet ... is anyone really surprised who knows anything about higher ed today?

Nerd Notes: Time to Get Rid of Affirmative Action?

Hmmmm. Well, yeah.  One of my recent campus memories is a white male telling me, with perfect seriousness and sincerity, that in the minorities/diversity game, "Asians don't count."

Nerd Fun and Satire Alert: Rich Kids at College

Check out this British spoof!  Headline: "Rich parents could soon be offered the chance to waste up to £100,000 buying Oxbridge degrees for their cretinous children."

Nerd News: Lunacy in College Admissions

Heh!

Historical Nerd News: A Forgettable College Application Essay

Read this high school student's essay for his application to Harvard.  Are you impressed?  Should you be impressed?  It's a totally boring, banal essay:

The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a "harvard man" is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.

You might be amused, though, to know who wrote it.

Nerd News: Teachers' Union Skulduggery in Massachusetts

CONTEMPTIBLE (via Betsy Newmark, an AP History and Government teacher in North Carolina):

In Wrentham, Massachusetts, the teachers and the school board have not been able to reach an agreement on salary disputes. The teachers are demanding a 28% increase over the next three years. No community can afford that sort of jump in payroll even in the best of times. The teachers union hasn't called a strike because that would be illegal and they'd be liable for fines. But they have decided to take what actions they can in order to put pressure on the school board. They're refusing to work with students on independent study classes that they'd previously agreed to. They're not entering grades into a system that allows parents to check on their children's grades. But most unforgivable of all, teachers are refusing to write recommendations for seniors applying to college.

A 28% increase?  In the depths of a massive lingering recession?  Are these people mad?  Still, the worst of it all is the willful use of students as what amounts to little better than hostages.  More from an editorial in the Boston Globe:

... it’s utterly reprehensible that any teacher anywhere put students in the middle of a negotiation. We know teachers should be paid better, but towns are strapped. Parents are losing jobs and taking pay cuts. Nobody can afford higher taxes and princely raises.

So some teachers are throwing petty little tantrums, hurting students they are supposed to help, and giving a bad name to a very honorable profession.

TRUE DAT.

Nerd News: Legacy Admissions at Universities

Hmmmmm. But is it really "affirmative action for the rich"?