Along the lines of volunteering to gain beneficial job experience, corporate employees are using volunteering for non-profits as a way to increase their job skills. Corporations have realized that it’s financially efficient to lend out their employees to non-profits so those employees can gain experience and increase their skill set while helping to improve the lives of others. After their stint learning lots in the non-profit sector, the corporate employees are more valuable to the company. I believe the technical term for this is symbiosis.
If you apply to a school that doesn’t require SAT scores, chances are it’s a liberal arts college. Smith College announced this month that they are now an SAT-optional school. This is a big deal and is an encouraging step in the right direction; I’m a firm disbeliever in the accuracy of standardized testing. I’m very, very happy about Smith’s decision to no longer require SAT scores on their admission applications.
In no way am I lessening the awesomeness of Smith College’s pronouncement, but it’s incredibly exciting that a high profile non-liberal arts university has also announced it’s decision to make SAT scores optional. Wake Forest University receives over 9,000 applications every year. They just increased their admissions department by twenty percent so as to better deal with the influx of admission applications (which is predicted to increase after the SAT-optional announcement).
You can read Inside Higher Ed’s great article here—it goes into all the details behind the decision. And you can go here to read the list FairTest keeps of all schools that don’t require standardized test scores on their applications. I’m going to bask in the glow of hopeful optimism that I will live to see the eventual demise of standardized testing.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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Catch-22 is safely ensconced in my top ten books list; it’s been there since I read it over a decade ago and I can’t imagine that it will ever be demoted. It’s such a perfect, perfect description of being caught in some bureaucratic, red-tape moment wherein the powers that be are unmoved by your pointing out of the obvious, utterly effed-up impossibility of your situation. You’re screwed because you’ve managed to find a special little corner of Rule Hell in which the guidelines contradict themselves and now there can be no forward or backward motion that might enable your extrication from the situation.
The job-hunting process can definitely be heavy on the Catch-22 nuances. This is especially true for the newly graduated. Your brain is packed full of (mostly) worthwhile information, but you lack any real job experience. Employers would prefer not to hire someone who has ridiculous amounts of knowledge but few real-world job skills. This realization usually makes the young job applicant scream (on the inside) something along the lines of How can I get any job experience if I can’t get an effing job, you freaks!
And there it is: you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. Right out of college, you pretty much have a diploma and some summer job experience to bullet-point on your résumé.
And that is why god created the internship: the unpaid, coffee-fetching rite of passage that won’t make you much money but will teach you how to do the job you want so badly that you’re willingly to work for free to learn how to do it. Internships are also invaluable networking venues; connecting with pertinent individuals in your field will be beneficial to future job searches and career moments.
Searching for internship opportunities is pretty similar to the job search process: search for “internships” on any job search site and a list of possibilities will magically appear. Alternatively, you can apply for an actual job, and note on your résumé that you’d like to be considered for the little- to no-pay internship version of the available position. What fool employer would turn down someone who’s willing to work for free? (This may not work in the law, medical or air traffic control fields).
If you’re still in college and are financially fortunate (or are really good at being poor) you can use the summer to do an internship. It’ll give you an extra bullet point on the résumé and will give you a better idea of what a job in your chosen field entails and whether you actually want to continue pursuing this career. Colleges and universities always have some informed person (librarian, career advisor, department secretary, etc.) who can hook students up with internship links, info, ideas and lists.
Thursday May 22nd 2008, 12:35 pm
Filed under: Education, NCLB
I wrote a post a few weeks ago applauding a Seattle middle school teacher who protested the No Child Left Behind-infused standardized tests by refusing to administer them to his students. I loathe the NCLB act and all the destruction and misery it has wrought. It is evil and no good has (or will) come of it. Tom Chapin managed to make a little cup of sarcastic lemonade out of all the politicians-screwing-up-education lemons.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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I’ve explained my utter disdain for the current state of the college admissions process here and here and here and also here. It’s completely warped and fubar and several other descriptive expletives that I probably shouldn’t write on a site devoted to all things educational.
Mr. Sam Jackson over at The Sam Jackson College Experience, in his powers-for-good brilliance, has come up with a way to aggregate many students’ experiences with the admissions process so as to bring said experiences to the attention of postsecondary institutions and (hopefully) have some changes made for the better. He, along with myUsearch, is offering a $1000 College Admissions Frustration Scholarship to the student who writes the essay best answering these questions:
What has been the most frustrating part of your college admissions process? Why is it important for colleges and universities to change this? What suggestions do you have for colleges and universities to try to relieve your frustration and the frustration of your fellow students?
Sam started his blog as a high school student when he was in the throes of his own personal college admissions process hell, and is continuing to try to point out to the powers that be which bits of the process are warped and what might be done to change the warpiness for the better. See? Using his powers for good.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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Monday May 19th 2008, 1:43 pm
Filed under: College
Whenever possible, I like to point out educators who have used their powers for good. Samuel Mockbee was absolutely one of the exceptional ones. Before leukemia got the better of him in 2001, he was an architecture professor at Auburn University and was the co-founder and co-director of the socially- and ecologically-conscious Rural Studio program.
The intention of the program at its inception in 1993 was (and still is) to teach students in Auburn’s Design, Architecture and Construction Program to design and build homes and community buildings for low-income residents in the Hale County region of Alabama. (Hale County is best known as the impoverished area in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.) Students are challenged to use as many recycled and reclaimed materials as possible when building the homes. Mockbee taught his students that “it’s got to be warm, dry, and noble.”
I have the book Andrea Oppenhe Dean wrote about the program and the resulting projects and it’s beautiful. There is nary a standard structure to be found. I wanted it for the photography (and because I’m obsessed with anything even vaguely related to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men or Walker Evans), but I got sucked in when I started reading the introduction. It’s an incredible story, and I’m happy it’s real and is still occurring.
Trying to decide whether to attend a community college or a university right out of high school is a question worthy of pondering. I’ve attended both (university, then CC, then university) and each has its pros and cons.
Class Size
Community Colleges tend toward fewer students per class, which means more student/teacher interaction. This is good for students who like access to their instructors so they can ask questions and avoid getting lost (in the course material or in the shuffle).
Universities usually have massive auditoriums full of a few hundred students, all of whom are trying to keep their heads above water and have hordes of fellow student to compete with for the prof’s office hours. Higher level courses have smaller class sizes (the riff-raff have been weeded out and those left have proven their mettle).
Campus Housing
Community Colleges rarely have on-campus housing to offer.
Universities generally have one or more version of campus housing in order to accommodate students, grad students, faculty, married students, etc.
Expense
Community College will put less of a dent in your college fund.
University tuition costs vary depending upon whether they are public or private, but are more expensive than community colleges.
Caliber of Instruction
At any school there are the amazing instructors and the dismal ones. It’s just the way it goes. I have experienced both kinds at two-year and at four-year schools.
A lot of great instructors teach at community colleges because they actually want to teach and not do the whole publish-or-perish game. I’ve had community college instructors who were there because they wanted to teach at a college-level and they were effing good at it. They could break down some utterly confusing and complicated calculus or chemistry or physics moment into its most simplified, basic form and with one eloquent statement sweep it up, explain it, and have it all fall into place, fully comprehended, in my head.
I’ve had university profs who were so busy with their research (which is, unfortunately, the only way to achieve and maintain professor status) that they were more like silent partners in the course and their TA’s did the actual teaching and question-fielding. But I’ve also had ass-kicking professors who clearly went into their chosen field because it is the thing that makes their world complete and they are happiest standing in classroom explaining their idea of perfection to college students.
Architecture
Community Colleges are rarely architecturally stunning as they tend to lack both real estate and funding.
University architecture is what we all think of when we picture a college campus: the buildings vary depending upon the decade in which they were built, but overall a university campus is usually far superior to its community college counterpart.
Transition Issues
The transition from high school to a community college is easier, but you miss out on all the dorm parts.
Jumping from high school to college isn’t as smooth as it could be, but moving away from home when you’re a barely legal adult and living sans parental supervision in a puke-infested dorm is the American version of painfully unmentionable tribal rites of passage. It’s a grow-up-quick, sink-or-swim, survival-of-the-fittest situation and it is what memories are made of.
Degrees Obtainable
Community colleges offer Associate of Arts degrees, nothing higher. However, they are extremely useful as a means to a transfer end: most general ed. coursework that a university requires of its freshmen and sophomores can be taken at a community college.
At a university you can be educated to within an inch of your life: they offer Bachelor’s degrees, Master’s degrees and Doctorates. Go crazy.
College Life
Little or none at a community college.
Lots at a university. Sports, clubs, bonding with fellow collegians, you name it.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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According to this article in the CS Monitor, more and more parents are keeping their kids home and sending them to virtual schools in which the teachers and coursework are accessed online. Any extra supplies are sent by mail to the students’ homes. One mom describes the idea of sending her kid to a virtual school as “the 21st-century, middle-class version of the private tutor.”
Kids who attend virtual schools can spend the extra time on the subjects they have a harder time grasping, and can more speedily attack the subjects they’re comfortable with. In an actual classroom, the teacher has the difficult job of having to walk that middle road: teaching at the average students’ learning pace. The unavoidable results of this are that the kids who are having a tough time get left behind, which affects them academically as well as socially and emotionally, and the kids who understand the information immediately can end up feeling bored and unchallenged.
The idea of sending kids to virtual school is gaining popularity:
Enrollment in online classes last year reached the 1 million mark, growing 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning. That’s just the start, says a new paper by the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Its authors predict that by 2019 half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online.
But, as with every new notion, the implementing of it often involves some working out of the inevitable kinkage. Monitoring learning hours accurately, issues with funding, and having better “official oversight” in place is still being worked out. I think it’s worth the effort to have it be a workable option for kids who either don’t have access to adequate schools, or who don’t fit into their available school for whatever reason.
I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with a decent public school system, and (so far) I have the time and energy to be there when my daughter is doing her homework and to spend time helping her with her extra reading every day. Which is all by way of saying I feel confident that between her day at a good public school and being home in the evenings with her not-utterly-exhausted parents, my kid is going to be covered on all educational fronts.
However, if Seattle schools sucked or if my daughter had issues that I didn’t feel the public education system was handling effectively, I would be stoked of I had solid online options available.
I’ve explained my utter disdain for the current state of the college admissions process 
