Girls & Women Just Wanna Be Engineers

It's been thrilling for me to work with several young women this semester who are applying to college to become engineers. I thought of them when I watched this video and read this article in the New York Times. Take a read. Have a look at the delightful video when you click on the NYT link. 

"Who said girls want to dress in pink and play with dolls, especially when they could be building Rube Goldberg machines instead?

"That is the message of a video that has gone viral since it was posted on YouTube this week — an ad for GoldieBlox, a start-up toy company that sells games and books to encourage girls to become engineers.

"In the video, three girls are bored watching princesses in pink on TV. So they grab a tool kit, goggles and a hard hat and set to work building a Rube Goldberg machine that sends pink teacups and baby dolls flying through the house, using umbrellas, ladders and, of course, GoldieBlox toys." READ MORE-WATCH THE VIDEO

Tweeting & FB Posts Might Mess with Your College Chances....

If you have any kind of on-line presence and you're applying to college, read this piece in The New York Times, "They Loved Your GPA. Then They Saw Your Tweets."  Here are some highlights:

"In an effort to help high school students avoid self-sabotage online, guidance counselors are tutoring them in scrubbing their digital identities. At Brookline High School in Massachusetts, juniors are taught to delete alcohol-related posts or photographs and to create socially acceptable email addresses. One junior’s original email address was “bleedingjesus,” said Lenny Libenzon, the school’s guidance department chairman. That changed.

“They imagine admissions officers are old professors,” he said. “But we tell them a lot of admissions officers are very young and technology-savvy.”

"Likewise, high school students seem to be growing more shrewd, changing their searchable names on Facebook or untagging themselves in pictures to obscure their digital footprints during the college admission process.

“We know that some students maintain two Facebook accounts,” says Wes K. Waggoner, the dean of undergraduate admission at Southern Methodist University in Dallas." READ MORE 

"Positive helicoptering" or the Twilight Zone?

Just when you thought it was time to leave home and be on your own, colleges - and parents - are finding new ways to keep parents in the loop. Some say it's using parents as cheap labor, to promote the colleges. One says it's "positive helicoptering." A shrink says it's a bad idea. An educator says it's a way to keep up a school's prestige. Your thoughts? From the New York Times article on Nov. 1.

"Colleges have long sought parents’ help with job placement and networking. But now many small and medium private colleges and some large public universities (West Virginia University, University of Pittsburgh) call on parents of enrolled students to volunteer with the admissions office. They promote the school at fairs, share their experiences on parent-to-parent panels, reach out to local parents and even conduct admissions interviews.

"With assistance from a generation of devoted P.T.A.-goers accustomed to playing an active part in their children’s education, smaller colleges can maintain a wider presence and cover more fairs, attracting more and better applicants. “It is a question of resource allocation,” Stephanie Balmer, dean of admissions at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., told me. “We can’t hire enough staff to expand our reach and be present in all those places.” READ MORE

More Schools Extend Early Deadlines & The Continuing Mess...

All of us can thank Nancy Griesemer and Tara Anne Dowling for keeping the list of schools extending their early application deadlines up to date and Nancy for her reporting on the ongoing mess with the Common Application. The takeaway seems to be that if you have successfully submitted your applications, do not assume they have been received at your schools. If you have submitted applications, wait several days to contact the schools and find out if they have been received. 

FOR THE UPDATED LIST OF COLLEGES CLICK HERE (and scroll down once you get to the article):

The opening of Nancy Griesemer's latest article:

"As the Common Application calls in a support team from Amazon to help sort out problems with server overloads and explain why the system isn’t working the way it should, member colleges are throwing in the towel and extending early admission deadlines. 

"From the college standpoint, the Common Application poses a complicated series of problems. At the most basic level, colleges are worried about their continued inability to access and read submitted applications through online enrollment management systems.

"As of this writing, the Common App reports that about half of those colleges using a daily automated process to retrieve files are either testing or waiting to go live with a software fix rolled out just last Thursday. But for those with functioning retrieval systems, there are still reports of applications and documents showing up as empty files or blank pages." READ MORE 

10 Tips Before You Submit Common App

Take a look at this article just posted on the Student Advisor Blog:

Written by Purvi Mody for StudentAdvisor

There has been quite a bit of grumbling in the media about the new version of the Common Application, the main application system for more than 500 colleges and universities.

Admissions officers, high school counselors, and admissions experts around the country have all weighed in on the Common Application's improvements and the new bugs that it introduced. If you are a high school senior trying to use the Common App, don’t get distracted by the commotion.

Use these 10 Tips that I share with my students, and you too will be able to maneuver the Common Application like a pro:

    1.         Paste your essays into Notepad or TextEdit first and format them properly before pasting them into the actual application.

I recommend a format with line breaks and spaces between paragraphs and no paragraph indentations. I think it looks the cleanest. In the application, those line spaces will not appear, but they should appear when you view the PDF version of your application.

    2.         By far, the worst change to the Common Application is that you cannot Print Preview your Common Application and Writing Supplement together. 

Since there are no plans to change that functionality, you have to work around it. First, complete the Common Application and the questions specific to one school. Print out the PDF version of your application and scour it thoroughly for mistakes. Once you are happy with it, submit your Common Application to that one school. Do the same for the Common App Writing Supplement next. Skipping the PDF version may cause you to miss some errors. READ MORE 

A Word or 3 about the Common App Crisis

This is a news story that just doesn't seem to end - the problems with the once-reliable, apple-pie-and-Mom Common Application. Six weeks ago, it was unthinkable to those of us on the outside that the system would still be so fragile, so bedeviled with every kind of problem. Now that more and more deadlines are being extended - today both Yale and William and Mary added themselves to the list - it seems increasingly unlikely that the problems will be "fixed" anytime soon. Still, the Common App folks assure us that they are being fixed, and that hundreds of thousands of applications are being submitted. 

Where can you get information about the current state of affairs? Where can you ask questions? What should you do in a crunch? I'm afraid there are no good answers, but here's what I know: 

1. Facebook's Common Application page is Kvetch Central and a pretty good place to go for advice. Today I found this comment, presumably from a teacher, which I copy in its entirety from the FB page. The takeaway is that if you are having a problem, change browsers and/or change computers. Keep changing browsers, and changing. Sometimes relief comes with the second or third or fourth browser you try. There doesn't seem to be one that does the trick. Christiana Quinn from Rhode Island writes:   "Just tried to submit with a student and her essay repeatedly would only half paste in. We switched computers and browsers and got it to work, but I am not sure how students on their own are supposed to handle ALL THESE ISSUES. There is a different one every time I log in with a student. Yesterday cut and paste didn't work at all for one of my students. Different computers, different browsers, but always problems...."
2. Occasionally people on Facebook ask: "How do I send an email to the Common App? It's not apparent on the website." Answer: On the Common App homepage, click on HELP CENTER, then click on the tab that says ASK A QUESTION and click through all the possible answers. That's the support. Many people report that they only get form responses, some report that they hear nothing, and occasionally people post when they get useful information.
3. Post your question on the Facebook page and hope someone answers it.
4. Submit your applications at off-hours. One family I work with could submit the application at 2am. 
5. This coming weekend is the last week before the Nov. 1 early deadlines. Don't wait until the weekend to submit, and whatever you do, don't wait until the final days of October.
6. Check in on Twitter's #CommonApp page to get the latest news. This is from earlier this hour:

1. Sam Chen ‏@Chen_Xing_Shu1m

   Is the "testing" section on the common app preview supposed to be blank?? Can someone confirm this

   Expand
3. Max Bokor ‏@m_boke242m

   Come on common app, generate!

   Expand
4. Rachel McCormick ‏@rikkicat143m

   The common app lost my account😡😡 anyone know how to retrieve it??

   Expand

12 Colleges Postpone Early Deadline Dates

Please be sure to check with individual schools for confirmations and updates.

Thanks to the Tweeter who originally posted this (looking for but can't find the source, pls forgive!):

University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill  - October 21st

Georgia Tech - October 21

Roanoke College - October 21

Barnard College - ED Friday November 8

Columbia U just pushed their ED back by one week to 11/8.

U Chicago is extending the Early Action Deadline to November 8th, 2013

Northwestern University extends Early Decision deadline to November 8

Duke University - ED moved to 11/8 -

Marist - ED deadline extended to 11/8.

Tufts - ED deadline extended to November 8th

SUNY Geneseo - ED Deadline extended to December 1

Boston University - ED from November 1st to November 15th