the Sam Jackson College Experience

The issue of pollution in China is a very great one, and not a matter than can easily be summed up in one blog post, no matter how exhaustive. However, after several rain and then snowstorms over the weekend, the air quality today is so nice, and the scenery so beautiful as a result, that I just had to stop delaying and start writing a little bit about it.

Or, "It's not lying when admissions office does it" -- Just wanted to quickly highlight something which is not gross lying, but just mild misrepresentation. The Yale Admitted Students website has fantastic images of student rooms which are really really scrumptious and gorgeous and make you feel like everyone at Yale lives in wonderful palaces [...]

The biggest thing to happen to the college search scene in years just went public, and it's called Unigo. It is a tremendous new company which I think will really make big waves: it's essentially an online, user-generated college guide book, though that description sells it short. This weekend's New York Times Magazine does a good job telling readers all about Unigo, but I'd like to take a moment to share my story about this very exciting enterprise as well. Unigo is a must-visit site for:

1. anyone applying to college (how I wish I had such a resource!),
2. anyone at college (to tell the true story of your institution), and
3. anyone working at the college (to get an easily accessible angle on what students are thinking and saying).

Thinking about schools as possible tourist attractions seems to be in line with the marketing and school "branding" talk that I try to discourage. However, any Harvard student would counter that it's just a fair description of their state of affairs: sit down in a lawn chair with a notepad and a sharp eye for [...]

Norman Kraft of Zen Writes Inc. keeps a higher education marketing blog called "Zen and the Art of Higher Education Marketing" which I read regularly (or at least as regularly as he posts--happily, the last couple of weeks have been pretty consistent) and generally find to be very on the mark. Two weeks ago he [...]