the Sam Jackson College Experience

Two weeks ago I outlined all the courses I was taking this semester, and a few days ago announced that I was going to become a complete recluse while I worked on my final papers and studied for tests. Let’s combine those two thoughts, and take a look at what my finals schedule and workload looks like. This is not exactly typical, thankfully. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to do it all!

In the order that the final exams are due:

• May 2nd (already due): 15-18 page paper for EP&E 353, Critique of Political Violence. I wrote 17 pages exploring the possibility of “nonviolent nonviolence in a violent world.”

• May 5th: 20 page paper for EP&E 440, Nonviolence and Political Power in the Twentieth Century. I am writing a paper questioning the Universality of Eastern European nonviolent movements 1920-1980 and tracing the disconnects between universality in theory and universal practicability, comparing successful 1980s nonviolent movements with unsuccessful antecedents and comparing with Gandhi and MLK.

• May 6th: 3 hour comprehensive French FR139 final, 9 am sharp… on science hill. Why my french final is in Sloane Physics Laboratory, I don’t know. I just resent the fact that it’s about 20 minutes away.

• May 6th: 10-15 page Sociology SOCY015 research paper. This is why I was running that survey for current Yale students. Collected the data, now have to analyze it, compile literature, write about findings.

• May 12th: EVST 245: 3 hour environmental studies final, wherein I will have to come prepared to regurgitate my prepared response on how to develop an effective global environmental governance scheme. So, basically, save the world.

So… that’s why I shouldn’t be blogging right now, why I’m going to stop blogging right now, and why I could be a little bit happier… wish me luck!

0_o

This is what one of my professor’s did today–not with any ill intent, but with potentially catastrophic results!

Step 1: Assign a 20 page long research paper, worth 70% of the course grade. Have it be due May 5th.

Step 2: On April 22nd, send out this e-mail (names changed):

Dear [course] students,

In response to queries:

The paper is due this Thursday. You may bring it to class, or if need be, bring it by 5 pm to room # of [building]. Give it to [name] at the main desk, or, if she is not there, anyone else in the office.

The papers will be graded and returned to [name] by May 11, and will be there in the fall if you don’t get them this spring.

Also — don’t forget! — in addition I want an electronic copy.

Best,

[Professor]

Step 3: Success! Fewer papers to grade because, imagining themselves to have only 2 days to complete their probably unstarted 20 page papers, the students’ heads have all exploded.

Step 4: For plausible deniability, send out another e-mail, a little bit later, acknowledging your mix-up:

Dear [class] Class:

Big mistake on my part! i confounded our due date with that of my other class. The real due date is May 5, with the same procedures to be followed as in the last e-mail. Don’t forget the electronic version.

Sorry!

[Professor]

Aiee!!! In all fairness, this was just a simple mixup between two classes’ final paper due dates, and not some ingenious attempt to drive part of the class insane, but it certainly caused me a fair amount of moral trauma! I read of the message just before going to a meeting with another professor to discuss topics for a separate 18 page paper, and was somewhat visibly shaken… : ( Still, the “oops” e-mail did come only 15 minutes afterwards, so that limited the time in which any drastic actions could have been taken.

Still, a message to all professors around finals time: be careful, please! For the sake of your students. : )

This is just a quick post to congratulate all those who were just accepted regular decision to Yale for the class of 2012. This is a great achievement! Some of you will come to Bulldog Days, some (like me) won’t, and some of you will decide to go somewhere else altogether.

It’s also just a note to say that even if your heart was set on Yale, and you were rejected or waitlisted, all is not lost! The dirty secret of college admissions is that people tend to be happy wherever they go, and what’s more, actually going to a school like Yale has no causal impact on your success or chances in life or etc–you control that, and statistically you’re just as able anywhere else (as shown by analysis of people who get into Yale, but choose to go elsewhere).

I’m reposting below a message from a fellow member of 2011, originally posted before SCEA decisions in December. Also, if you I know you in real life and you got in or even if you didn’t, please let me know because I am anxious to see if you might be joining me next year… you know who you are! Without further ado:

Hi! As a class of ‘11 yalie, i can tell you that lots of people on campus are excited that in a little over a day there will be several hundred new prospective yalies! As a former SCEA applicant, i can also understand how anxious many of you are right now. So before you log on to admits.yale.edu and get what you may think is the most critical result of your life up to this point, i wanted to share some thoughts.

Yale was my absolute first choice when i applied early action. I wanted to be in the northeast, the campus is beautiful, the residential college system really does work (ie, i don’t want to imagine what this semester would have been like if i didn’t have berkeley, but that’s beyond the point of this note), and as much as i hate to admit it, the huge endowment and name are big selling points. Yale also has its share of flaws, and if you have a romantic notion of a perfect life following your admission (as i did), you’ve been misled.

I don’t mean to tell you that you shouldn’t be excited about tomorrow. Yale is a great college and you’ve accomplished something very difficult if you’re accepted. What i do think you should know is that i’ve often thought i could have been just as satisfied, if not more satisfied, with a different college experience. Yale isn’t a perfect place, and yale isn’t “the one.” So if tomorrow at fiveish (for the most eager among you, i believe you could access the results at around 4:15 last year) you don’t see a big blue screen with a bulldog replacing the A in YALE, know that life is not over. Know that for most of us there really is no “one,” and that your college experience will be what you make of it. Know that my sister, who is every bit as smart as i am but went to a college that US News and World Report ranks below their top fifty liberal arts colleges, had a more satisfying college experience than i’ve had this semester. Know that Yale is a great place with interesting people and lots of options, but know that there are lots of great places with similar resources. Know that four years from now, you’re only going to have had one college experience and the quality of that experience is mostly dependent upon the attitude with which you approach it.

So for those of you who do see the bulldog tomorrow, know this: you are very lucky. Visit Yale, live our lives for a few days, and decide if this is the right place for you. The large majority of you will come to that conclusion, and that’s a testament to the magic of Yale. For those of you who don’t see that bulldog, it’s imperative that you embrace what i could not: If you had a realistic shot at Yale, you’re in very good shape and will be admitted to many other colleges, likely including several of Yale’s peer schools. What’s more (and more important), wherever you end up, your experience is contingent upon your outlook and actions more than anything else. There is no “one”, and the one you choose is just as likely as anywhere else to be the absolute best experience possible for you.

Best of luck, wherever tomorrow takes you.

~A bulldog ‘11

I don’t agree with every word, but it’s a pretty good message. To prospective students reading: let me know how things turn out! I am always interested in the going-ons of my readers, really. I hope everyone gets what they want, but that sadly can’t be the case. Just remember that what makes your college experience great is not your college–it’s you.

[message originally posted in December]

One of the most popular posts ever written for this blog was the one in which I wrote about the finer details within the 2006 Senior SAT College Board data. In a way, I am very much a beneficiary of the same standardized-testing and college admissions stresses which I rail against. However, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to provide clear and accessible information about the 2007 Senior SAT data–information which will help de-stress applicants, hopefully, and also raise awareness of some of the ways in which the SAT is biased and why we should think twice before judging people on their SAT scores.

I’m going to break it up into a few posts, starting with this one about some general data for the SAT I: Reasoning, with another on percentiles and more detailed demographics, and one more about the SAT II subject tests.

There’s a lot of information in the total national report to cover, so I’ll start with the big picture and hit the most important tables. If you’re interested in the whole report, it’s worth checking out. I aim to give a narrative overview of what is going on in all the most important tables of that 18 page document, so if you don’t want to stare at numbers but want to know what’s going on… keep reading. Numbers given are in Critical Reading / Mathematics / Writing , or complete SAT I reasoning composite score out of 2400 maximum.

The College Board says this data can be used to

• interpret scores of individual students within the broader context of data aggregated across groups of collegebound seniors;
• study changes over time in the characteristics of students taking SAT tests; and
• look at year-to-year educational and demographic changes in this population, along with changes in test performance.

So let’s do the last two, and individual readers can do the first with their own scores or whoever’s scores they happen to have handy, if they want.

First things first–scores dropped for the second year in a row. These scores are “within the expected range” over the long term, but this continues the trend seen with the introduction of the “new” SAT last year. What does it mean? Nothing that should matter on an individual level–the test, in its new longer and more expensive format, is unlikely to change again any time too soon.

Of the 1,494,531 people who took the SAT, with an average composite score of 1511 (502 Critical Reading, 515 Mathematics, and 494 Writing), 53% were female and 46% were male; this mirrors results from last year. The score comparison is, for CR / M / W, Male v. Female, 1526 (504 / 533 / 489) v. 1501 (502 / 499 / 500): a total score difference of just 25 points, in favor of guys. Last year, the difference was… 26 points. You see where this trend is going? Females were helped, once again, by the 11 point writing section advantage in the new SAT, which held steady from last year.

Here’s some correlational information which I find especially interesting: breakdowns of who took the test when. The College Board tracks people over their high school years and indicates if they most recently took the test in Senior, Junior, Sophomore, or Freshman year. Of the graduating class of 2007, 1,001,667 took the test their senior year (either only, or most recently, as an additional sitting). 485,401 took it their junior year, and from there it trickles down with 6339 / 1124 for 10th and 9th grade, respectively. Now, the scores from these sittings? Freshman fare worst overall, and they don’t have writing scores to compare since it wasn’t around for them, but still manage a 1 pt increase over seniors in mathematics. People who only take the test their senior year are the next worse, with 493 / 505 / 486 for a composite score of 1484. Followed by, shocker here, juniors! Who go 522 / 534 / 511 for a total composite of 1567. The best scoring group are those who take the test only in their sophomore year, and their mean score is 1603 (526 / 549 / 528).

Lastly for today, a few Fun Facts, a preview of the percentiles and demographics data to come in the next post in this series:

• Of the 9% of test takers for whom English is not their first language learned (reporting), there was a 7 point mean increase on the math section, while there was a 32 point decline in the critical reading and 24 point decline on average in the writing section.
• 22% of test-takers say they don’t plan to apply for financial aid. (Why not? Lot’s of reasons, but a lot of those numbers probably should be applying, I bet!)
• Those students with coursework or experience in Italian did worst on the math section of all languages polled, with a mean score of 509–lower even than the dismal performances of “other languages.”

Look forward to more to come! Just didn’t want to overload people with too many numbers and too much text all in one place. Enjoy!

I know a lot of people have recently been coming to the site via CollegeConfidential or panicked “Yale 2012 how to survive after deferral” googling. It’s amazing for me to remember where I was last year this time (Exeter, NH) what I was doing (finals) and how I was feeling (more stressed than any other time in my entire life, ever). This past week I popped my head in at CC a little to try to tell people to 1. get off CollegeConfidential at least for the duration of the waiting time and 2. to try to instill some hope and raise some spirits (things which CC often takes away and dashes, I might add).

I saw the other day a post by a fellow yalie (name withheld by request) who wrote a post that I will reprint here, because I think it sends a very good message. I will definitely be writing one of my own as soon as I am done with this massive paper weighing over my head, but for now you’ll just have to hear from an anonymous fellow yalie. I don’t agree with every word, but it’s a pretty good message.

Hi! As a class of ‘11 yalie, i can tell you that lots of people on campus are excited that in a little over a day there will be several hundred new prospective yalies! As a former SCEA applicant, i can also understand how anxious many of you are right now. So before you log on to admits.yale.edu and get what you may think is the most critical result of your life up to this point, i wanted to share some thoughts.

Yale was my absolute first choice when i applied early action. I wanted to be in the northeast, the campus is beautiful, the residential college system really does work (ie, i don’t want to imagine what this semester would have been like if i didn’t have berkeley, but that’s beyond the point of this note), and as much as i hate to admit it, the huge endowment and name are big selling points. Yale also has its share of flaws, and if you have a romantic notion of a perfect life following your admission (as i did), you’ve been misled.

I don’t mean to tell you that you shouldn’t be excited about tomorrow. Yale is a great college and you’ve accomplished something very difficult if you’re accepted. What i do think you should know is that i’ve often thought i could have been just as satisfied, if not more satisfied, with a different college experience. Yale isn’t a perfect place, and yale isn’t “the one.” So if tomorrow at fiveish (for the most eager among you, i believe you could access the results at around 4:15 last year) you don’t see a big blue screen with a bulldog replacing the A in YALE, know that life is not over. Know that for most of us there really is no “one,” and that your college experience will be what you make of it. Know that my sister, who is every bit as smart as i am but went to a college that US News and World Report ranks below their top fifty liberal arts colleges, had a more satisfying college experience than i’ve had this semester. Know that Yale is a great place with interesting people and lots of options, but know that there are lots of great places with similar resources. Know that four years from now, you’re only going to have had one college experience and the quality of that experience is mostly dependent upon the attitude with which you approach it.

So for those of you who do see the bulldog tomorrow, know this: you are very lucky. Visit Yale, live our lives for a few days, and decide if this is the right place for you. The large majority of you will come to that conclusion, and that’s a testament to the magic of Yale. For those of you who don’t see that bulldog, it’s imperative that you embrace what i could not: If you had a realistic shot at Yale, you’re in very good shape and will be admitted to many other colleges, likely including several of Yale’s peer schools. What’s more (and more important), wherever you end up, your experience is contingent upon your outlook and actions more than anything else. There is no “one”, and the one you choose is just as likely as anywhere else to be the absolute best experience possible for you.

Best of luck, wherever tomorrow takes you.

~A bulldog ‘11

[Originally on CC here]

Good luck again to everyone waiting. Try to stay sane. I know that by 24 hours until results were out, I had literally started counting minutes, and that by 12 hours before decisions I was counting–I wish I was kidding–every second… try to avoid that, and try to relax, if that’s at all possible.