Back when I started in journalism (back in the era of print journalism), I was taught that every news story had to have some research, so it wasn’t just a repeat of what someone else had said. We were supposed to get opposing points of view, if there was a point of view, and if…
Category: Education
College Admission and the Difficulty of the Homeschooled Applicant
Do you know what it’s like to have your child get rejected for admission at the college he’s dreamed of going to since he was 8, where his heroes and mentors studied, and whose online courses he’s taken, and whose professors he’s worked with — and to have the horrible knowledge that it is all…
I Wish There Was Something Like Boy Scouts for Girls
After having homeschooled my son from 6th grade through high school, my daughter got a turn at being homeschooled as a sixth grader. Unfortunately, and while she kept a positive attitude, it was surprisingly isolated and lonely, despite the fact that she is a girl scout and we went to park days and teen nights….
Neil and the Continuous Mathematicians
When Neil heard that Stanford was having a celebration of Joe Keller’s 90th birthday, he signed up to go to it. After all, it was for the Joe Keller, the world’s only two-time winner of the Ig Nobel Prize! The conference was free, but dinner was $30 for students, so I told Neil I’d pay…
The Exploited College Athlete and the Revenge of the Nerds
As Peter and I were reviving a series of old 80s college movies (most of which are terrible), we realized our son had missed out on life by never having seen Revenge of the Nerds or any of its sequels. These days the people I like and hang out with are openly and happily nerdy….
The Perfect SAT Score and the Quest for the Right College
Yesterday, we got some amazing news: Neil scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT test he took earlier this month. I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s always been smart, but he really sweated the SAT, running himself through practice test after practice test, and even mastering the devilish essay which gets the best…
The College Fair
Yesterday evening, Neil and I went to Exploring Educational Excellence, a college fair, a first for him. More than anything, in the frustrating sameness of college solicitations, we wanted to hear what the unique qualities are for any school. In that, the fair excelled. The admissions officers for each school only had 10 minutes to…
The Frustrating Sameness of College Recruitment
Neil is now at the stage of his education where I’ve tasked him with identifying a few colleges he might like to attend. And so, when he started taking College Board tests, I encouraged him to let them sell his information to various colleges who think he’d be a good fit for them. Soon glossy…
Elite Universities Don’t Understand Financial Hardship
Many elite universities seek out poor, but smart students, for the sake of diversity, and they go to some lengths to seek them out and reassure them that they, too, can go to, say, Stanford or Harvard, even if they don’t have the $60,000 a year it takes to go there. However, all I see to…
The Portuguese Conspiracy
At Gathering for Gardner 11, a group of Portuguese mathematicians gathered together and announced themselves to be members of The Portuguese Conspiracy. I first got hip to this when Carlotta of the Portuguese Conspiracy finished her talk and pointed out a table which had been taken over by herself and her fellow countrymen. After that,…