Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

Is Harvard “turning the tide” in admissions to Ivy League schools?

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Harvard Turning the Tide - This report recommended sweeping changes to the college application process. Are there any changes in the Harvard application for Harvard's own admissions since the release of the report?

CAMBRIDGE, MA – MAY 29: Students of Harvard University gather for their graduation ceremonies on Commencement Day on May 29, 2014 in Cambridge, MA.

Harvard got a lot of positive press last year when it announced its report, Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern For Others And The Common Good Through College Admissions. The Harvard Turning the Tide report found the current college admissions’ process is damaging to students. As Harvard states on its website, this report is “the first step in a two-year campaign that seeks to substantially reshape the existing college admissions process.” One year in on a two year campaign, has the Harvard admission process changed?

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National Merit Scholarship Confirming SAT Score

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National Merit confirming SAT score - how to calculate the National Merit Selection Index score for the SAT and predict a likely required score.What are the National Merit score requirements? To become National Merit Finalist, both PSAT and SAT scores are required. Students who reach the required PSAT National Merit Scholar cutoff score for their state will be required to have an SAT score that “confirms” their PSAT score to advance to National Merit Finalist. I’ll explain what that means and how to calculate the National Merit Selection Index score for the SAT to get the National Merit confirming SAT score….

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Is the current education system really working?

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Are schools working if graduates can't find jobs?

Most of the United States feels like our current education system is still working. Maybe it’s not as good when they were in school, or maybe it’s better, but it’s still good. Kids in their neighborhood are still graduating from high school and getting into college.

“Good” colleges, in fact. (Whatever a “good” college means.)

But if you’re familiar with research, such as that presented in Most Likely to Succeed, you are aware that the world of work is changing, and changing at a rapid pace. The schools of today are not training students for the jobs that will be available in the future.

And if you have a top student who’s being crushed under a load of homework, you might be ready for it to change.

And change faster already before your kid graduates!…

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Fix the cause – or only treat the emotions – of student anxiety?

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Student anxiety and stress - treat the symptoms or fix the problem.A recent article in the New York Times highlights a school in the Boston area that has high levels of academic achievement. The school has lots of awards, high test scores, high rates of acceptance to Ivy League universities, and unfortunately the all too common occurrence of high rates of student anxiety. And a high student suicide rate. Another parent from our high school sent me this article and resonated with me for several reasons.

Truth test – matching up with my own experiences

It passes the truth test of fitting with some of my own observations.

It shares many similarities with our own academically competitive high school, although not quite to the same extreme. (Or maybe that is hopeful denial.)

But I also have the added insight of having relatives whose children recently finished high school in the Greater Boston area (but a different school.) …

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National Merit Semifinalist PSAT score predictions

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National Merit Semifinalist PSAT score predictionsNational Merit Semifinalist PSAT score predictions

National Merit Semi-Finalist qualifying scores won’t be announced by the National Merit Corporation until the September the year after the October PSAT. The best predictor is often the scores from the previous year, but scores do go up – and sometimes down. A year is a long time to wait! So if your score is close, you can’t help but try to figure out what the National Merit qualifying score for your state might be. This will help you know if you need to prepare for the next step in the competition, like achieving a National Merit confirming SAT score.

Have National Merit PSAT scores gone up or down from 2015-2016?

Since National Merit Semi-finalist cutoffs are higher than the top 99th percentile (more like the 99.5th percentile), you can’t tell if you’re going to qualify on percentile alone. To complicate matters, the College Board publishes a National Representative Sample percentile AND a PSAT/NMSQT and PSAT/10 User National Sample (this means the population of students that age in the entire United States vs. students who actually took the test.)

To complicate it further, they publish this chart for the 1520 scale score, not the National Merit Selection Index score, the 228 score scale….

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Is a liberal arts education better? – Part 9/9

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Will a liberal arts degree get you a job? While liberal arts may develop useful general skills, there's no evidence they're actually getting hired.In this series of posts, I’ve been looking for proof that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job. To start at the beginning, go back to my first post in this series, What is a liberal arts degree?

I started out by reading the information on the website PBK Toolkit, which had sources for their assertions. (I almost said “facts,” but I now heavily doubt whether the assertions are indeed facts.) When I came to an interesting assertion, I would look up the source. But I got tired of being intrigued by the assertion only to look up the source and finding it to not be meaningful. So then I jumped straight to their reference section and started going through their sources one by one. Unfortunately, I still didn’t find any sources I considered convincing.

Then I realized that there are two references at the beginning of the PBK Toolkit which I overlooked when I was just analyzing the sources of intriguing statistics I saw quoted. I’ll go back to those now.

Will a liberal arts degree lead to employment?

China is copying the United States Liberal Arts System

Here are the first two sources of the PBK Toolkit.

Eric Abrahamsen, “A Liberal Arts Education, Made in China,” The New York Times: July 3, 2012; Pericles Lewis, PBK Toolkit

“Asia Invests in Liberal Arts: US Higher Education Expands Abroad” Harvard International Review, Cambridge, MA: Spring 2013, PBK Toolkit

Maybe it’s ironic, but more than when educators in the United States say that a liberal arts and sciences education is important, when the Chinese are looking at a liberal arts education, it makes me take notice.

That’s because…

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Will a liberal arts degree leave you time to take ART?- Part 8/9

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College degrees, especially liberal arts degrees, have lots of required classes. Will that leave a student time to take classes in subjects like ART?A liberal arts degree will teach you skills that employers are looking for when they hire. When you’re researching college majors, colleges vs. universities, and types of degrees, you will see this statement often. But is it true? I was trying to find some data some data to back up that claim when I came across the PBK website Toolkit. In this series of posts, I’m looking up the references used to prove that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job.

Let’s get back to analyzing the sources given in the PBK toolkit used to justify a liberal arts and sciences degree. Here is another one of their sources:

Robert Root-Bernstein et al., “Arts Fosters Scientific Success,” Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology, Vol. 1, No. 2, New York, NY: 2008, PBK toolkit

This is an interesting study that shows that scientists who are also artistic, who actually practice some type of art or music, seem to be more creative and more likely to win a Nobel Prize. And I would agree that the “arts” are an often neglected part of our educations.

However,…

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Do liberal arts college or university graduates earn more? – Part 7/9

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Do graduates of liberal arts colleges or universities earn more? A look at two viewpoints and whether colleges and universities prepare students for jobs.A liberal arts degree will teach you skills that employers are looking for when they hire. When you’re researching college majors, colleges vs. universities, and types of degrees, you will see this statement often. But is it true? In this series of posts, I’m looked up some references used to prove that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job. I’m not convinced yet.

But before we leave this subject of liberal arts and science majors’ earning potential, consider this article:

WSJ: Grads Of Selective Research Universities Far Out Earn Grads Of Selective Liberal Arts Colleges…

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How much do people with different college majors earn? – Part 6/9

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Do liberal arts majors really earn more than pre-professional degrees? Or just specific liberal arts majors like physics? Digging into the data.In my last post, I decided that I wasn’t convinced that graduates with liberal arts degrees end up earning more than preprofessional, or professional degrees. There may be something in the full report that would answer my questions, but I don’t have access to that so I went looking on my own across the internet for more sources and some more specific data.

All I found were articles quoting these same sources that I found in the PBK webpage that I talked about in the previous blog post referenced above.

So these sources have been widely quoted to justify a liberal arts degree. From my work as a textbook editor, I know that this is a common problem. It’s not unusual to have one source widely quoted. And if that source isn’t good, then “common knowledge” isn’t based on something that’s true. While I appreciate the effort in many of the articles I cam across, I’m still not convinced.

I found an article on the US News and World Report site interesting. The title sounded useful. …

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Does a liberal arts degree earn more than other degrees? – Part 5/9

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Do graduates with liberal arts degrees earn more than those with other degrees? I analyze some sources to see if this is true.I have often heard the vague assertion that a liberal arts degree will best prepare you for a job. But I’m more interested in concrete results. Will it get you hired? That information is surprisingly hard to find. So I was excited to find referenced sources on the Phi Beta Kappa (liberal arts and sciences honor society) website, on a page called their toolkit. (You might want to start with the first post in this series, What is a liberal arts degree?)

I started out by looking at the references for statements that sounded substantial, only to discover that I didn’t find their sources to be very rigorous. (That’s a nice way to say that they looked too vague to convince me that they meant anything. They were only barely better than worthless.) Frustrated, I decided to quit reading the conclusions on the PBK website and just jump to their referenced sources and finish them in order. Were the statements on the website based on anything that seemed to provide substantial evidence?…

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