squoogy.com

Miss South Carolina* Answers a Question

*This girl finished third. [slaps forehead]

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Something named the College Access and Opportunity Act sounds like it should be a good thing, right?

One would think that it would inherently be for making college more accessable by offering more opportunities for students.

The only opportunity this bill is offering students is to pay an average of $5,500 more in interest on their loans.

House Republicans late last week introduced the College Access and Opportunity Act, legislation that will stick college graduates with higher and variable interest rates on university loans. This will load more costs onto young students, even though student debt levels have doubled in the last ten years, and are likely to rise even higher with public college tuition rates soaring — up 14 percent this past year alone.

The government helps students pay for college by allowing them to consolidate their student loans with a fixed interest rate. The College Access and Opportunity Act would force an average of $5,500 more in variable interest payments on borrowers, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The Institute for America’s Future found that nearly 60 percent of borrowers that consolidate their loans are under the age of 35 and a quarter make less than $35,000 a year. Nearly 40 percent of borrowers hold off on buying a house because of student loan debt. These are the successful sons and daughters of working families — moderate and low income families that can’t afford to pay all the costs of a college education and are forced to take on debt.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

A list of grants and fellowships for women pursuing graduate education

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

I got into grad school!! And they gave me scholarship money! And work study! They’re paying for 1/3 of my education! YAAAAAY!

Ladies and gentlemen, my new home this fall.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Patent Issued to Test.com for Distributing and Selling Tests on the Internet

CLEVELAND, OH - Test.com, Inc., the parent company of Test Central, Inc., a provider of enterprise certification, survey and assessment technology, today announced that the U.S. Patent Office has issued it Patent No. 6,513,042 on January 28, 2003. The Patent issued to Test.com, Inc. protects its intellectual property in the area of distributing and selling tests on the Internet and sharing revenues received for the test with the test creator.

* bangs head on keyboard *

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Harvard will not charge tuition to students whose parents make under $40,000 a year.

I really hate to be cynical about this, but I wonder what the catch is.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Yahta yahta yahta …. many of the comments in this MeFi thread amused me, including this one:

Without evolution, how can the white man be superior to the black man?

Update:

Holy crap. This article was in the thread too. Apparently a successful black man was turned down for a teaching position because he was too smart and set an “unrealistic expectation”. gaah!

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

I heart the University of Maryland. Here’s why: I logged onto their website and ordered two copies of official transcripts and said transcripts are now on their way. It sounds simplistic, but that’s exactly why I love it:

1. It’s all automated.
2. My pin number from five and a half years ago still works.
3. There was no charge to send them–not even postage.
4. It took five minutes.

Let’s compare that to the rinky-dink school I went to in San Diego (USIU):

1. I must mail my request. No phone, no email, no fax.
2. Transcripts are $10 a piece.
3. There is no way to check the status of my request.
4. It takes them 10 days to process all requests.

You’d think educational institutions would be more tech savy. (In this case, they spent all their money building a big gymnasium.)

Speaking of getting ready for Grad School, I took the practice CAT GRE on the computer last night and got 200 points over the minimum requirement for the program I’m looking at. And that was with cats clawing the furniture and phones ringing and a general sense of unease. Whew!

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Drool!

[via]

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Several episodes of The Simpsons contain significant mathematics that relates to material we normally cover in our classes. For these reasons, this program is an ideal source of fun ways to introduce important concepts to students, and to reduce math anxiety and motivate students in courses for non-majors.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

“Schools could comply with a new law requiring parents to be told of their children’s body-mass index by sending the information in a special report, not putting it on students’ report cards, an advisory panel says.”

I can’t even tell you how much this bothers me. First of all, if a kid is overweight, you know it. You don’t need to read a special report telling you. Secondly, telling people “Eat more vegetables and exercize more” isn’t going to solve the problem either (especially if you follow the “Eat Carbs Until You Puke” plan the goverment endorses).

Why hasn’t anyone come up with the “Let’s boost self-esteem rather than dragging it through the mud more than it already has been” plan? What about the “You’re a great person and people love you, no really!” plan? Speaking as a former overweight child, getting a report sent to my parents that confirmed what I already knew about myself–namely that I was a failure and intrinsically less valuable than skinny kids–would have made things even worse.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |