Thursday, April 29, 2010

Washington D.C. families: Obsessed with SAT scores

Ace! NewsFlash


The D.C. area: Obsessed with SAT scores


If you have any doubt just how obsessed folks in the Washington area are with getting their children into college, you need look no further than the Washington Post’s list of best-selling books. In the latest list of book sales among area residents, the No. 1 book under paperback Nonfiction/General for the week ending April 18 was “Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda,” by Sean Hannity.

That book has nothing to do with getting kids into college, but look at what was right behind it, at No. 2: "The Official SAT Study Guide (Second Edition)" published by theCollege Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the SAT. This study guide, which sells for $21.99, is advertised as offering practice tests created by the same folks who make the SAT, as well as test-taking “tips” and advice on writing the essay, which is part of the test.

A quick glance of the paperback New York Times bestsellers on the Nonfiction list as well as the Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list, shows that nary a book has anything to do with college admissions. The top book on the Times’ Nonfiction paperback list was also “Conservative Victory,” but No. 2 was, “Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea,” by comedian Chelsea Handler. Eight out of the 10 books on the Advice list are about food, how to cook it or how not to eat it.

The SAT guide is only one of the many products -- some free, some not -- offered by the College Board, which says that coaching on the SAT can’t really produce big score gains and recommends that students take only no more than twice. The Web site of the College Board says: “Most students take the SAT once or twice. We don’t recommend taking it more than twice because there’s no evidence that taking the SAT multiple times significantly changes your score.”

Of course, if you want to take it more than twice, the College Board’s Web site is helpful with a study plan, tailored to how much time you have to study.

For someone who has taken the SAT at least once and has one to three months to study, it says: “So you’ve taken the SAT. Smart move – you’re already ahead of the game. Now’s your chance to improve your performance, and with one to three months to prepare, you can do just that.” Wouldn’t you know it? Step five is trying the “Official SAT Online Course,” described as a “low-cost tool” that features interactive lessons and 10 practice tests. It’s only $69.95!

Of course, that is inexpensive when you consider that private tutors can cost hundreds of dollars an hour.

The next SAT administration is May 1, and the one after that is June 5. Good news: If your child has taken the SAT three or four times already and you did not get him/her signed up in time for the May date, registration is still open for June.


http://sat.collegeboard.com/home


*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

21st Century College Admission Strategy: Mass Apps

Ace! NewsFlash

After an early rebuff from Stanford University, Montgomery Blair senior Scott Yu, a straight-A student with a perfect SAT score, was offered admission to 12 schools.
Scott Yu, a straight-A student with a perfect SAT score

Scott Yu had the strongest possible credentials: a perfect SAT score, a perfect high school transcript and conservatory-quality piano skills. But his first foray into college admissions, an "early-action" application to Stanford, landed in limbo with a deferral.

His faith shaken, Yu responded the way any straight-A student would, with a flurry of work. He applied to every college in the Ivy League, along with Duke, MIT, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Maryland and the New England Conservatory in Boston. For his efforts, the Rockville teen reaped 12 offers of admission. He now faces a not-very-painful choice among Harvard, Yale and MIT.

Yu, a senior in the Science, Mathematics and Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, represents a new generation of college applicant. Spooked by single-digit admission rates at the top private schools, students sweeten the odds by applying to more of them. And, thus, the applicant pool runneth over.

Harvard, the nation's oldest college, crossed a symbolic threshold this year when it received more than 30,000 applications for about 1,600 seats in its freshman class. With 1.5 million students expected to enter four-year colleges this fall, that means that about one in 50 applied to Harvard. Brown University passed the same milestone this year, Stanford last year. One-fifth of college applicants nationwide apply to seven or more schools, twice the rate of a decade ago, according to data from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Yu, 18, knew he was a strong candidate. But he didn't know how strong. The early rebuff from Stanford -- a school not in the Ivy League but just as selective -- unnerved him. He sat at his computer with two Harvard teddy bears for luck as he checked for news April 1, the deadline for most admissions departments to let students know whether they got in. "I didn't mean to apply to this many schools," he said. "You can't really gauge your qualifications as a candidate until you get in somewhere."

Students apply to more schools partly because they can: Today's online applications are more easily replicated than the paper forms of previous decades. But that's not the only factor. The biggest surge has come at the most selective schools, where fewer than half of applicants gain admission. Students apply to twice as many schools as their parents did on the theory that they are half as likely to get in.

Admission rates fell this year to 6.9 percent at Harvard, 7.2 percent at Stanford, 7.5 percent at Yale, 8.2 percent at Princeton, 9.2 percent at Columbia and 9.3 percent at Brown. As recently as 2003, when fewer students competed for the same number of seats, all of those schools admitted more than 10 percent of applicants.

Worldwide interest

Ivy League schools are getting more applications from every part of the globe. Diana Barthauer, who lives in Switzerland, started with a slate of 50 schools and narrowed it to 20. She netted 15 offers, including Columbia, Stanford and Dartmouth, and rejections from MIT, Princeton and the University of Cambridge in England. Two colleges in China haven't replied. "The reason I did so many applications was that the admission rates are so low," she said. "But then, I pushed them down by doing it, so it's kind of ironic."

Is there any harm in applying to colleges en masse? Counselors and deans are divided.

The fundamentals of admission advice have not changed. Most students are counseled to apply to at least three schools: one that is deemed a "match," a less selective "safety" school and a more selective "reach." Two of each would not be deemed excessive. "I say four to six. I used to say three to five. They end up applying to six to eight," said Robin Groelle, director of college counseling at St. Stephen's Episcopal School, a college-prep school in Bradenton, Fla.

Some students apply scattershot to top schools, without regard for "fit" or "match." They raise their chances of getting in somewhere. They might also be wasting their time. "It's more work for us, and it's more work for the colleges," said Timothy Gallen, director of college counseling at the private Solebury School in New Hope, Pa. "It's playing the game, more than anything."

The process also can be expensive. Applications to selective colleges cost about $50 each, although fee waivers are available for low-income students.

The expanding applicant pool is not simply a matter of more applications per student. There has also been a growing population of college-bound seniors, although it is thought to have peaked last year and is expected to decline. And a larger share of applications is going to the most selective schools, which together receive 31 percent of applications but enroll 18 percent of freshmen. Deans say their applicant pools are larger, more diverse and better qualified than in previous generations in terms of grade-point averages and SAT scores.

"The long and short of it is, there has been a remarkable democratization of higher education in the past 50 years in the United States," said William Fitzsimmons, admissions dean at Harvard. He said his department's goal is to get a Harvard application "on the kitchen table of every student in America who has a chance of getting in."

'Come out of nowhere'

For the broader population of public and private colleges, the explosion in applications means more selectivity, but also more headaches.

The average four-year college, public and private, received 24 percent more applications in 2006 than 2002, according to an analysis of the latest available data by the admissions counseling group. The average admission rate narrowed from 71 percent in 2001 to 67 percent in 2007. The share of students who were admitted and chose to enroll also declined in that span, from 49 percent to 45 percent.

The rise of mass applications has complicated the task of predicting who will enroll. Increasing numbers of applicants "come out of nowhere" and have no connection to the college, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the admissions counseling group. "And [colleges] just don't have much intelligence on what these students' intentions are." Colleges have courted mass applicants -- and higher application numbers -- by adopting the Common Application and putting forms online. But they also pay closer attention to an applicant's "demonstrated interest," Hawkins said, weighing such factors as correspondence or a visit to campus.

Admissions departments rely more heavily on early-decision and early-action programs, which deliver decisions to applicants sooner, in trade for a hope -- or an expectation -- that they will attend.

The University of Pennsylvania locked in half its freshman class this year through early decision. The effect on regular applicants was somewhat like scouting tickets for a rock concert that had been heavily pre-sold. With 26,938 applicants for 2,420 slots, the school's overall admission rate was 14 percent. For regular-decision applicants: 10 percent. "How many offers of admission can we go out with on April 1, knowing that we already have 49 percent of our class spoken for?" said Eric Furda, dean of admissions.

Despite the long odds, some in the industry envision an emerging buyer's market in college admissions. The ease of applying to any college, anywhere, gives motivated students a fighting chance in shopping among schools with single-digit admission rates. "I think they know that they can be consumers in this process, whereas maybe 10 years ago, it was the college that was picking the student," said Kristin White, director of marketing and communication at Westover School, a private girls school in Connecticut. "They're comparison shoppers now."

Missan DeSouza, a senior at Westover School, applied to 19 colleges. Some, such as Wellesley and Connecticut College, fit the liberal-arts mold of Westover. Others, including John Jay College and West Virginia University, had strong programs in forensic science, an interest she acquired from her mother, a Brooklyn police officer. She added several to the list because they offered strong academics and a lower price, or promised merit aid. Thirteen colleges offered her admission. Ursinus College included a $30,000 scholarship, and John Jay would effectively cost nothing. But she is leaning toward three others: Wellesley, Middlebury College or George Washington University. "I'm feeling it was really smart of me to apply to so many," she said, "because now I have enough options."

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

iPad overwhelms some campus networks

Ace! NewsFlash


The iPad has been touted as the next big thing in higher education technology, especially as more textbooks make the digital conversation, but the Wall Street Journal reports that not all college campus networks can handle the mobile tablets.

George Washington University students and faculty members who sprung for an iPad can't access the campus wireless network. Princeton University has blocked about two dozen iPads that were messing up the university network. Seton Hill University, which is equipping every student with an iPad, has had to quadruple its bandwidth and charge students a $500-per-semester technology fee. Cornell University is also seeing networking and connectivity issues, similar to what happened with the iPhone hit.

Earlier this month, George Washington University's information technology officials broke the sad news to students and faculty members planning to order an iPad: They can't log onto the university's wireless network. The university is working on the problem, The GW Hatchet reports, but doesn't plan to offer iPad access for at least another year. The iPhone also doesn't work on the university network.

About five days after the iPad was released (Apple sold more than half a million in that first week), Princeton officials warned students and others not to try to connect to the university network because of "high risk problems," the Daily Princetonian reported. Still, about four dozen people tried accessing the Internet from their new iPads -- and half caused problems to the network and have been blocked.

Seton Hill University is lovingly embracing the iPad and, starting this fall, will give all 2,100 students an iPad -- incoming freshman also get a 13-inch MacBook laptop. But to handle all of that technology, the liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania has had to quadruple its bandwidth, extend wireless coverage to the entire campus and train faculty members. The new technology program is costing students an additional $500 per semester in fees, the Chronicle reports.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Fighting Social Media Addiction @ U Maryland

Ace! NewsFlash

Jenna Johnson

Here was the challenge given to 200 University of Maryland students from a variety of majors: Abstain from social media for 24 hours. That meant no iPhone or text messaging. No laptops or netbooks. No Gchatting or Twittering. No e-mail and absolutely no Facebook. Ah, a return to simplicity.

But just read the blogs these students wrote after the traumatic experience -- it's very easy to confuse these students with crack addicts who went cold-turkey, smokers not given the comfort of a patch while quitting, alcoholics forced to dry up. The university's new release on the study last week reported that some descriptions popped up over and over: "In withdrawal. Frantically craving. Very anxious. Extremely antsy. Miserable. Jittery. Crazy." "I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening," one student said. Another student had to fight the urge to check e-mail: "I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am."

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The study -- "24 Hours: Unplugged" -- was conducted by the university's International Center for Media & the Public Agenda in late February and early March. Researchers found that American college students struggle to function without their media connection to the world. "We were surprised by how many students admitted that they were 'incredibly addicted' to media," said Susan D. Moeller, a journalism professor and director of the center, said in the university's news report on the study.

wordle
A Wordle data visualization of the over 100,000 words the students in the study wrote about their experiences. See larger image.

Students found themselves surrounded by new technology and blaring TVs, even when they were trying to avoid them. And it was boring to walk around without a soundtrack being piped into their ears from an MP3 player. "It was really hard for me to go without listening to my iPod during the day because it's kind of my way to zone out of everything and everyone when I walk to class," a student wrote. "It gets my mind right. Listening to music before I go to class or take an exam is my way of getting amped up like a football player before a game. It sounds weird but music really helps to set my mood or fix my mood and without it I had to rely on other people to keep me in a good mood."

But it's not just the entertainment value. When cut off from social media, many students felt cut off from other humans and lived in isolation. The study found that the friendships and relationships these 18- to 21-year-olds were dependent on technology.

"Going without media meant, in their world, going without their friends and family," Moeller said. One student wrote that texting and instant messaging friends gives a feeling of comfort: "When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable."

Being cut off from the wired world also meant being cut off from news and information -- not that any of them were regularly watching the news on TV, picking up a newspaper, listening to the news on the radio or visiting a news Web site. One student who failed the assignment and cracked open a laptop during the 24-hour-ban learned about the violent earthquake in Chile from "an informal blog post on Tumblr." Another student suddenly had less information than everyone else about a range of subjects, including sports and news and cultural references.

While students had an insatiable appetite for news, they relied on a broad range of sources, showing little loyalty to any, the university's news report said. "They care about what is going on among their friends and families and even in the world at large," said researcher Raymond McCaffrey, a Ph.D. student who used to work at The Washington Post. "But most of all they care about being cut off from that instantaneous flow of information that comes from all sides and does not seemed tied to any single device or application or news outlet."


*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

China Tightens Data Controls - even more!

Ace! NewsFlash

China Moves to Tighten Data Controls


BEIJING — China is on the verge of requiring telecommunications companies and Internet service providers to halt and report leaks of what the government deems to be state secrets, the latest in a series of moves intended to strengthen the government’s control over private communications.

The proposed amendment to the state secrets law, reported Tuesday by the state news media, defines a state secret broadly and loosely as information that, if disclosed, would damage China’s security or interests in political, economic, defense and other realms.

The amendment was submitted Monday to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, for a third reading, the final step before being signed into law. Few measures reach that point in China without being adopted. The wording of the amendment, as cited by the state-controlled newspaper China Daily, suggested that Internet and telecommunications companies would have to take a more proactive stance in identifying leaks of state secrets and their sources. The paper said companies must detect, report and delete unauthorized disclosures.

But reports by the state-run news agency Xinhua seemed less definitive about whether the companies must independently scour online transmissions for forbidden information or simply cooperate with the authorities if they suspect transgressions. According to Xinhua, when companies discover leaks, “information transmissions should be immediately stopped” and the authorities alerted. It did not say how active companies must be in uncovering unauthorized disclosures. Reports in the state-controlled media did not say what penalties, if any, would be imposed if companies failed to comply.

In a related move, the Chinese government on Monday posted on a government Web site a broad definition of what constituted a commercial secret, covering information related to strategic plans, management, mergers, equity trades, stock market listings, reserves, production, procurement and sales strategy, financing and finances, negotiations, joint venture investments and technology transfers. Four employees of the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto were recently convicted in China of bribery and stealing commercial secrets from a state-owned company. Their prosecution inspired widespread concern in the international business community, partly because of the lack of clarity about what was considered to be a state or commercial secret in China.

Several analysts suggested that the amendment to the state secrets law would have limited impact. Internet service providers and telecommunications companies are already expected to fully cooperate with state security investigations. In one well-known case, in 2005 a Chinese journalist was sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating the state secrecy law after the authorities obtained information from Yahooabout an e-mail message he sent regarding a confidential government document. Yahoo was later severely criticized in the United States for its role in the case, and one of its founders, Jerry Yang, eventually apologized to the journalist’s family.

“Obviously, it adds another tool that authorities would have to snoop on people,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, publisher of Danwei.org, a Web site about Chinese media and the Internet. “But I don’t think anybody thinks that their communications are safe from the prying eyes of the government, whether it is text messages or any other form of communications.”

Some Chinese legal experts have questioned whether the draft amendment contradicts the government’s pledge to be more open and violates China’s constitutional guarantees of privacy and freedom of communication. But one legal scholar cautioned against judging the amendment before the exact wording was made public. China’s determination to control cellphone and Internet communications more closely has been increasingly obvious in recent months.


*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

West Point, PowerPoint, Just Get to the Point!

Ace! NewsFlash

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint

A PowerPoint diagram meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan certainly succeeded in that aim.


WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

Pool photo by Jim Watson

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, center, in Kabul in March. He gets PowerPoint printouts the night before staff meetings.


“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat. “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. “If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise,” General McMaster said.

Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers — referred to as PowerPoint Rangers — in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader’s pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan.

Last year when a military Web site, Company Command, asked an Army platoon leader in Iraq, Lt. Sam Nuxoll, how he spent most of his time, he responded, “Making PowerPoint slides.” When pressed, he said he was serious. “I have to make a storyboard complete with digital pictures, diagrams and text summaries on just about anything that happens,” Lieutenant Nuxoll told the Web site. “Conduct a key leader engagement? Make a storyboard. Award a microgrant? Make a storyboard.”

Despite such tales, “death by PowerPoint,” the phrase used to described the numbing sensation that accompanies a 30-slide briefing, seems here to stay. The program, which first went on sale in 1987 and was acquired by Microsoft soon afterward, is deeply embedded in a military culture that has come to rely on PowerPoint’s hierarchical ordering of a confused world. “There’s a lot of PowerPoint backlash, but I don’t see it going away anytime soon,” said Capt. Crispin Burke, an Army operations officer at Fort Drum, N.Y., who under the name Starbuck wrote an essay about PowerPoint on the Web site Small Wars Journal that cited Lieutenant Nuxoll’s comment. In a daytime telephone conversation, he estimated that he spent an hour each day making PowerPoint slides. In an initial e-mail message responding to the request for an interview, he wrote, “I would be free tonight, but unfortunately, I work kind of late (sadly enough, making PPT slides).”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates reviews printed-out PowerPoint slides at his morning staff meeting, although he insists on getting them the night before so he can read ahead and cut back the briefing time. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and says that sitting through some PowerPoint briefings is “just agony,” nonetheless likes the program for the display of maps and statistics showing trends. He has also conducted more than a few PowerPoint presentations himself.

General McChrystal gets two PowerPoint briefings in Kabul per day, plus three more during the week. General Mattis, despite his dim view of the program, said a third of his briefings are by PowerPoint. Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was given PowerPoint briefings during a trip to Afghanistan last summer at each of three stops — Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif and Bagram Air Base. At a fourth stop, Herat, the Italian forces there not only provided Mr. Holbrooke with a PowerPoint briefing, but accompanied it with swelling orchestral music. President Obama was shown PowerPoint slides, mostly maps and charts, in the White House Situation Room during the Afghan strategy review last fall.

Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs. Captain Burke’s essay in the Small Wars Journal also cited a widely read attack on PowerPoint in Armed Forces Journal last summer by Thomas X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel, whose title, “Dumb-Dumb Bullets,” underscored criticism of fuzzy bullet points; “accelerate the introduction of new weapons,” for instance, does not actually say who should do so.

No one is suggesting that PowerPoint is to blame for mistakes in the current wars, but the program did become notorious during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. As recounted in the book “Fiasco” by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin Press, 2006), Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who led the allied ground forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, grew frustrated when he could not get Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander at the time of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, to issue orders that stated explicitly how he wanted the invasion conducted, and why. Instead, General Franks just passed on to General McKiernan the vague PowerPoint slides that he had already shown to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary at the time.

Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters. The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”


*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

"Text Generation" on the hook

Ace! NewsFlash

Encouraging the Text Generation to Rediscover Its Voice


Julia Sokoloff, 14, woke up around 8 on Sunday morning and reached for her phone the way hard-core smokers reach for their cigarettes, before they’re even fully conscious. She sent a text, something about a play rehearsal, and then it hit her.

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Alexandra Steel, a science teacher, talked Monday about the no-texting experiment at Riverdale Country School.


“Noooo!” she screamed, then ran into her little brother Gabriel’s room and threw the phone at him: “Take it!”

It was the first hour of the first day of a two-day experiment in text-free living at Riverdale Country School, where Julia is an eighth grader, and already she had fallen off the wagon, simply by forgetting.

If only every supposedly responsible grown-up who was tempted to text and drive had an 11-year-old Gabriel in the back seat, someone with an iron grip and a long-unsatisfied desire to play the enforcer. (A few hours later, when Julia asked for the phone back, he told her: No can do.)

Last week, researchers at the University of Maryland reported that college students who swore off social media showed signs of withdrawal similar to those of drug addicts going cold turkey. So how would scores of middle-schoolers fare under the same circumstances, what with their underdeveloped frontal lobes and raging need for affirmation?

By midday Monday, three-quarters of the way through the experiment at Riverdale, an elite private school in the Bronx, a handful of students gathered to discuss how it felt. None looked pale and ashen; none were twitching, at least visibly.

The school counselor, K C Cohen, had distributed worksheets to the group beforehand that asked, among other things: When you find yourself wanting to text/I.M./chat, is it because you need to communicate with someone right away? Or just for the sake of a casual connection?

“WANT TO!” Zachary Riopelle, a 13-year-old seventh grader answered. He underlined it, too.

The experiment, which asked students to voluntarily forsake instant messaging, chat, texts, and Facebook through Monday night, was Ms. Cohen’s idea. “Are they finding easy ways to avoid negotiating some of the normal social challenges of adolescence?” she wrote in an explanatory e-mail message that the head of school sent to parents.

The immediacy of parent-child texting does wonders for communication, Ms. Cohen said in an interview, but some aspects of the constant electronic dialogue make her uneasy. “Kids will do poorly on a test, and more often than not, right away they’ll go into the bathroom and text their mom and dad,” she said. “There’s no sense that the kid just has to feel his feelings. It’s an instant Band-Aid.”

The experiment left Kayla Waterman, a 12-year-old sixth grader, with a new appreciation for the convenience of texting over calling. On Monday morning, instead of texting, she called her mom to let her know there were “a gazillion fire trucks at school.” Then she called right back: false alarm — fire drill. “I could tell she was getting annoyed because I kept calling,” Kayla said. How many times during the school day does she usually text her mom? About 10, Kayla said; a friend nodded in agreement.

Boundaries between work and home have long since fallen, so maybe it should not be surprising that the same is true for school and home. But what middle school student 20 years ago would have voluntarily reached out to her mother 10 times between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.? If school had any universally agreed upon upside, it was that it gave a 12-year-old some much-needed space to revel in independence or struggle with rejection — space in which, presumably, that 12-year-old could start to figure out who she was, or how he wanted to navigate the world.

This text-free Sunday, the Riverdale students said, was unusually relaxing. They were shocked at how quickly they finished their homework, undistracted by an always-open video chat, or checking in on Facebook or responding to the hundred messages they typically get in a day. Kayla and her mother went for a stroll in SoHo, a rare outing, with them both off the computer. “I had to look for things to do,” said Zachary, who ended up watching a movie with his mother.

Fewer than half of the 250 middle school students at Riverdale participated in the experiment, but Julia, for one, found it valuable. Among the revelations was the envious reaction of her father, who pointed at his own BlackBerry and told her, “I’d give anything to put this down.”

Unlike him, she realized, she had a choice, the best youth has to offer: freedom.


*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Maryville University's Latest MBA & Graduate Programs

Ace! NewsFlash

MARYVILLE UNIVERSITY OF ST. LOUIS ANNOUNCES NEW MASTER'S PROGRAMS AND
MBA CONCENTRATIONS

Maryville University of St. Louis, fulfilling its mission to "provide
selective and cutting edge programs in the Arts and Sciences, Health
Professions, Education and Business", is happy to announce two new MBA
concentrations, two new Master programs and one new Doctoral program,
beginning Fall 2010.

The two new MBA concentrations are Sport and Entertainment Management,
and Process and Project Management. The two new Master programs are
Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership and Master of Arts in
Strategic Communication and Leadership. The new doctoral program is
the Doctorate of Nursing Practice.

To learn more about the Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership,
please use this link:
www.maryville.edu/academics-as-MA-Organizational-Leadership%20.htm

To learn more about the Master of Arts in Strategic Communication and
Leadership, please visit:
www.maryville.edu/academics-as-communications-ma-strategic-communication.htm

To learn more about the Doctorate of Nursing Practice, please visit:
www.maryville.edu/academics-hp-nursing-dnp.htm

For more information about these two concentrations, please visit:
www.maryville.edu/news7047.htm

For further inquires or questions, please contact the Office of
International Admissions at internationaladmissions@maryville.edu,
(314) 529-6857 or 800-627-9855

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

U Pitt's Post-Doctoral Fellowships: June 1 deadline

Ace! NewsFlash

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH's SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES POSTDOCTORAL
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

Application Deadline: June 1, 2010

The University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences Announces a
New Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for 2011
For the first time, the University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and
Sciences is offering up to eight postdoctoral fellowships in the
humanities and social sciences to begin in January 2011. These
inaugural fellowships are designed to attract excellent scholars from
outside the University of Pittsburgh and to offer junior scholars the
time, space, and financial support necessary to produce significant
scholarship early in their careers.

The Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowships are for one year and
are renewable for an additional year. Fellows will teach two courses
per year, complete scholarly work, and participate in the academic and
intellectual community of the School of Arts and Sciences and the
department or program with which they are affiliated. The fellowship
offers junior scholars the time, space, and financial support
necessary to produce significant scholarship early in their careers.
The annual stipend will be $45,000. Fellows will receive an annual
research fund of $3,500 and a one-time reimbursement of up to $1,500
for moving expenses.

Eligibility:
We invite applications from qualified candidates in the humanities and
social sciences who have received the PhD from outside of the
University of Pittsburgh between December 1, 2007 and November 30,
2010. Applicants who do not have the PhD in hand at the time of
application must provide a letter from the Department Chair or the
Advisor stating that the PhD degree will be conferred before the term
of the fellowship begins.

Guidelines:
Postdoctoral education is an important facet of research and
scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh, and the University has
developed a comprehensive set of guidelines for postdoctoral fellows
and the faculty, departments, and programs who work with them.

Application Requirements and Procedure

Applicants should submit the following materials:

1. An application form (available at www.as.pitt.edu/postdoc)
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Detailed statement of current research interests (1,000 words)
that clearly outlines the goals of the research you will undertake
during the term of the fellowship.
4. One writing sample no longer than 20 pages.
5. A copy of the Dissertation Table of Contents
6. A two-page statement of teaching interests and one or two course
proposals (subject area, brief syllabus, proposed methods) for a
15-week course directed towards advanced undergraduates or graduate
students.
7. Three letters of recommendation. (NOTE: Letter writers should
e-mail their recommendations directly to postdoc@as.pitt.edu , using
the applicant's name and the word, "Postdoc Recommendation" in the
e-mail subject line.

Application Deadline and Notification of Awards
All application materials-including letters of recommendation- must be
submitted electronically before June 1, 2010. Only fully completed
formal applications will be considered. It is your responsibility to
ensure that all documentation is complete and that referees submit
their letters of recommendation to postdoc@as.pitt.edu by the closing
date. Awards will be announced in July 2010.

The University of Pittsburgh is an affirmative action/equal
opportunity employer and educator. Women, minorities, and
international candidates are especially encouraged to apply.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

UMU Offers Awards for 50% of Total Cost

Ace! NewsFlash

THE UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT UNION OFFERS SCHOLARSHIPS TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

The International Award is given automatically to non-native English
speaking applicants who qualify based on a review of a student's
English language proficiency level at the time of acceptance. To
qualify for the International Award, applicants must be admitted as an
F-1 degree seeking student and hold a valid I-20 form which will be
issued by Mount Union and must not have completed their entire
secondary school education in an English curriculum.

The award amounts are the following:

* 45-60 iBT (PB TOEFL scores between 450 and 497) or
an IELTS score of 4.5 - $7,500 award

* 61 iBT (PB TOEFL scores at 500 and above) or an IELTS
score of 5.0 and above - $10,000 award

In addition, we also offer need based financial aid and if an
international student qualifies as according to the College Board's
International Student Financial Aid Application it could mean an
additional $6,000 for a total max of $16,000. Our total cost for
2010-2022 for tuition, fees, room and meals is $32,584 so on average
we can help with about 50% of the total cost.

About Mount Union
The University of Mount Union offers a liberal arts education and
affirms the importance of reason, open inquiry, and individual worth.
Mount Union's mission is to prepare students for meaningful work,
fulfilling lives, and responsible citizenship. Mount Union was founded
in 1846 by Orville Nelson Hartshorn as a place where men and women
could be educated with equal opportunity, science would parallel the
humanities and there would be no distinction due to race, color or
sex.

Mount Union is in Alliance, Ohio (population 25,000). The College is
located 70 miles from Cleveland and 80 miles from Pittsburgh.

Mount Union enrolls 2,200 undergraduates; approximately 50 percent
women and 50 percent men, representing more than 28 states and 18
countries.

For more information on international admission, contact the Center
for Global Education at: intladms@muc.edu
Tel. (330) 823-3296 or fax at (330) 829-8204.

Mount Union www.mountunion.edu

www.youtube.com/user/mountunioncollege

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Monday, April 26, 2010

Cyberattack on Google's Password System

Ace! NewsFlash

The Chinese Cyberattack on Google That Escalated Tensions


Ever since Google disclosed in January that Internet intruders had stolen information from its computers, the exact nature and extent of the theft has been a closely guarded company secret. But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company’s Web services, including e-mail and business applications.

The program, code named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, was attacked in a lightning raid taking less than two days last December, the person said. Described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the software is intended to enable users and employees to sign in with their password just once to operate a range of services.

The intruders do not appear to have stolen passwords of Gmail users, and the company quickly started making significant changes to the security of its networks after the intrusions. But the theft leaves open the possibility, however faint, that the intruders may find weaknesses that Google might not even be aware of, independent computer experts said.

The new details seem likely to increase the debate about the security and privacy of vast computing systems such as Google’s that now centralize the personal information of millions of individuals and businesses. Because vast amounts of digital information are stored in a cluster of computers, popularly referred to as “cloud” computing, a single breach can lead to disastrous losses.

The theft began with an instant message sent to a Google employee in China who was using Microsoft’s Messenger program, according to the person with knowledge of the internal inquiry, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

By clicking on a link and connecting to a “poisoned” Web site, the employee inadvertently permitted the intruders to gain access to his (or her) personal computer and then to the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Ultimately, the intruders were able to gain control of a software repository used by the development team.

The details surrounding the theft of the software have been a closely guarded secret by the company. Google first publicly disclosed the theft in a Jan. 12 posting on the company’s Web site, which stated that the company was changing its policy toward China in the wake of the theft of unidentified “intellectual property” and the apparent compromise of the e-mail accounts of two human rights advocates in China.

The accusations became a significant source of tension between the United States and China, leading Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to urge China to conduct a “transparent” inquiry into the attack. In March, after difficult discussions with the Chinese government, Google said it would move its mainland Chinese-language Web site and begin rerouting search queries to its Hong Kong-based site.

Company executives on Monday declined to comment about the new details of the case, saying they had dealt with the security issues raised by the theft of the company’s intellectual property in their initial statement in January.

Google executives have also said privately that the company had been far more transparent about the intrusions than any of the more than two dozen other companies that were compromised, the vast majority of which have not acknowledged the attacks.

Google continues to use the Gaia system, now known as Single Sign-On. Hours after announcing the intrusions, Google said it would activate a new layer of encryption for Gmail service. The company also tightened the security of its data centers and further secured the communications links between its services and the computers of its users.

Several technical experts said that because Google had quickly learned of the theft of the software, it was unclear what the consequences of the theft had been. One of the most alarming possibilities is that the attackers might have intended to insert a Trojan horse — a secret back door — into the Gaia program and install it in dozens of Google’s global data centers to establish clandestine entry points. But the independent security specialists emphasized that such an undertaking would have been remarkably difficult, particularly because Google’s security specialists had been alerted to the theft of the program.

However, having access to the original programmer’s instructions, or source code, could also provide technically skilled hackers with knowledge about subtle security vulnerabilities in the Gaia code that may have eluded Google’s engineers.

“If you can get to the software repository where the bugs are housed before they are patched, that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” said George Kurtz, chief technology officer for McAfee Inc., a software security company that was one of the companies that analyzed the illicit software used in the intrusions at Google and at other companies last year.

Rodney Joffe, a vice president at Neustar, a developer of Internet infrastructure services, said, “It’s obviously a real issue if you can understand how the system works.” Understanding the algorithms on which the software is based might be of great value to an attacker looking for weak points in the system, he said.

When Google first announced the thefts, the company said it had evidence that the intrusions had come from China. The attacks have been traced to computers at two campuses in China, but investigators acknowledge that the true origin may have been concealed, a quintessential problem of cyberattacks.

Several people involved in the investigation of break-ins at more than two dozen other technology firms said that while there were similarities between the attacks on the companies, there were also significant differences, like the use of different types of software in intrusions. At one high-profile Silicon Valley company, investigators found evidence of intrusions going back more than two years, according to the person involved in Google’s inquiry.

In Google’s case, the intruders seemed to have precise intelligence about the names of the Gaia software developers, and they first tried to access their work computers and then used a set of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the repositories where the source code for the program was stored.

They then transferred the stolen software to computers owned by Rackspace, a Texas company that offers Web-hosting services, which had no knowledge of the transaction. It is not known where the software was sent from there. The intruders had access to an internal Google corporate directory known as Moma, which holds information about the work activities of each Google employee, and they may have used it to find specific employees.


China's naval arms race threatens South China Sea & beyond

Ace! NewsFlash

Chinese Military Seeks to Extend Its Naval Power

The strategy reflects China’s growing sense of self-confidence and increasing willingness to assert its interests abroad.

YALONG BAY, China — The Chinese military is seeking to project naval power well beyond the Chinese coast, from the oil ports of the Middle East to the shipping lanes of the Pacific, where the United States Navy has long reigned as the dominant force, military officials and analysts say.

China calls the new strategy “far sea defense,” and the speed with which it is building long-range capabilities has surprised foreign military officials.

The strategy is a sharp break from the traditional, narrower doctrine of preparing for war over the self-governing island of Taiwan or defending the Chinese coast. Now, Chinese admirals say they want warships to escort commercial vessels that are crucial to the country’s economy, from as far as the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca, in Southeast Asia, and to help secure Chinese interests in the resource-rich South and East China Seas. In late March, two Chinese warships docked in Abu Dhabi, the first time the modern Chinese Navy made a port visit in the Middle East.

The overall plan reflects China’s growing sense of self-confidence and increasing willingness to assert its interests abroad. China’s naval ambitions are being felt, too, in recent muscle flexing with the United States: in March, Chinese officials told senior American officials privately that China would brook no foreign interference in its territorial issues in the South China Sea, said a senior American official involved in China policy.

The naval expansion will not make China a serious rival to American naval hegemony in the near future, and there are few indications that China has aggressive intentions toward the United States or other countries. But China, now the world’s leading exporter and a giant buyer of oil and other natural resources, is also no longer content to trust the security of sea lanes to the Americans, and its definition of its own core interests has expanded along with its economic clout.

In late March, Adm. Robert F. Willard, the leader of the United States Pacific Command, said in Congressional testimony that recent Chinese military developments were “pretty dramatic.” China has tested long-range ballistic missiles that could be used against aircraft carriers, he said. After years of denials, Chinese officials have confirmed that they intend to deploy an aircraft carrier group within a few years.

China is also developing a sophisticated submarine fleet that could try to prevent foreign naval vessels from entering its strategic waters if a conflict erupted in the region, said Admiral Willard and military analysts. “Of particular concern is that elements of China’s military modernization appear designed to challenge our freedom of action in the region,” the admiral said.

Yalong Bay, on the southern coast of Hainan island in the South China Sea, is the site of five-star beach resorts just west of a new underground submarine base. The base allows submarines to reach deep water within 20 minutes and roam the South China Sea, which has some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and areas rich in oil and natural gas that are the focus of territorial disputes between China and other Asian nations.

That has caused concern not only among American commanders, but also among officials in Southeast Asian nations, which have been quietly acquiring more submarines, missiles and other weapons. “Regional officials have been surprised,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of the Chinese military at the National University of Singapore. “We were in a blinded situation. We thought the Chinese military was 20 years behind us, but we suddenly realized China is catching up.”

China is also pressing the United States to heed its claims in the region. In March, Chinese officials told two visiting senior Obama administration officials, Jeffrey A. Bader andJames B. Steinberg, that China would not tolerate any interference in the South China Sea, now part of China’s “core interest” of sovereignty, said an American official involved in China policy. It was the first time the Chinese labeled the South China Sea a core interest, on par with Taiwan and Tibet, the official said. Another element of the Chinese Navy’s new strategy is to extend its operational reach beyond the South China Sea and the Philippines to what is known as the “second island chain” — rocks and atolls out in the Pacific, the official said. That zone significantly overlaps the United States Navy’s area of supremacy.

Japan is anxious, too. Its defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, said in mid-April that two Chinese submarines and eight destroyers were spotted on April 10 heading between two Japanese islands en route to the Pacific, the first time such a large Chinese flotilla had been seen so close to Japan. When two Japanese destroyers began following the Chinese ships, a Chinese helicopter flew within 300 feet of one of the destroyers, the Japanese Defense Ministry said. Since December 2008, China has maintained three ships in the Gulf of Aden to contribute to international antipiracy patrols, the first deployment of the Chinese Navy beyond the Pacific. The mission allows China to improve its navy’s long-range capabilities, analysts say.

A 2009 Pentagon report estimated Chinese naval forces at 260 vessels, including 75 “principal combatants” — major warships — and more than 60 submarines. The report noted the building of an aircraft carrier, and said China “continues to show interest” in acquiring carrier-borne jet fighters from Russia. The United States Navy has 286 battle-force ships and 3,700 naval aircraft, though ship for ship the American Navy is considered qualitatively superior to the Chinese Navy.

The Pentagon does not classify China as an enemy force. But partly in reaction to China’s growth, the United States has recently transferred submarines from the Atlantic to the Pacific so that most of its nuclear-powered attack submarines are now in the Pacific, said Bernard D. Cole, a former American naval officer and a professor at the National War College in Washington. The United States has also begun rotating three to four submarines on deployments out of Guam, reviving a practice that had ended with the cold war, Mr. Cole said.

American vessels now frequently survey the submarine base at Hainan island, and that activity leads to occasional friction with Chinese ships. A survey mission last year by an American naval ship, the Impeccable, resulted in what Pentagon officials said was harassment by Chinese fishing vessels; the Chinese government said it had the right to block surveillance in those waters because they are an “exclusive economic zone” of China.

The United States and China have clashing definitions of such zones, defined by a United Nations convention as waters within 200 nautical miles of a coast. The United States says international law allows a coastal country to retain only special commercial rights in the zones, while China contends the country can control virtually any activity within them.

Military leaders here maintain that the Chinese Navy is purely a self-defense force. But the definition of self-defense has expanded to encompass broad maritime and economic interests, two Chinese admirals contended in March. “With our naval strategy changing now, we are going from coastal defense to far sea defense,” Rear Adm. Zhang Huachen, deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet, said in an interview with Xinhua, the state news agency. “With the expansion of the country’s economic interests, the navy wants to better protect the country’s transportation routes and the safety of our major sea lanes,” he added. “In order to achieve this, the Chinese Navy needs to develop along the lines of bigger vessels and with more comprehensive capabilities.”

The navy gets more than one-third of the overall Chinese military budget, “reflecting the priority Beijing currently places on the navy as an instrument of national security,” Mr. Cole said. China’s official military budget for 2010 is $78 billion, but the Pentagon says China spends much more than that amount. Last year, the Pentagon estimated total Chinese military spending at $105 billion to $150 billion, still much less than what the United States spends on defense. For comparison, the Obama administration proposed $548.9 billion as the Pentagon’s base operating budget for next year. The Chinese Navy’s most impressive growth has been in its submarine fleet, said Mr. Huang, the scholar in Singapore. It recently built at least two Jin-class submarines, the first regularly active ones in the fleet with ballistic missile capabilities, and two more are under construction. Two Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarines recently entered service.

Countries in the region have responded with their own acquisitions, said Carlyle A. Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy. In December, Vietnam signed an arms deal with Russia that included six Kilo-class submarines, which would give Vietnam the most formidable submarine fleet in Southeast Asia. Last year, Malaysia took delivery of its first submarine, one of two ordered from France, and Singapore began operating one of two Archer-class submarines bought from Sweden.

Last fall, during a speech in Washington, Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singaporean leader, reflected widespread anxieties when he noted China’s naval rise and urged the United States to maintain its regional presence. “U.S. core interest requires that it remains the superior power on the Pacific,” he said. “To give up this position would diminish America’s role throughout the world.”