Research Opportunities
Ralph Becker
The Importance of High School Research

Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.

The Importance of High School Research

University of Virginia

Accessing your Admissions File: Fountain Hopper and FERPA

Accessing your Admissions File: Fountain Hopper and FERPA

An anonymous newsletter and website at Stanford named Fountain Hopper, has pulled together a five-step process for students to gain access to all their admissions records, including comments written by the admissions officers, under FERPA.  

When FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) was enacted into law in 1974, its intent was to protect the privacy of students and ensure that students have the right to access their educational records and challenge the content, if necessary, while preventing the release of the records to unauthorized third parties.

Haunted Campuses

Haunted Campuses

The New York University (NYU) application essay reads: ‘NYU is global, urban, inspired, smart, connected, and bold. What can NYU offer you, and what can you offer NYU?’ Whatever you might offer NYU, NYU offers you a place in the elite of haunted campuses, along with a very good scare above and beyond its annual tuition rate of $45,000.

Founded in 1831, NYU has over 20,000 souls buried beneath its main campus. The land comprising Washington Square Park, NYU’s Greenwich Village location, was a ‘potter’s field,’ a graveyard for the indigent.  It also served as a mass grave for the thousands who died in the Yellow Fever epidemic of the 1820s. The Old University building, one of the first buildings built on the campus, was haunted by a young artist who committed suicide in one of its turrets.