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

engineering

Grove City College, a Hidden Gem

Grove City College, a Hidden Gem

On occasion people ask me where are the hidden college gems?

I have a found that the 50 Best Colleges list (www.thebestschools.org) is a pretty good source of hidden gems. The list’s primary criterion is that college is for undergraduates, not graduate students—which eliminates many of the big names, such as Harvard or Northwestern. It surveys the record of achievement among a college’s graduates to determine whether they have the skills to succeed in the real world. It also considers whether a college offers a ‘diversity of courses’ free of dogmatism, ideology or political correctness, delivers academic rigor so that students master their subjects, and watches its expenses to avoid adding an unwieldy debt load that indentures many graduates for decades to come. Grove City College (GCC) is number 18 on this list.

UC Davis, the UC System’s Pearl of the Sacramento Valley

UC Davis, the UC System’s Pearl of the Sacramento Valley

Despite the buffets of budget cuts, the UC System is more popular than ever. This year, UC applications hit over 161,000, up 13% from last year. UC Davis, located just 15 miles west of Sacramento, best known for its biology, agriculture, and engineering programs, was up 5% from a year earlier with slightly more than 62,000 applications. This in the face of the ill-conceived Davis police pepper spraying of students protesting student tuition increases. The steady rise of applications-despite the pepper spray gaff-speaks to the resources and boundless educational opportunities Davis offers.

Why Swarthmore Warrants a Glance

Why Swarthmore Warrants a Glance

While Swarthmore might be small in numbers, with fewer than 1,550 undergraduates, its breadth and depth seem unrivalled. Swarthmore is international in scope: Swarthmore students (Swatties) come from every state, and 49 foreign countries. Its student faculty ratio of 8 to 1 enables students to develop an intimate relationship with professors. The alumni base of 19,000 is active, accessible, and devoted. Swarthmore also has a track record of producing Nobel Prize and MacArthur Grant winners, along with numerous PhDs per capita, exceeding all but a handful of schools. Couple all this with an endowment of over $1.2 billion, and there is a lot to like about Swarthmore.

3+2 Dual Degree Program: Engineering (BS) and Liberal Arts (BA) Degrees

3+2 Dual Degree Program: Engineering (BS) and Liberal Arts (BA) Degrees

There are a number of paths for studying engineering. If you’re resolved to be an engineer then state engineering schools (Purdue, Virginia Tech, or Colorado School of Mines) are solid choices. If you’re a cerebral genius who solves Rubric cubes blindfolded in less than 15 seconds then MIT, Princeton, Columbia’s Fu School of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, or Harvey Mudd should be in your scope.  Even if you’re one of those rare birds who is torn between becoming the next great novelist while solving the mystery of Saturn’s rings, there are liberal arts colleges with very solid engineering programs (Lehigh University, Bucknell, Lafayette, or Swarthmore). There are even boutique engineering schools to accommodate the most discerning students: Franklin Olin School of Engineering, Cooper Union, and the Webb Institute (Naval Architectural Engineering), all tuition free, come to mind.  

The Science of Teaching Science: It’s the Method not the Teacher that Matters

The Science of Teaching Science: It’s the Method not the Teacher that Matters

If you were to discover a method to almost double the learning from the same amount of time spent in class and on homework, chances are you’d want to use this method across all your studies.  Research just published in the Science journal by Louis Deslauriers and Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist at the University of British Columbia (UBC), showed that a method called “deliberate practice” produced dramatic results.

The Engineering Major

The Engineering Major

Engineering programs attract students who like to design, develop, and create solutions, and who have an aptitude for structural visualization. Certainly, a burning curiosity and tenacity to wrestle with physical puzzles, such as building a tunnel through the side of mountain, is advantageous. If that description sounds as if it’s been extracted from your resume, the next step is to figure out which engineering discipline fits best: aeronautical, architectural, chemical, civil, electrical, industrial, mechanical…the College Board’s Majors and Career homepage lists over 40 different engineering degrees.

How Colleges and Salaries Match Up

How Colleges and Salaries Match Up

There will always be endless debates about whether an Ivy League school or other highly selective school is worth the price of admission. Now, however, there is hard evidence about the actual payback for attending a certain school. Not that this information is the last word in these debates, but it certainly supplies the numbers one might want to see  when sharpening the pencil and figuring out what are the probable returns associated with attending an UC San Diego instead of a Princeton.