Cognitive Enhancement: Help me kick some midterm ass.

[bohemiandonut]

Haha for the UC system that would probably work. Probably not necessary though. Yes my SAT was based on old system. I don't think he'll have any problems getting into a good UC with that gpa and good AP scores. I don't know enough about the new SAT system to comment really. On a side note, perhaps he doesn't realize that being president of the gay club would probably kick his dating life into overdrive. Gay guys get all the hotties - and their straight friends get the pick of the litter.

[bohemiandonut]

I guess I'm too late for this but for the future...

On an average day I'll have 3 shots of espresso or an energy drink when I wake up, and then after my first class I drink about 4 - 6 glasses of Mountain Dew. When I have exams I spread out the Mountain Dew consumption a little more throughout the day. I also like to watch some porn or videos of sexy girls a little before hand just to feel better before

Good luck!

So this post has actually been on my mind since yesterday... Can we confirm that DM is joking here? If so, man, that is the funniest thing I've read in a while. I just didn't know his shtick was so deadpan. But somehow I feel it couldn't be without a few cans of truth backing it up.

[DoesntMatter]

lol no I'm not kidding. Why would I be?

[IndiReloaded]

Are you at Berkeley, donut?

Boehemian part gave it away... only more Crunchie school in Cali is UC Santa Cruz, lol.

FWIW, BD (DM also), we found the 'big fish in small pond' effect very useful. Both went to a Name School in Boston (as graduate students, fyi) then used it to get good jobs back in Canada.

Your terminal degree counts most, FYI. So going to Berkeley for undergrad is awesome but will have less impact if you do you grad/professional school someplace less known. On the other hand, a small state school undergrad followed by, say, MIT/Harvard PhD will set you up pretty well if that makes sense.

Just something to think about.

[vashti]

Boehemian part gave it away... only more Crunchie school in Cali is UC Santa Cruz, lol.

FWIW, BD (DM also), we found the 'big fish in small pond' effect very useful. Both went to a Name School in Boston (as graduate students, fyi) then used it to get good jobs back in Canada.

Your terminal degree counts most, FYI. So going to Berkeley for undergrad is awesome but will have less impact if you do you grad/professional school someplace less known. On the other hand, a small state school undergrad followed by, say, MIT/Harvard PhD will set you up pretty well if that makes sense.

Just something to think about.

I agree that where you finish is ultimately more important than where you start, however it doesn't hurt to start high and finish higher.

[DoesntMatter]

Yeah definitely go to a good undergrad school if money isn't an issue. It's harder to get into a good undergrad school than a good grad school from what I hear. Besides, some undergrad schools will much better prepare you for grad school than others. Research opportunities at undergrad is also something to give good consideration

BTW your son is interested in pursuing a nice degree

[vashti]

He's a smartypants, allright... just like you.

[DoesntMatter]

Jewish people seem to usually be pretty smart. Like last night I was sitting around at 2am with 3 of my friends and they were all Jewish lol. One of them turned down Princeton to come here for engineering. Not many Jewish people in Rochester thats for sure

[vashti]

There is a lot of pressure in the Jewish community to excel academically, similar to Asians, actually. I didn't grow up this way. It was rather shocking at first.

[DoesntMatter]

Yeah I'm aware of that, it seems like a good pressure though. My residence advisor person is a professor of Chinese and I eat dinner with her sometimes. It's pretty cool because she and her husband introduce me to all these researchers and professors at the frontier of their fields and I get to eat dinner and talk with them in the dining hall. But anyways she was telling me about how bad it is for a lot of Asian kids, because if they don't get As their parents will be like "What!? You got a B-!?!? Are you slacking or something, what's your problem!??" This thought just pisses me off because that means their parents are too fuccking stupid to realize that A+ to A- grades are only given out to about 15% of the kids in any given class in the sciences or engineering here. It's called a curve. More than 15% of the kids here are Asian, so it would be literally impossible for all of them to get an A!

Makes me so glad my parents aren't like that

[vashti]

Yup. My son's close friend is a Chinese boy - he says if he can't get into Stanford (like his cousin) his mother will be humiliated. He tells me he's known kids who killed themselves when they didn't get into the right school.

[DoesntMatter]

Affirmative action actually hurts Asians the most (their test scores are shifted down 50 points relative to whites) because they are typically over-represented on college campuses

[vashti]

Really? I hadn't heard that. That sucks.

[bohemiandonut]

Affirmative action actually hurts Asians the most (their test scores are shifted down 50 points relative to whites) because they are typically over-represented on college campuses

I doubt this is true, however, regardless of whether affirmative action is recognized as official policy on a campus, the board is always trying to round out their student body. Haha, get it? "Round out?"

Anyway this leads us right back to our friend Watson. About Jews, it's definitely not the families that are the main cause, they are simply more intelligent in general. 'Specially those damn Ahskenazis. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Indi: Whenever I hear this kind of thing I get all sorts of peeved. I just cannot accept that someone going to a junior college would be given the same candidacy for graduate acceptance as I would. Granted, there could be some real driven kids there, and they could prove themselves with MCATs and whatnot, but their grades could not be given the same weight as mine, could they? ::Shudder::

By the way... bohemiandonut is a creation from my freshman year in highschool - my first and only screen name. But I guess that just means I was destined for this hipster mecca from the beginning.

DM - Where are you going to school again?

[DoesntMatter]

Well I imagine a lot of Asians work really hard and study hard to get good SAT score, so more of them have slightly higher scores on average than white kids. Like in my high school, all the Asian kids tried really hard and most white kids didn't give a shit

I go to Cornell donut. East coast