Colleges: The Waiting Game | Newsweek Periscope

EDUCATION
Grading the Test
Pat Wingert 6/18/2008 12:00:00 AM
Ever since the new SAT writing test, featuring a proctored off-the-cuff writing sample, was launched in 2005, it has found few fans. Students weren't crazy about having to write a high-stakes essay under time pressure on a randomly assigned topic, or the fact that the new test extended a three-hour college-entrance exam by another 45 minutes. Meanwhile, college admission offices were reluctant to put much weight in a new test of unknown value that hadn't been formally validated.
TECHNOLOGY
The College Tour Goes High-Tech
Katie Paul 3/28/2008 12:00:00 AM
How big a hall would you need to bring together some 50,000 students and their parents, as well as college admissions officers, guidance counselors and financial aid experts? No room required: the crowd participated in CollegeWeekLive, a virtual two-day college fair that built on a smaller "test" event held last fall.
EDUCATION
Getting In Gets Harder
Peg Tyre 1/3/2008 12:00:00 AM
When high-school senior Maxine Wally got rejected from Northwestern University last month, she lay down on her mother's bed and cried. She thought she had a good shot. Wally consistently took the toughest classes she could fit into her schedule, and her grade point average puts her near the top of the class at her well-regarded public high school in Berkeley, Calif. After months of researching Northwestern on the Web and grilling friends, teachers and advisers who had gone there, Maxine pinned her hopes on getting accepted. "I've been trying to tell her—gently—that getting into college can be very competitive," said Maxine's mom Wendy. But young people, sighed Wendy, "want to follow their dreams."
PERISCOPE
Media Matters: Why Britain’s P.M. Is Popular Abroad But Hated At Home

When Gordon Brown went on his second official visit to the United States in mid-April, all three presidential candidates made time to meet him—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton even took a morning off from their fierce campaigning in Pennsylvania. Yet the British press corps used the occasion to slam the prime minister for his timing, which coincided with—and let him be overshadowed by—Pope Benedict XVI's stateside tour. Likewise, when Brown, at the end of his trip, gave a major address on globalization in Boston that was serious and carefully argued—vintage Brown—the Americans lapped it up, while the British press corps snickered.
Learning The Hard Way
Barbara Kantrowitz
Playing Rough In The Ivies
Julie Scelfo