Watch "The Zen of Garry Shandling"!!
It's beyond terrific. Repeating on HBO now. Poignant and hilarious at the same time. All the comedy greats participated and the love is palpable.
Watch it!
Watch "The Zen of Garry Shandling"!!
It's beyond terrific. Repeating on HBO now. Poignant and hilarious at the same time. All the comedy greats participated and the love is palpable.
Watch it!
Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'
Geez, meant to type "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling"
That's what happens when your fingers type faster than your mind and your mind is slow and your fingers really can't type that well I guess.
Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'
Sigh. It's a no from Duke. Not surprised, but still disappointed.
Ugh....sorry to hear this news and I know it is disappointing.
From the Duke Today website, they said that they received over 33,000 applications for regular admission (over 37,000 in total if you include early decision applicants) and they accepted only 6.4% of the regular decision applicants. If my math is right, I believe that is about 1 out of 16 applicants were accepted in the regular decision process. Just on a purely statistical basis, very long odds for any candidate. I'm also guessing that for many applicants, the odds of admission are even much higher, when you consider that a substantial percentage of the incoming class is made up of certain "favored" applicants - varsity athletes, affirmative action candidates, "special" admittees (legacy kids whose parents or grandparents, etc. have been very generous donors to Duke or otherwise heavily involved in the university; so-called celebrity kids, etc.), geographically-diverse applicants (it helps if you're from North Dakota). For any applicant that doesn't fall into one of those favored groups, I'm sure the odds are much higher than the 1 in 16 gross numbers. As always, it will be interesting to see if the "yield" has increased. I think that Duke is still below a 50% yield for admitted students (regular decision).
Yeah, I know. I know the numbers and I'm a statistician so I knew it was highly unlikely even if my kid is probably the only applicant whose passion for historical linguistics has lead him to study on his own time everything that is known about the grammatical structure of the proto Indo-European language. To quote the kid himself, "It's not so much not getting in, it's that the reason I don't get to study linguistics is because I can't get A's in biology." I have been a reasonably active alumna and a reasonably frequent donor. (Donations went down when my oldest was a student there because, c'mon, I was giving them 60k a year already!) I still love Duke and I'll still come back for Homecoming when I can, but I'm not giving the general scholarship fund another dime. I'm through with supporting other people's kids at Duke.
He did get into UMass which has excellent programs in both Classics and linguistics. Once he was in we spent time looking into the program in more depth and honestly, in terms of the whole historical linguistics thing, it's probably a better place for him than Duke. I fully believe he will be just fine. But, having been through the college admissions game 3+ times now, it just leaves an awful taste in my mouth. Kids like my son, not straight A students who had a passion for one subject, used to have a chance. They don't anymore. In chasing one kind of diversity, we're giving up another. He's also into UVM, Union College, and Dickinson College (although they dropped their linguistics program, so, he's not going there.) We're going to the accepted student days at the top 3 and then he'll pick. My money is on UMass at this point. He got big scholarship offers from both Union and UVM. Not enough to make them cheaper than UMass but enough to make it so he wouldn't need to take any loans, so, completely his choice from those 3.
I understand how you feel. I've gone through the process only once with my daughter and it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth (although she ended up at the college where she wanted to go, once she was accepted and looked at it and she has been happy there). Hell, I couldn't even get her to apply to Duke. At the most highly selective schools, it is definitely a crapshoot and there are a lot of factors that go into who is accepted or not accepted. I would advise any kid not to take the whole process too seriously.
Those are three good choices for your son. Really can't go wrong at any of them. Just a question of the quality of the departments and whether he wants to be at a larger university or a smaller college. Good luck with the decision process!
I’m an educator, and this is a current conversation that many of us are struggling with. On the one hand, it’s generally unwise to advice any adolescent not to take things too seriously...for the most part, they’re already good enough at that. On the other hand, though, y’all are absolutely right that the admissions process is an inscrutable one, packed with all manner of arbitrary processes and motivations. Furthermore, one’s college alma mater usually means rather little with regard to career prospects and long-term success. It’s quite a challenge to find the balancing point between “try hard and aim high” and “don’t worry; you’ll end up someplace good, and for the most part people won’t care where you went anyway.”
Last edited by wilson; 03-30-2018 at 04:14 PM.
Yea, maybe I misspoke....I should have said that kids should not take the decision from any one school too personally (rather than "seriously"). The whole process is somewhat arbitrary and, by no means, a definitive judgment on their worth as a human being or their future success.
My son only aimed high because he had to.
He wants to double major in Classics and linguistics. His first thought was to go to a small liberal arts school in New England where he could that. We started a list. Bowdoin College. Complete list. He didn't get in. We continued down the East Coast, added Colgate and Dickinson. Colgate only offers a certificate in linguistics. He wasn't against going to school in a smallish place but the middle of nowhere was not appealing, so, Colgate dropped from the list. Perhaps we should have kept it on the list but, oh well. Dickinson, as I believe I said up thread, dropped their linguistics department. I talked him into applying to Union even though it doesn't have linguistics because I was sure he would get in. I said if you want an almost New England small liberal arts school, this one has good Classics and based on what I know about it might be a good fit. He applied to the New England state universities that have linguistics - UVM and UMass. Added issue - he really wants to study Sanskrit and Old English in addition to Ancient Greek. UMass. And Cornell and Harvard and Duke - but they don't let kids in just because they can't get what they offer elsewhere. He's already proficient in Latin, he doesn't need to take more and considering how many other languages he's thinking about studying, he probably won't. Modern languages he'd like to study: Lithuanian, Icelandic, Georgian, and if he has to learn an East Asian language for the degree - Japanese. Lithuanian is the most similar to what we know of proto Indo-European, Icelandic to Old Norse, and Georgian because it's nearly a language isolate and he thinks the phonology of the Kartevelian (sic) languages is cool. Japanese - I have no idea.
But yeah, Duke needed another 4.0 high schooler who wants to work in the financial services industry upon graduation.
At the end of the day, what I truly believe these highly competitive schools should do is grow the sizes of their student bodies by 2-5%, maybe more, but that level feels about right to me. Increasing access to these schools to groups that have traditionally been shut out is a worthy goal but increasing access should be just that, an increase in access. What is happening now is a shift in access. There will be some unintended consequences of this shift - can't predict what yet, but the landscape can't change this much without consequences. One prediction I will make - the Ivy League will drop football within 10 years.
The Final Four is in town and I'm not going.![]()
Has anyone ever been so tired you can't stop laughing?
I'm worried that I need to self-commit to a kook rest home for the hysteria that overtakes me when I throw my husband's hoarded stuff out. I think he enjoys me laughing so much that he's distracted enough not to notice what's actually going on.
Frankly, I don't see us shouldering up our many old duffel bags and hitchhiking across Europe looking for the cheapest hostel.
That ship has sailed.
Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'
The Final Four is stress free for me since Duke isn't in it.
I would much rather be stressing.
Watched about an entire sixty seconds total both games.
Looked a bit dull.
Enjoyed my clean attic more.
Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'
Overseas and in a very different time zone, forgot all about it.
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(Yes, I am on the side of the Earth. Hanging with Kyrie)
“Bob says run! Bob says run! Bob says run!”
{good pick-up after handoff}
“Bob was right! Bob was right! Bob was right!”