A Few Simple Steps Will Help Optimize Campus Tours BY LINDSAY GELLMAN When it comes to college visits, Jack Barry has a routine. In advance of a visit, the Bentonville, Ark., high-school senior—who visited Duke, Georgetown and the University of Virginia last spring and plans to visit Yale and the University of Texas this spring—typically…
Ralph Gardner Column: Why Not Teach Math Via Videogames? BY RALPH GARDNER JR. If would seem like a no-brainer: Kids love videogames, but often hate math. So why not teach them math via videogames? I doubt, though, that math and science teacher Henry Rey would refer to the flight simulators that he uses at Frederick…
What the New SAT and Digital ACT Might Look Like By TAMAR LEWIN SAY farewell to vocabulary flashcards with arcane words like “compendious,” “membranous,” “mendacious,” “pugnacious,” “depreciatory,” “redolent,” “treacly” and “jettison.” In the new SAT, to be unveiled in 2015, David Coleman, president of the College Board, wants to get rid of obscure words that…
More Students Are Taking Both the ACT and SAT By TAMAR LEWIN AS if applying to college isn’t taxing enough, the process seems to have been ratcheted up another notch. Ambitious high school students are no longer content with just one college admissions test. Not a single college requires it, but many applicants to the…
Math, Science Popular Until Students Realize They’re Hard By Khadeeja Safdar Math and science majors are popular until students realize what they’re getting themselves into, according to new research. In a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers Ralph Stinebrickner of Berea College and Todd R. Stinebrickner of the University of…
Grouping Students by Ability Regains Favor in Classroom By VIVIAN YEE It was once common for elementary-school teachers to arrange their classrooms by ability, placing the highest-achieving students in one cluster, the lowest in another. But ability grouping and its close cousin, tracking, in which children take different classes based on their proficiency levels, fell…
College Grads Earn Nearly Three Times More Than High School Dropouts By Neil Shah By some measures, nearly 50% of working college grads are in jobs that don’t require a college degree — but for most people that diploma does pay, eventually. The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday said the typical American with a college…