the buzz log

For anyone considering shelling out a lot of money (and time) for SAT prep classes, we have good news and bad news.

The bad: Your scores will only improve a scant 30 points or so. The good: That may be enough to get you into your dream school. That's the conclusion of a nonprofit organization that studied the success of the $4 billion college prep industry.

The study found the bump in scores to be so small as to be statistically insignificant. But selective colleges don't see the changes as insignificant. That 10- or 20-point increase in math or verbal sections can make the difference between a fat or thin envelope. Is "irony" an SAT word?

But for such low expectations, why not DIY it? As a report on Marketplace points out, you can achieve similar results by forgoing the hefty price tag of the test-prep biz by picking up a $30 study guide, a stack of pencils, and planning on some quality library time.

The report is likely to hit home for test takers. Searches on the college exam surged as results were available today. Lookups on "sat scores," "college board sat," and "sat results" all spiked.

Filed under: Tests, School

When you're trying to decide where to spend four-plus years of your life, rank matters.

Proximity, tuition, and size figure into deciding where to go to college. More complicated criteria require prospective students and their parents to rely upon college rankings. How these lists measure quality, though, isn't always a numbers-crunching game.

In other words, a ranking doesn't always depend on seemingly straightforward factors like graduation rates, student G.P.A., and faculty numbers. U.S. News & World Report released its buzzy annual America's Best Colleges list, and with it came the renewed controversy over its "reputational" survey. Reputation is apparently weighted a quarter of U.S. News final grade. That's more than criteria like graduation rates. Inside Higher Education reports that almost half the institutions didn't return the peer assessment survey, which some colleges regard "as unscientific and likely to reward colleges that had great reputations in the past."

The annual controversy over the peer survey and other methodological quirks not only led colleges to send protest letters, but prompted the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to launch an online database in 2007 that includes factors NAICU deems more relevant and realistic. Nonprofits like the Council for Aid to Education and National Survey for Student Engagement try to measure institutions by what students actually learned in their time there.

Of course, the intangibles of reputation are still irresistible to outlets. Princeton Review's list evaulates, among other things, details like the campus grounds, the drug scene, and gay-friendly cultures. Kipling looks into good deals. The Washington Monthly College Guide susses out schools who do good for the country. Forbes tallies in its scores the results from RateMyProfessor.com (but ignores the "hotness" factor). And yes, someone else besides your high school counselor ranks the rankers: College Confidential explains how to interpret the lists.

Some parents restrict choices to a Top 10. Unfortunately, there's no Cliff Notes substitute to doing lots... and lots... of homework on what's the best.

Filed under: Education, Magazines, School

Imagine a campus in which students carry only man-purses, instead of 80-pound packs stuffed with textbooks. Amazon may soon get additional academic credit as more university publishers sign up with its wireless reading device.

Kindle will start carrying titles from Princeton University Press this fall. According to Inside Higher Education, the prestigious outlet joins the presses published by Oxford, Yale, and University of California in going digital.

The textbook savings aren't going to be instant. Kindle, which hit the market in November and was instantly backordered for weeks, cut its $399 price a measly $40. With some titles only a few dollars cheaper than the paper version, textbook readers save mostly on shipping costs and time. Plus, Kindle is clearly in its infancy with a clunky interface and, as one otherwise enthusiastic blogger notes, few social networking elements.

Still, people have been buying the digital reader, and one analyst calls it the new iPod. Amazon originally targeted the male tech-toy buyers, but women are apparently the true audience. Females have been warming to Kindle and currently makes up half of the device's searches, which have been growing after a post-holiday lull. The Wall Street Journal opines the product could be a moneysaver overall, partly due to its free mobile Internet access and costs of regular titles. Then of course there's instant gratification: Owners could download a former White House press secretary's sold-out memoir on the fly.

No word on whether Amazon will "pull an Apple" and come out with a thinner, sexier version at half the cost, but the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests a 2.0 is in the works. 

Filed under: Tech, Books, Reading, Electronics, School