Ranking lists I'm proud NOT to see UVa on

The RIAA and MPAA (recording industry and motion picture industry groups) have published lists of schools that have the most students who violate copyright protection laws. I'm thrilled not to see UVa on either list!

Oddly, the RIAA expects the schools to help them deliver paperwork to the students on their list and so far, a number of schools have told the RIAA that they don't have time to take on the extra administrative work.

The RIAA list
The MPAA list

A surprise member of the admission blogsphere

I've been chatting about blogs with some parents on one of the college admission message boards today and came across a blog I never knew existed: The ACT student blog. Is anyone reading this? How do you like it? Is it useful?

I'm surprised (in a good way) to see that the ACT is doing this. To mean, it shows a student-centered philosophy and that they're in touch with real students. Nice touch!

What's zinch? Most admission officers don't know.

There's a well established pipeline through which colleges get information about juniors (and sometimes sophomores) who they want to target with marketing efforts. College Board's Student Search Service provides colleges with names of students who took the PSAT or SAT and filled out the demographic information on their registration sheet. At the end of the survey, there's a question about receiving information from colleges. Those who check "yes" should have a deluge of mail within 6-8 weeks. Those who check "no" have to visit the websites for the schools in which they're interested to put themselves on the mailing lists.

There's a new company, started by brothers from BYU, that is attempting to break into the pipeline. It's called Zinch and somehow, they're getting the word out to students, though only 451 have created profiles on the site. The problem, though, is that they haven't marketed this "service" to college admission officers in any way. A mention in The Chronicle this morning is the first I've seen outside of a student post on a message board.

Maybe they're waiting until they have the 20,000 students they want to have by the end of May, but I imagine that if students creating profiles report no response from the colleges, they won't get to that target.

I'm waiting for the pitch. What I've seen on their website isn't particularly enticing. None of the information on the site seems verified and they seem to require interaction to take place in their environment. The idea is interesting, but requires colleges to abandon their traditional marketing plans that Student Search syncs with.

Message board attacks haunt former students

The message board used by most prospective students and parents looking for admission information online isn't my favorite place, but it's fairly tame. There's another message board out there that's more popular with current college and grad students that's a little more "wild west". I take a look at it every once in a while and see a variety of topics. Some are interesting and some comments are quite funny and clever. Some topics are pretty silly and it's hard to believe the comments are being written by educated students (many of whom are in grad/professional school).

I mentioned the site to a reporter at The Washington Post about a month ago when she was responding to an article pitch. I actually told her to stay away from it, that she wouldn't find anything interesting there. I guess I was wrong. Another reporter at the newspaper has written a story about comments on the message board haunting people long after they've left school.

We usually think of the "mean girls" as being in high school, but I guess they can be 20-something men in grad school as well.

They think students are nacissistic now?

I was going to post my reaction to a recent study about narcissism and American students. The AP wrote an interesting article about the study and if you caught me on the right day, I'd agree with it, but would probably disagree with it the next day.

It seems that some schools are developing marketing plans to cater to the new "me" generation. Wilkes University in PA is taking out ad space (billboards, kiosks) in public places targeting specific students. Not specific groups of students, but one student. The New York Times business section has an article about this. Interesting that it didn't show up in the education section. I imagine that marketing firms will jump on the bandwagon, proposing this strategy to clients, but from the education side, I'm a little disturbed by it. Will students see things like this as evidence that a school "wants" them more? What are those of us at schools with modest admission budgets to do?

An ad on Facebook: