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Beauty Rankings
2007-12-09 12:17:00
Campus Squeeze, "a site dedicated to making the whole college experience much, much less serious than it should be," has published their list of the 20 Most Beautiful College Campuses and the 20 Ugliest in the US. The methodology has been questioned as the reviewers apparently didn't actually visit any of these schools and are only going by website pictures. Some may regard such a survey as
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Get Your Shots!
2007-12-09 05:26:00
An interesting piece in the news: The University of Southern Maine has banned 462 students who didn't get up to date mumps shots. The students can remain in college housing apparently, but they are forbidden from coming to class. The measure was taken to avoid an outbreak of mumps on campus. In the state of Maine, authorities believe that 35 people have the mumps, including one university student
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Are International Rankings Any Better?
2007-12-05 10:19:00
This article is part of a series on rankings. Part 1 talked about critiques of the US News ratings. Part 2 talked about the methodology of the US New rankings and Part 3 offered alternatives for finding the university or program of your dreams without rankings. This article will look at the methodology of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, which rate universities all over the world and
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Are you Insured?
2007-12-05 09:33:00
You may or may not realize that you need health insurance if you plan to study in the US, the UK, or most other Western countries. It's the law. At the same time, if you're an American planning to study abroad your program or host university will probably want you to have insurance too. Already have insurance? Or you're on your parent's plan? Chances are that's not going to help you when you

Sorbonne Closed Down
2007-11-29 10:37:00
European universities have been going through severe crises in the past years. Unlike America where the best schools are private, most European countries have maintained government control over their top schools, if not all higher education institutions. In France, home of Le Sorbonne, widely regarded as one of the best universities in the world, many have complained that too much government
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Depp and Sascha Baron Cohen
2007-11-29 10:18:00
OK, everyone knows Johnny Depp is an awesome actor. I have to admit, I'm not always thrilled that he chooses big name films like Pirates of the Caribbean because I think of him as an indie actor who does Tim Burton flicks. As it gets near Christmas I always crave Edward Scissorhands which has that lovely end where it starts to snow as the old Wynona Ryder is telling her grandkids about the
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Common Mistakes in English: Negative Questions
2007-11-25 05:53:00
Every now and then, I want to post about some of the most common mistakes I hear by English learners. Which probably means these are some of the hardest things about learning English. I thought I would start with a mistake that is a bit subtle but very important. The other day, I went to the office and my boss asked me, "Haven't you seen Aizhan?" I said, "No," a bit annoyed She asked, "Don't
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Innovations in Education and Teaching
2007-10-10 08:52:00
Inside Higher Ed reported a while back on new ideas for teaching political science from the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association Thursday in Chicago. Perhaps the most controversial idea introduced was replacing the textbook for the Introduction to Political Science course with John Stewart's America: the Book. John Stewart is the host of a satirical comedy news show on Comedy Central, and his book continues the vein of satirizing. The choice is controversial because the book doesn't claim to be a textbook, contains graphic humor, and Stewart is known for his liberal bias. However, the professor at Northern Kentucky University defended his choice saying that using a humourous text can counteract a major problem at universities today: Students don't read the textbook and get bored in class. Supplementing primary sources with a more fun book that, the professor claims, is still factual and covers the scope of an intro to poli sci class, will boost student int...
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Win $50 000 for school!
2007-10-10 08:43:00
Some big news: Proctor and Gamble is sponsoring a $50,000 College Education Sweepstakes All you have to do is click on the link and enter your email to sign up. Then watch As the World Turns and Guiding Light on November 12, 14, and 16th. Send in the name of the character who speaks the first line those three days, and you'll be entered into the drawing for the sweepstakes. $50 000 is a big help in financing university studies these days--that's pretty much tuition, housing, books and insurance for one year. Or divide it up, $12 000 per year for four years! You can also win a 6-month supply of Pampers diapers. The contest is quick and simple. So sign up today.
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English Lit Advantage?
2007-10-07 05:44:00
The Home and The World has a thoughtful post on the reasons for studying English Literature. For those unfamiliar with this blog, it's the blog of a literature professor which is full of extremely insightful and interesting posts on the academy.I won't make any comments on her post because I haven't processed it yet, but please feel free to tell me what you think.
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Getting Money for University: Loans
2007-10-07 05:27:00
Studying in the US is expensive. As a foreign student, there's a lot less financial aid out there for you and you aren't eligible for in-state tuition. Plus, for a lot of students from developing countries incomes are just lower and opportunities to save or invest money are less reliable. Plus as an international student you have to factor in transport costs, visa and registration fees, not to mention costs of buying a lot of stuff you just can't bring from home. A lot of foreign students end up taking out private loans. But then you end up where a lot of American students end up. Deep in debt before you even have a job!If you're going to need to take out loans to study (whether you are foreign or domestic), you might want to check out the information on Premier Student Loan.com. They really give great information on private loans and how they work, how to qualify. Plus they have information on federal loans and other sources. Check it out or you'll end up in a bank signing awa...
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Harvard Day
2007-10-07 05:22:00
The Harvard Club of Central Asia has arranged Harvard Day in Almaty and Astana! Representatives from the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Business School will be present to talk about applying and studying at Harvard. There will also be information about scholarships for graduate studies!Almaty: Oct 15th2pm at KIMEP, in the Great Hall.Astana: Oct 17thTime and Place: As yet undecided.For more information, you can call (727) 2619090 (ext. 5231) or e-mail harvard.club.kz@gmail.com. Or check the Harvard Club.KZ website

Maybe It's Just Me...
2007-10-06 06:25:00
But tequila and university are mixed irrevocably for me. When I was a wee little undergraduate, tequila was the drink of choice of my social group. While we would sometimes drink everyone's favorite, Jose Cuervo, when we were shooting, we liked to experiment and often bought white tequila which has almost no scent for those who don't like that smoky aroma. We played around with agave, and ate our share of worms. While most people think of tequila as something to get drunk on, for us it was an introduction to sophisticated drinking. There are so many different kinds of tequila out there, not to mention the different labels. We played around quite a bit at the liquor store, but it would have been great to have had a guide, like The Tequila Guy. Obviously, the first thing I really like about his site is The recipes. Tequila shots will kill you night after night, and Tequila Sunrises get boring. Plus Tequila is such a unique flavor it's hard to know what it mixes well with. So it's ...

Home Page Updated
2007-09-30 05:54:00
After a long time of leaving the home page alone, I've redone the design a little bit and also added a couple of new things. The biggest change is that I finally added some tests to the site. There's a couple of grammar tests and some TOEFL iBT tests. Keep checking back because I'll be adding new tests periodically.On that note, I took away the Question of the Week sidebar because that thing hasn't been updated in months (Thinking up new questions wasn't the most fun Sunday activity of my life) but the feed is still up and the archived questions are still there.Other than that, the menu has been redesigned to focus on some of the more fun stuff on the site, like this blog and also Robo Tutor, an AI-robot that can help you practice your English. There's also two silly animated GIF movies/adverts I made which are hopefully kind of funny. Always looking for ideas for new ones, so if you have an idea after watching Deal! and Bridge Out!, let me know and I'll see what I can do.As ...
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Student as Consumer
2007-09-30 05:14:00
If you read a lot of professor blogs--and check my blogroll in the next couple of days since I am working to add my favorite prof blogs to it--you will see a level of frustration at the student-as-consumer model which is being adopted by many universities. In this model, students (or their parents) pay money to a university which is a service-provider. Customer satisfaction is therefore the most important goal. Why do professors resist this? Or in some cases rage against it? Because customer satisfaction seems to imply in the case of a university that:1) Student s should be given good grades2) Professors should only teach what students want to learn3) The customer is always right, even if he or she cheats, plagiarizes, fails to come to class, listens to MP3s all through class, etc...Is education really like a restaurant or a resort hotel? Or is education a different kind of product that involves earning a good grade through work, learning what the professors/experts say you should le...
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Questions Not to Ask
2007-09-29 06:25:00
Another good one from Rateyourstudents.com, the site where professors get to rant about their students. This post is top ten first year pre-midterm quotes. Think of it as a guide to what not to say to your professor.Let me also throw in some of my favorite anti-quotes from Kazakhstan high school students, some of my least favorite things said to me by school children here:Hi. While I appreciate the enthusiasm, we do not say 'Hi' to teachers. We say 'Hello' or 'Good morning' I assume most students do not say 'Привет' to their Russian teachers.Do you take bribes?I don't want to. After being asked to go see the assistant director for using bad words in class.Do you smoke? How old are you? Personal questions shouted out in the middle of class are not appreciated
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Flirting with SMS
2007-09-29 05:23:00
These days there's hundreds of social websites out there--facebook, myspace, xanga, friendster. Your own school or university probably has its own site for meeting people. As a foreign student, it can be hard to know which ones are popular, or which ones are kind of useless. In fact, my poor Afghan students that I was teaching in Kyrgyzstan this summer are all joining a dating site. I think they think it's just another social site, but this very strict Muslim teenagers, who can't get through movies where men take off their shirts, are all urging me to sign up for a dating and match-making site. So while you definitely might want to check out Mobile Chat at Ilovetexting.com, which is a much easier way of high-tech socializing. I do want to warn you that it is definitely for meeting dates and hooking up--if the homepage is to be believed. That being said, I like the idea of mobile networks instead of online. Instead of using a big computer to do your networking and flirting, you ca...
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Healthy Slang
2007-09-28 12:49:00
Another look at some slang, this time about health and how we feelYou've got ants in your pantsMade you look! You don't really have ants in your pants. But imagine if you did! You'd be jumping up and down from all those tiny tickling little feet. And imagine if they were those biting ants. You'd be going crazy! So when we say someone has ants in their pants, we mean they are full of energy, jumping around all over the place, ready to go! Or sometimes we make it short and say: "Oh boy, I sure feel antsy today," meaning "I feel nervous or energetic, I really need to do something."Another related bit of slang we use to describe someone's state of mind, is stir crazy. If you've ever been sick and had to stay inside, in bed, for four or five days, chances are you went a little stir crazy. You just wanted to go outside and run around, you couldn't stay in the house another second. You probably wandered all over your room, and picked things up and put them down. When I sit in my off...
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FLEX Program
2007-09-20 09:07:00
As usual I am bringing you information on scholarships to study in the US or other countries. However, the FLEX program for high school students is beginning its application process NOW in Kazakhstan. If you are interested, call (7172) 98-00-68 today to talk to the American Councils office in Astana about where to go and what to do.The FLEX Program The Future Leaders EXchange program is funded by the US Department of State and funds secondary school students from the former Soviet Union, to study for one year in a US high school and live with a host-family. A parallel program also exists for students from Muslim majority countries such as Indonesia, Afghanistan and Malaysia.The program aims to teach students about American civil society, including volunteerism and respect for the rule of law so that they will bring these lessons back to their respective countries and become leaders of development. It is also hoped that these students will learn more about Americans and American cultu...
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More Discount Shopping
2007-09-16 06:24:00
The biggest shopping day of the year in the US is Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving. Don't ask me why it's called Black Friday, I don't know--but it's when everyone starts thinking about their Christmas shopping and the stores will be packed. So you can get huge discounts and great sales at stores on the 23rd of November this year. If you know where to go.You need a black friday site that releases the ads early so you can plan your shopping. Check out www.black-friday.net for a huge list of already planned sales and discount coupon codes. For example, Target is planning to sell a Samsung DVD camcorder $179--something I have been wanting to get my hands on since our camcorder is an old school cassette model. And I think we paid about $200 for that! They also have DVD sets of The Family Guy or The Simpsons for $16 which is a very good deal.But enough about my Christmas list: Black Friday.net has reported sales from basically every store you can imagine: Wal-Mart, Old...
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A Day in the Life
2007-09-16 06:20:00
I realize that no one reads this blog or ever comments but I am undaunted!I recently came across an article in ETS' TOEFL Access Newsletter, featuring a typical schedule in the day of the life of an American undergraduate university student entitled Everyday Life . It certainly was one take on American university life and may give you some idea of the rhythm of universities here. However for a counterpoint, I thought I would present my typical day at school and I would love to hear from you gentle readers. What is your typical day at school like? It would be great to hear from people in the US and outside of it, to get an idea of what American university life is like and how it may be different from your home country. Or maybe you have an interesting story about adjusting? For example, one foreign student at my school couldn't quite grasp that in the US you typically have the same class only once or twice a week. So everyday for one week, she showed up at her History classroom at 1...
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Ten Tools for Students
2007-09-13 10:00:00
Another post for those of you heading back to school. Lifehacker.com has published a list of ten programs, websites and software packages for students. All of them are free and you can get them by clicking on the link. They include:Tools for Facebook.comThe Cornell PDF GeneratorOnline Cliff Notes to LiteratureBookfinder.comBibliography MakerSocial Class NotesSearch engine for Google Scholar and Google BooksWeb-based OrganizerA package of all the free software you will ever need--incuding Open Office and Firefox.Check it out. Some of it might be useful for you.
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Become a Big Dealer
2007-09-12 06:11:00
One of the weird things about the US is that a lot of professional licenses and exams to get those licenses vary from state to state. So it can be very hard to get good materials to prepare for those exams. If you are interested in getting a real estate license in the US, you need to check out this software: Real Estate Exam Questions. These questions imitate the real exam questions you will get on the real-estate exam. Compucram promises that "success is 100% guaranteed." Plus they offer a money-back guarentee. You can check out a free demo on the site. They also offer different exam preparation software for different industries like real estate sales, appraisal, and securities. You also get free software updates when the exams change, so your test-prep changes too. The best way to pass an exam is to get the right preparation. Compucram looks like an excellent piece of software to get you ready to win your real-estate license.
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Scholarships: The Fulbright Scholarship
2007-09-10 12:41:00
The Fulbright Program is funded by the US Department of State and administered by a number of organizations including the IIE. It funds a number of different activities but for foreign (non-US) students the most important are that it funds graduate students who wish to study in the US and it funds foreign scholars (professors or academics) to conduct research, lecture, or teach at US universities.For the 2005-2006 year the Fulbright program funded over 2000 foreign graduate students (about 50% of which were renewals of previous grants) and approximately 750 grants to foreign scholars to visit or teach in US universities. To apply for the Fulbright scholarship you should contact the Fulbright Commission in your country. In Kazakhstan, where no such commission exists, you should contact the US Embassy for information on how to apply. Applications are taken in the fall and candidates are chosen based on language proficiency, academic qualifications, and personal characteristics. Howeve...
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Keep in Touch
2007-09-10 12:13:00
So you're going off to school in another country far from your home and your family. You already know you're going to be calling home a lot, right? Your mom has already told you to call every day, and your buddies are going to want to know what you're doing, how bad the food is, how cute the girls (or boys are). So sign on with Pingo cheap calling card to India or anywhere in the world! It's simple and it's cheap. A call from the US to Kazakhstan is 12 cents a minute, or 1/10 of a tenge! To Malaysia it's less than 3 cents a minute. Check out the rates yourself.Pingo offers virtual calling cards. You sign up and buy minutes, and they give you a PIN code and a toll-free telephone number to call. So you can call from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world with a network reliable enough to serve 1.1 billion calling minutes every month! The best part is that there are no hidden fees and no surprise charges. You pay for the phone call and that's it. And when you sign up you...
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Make Mistakes in Your Essay?
2007-09-07 08:51:00
If there's a sign of the times in college admissions, it may be this: Steven Roy Goodman, an independent college counselor, tells clients to make a small mistake somewhere in their application on purpose."Sometimes it's a typo," he says. "I don't want my students to sound like robots. It's pretty easy to fall into that trap of trying to do everything perfectly and there's no spark left."This advice to deliberately make a mistake in your application comes from a story on ABC News, Colleges Seek 'Authenticity' in Hopefuls. Controversial advice, but it shows that these days colleges are looking for real human beings to fill their classes, not perfect students with all A+'s who have won 15 sports championships, volunteered at hospitals, composed award-winning music and solved Fermat's equation. Or perhaps it's because the admissions committee already knows you aren't perfect, so why pretend?Most of the advice in the story focuses on the need to show your personality, mainly b...
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Selling Pot and Wearing Revealing Clothes
2007-09-07 06:20:00
Just a couple of funny news items that caught my eye from the Chronicle of Higher Education news feed.First off, How Not to Sell Marijuana. Namely, do not shout out your window, “If you’re looking for weed, my roommate Ferrante has some for sale.” That might attract the attention of nearby policemen who might then search your room and arrest you. You might get kicked out of school as well for that.Or your wardrobe may get you in trouble. As the busy holiday travel season begins, take a look at your clothes. A 23-year old student was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight because her outfit was inappropriate. She was let back on after covering her legs with a blanket so apparently it was the denim mini-skirt that was the issue. Mind, she wasn't wearing a bikini bottom, she was wearing a mini-skirt made of denim, the same material jeans are made of, so not a skin-tight material like spandex. A little demanding of the airline, if you ask me.
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Interested in Kazakhstan?
2007-09-07 05:37:00
Although I assumed this blog would be read mainly by students from Kaza khstan and the former Soviet republics, in fact my biggest readers are from the US, Malaysia and India (in that order). So it might be interesting for you guys to read about life around these here parts. It's definitely an interesting part of the world: former USSR, nomadic history, culturally Muslim but not religious. If you want to see what this country looks like through the eyes of a genius Brit living here in Astana, check out Kazakhstan Blog. Chris Merriman's blog covers a lot of ground and the Kazakhstan-related posts are in the Kazakhstan archive, including some funny stories about culture shock and adapting to a new environment. But for English language learners, you can check out his most recent post Language Differences about differences in American and British spelling. He also has articles on interesting news items, bits of tech-geekiness for geniuses, and pictures of handsome kittens! So check out...
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Even in Email, Be Polite to Professors
2007-09-07 05:15:00
A great article from the New York Times was just brought to my attention, To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me. Maybe because today's 18 year olds grew up with email, chat rooms and the Internet, many professors get annoying emails from students. Students write in informal language sometimes using L33T, demand instant replies to their emails, call the professor by the first name, and even share incredibly personal information. No matter what the reason, it seems like email makes students feel that all rules of formality go out the window. Or some students seem to think that email is somehow separate from the rest of the world, so that confessing that they are too hungover to go to class will not affect their professor's opinion of them.So what can you do? Well, a few simple rules of courtesy should apply:Make the subject of your email clear. If you want to clarify some information about the final exam, make your subject "Question about final exam." If you w...
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A New Way to Evaluate Grad Students
2007-09-05 07:49:00
A new project by ETS, the makers of the TOEFL, GRE, and SAT exams, will attempt to measure candidates for graduate school in a more accurate way, by standardizing measures of subjective merit.One of the biggest problems graduate programs face is just that: getting the ultimately subjective information they need about a candidate's personality, academic qualifications and ability to study in a way that is easy to evaluate. The GRE test is one measure of academic ability and skill but that is only part of what a graduate program needs to know. Letters of recommendation from professors or supervisors are useful but problems remain in how to read different letters in a uniform way, not to mention that some professors give out the same letter for every student. In Kazakhstan and elsewhere, it is also common for students or employees to write the letter themselves!The Personal Potential Index will measure 6 characteristics: Knowledge and Creativity; Communication Skills; Teamwork; Resili...
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