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Class of 2015 admit rate lowest ever
In line with its peer institutions, Yale’s admission rate dropped this year — from 7.5 percent in the last admissions cycle to 7.35 percent this year.
Yale is making a total of 2,006 offers of admission to the record 27,282 students who applied this year, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said. Yale’s target class size will stay consistent this year, and Brenzel attributed the decreased admit rate to the rise in applications this year.
“The admit rate went down simply because applications went up,” Brenzel said. “We’re aiming at about the same number of places as last year, and we had a significant application increase, so our admit rate must go down as a result.”
The University joins Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and MIT in recording small decreases in admissions rate this year.
According to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s acceptance rate fell from 6.9 percent last year to 6.2 percent this year. Princeton dropped from 8.8 percent to 8.39 percent, the Daily Princetonian reported, while Stanford fell from 7.2 percent to 7.1 percent according to the Stanford Daily, and MIT from 9.7 percent to 9.6 percent according to The MIT Tech.
Four college counselors interviewed said they were not surprised by Yale’s ever-lower admissions rate, which has fallen from 9.9 percent since 2007.
Nancy Beane, a college counselor at the Westminster Schools, a private Christian day school in Atlanta, Ga., said decreasing admissions rates are causing more students to apply to more schools.
“Every school seems to be getting incrementally harder to get into,” she said. “It worries me, especially with the number of applications out there. It’s gotten crazy.”
Beane added that some of her students applied to 15 schools or more because they were afraid they would not be accepted.
But she agreed with three other college counselors who said the .15 percent change in Yale’s admissions rate this year did not indicate a meaningful change in the school’s selectivity.
“It’s hard to get into Yale: it’s an easy thing to say and it’s true,” said Alice Kleeman, college and career advisor at the Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, Cali. “It was true last year, it’s true this year and it will be true next year.”
Yale admitted 65 more students initially this year than last year, when 1,941 applicants were admitted on April 1 last year out of a total pool of 25,869.
Leonard King, director of college counseling at the Maret School in Washington, D.C., said Yale accepts more students than it aims to take, knowing that it will lose some to peers like Harvard and Princeton. He added that he thinks next year, Yale may accept fewer students because Harvard and Princeton will offer early action for the first time in four years, taking some students who prefer those schools over Yale out of Yale’s regular decision pool.
Yale also offered 996 students a place on the waitlist for the class of 2015. Last year, Yale waitlisted 932 applicants, and eventually made offers of admission to 98 of them. With these additional offers of admission, Yale’s acceptance rate overall was 7.9 percent.
“We had another extraordinary applicant pool, and another challenging selection process,” Brenzel said. “We could not make the offers we would have liked to a large number of immensely talented students, almost all of whom will attend other great colleges and universities.”
Marissa Medansky, a senior at Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Illin. said she was very excited to be accepted to Yale after having been deferred in the early round. Medansky said she is “most definitely probably” going to come to Yale.
Students admitted to Yale, both on December 15 and yesterday, have until May 1 to accept their offer of admission.
By Emily Wanger
Staff Reporter
Thursday, March 31, 2011
yaledailynews.com
Princeton makes offers to 8.39 percent of applicants in record admission cycle
Princeton University has offered admission to 2,282 students, or 8.39 percent, of the record 27,189 applications for the class of 2015 in what may be the most selective admission process in the University’s history. This compares with Princeton’s final admission rates of 8.8 percent for the class of 2014 and 10.1 percent for the class of 2013.
The applicant pool has increased 98.5 percent over the past seven years, with Princeton’s strong academic programs and financial aid policies continuing to appeal to prospective students from around the United States and the world.
“Our competitive acceptance rate continues a trend Princeton has been experiencing over the last several years,” Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said. “We have always focused on the quality of our pool, more than its size, yet this year we were impressed by both the size and quality of the applicant pool. The task of choosing our incoming class continues to be difficult, and the intellectual, personal and civic accomplishments we observed in these candidates were outstanding.”
The Office of Admission mailed letters to applicants at noon March 30, and students also will be informed of their admission decision through an online notification system beginning at 5 p.m. March 30.
The University expects that 60 percent of the freshman class of 2015 will receive need-based financial aid. The average aid package is projected to be $38,000, which more than covers the cost of next year’s tuition. For an incoming freshman whose family income is $60,000 or less a year, the projected aid package is $49,650.
“Our admission decisions reflect the University’s commitment to guarantee an exceptional educational opportunity to any deserving student, no matter what his or her financial circumstances may be,” Rapelye said. “Despite the slow economic recovery throughout the world, Princeton is able to provide students the ability to graduate debt-free.”
Princeton in 2001 became the first institution to offer a comprehensive no-loan financial aid program to all students on aid. Rather than loans, the program gives aid in the form of grants that do not have to repaid. The University’s admission process is need-blind for all students, meaning they are not at a disadvantage if they apply for financial aid.
In addition to its commitment to financial aid for low-, middle- and upper-middle-income students, Princeton has limited tuition increases in recognition of the challenging economic environment that continues to affect students and their families. University trustees in January approved a 1 percent increase in undergraduate tuition and fees for the upcoming 2011-12 academic year — the lowest fee package increase in 45 years.
Beyond the 2,282 students offered admission to the class of 2015, an additional 1,248 were offered positions on the wait list, and approximately half of those students are expected to choose to stay on the wait list, as in past years. Students who ultimately are offered a position in the class in May or June will receive the same financial aid considerations as students offered admission this week.
Princeton’s previous record-low 8.8 percent admission rate for the class of 2014 includes those students who were admitted from the wait list.
As part of its continued gradual expansion of the student body, the University intends to enroll 1,300 freshmen in fall 2011. An 11 percent overall increase in the number of undergraduates that began in fall 2005 will result in a student body of 5,200 by the 2012-13 academic year.
This year’s applicants come from 8,658 high schools in 138 countries, including the United States. Among the applicants, 10,099 had a cumulative 4.0 grade point average, and 14,042 had a combined score of 2100 or higher on the three sections of the SAT. Alumni volunteers had personal contact with 99.7 percent of applicants.
“The Admission Office has continued its efforts to reach out to a diverse group of prospective students who have distinguished themselves as scholars, as well as humanitarians, artists, athletes and leaders,” Rapelye said. “We are aware of the responsibility we have to review each application carefully and individually, and given the extraordinary applicant pool, we knew we could not include all of the qualified candidates in the class.”
Students receiving offers of admission for the class of 2015 come from 49 states and Washington, D.C., with the largest number of students admitted from California, followed by New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. International students make up 10.3 percent of the admitted students, and they are citizens of 66 countries, including Belgium, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the Ukraine.
Of the admitted students, 50.7 percent are men and 49.3 percent are women. Admitted students self-identified among the following racial and ethnic groups: 9.1 percent as African American; 22 percent as Asian American; 9.8 percent as Hispanic or Latino; less than 1 percent as Native American; and 5 percent as belonging to two or more races.
Twenty-three percent of the admitted students stated plans to pursue a bachelor of science in engineering, and 42 percent of those students are women.
For the third year in a row, 20 students of the new class are expected to defer their enrollment as part of Princeton’s Bridge Year Program. The University-sponsored program allows incoming freshmen to spend a tuition-free year doing international service work. Applications for the Bridge Year Program will be due in May from students who accept the University’s offer of admission.
The freshman class of 2015 was admitted through a single-deadline admission program. The University announced in February that it will reinstate an early admission program starting with students applying for the class of 2016. The single-choice early action program will allow students to apply early only to Princeton by Nov. 1, but will not require them to decide whether to accept Princeton’s offer until the end of the regular admission process on the candidate’s reply date of May 1.
By reinstating an early action program, the University hopes to provide an opportunity to apply early for students who know that Princeton is their first choice, while at the same time sustaining the progress made in recent years in diversifying the applicant pool and admitting the strongest possible class.
Emily Aronson
www.princeton.edu
Harvard Accepts Record Low 6.2 Percent of Applicants to the Class of 2015
An all-time low of 6.2 percent of applicants were offered admission to the Harvard College Class of 2015, beating records for the sixth consecutive year in what reflects a trend of increasing selectivity both at Harvard and at other top-tier universities.
Notification letters were mailed yesterday afternoon to 2,158 students, who were selected from a pool of 34,950—the largest number of applicants ever.
“You can’t help but feel optimistic when you look at an applicant pool like ours,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67. “It’s a big sign that American higher education has democratized.”
Next year’s freshman class will have an acceptance rate that’s nearly one percentage point below next year’s senior class, which had a rate of 7.1 percent. Ten years ago, 10.7 percent of applicants—an all-time low at the time—were admitted to that year’s incoming class, the Class of 2005.
Harvard’s admissions rate, down from 6.9 percent last year, is the lowest in the Ivy League, below Columbia’s 6.9 percent rate and Yale’s 7.35.
Those accepted to the Class of 2015 represent an increasingly diverse spectrum of students from around the country and the world: 17.8 percent of the accepted class is Asian-American, 11.8 percent is African-American, 12.1 percent is Latino, 1.9 percent is Native American, and 0.2 percent is Native Hawaiian. Harvard said in a press release that the number of Latino and African-American students in the Class of 2015 will most likely be these groups’ highest representation in any class yet.
“The fact is the demographics of America are changing very rapidly,” Fitzsimmons said of the increased outreach to minority students. “This part of Harvard’s mission to produce future leaders.”
Approximately 20 percent of the admitted students are either foreign citizens, U.S. dual citizens, or U.S. permanent residents. Together, this group represents 85 countries.
“The world’s very best students now feel that it’s possible to be admitted to a school like Harvard,” Fitzsimmons said.
The budget for financial aid increased to more than $160 million for next year, and more than 60 percent of the Class of 2015 is expected to benefit from an average need-based scholarship of more than $40,000. Under the provisions of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, students from families with a household income of less than $60,000 are able attend Harvard at no cost.
While Fitzsimmons acknowledged that this year’s class boasts higher test scores than in previous years—3,800 applicants were ranked first in their class—he said that he was impressed by the response of the faculty to supplementary academic materials submitted by applicants.
“The quality [of these submissions] seemed to be different. It seemed to be better,” Fitzsimmons said.
The College did not disclose the number of students placed on Harvard’s waitlist.
While Fitzsimmons said numbers vary from year to year, he said his office generally hopes to accept 50 to 125 students off the list.
The decline in the acceptance rate is consistent with the numbers at peer institutions. The acceptance rate for Princeton University’s Class of 2015 was 8.4 percent, down from 8.8 percent last year. At Stanford University, 7.1 percent of applicants gained acceptance—a slight decrease from 7.2 percent the year before. Columbia University saw the most dramatic drop: 6.9 percent were admitted to the freshman class this year compared to 9.2 the year before.
Admitted students are expected to converge on Cambridge in about two weeks for Visitas, the College’s visiting program for prospective freshmen. Accepted students must notify the College whether they intend to enroll by May 1.
By Justin C. Worland, Crimson Staff Write
thecrimson.com
Updated 2:10 p.m. | Harvard announced today that its non-binding early action admissions program will return this fall for the Class of 2016.
The program, which was eliminated in 2007 due to concerns that it posed a disadvantage to low-income applicants, will prohibit students from applying early to other schools, while being non-binding.
In a statement, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith said that offering an accelerated decision cycle for interested applicants will increase Harvard’s potential to attract top-caliber students.
“We looked carefully at trends in Harvard admissions these past years and saw that many highly talented students, including some of the best-prepared low-income and underrepresented minority students, were choosing programs with an early-action option, and therefore were missing out on the opportunity to consider Harvard,” he said.
In 2006, Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Virginia made headlines by announcing within weeks of each other that early admissions practices at their schools would end.
Less than two hours after Harvard revealed its plan to resume early admissions this morning, Princeton also announced its plans to restore the early admissions program. Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman said in a statement that she believed that bringing back an early program would allow her school to better recruit underrepresented groups.
“By reinstating an early program, we hope we can achieve two goals: provide opportunities for early application for students who know that Princeton is their first choice, while at the same time sustaining and even enhancing the progress we have made in recent years in diversifying our applicant pool,” she said in the statement.
The University of Virginia had already rolled out an early action program this past November.
Harvard President Drew G. Faust said in a statement that the return of early action is now “consistent with our bedrock commitment to access, affordability, and excellence.”
Harvard has been reevaluating its decision to move to a single admissions cycle since early this academic year. In November, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said in an interview with The Crimson that he did not expect any changes to the current program, but he added that “we’re a dynamic institution.”
While in 2006 Fitzsimmons heralded the single admissions notification date as “a win for students in the bottom quarter and bottom half of the income distribution,” earlier this month, he classified the move as an “experiment.”
When the College first removed early action admissions, then-Interim University President Derek C. Bok criticized the early round.
“We feel that if anybody is going to step up and take the lead to try to get rid of something which is really doing more harm than good in high schools across the country, it’s us,” Bok had said.
Harvard also said that it will add other recruiting programs in order to encourage greater transparency in college admissions and increase undergraduate involvement in the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program, and “Return to High School Program”—existing endeavors which aim to heighten interest in Harvard among students of diverse backgrounds.
Source:
www.thecrimson.com
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/24/harvard-admissions-early-program/
Princeton University will reinstate an early admission program, beginning next year with the class that will enter Princeton in September 2012. The single-choice early action program will require applicants to apply early only to Princeton, but will not require them to decide whether to accept Princeton’s offer until the end of the regular admission process.
“We have carefully reviewed our single admission program every year, and we have been very pleased with how it has worked,” Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman said. “But in eliminating our early program four years ago, we hoped other colleges and universities would do the same and they haven’t. One consequence is that some students who really want to make their college decision as early as possible in their senior year apply to other schools early, even if their first choice is Princeton.
“By reinstating an early program, we hope we can achieve two goals: provide opportunities for early application for students who know that Princeton is their first choice, while at the same time sustaining and even enhancing the progress we have made in recent years in diversifying our applicant pool and admitting the strongest possible class,” she added.
In 2006, Princeton announced its intention to adopt a single admission program, shortly after Harvard University announced its intention to eliminate its early action program. At the time, both universities expressed the hope that other universities would follow suit. Only the University of Virginia did so, and it reversed that decision last year. Earlier today, Harvard also returned to an early admission program.
Princeton had some form of early admission program for almost 30 years before it eliminated its early program with the class that entered in September 2008. From 1977 to 1995 it had an “early action” program in which students admitted early did not have to commit to attending Princeton, and in 1996 it switched to an “early decision” program in which students admitted early had to commit to accepting Princeton’s offer of admission. Since the elimination of the University’s early admission program, the number of applications to Princeton has increased from just under 19,000 to just over 27,000 this year; the number of high schools represented in the applicant pool has increased from 6,881 to 8,658; and the number of applicants from lower-income and minority backgrounds has increased significantly.
“One of our foremost goals in eliminating an early program was to encourage excellent students from a broad array of backgrounds and geographical areas to consider Princeton, and to assure them that their applications would be reviewed with the same care and attention as every other applicant,” Dean of Admission Janet Lavin Rapelye said. “Our single admission program helped us to make progress toward those goals, to which we remain fully committed. We are confident we can achieve them while also allowing students who are ready to apply early to do so.”
Since one of the purposes of Princeton’s early admission program will be to identify applicants for whom Princeton is their first choice, students who apply early will be required to affirm that their only early application is to Princeton. Because Princeton’s program will be “early action” rather than “early decision,” students who are admitted early will be permitted to apply to other schools through their regular admission processes and to defer decisions about where to enroll until they know all their options. This process also allows students who wish to compare financial aid awards to do so before making final decisions.
The 1,313 Princeton students in this year’s freshman class of 2014 were selected from a record 26,247 applicants. Overall, last year Princeton admitted 8.8 percent of its applicants — the lowest percentage ever. Almost 59 percent of the class is receiving financial aid, which under Princeton’s groundbreaking policy requires no loans, and the average grant is $35,157. Nearly 16 percent of the class comes from low-income backgrounds, and nearly 11 percent are the first in their families to attend college.
The class of 2014 includes the largest number of students from minority backgrounds in Princeton’s history, with a total of 490 students from American minority groups, representing 37.3 percent of the class, and 141 international students from 47 countries, constituting 10.7 percent of the class. Along with the two previous classes, this year’s freshman class is the third in Princeton’s history to be evenly balanced in terms of gender.
The decision to reinstate Princeton’s early admission program was made by Tilghman, Rapelye and Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel. The decision was discussed at length with the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, which expressed strong support for the decision.
Source:
February 24, 2011
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S29/85/15K32/index.xml?section=topstories
IN 1975 scientists expert in a new and potentially world-changing technology, genetic engineering, gathered at Asilomar, on the Monterey peninsula in California, to ponder the ethics and safety of the course they were embarking on. The year before, they had imposed on themselves a voluntary moratorium on experiments which involved the transfer of genes from one species to another, amid concerns about the risk to human health and to the environment which such “transgenic” creations might pose. Continue reading Messing with our planet
IN MORE than 30 years of teaching introductory macroeconomics, says Alan Blinder of Princeton University, he has never seen interest as high as it was last year. At Harvard, says David Laibson, students in his undergraduate macroeconomics course are “chomping at the bit”. Continue reading Rewriting Macroeconomics Curriculum
PROVIDENCE – Brown University said Thursday it admitted just 9.3 percent of those who applied to join its Class of 2014, making this the most selective year in the school’s history. Continue reading Brown 2014
In the most selective admission process in the University’s history, Princeton has offered admission to 2,148, or 8.18 percent, of the record 26,247 applicants for the class of 2014. This compares to an admission rate of 9.79 percent at this time last year, and 9.25 percent the previous year. Continue reading Princeton 2014
As MIT students celebrated π day this Sunday, 10,948 high school seniors waited nervously by their computers for the Class of 2014 admissions decisions. Continue reading MIT 2014
A record-low 6.9 percent of applicants have been accepted to the Harvard College Class of 2014. Continue reading Harvard 2014
Yale College admitted 7.5 percent of its applicants to the class of 2014, equaling last year’s record low rate. Continue reading Yale 2014
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Admission decisions will, in fact, be released sometime after 3pm (Pacific Time) today, March 26, six days ahead of schedule. Continue reading Stanford 2014
MANHASSET, NY — Researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have successfully created a transistor made from a single molecule. The researchers showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor. Continue reading Single Molecule Transistor
The tyres of the future may be made from dandelions. OTHER than being an ingredient of the more recherché sorts of salad, herbal tea or wine, dandelions are pretty useless plants. Or, at least, they were. But one species, a Russian variety called Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS), may yet make the big time. It produces molecules of rubber in its sap and if two research programmes, one going on in Germany and one in America, come to fruition, it could supplement—or even replace—the traditional rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. Continue reading Rubber from Dandelions
A team led by Harvard researchers has discovered a family of naturally occurring proteins in human cells that protect against influenza and other illnesses—a finding that may lead to methods to speed up vaccine production and to new flu prevention drugs for humans.
Continue reading Native Flu Fighting Proteins
Marin Soljacic couldn’t sleep. The problem was his wife’s Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled.
Continue reading Wireless Electricity
How a new communications technology disrupted America’s newspaper industry — in 1845. CHANGE is in the air. A new communications technology threatens a dramatic upheaval in America’s newspaper industry, overturning the status quo and disrupting the business model that has served the industry for years. This “great revolution”, warns one editor, will mean that some publications “must submit to destiny, and go out of existence.” With many American papers declaring bankruptcy in the past few months, their readers and advertisers lured away by cheaper alternatives on the internet, this doom-laden prediction sounds familiar. But it was in fact made in May 1845, when the revolutionary technology of the day was not the internet—but the electric telegraph.
Continue reading News vs Newspaper
Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94.
Continue reading Foundations of Economic Analysis
Copying Birds may save aircraft fuel.
Source: The Economist. Photo: Corbis
Continue reading Birds and Aviation Fuel Efficiency
All elephants living in Indian zoos and circuses will be moved to wildlife parks and game sanctuaries where the animals can graze more freely, officials said Friday. Continue reading Elephant Camps
A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. Continue reading Giant Crack in Africa
LONDON – Ireland is to ban the traditional lightbulb with householders forced to switch to new long-life low-energy bulbs.
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PORTLAND, Ore. — Diatoms–single-celled phytoplankton (algae)–are one of the most plentiful life forms on Earth, accounting for 20 percent of the carbon dioxide removed from the environment each year. The mechanism they use–encasing themselves in patterned silicon dioxide shells as they fall to the bottom of oceans and lakes worldwide–removes as much carbon dioxide from the environment as all of the planet’s rainforests combined. Continue reading Diatoms
PORTLAND, Ore. — The hydrogen economy is getting a shot in the arm from a start-up that says its nanoparticle coatings could make hydrogen easy to produce at home from distilled water, and ultimately bring the cost of hydrogen fuel cells in line with that of fossil fuels. QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the manufacture of highly reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings that could up the efficiency of electrolysis, the technique that generates hydrogen from water. Moreover, the coatings could also eliminate the need for expensive metals like platinum in hydrogen fuel cells. Continue reading Car fuel from water
A tiny chemical “brain” which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented. The molecular device – just two billionths of a metre across – was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test. Continue reading Molecular Machines
PORTLAND, Ore. — Thermoelectric coolers and power generators were handed a 40-percent boost in performance recently by a nanotechnological reconstruction of a classic bulk material. The technique is suitable for mass production, according to its inventors at Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Continue reading Bismuth Antimony Telluride
After 38 years, Israeli solves math code. A mathematical puzzle that baffled the top minds in the esoteric field of symbolic dynamics for nearly four decades has been cracked — by a 63-year-old immigrant who once had to work as a security guard. Continue reading Road Coloring Problem
| Nanodots could yield denser memories, ceramic engine
PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at North Carolina State University said they were able to read and write bits at room temperature using magnetic nanodots that delivered 1 terabit of memory per centimeter2. Continue reading Nanodots |
Wall Street Journal | September 12, 2009
Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence.
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do!
Continue reading Man vs God
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. — Gaze into the electron microscope display in Frances Ross’s laboratory here and it is possible to persuade yourself that Dr. Ross, a 21st-century materials scientist, is actually a farmer in some Lilliputian silicon world. Continue reading FinFETs
UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Wednesday a vault carved into the Arctic permafrost, filled with samples of the world’s most important seeds in case food crops are wiped out by a catastrophe. Continue reading Doomsday Seed Vault
LONDON (Reuters) – A 17-year-old Briton became the youngest person to sail round the globe single-handed on Thursday after nine months at sea. Continue reading Youngest circumnavigator
An adhesive made by worms inspires a new treatment for broken bones. Continue reading Biomimicry
Wild elephants cross a road at the Kerala – Karnataka state border (Bandipur forest) in India. Photo by K. K. Mustafa | The Hindu | 19 August 2009
Triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt set a new world record as he cruised to a stunning victory in the 100m at the World Championships in Berlin. The 22-year-old Jamaican stormed home in a time of 9.58 seconds to leave the rest of the field in his wake. Continue reading Bolt 9.58s
Built in 427 AD, world’s first university predating Harvard and Oxford.
At a summit meeting of leaders next week in the Philippines, senior officials from India, Singapore, Japan and perhaps other countries are scheduled to discuss the revival of an ancient university in India called Nalanda. Continue reading University Predating Harvard and Oxford
Google Earth’s got some competition now — from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which today unveiled its beta version of Bhuvan (meaning earth in Sanskrit). Continue reading Bhuvan challenging Google Earth
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A flying frog, the world’s smallest deer and the first new monkey to be found in over a century are among 350 new species discovered in the eastern Himalayas in the past decade, the WWF said Monday. Continue reading Flying Frogs
Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers have revealed. Continue reading 1 million mph
BANGALORE – Red-hot chili peppers could soon come to India’s defense. The country’s defense scientists are working on using the world’s hottest chilies in hand grenades for use in counter-insurgency operations and riot control. Continue reading World’s Hottest Chili
Solar Eclipse July 22, 2009 | New Delhi, India
Zac Sunderland completes solo sail around the world.
The 17-year-old from Thousand Oaks is the youngest sailor to complete the feat. The journey lasted 13 months. Zac Sunderland, who left Marina del Rey 13 months ago with a bold ambition to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone, returned to complete that quest today at 10:30 a.m. Continue reading Sailing solo around the world
The Times of India Online has emerged as the world’s No.1 English newspaper website in terms of page views. According to the latest figures from internet marketing research company ComScore, timesofindia.com with 159 million page views in May 2009 was way ahead of the New York Times, Sun, Washington Post, Daily Mail and USA Today websites. Continue reading Largest English Newspaper
Henry Kissinger on Obama’s Opportunity to Forge a Peaceful U.S. Foreign Policy
SPIEGEL: Dr. Kissinger, 90 years ago, at the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Is that an event of the past only of interest to historians or does it still shape contemporary politics? Continue reading Lessons from Versailles
Financial Times | Jonathan Leahy | June 26 2009
India plans ID cards for citizens
India’s government has launched one of the biggest bureaucratic exercises in the country’s history – the issue of a single identity card for each of its 1.1bn citizens. Continue reading World’s Largest Database
RAY HENRY | June 25, 2009 09:53 PM EST
Rhode Island Slavery Legacy Prompting Name Change
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The country’s smallest state has the longest official name: “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”
A push to drop “Providence Plantations” from that name advanced farther than ever on Thursday when House lawmakers voted 70-3 to let residents decide whether their home should simply be called the “State of Rhode Island.” It’s an encouraging sign for those who believe the formal name conjures up images of slavery, while opponents argue it’s an unnecessary rewriting of history that ignores Rhode Island’s tradition of religious liberty and tolerance. Continue reading Renaming Rhode Island
Source: yosemitehikes
WASHINGTON: When the letter with the 90-cent Lincoln stamp was mailed in 1873 by an ice exporter in Boston to his office in Calcutta, Mohandas Gandhi (later Mahatma) was a toddler of four, Narendranath Dutta (later Swami Vivekananda) was a stripling of ten, and Ulysses Grant (later to visit Calcutta) was President of the United States.
Continue reading Lincoln Stamp and Trading Ice
According to Roman legend, there once was a cruel boy who tortured a fox by tying straw to its tail and then setting the straw ablaze. The god Robigus was so outraged that he punished humanity with wheat rust, a fungal nightmare that leaves crops looking as though they had been burned.
Continue reading Wrath of Robigus
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a maths puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported on Thursday.
Continue reading Cracking Bernoulli Puzzle
The dive to 10,902m (6.8 miles) took place on 31 May, at the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean.
Continue reading Nereus
Californian school kids have been told to throw away their textbooks to help the state avoid bankruptcy. But they won’t need total recall — they’re going digital instead. The textbooks have been terminated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilding state governor who says they are “outdated” and too expensive.
Continue reading Goodbye Textbooks
BENIPUR VILLAGE, India — Advertisers in India can’t rely on TV, radio or even newspapers to reach the country’s 700 million rural consumers. So they use Sandeep Sharma.
Continue reading Global consumerism
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2009061204
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4608799.cms
http://www.myyearbook.com/our_story.php
Usain Bolt ran the 100 metres in a breathtaking 9.77 seconds – the fastest time in the world this year – at the IAAF Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava.
Continue reading Bolt 9.97s
Whenever a new gadget hits the streets, it’s a race to see who will be the first to reduce to its constituent pieces. With the launch of the iPhone 3G S we’ve got a pair of different companies doing their darndest to disassemble the latest iteration of Apple’s iconic device. Frankly, I’d be happy to have one fully assembled right now, but the FedEx guy has shown up yet.
Continue reading iPhone Teardown
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