The 15 Most Inspiring Videos of All Time! Personal favorite: Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. Really, don’t miss it. It’s great advice for all high school students in the midst of the college application process. Thank you Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likable Media.
Founded in 1908, Reed College is a liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, known for its rich intellectual life. Dean of Admission Keith Todd joins us this month to answer not five -- but eight questions -- in the generous spirit of inquiry that exemplifies Reed College.
Located on 116 acres in a residential neighborhood, the Reed campus is just five miles from downtown Portland, and about 90 minutes from the Pacific coast. Featuring a lake and Reed Canyon, a wooded wetland with abundant wildlife and native plants, the campus is home to 1400 students.
The quirky intellectualism Reed is known for is on full display even on their website, which reads like a series of droll literary vignettes -- with comic overtones. (Not to go too Reedie on you.) In fact, Reed has produced 31 Rhodes Scholars, as well as numerous winners of the Fulbright, Watson, and National Science Foundation fellowships. Classes average 15 students with a 10-to-1 student-faculty ratio. Reed offers 22 department-based majors (from Anthropology to Theater), 12 interdisciplinary majors (including History-literature or Mathematics-economics) and 6 dual degree programs (such as applied physics and electronic science). And students can also work with their adviser to design alternate interdisciplinary majors.
Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution features College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step in her column, Get Schooled ! We appreciate her take on the need for getting good information to underresourced students.
Steve Jobs has been much on the minds of many since his death last week. What made him who he was? What in his past paved the way for his vision and his ability to realize it? Wired writer Steven Levy has posted an insightful piece on Jobs and we were particularly interested in what he had to say here: Jobs usually had little interest in public self-analysis, but every so often he'd drop a clue to what made him tick. Once he recalled for me some of the long summers of his youth. I'm a big believer in boredom," he told me. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, he explained, and "out of curiosity comes everything." The man who popularized personal computers and smartphones -- machines that would draw our attention like a flame attracts gnats -- worried about the future of boredom. "All the [technology] stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too." The intersection of Steve Jobs and the importance of downtime is also one that College Admission contributor Denise Clark Pope of Stanford University's School of Education often uses as a thought experiment to provide an "Aha!" moment for students and parents.
