Before applying to college, many students will look through U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges. The higher the ranking, the higher the prestige. And hopefully, higher the starting salary.

And who wouldn’t want to attend a high-ranked college or university? From graduation on, that school’s name will stick to your resume. And if there is anything you can do to improve your school’s ranking, you should. It would essentially improve your credentials as well.

So today is a good day.

Forbes has released its take on the college ranking system, basing 25% of the rankings on 7 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com.

Let me repeat. Based on what you and your peers wrote on the infamous RateMyProfessors.

So maybe instead of bashing that professor for a low B, you should commend them for the greatest semester of your life. That is, if anyone actually reads Forbes.

[Forbes' Top 50 U.S. Colleges, via AboveTheLaw & Althouse]

A quick “top 10″ comparison between the two rankings after the jump.

Read on to your heart’s content »

This was an article originally written for the Los Angeles Loyolan, the student-run newspaper at LMU. We thought most HackCollege readers would also find it interesting.

I’m part of the last generation of “Film Production” majors to go through LMU. The School of Film and Television is phasing out the major and already, the sophomores and freshmen major in something different: just plain old “Production.” The point is to encompass both television and film (and maybe even new media) into one major. The class structure is altered now so that students have to take both television and film classes. The idea is that the two workflows are gradually converging, as one-hour television dramas shoot on film and action movies get shot on digital video. That sounds pretty progressive for a film school, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, changing the name of a major doesn’t do the trick. If you’re going to shoot a junior thesis, AKA PROD 300, you have to use film – actual film, like the stuff we used in still cameras once upon a time. Real film is expensive. That means the bare minimum budget for a junior thesis is about $3,000. Indeed, it’s as goofy a requirement as it sounds. Effectively, when you’re a junior, you can’t shoot a fictional piece on a digital medium in spite of the dawn of iTunes, high-definition television and outstanding digital cameras like the Red One. Granted, 35mm is certainly not obsolete, but it’s noncore for a media person these days.

Read on to your heart’s content »

From time to time, I write for Portfolio.com’s tech section as a junior correspondent of sorts. My most recent post, published today, is a reaction to the MPAA overestimating the effect of student piracy and the rest of the web media–in turn–hastily criticizing the MPAA. The point of my quick post is that people are looking at the wrong parts of the argument. Check it out:

“We’re Not Thieves Just Cash Poor Consumers” [Portfolio.com]

Much to our unwillingness to help such an intellectual brain dead site with some extra publicity, we completely neglected the JuicyCampus blog. For those who missed it, a student posting on JuicyCampus caused some problems three weeks ago at LMU when a student. HackCollege broke the news to the world about the incident (not really). But we did get quite a bit of press and are currently the #2 hit when you search “JuicyCampus” in Google. I just found their blog today while posting more nonsense garbage on their site (explanation in episode 12 of the podcast), our website for all to see. Whoops! There goes my anonymity!

The Dealio

On December 9, the JuicyCampus Blog responded to the shooting threat debacle in the most professional and mature way possible–by vicariously blaming someone else. Cool.

By using another user’s post as a seemingly official response to an overblown yet serious matter, JuicyCampus belittles their users:

Read on to your heart’s content »

This story was picked up by CNN: “Student arrested after threats to attack campus”

I arrived back from the “Altstadt” in Düsseldorf, Germany, last night to an email and an AIM message. The email was from LMU and was not a routine test of the emergency broadcast system. It was warning me that there could be a school shooting today. The administration had got wind of an anonymous post on the juvenile gossip site, JuicyCampus.com [with no hyperlink for a reason].

JuicyCampus.com boasts itself as an anonymous forum for students to voice their opinions and gossips about their school in particular. The current top posts on the site for LMU are: “People are so stupid I can’t even begin,” “Hottest female teacher?” and “Too many blacks/mexicans?” On December 8, one student from LMU–struck by a stroke of genius–posted the following comment yesterday on JuicyCampus:

Regardless of your political leanings, the New York Times is a world-leading publication. And so, we’re serving some up for you:

New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology

If you would like to read our retroactive rebuttal, check out my guest post at Cal’s blog:

Guest Post: How to Use a Laptop in Class

Tom… You accepted his friendship blindly, and you’ve probably kept him on your friends list. But is Tom really who you think he is?

Some recent digging has argued that Tom Anderson, everyone’s first “friend”, might be lying about his age. His profile says he’s 32, but how old is he really?

We first heard 40. We dug a little online and came up with nothing. But then we got a senior person at MySpace to talk to us about it off record at the Web 2.0 Summit last week: this person confirmed that he’s really “36 or 37? and that MySpace has been trying to keep this quiet for some time.

But why, Tom? Aren’t friends supposed to be honest with one another?

[via TechCrunch]

Last week I wrote a post about looking like an American in Europe and the usually negative consequences. Asia, on the other hand, has a few different rules to play by. The information contained within this article is based upon my own personal experience in Korea and anecdotes from friends who have visited China, Japan, and Taiwan.

Unlike your typical Europeans, the average Korean person was very interested in American culture. The same seems to be true for China and Taiwan, and a little less so for Japan. Perhaps I can make the generalization that the information to follow is true for most of Asia. I haven’t been to every place in Asia though, so I don’t know for sure.

Because you (may) want to look American, you need to dress and act the part. Rather than talk about how to look like an American for the rest of this post, I’ll talk about the benefits of being an American in Asia.

Read on to your heart’s content »

Chris, our friend Scott, and I arrived in Germany the last week. Sorry for the lack of posts. We’ve been acquainting ourselves with the local beer–but not the local women quite yet, unfortunately. While it’s a tad pessimistic and unpatriotic, not looking like an American has its advantages. You are less of an obvious target for pick-pocketers, for one. Although looking like an American every day does lend itself to spontaneous conversation.

A quick apology for our international readers; hopefully you can derive some humor out of this post and help out if we’re missing anything. Here’s a few things I’ve learned while in Dusseldorf, Germany:

1. Dress the part. Let’s face it, most people in Europe dress better. Avoiding hooded sweatshirts, flip-flops/sandals/slippers, athletic shoes, non-New York Yankees baseball caps will help you blend in a little bit more. Collared shirts, a nice jacket, and “European” shoes will have locals asking you for directions.
2. Don’t have your travel guide/translator/language dictionary in your hand at all times. Duh.
3. Don’t take pictures of every single new thing. Shit looks different outside of the U.S. Get over it.
4. Try to learn everyday language. As my friend puts it best, “It’s the effort that counts.”
5. Make a conscious effort to keep your voice down. For reasons unbeknownst the world, Americans tend to talk louder. Much louder. You’ll get that feeling like you’re the only one talking in a public place quite a bit.
6. Get a messenger bag. Backpacks are dead giveaways. Just because the phrase is “backpacking around Europe” doesn’t mean you have to use a backpack.

Did we miss anything?

Stay tuned for “How To: Look Like an American in Asia (and Why This is a Good Thing).”

Three things:

• This is going to be a long post.
• I have a love for Arcade Fire; I would follow them off of a cliff.
• I have a general distaste for big-business, mostly because of the despicable cases that arise from time to time.

The RIAA is at it again. They recently filed 400 more lawsuits for “file-sharing,” this time mostly against students. In an attempt to strike fear in the hearts of students and coerce people into never trading music again, the RIAA once again shows its ugly teeth. Did I mention they also convinced the Copyright Royalty Board to up the fees for Internet Radio? Kiss your streams goodbye (especially Pandora and Last.fm). The RIAA is attempting to put pressure on all fronts possible. It’s almost as if they don’t want people to listen to their music.

Recently the RIAA has been doing what big-business does best: strong-arming people with less money, i.e. almost any given American.

Read on to your heart’s content »