Complete New Yorker Blog

For those of you that own The Complete New Yorker, Between the Squibs is a new blog that tries to dig through the mountain of articles and find some of the great ones. They just accepted a submission from me, and I'm looking forward to having time to read the other posted articles. Oh, and if you don't have the collection, think seriously about getting it or asking for it as a gift. The software sucks, but the content is amazing.

Thelma Schoonmaker

I heard this interview with Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's editor, a while back. It had many interesting anecdotes, and it sparked my interest in Michael Powell, to whom she was married. I just saw The Red Shoes last night, and it's a wonderful film.

Various logs

Inspired by Abstract Factory, my filmlog, musiclog, and booklog, all with RSS feeds. I'll do my best to keep them up to date. I might cheat and write about old stuff once in a while too.

A Thought for Graduate School Admissions

I was discussing the admissions process for the EECS department with a friend at lunch today, and a question popped into my head. Why is there nothing similar to "early decision" for applying to grad school? Actual early decision probably would not work, as we have no admissions office reading applications, so the extra work of going through applications early would be too much. My idea is instead to have a checkbox on the regular application, saying something to the effect of, "If admitted, will accept offer." This should probably actually say something like you won't accept an offer from another school, whatever the early decision form says for undergrad admissions.

According to my friend, this information would be useful during the admissions process. There are lots of qualified students that get rejected for essentially arbitrary reasons, and with this information, it might be slightly less arbitrary, as certain students could be accepted to guarantee a certain yield. The very top students would be admitted regardless of whether they had committed or not, but for others, checking the box may provide their application with a little boost. Of course, applicants who don't check the box may be at a disadvantage compared to those who do. But, some applicants who would definitely come to Berkeley may be at a disadvantage now, since they can't communicate this information to the admissions committee.

Anyway, I'm curious as to what others think about this proposal.