At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found. But she was drawn to what she calls “all the computer and math stuff” that was part of the job.

Now Ms. Grimes does a different kind of digging. She works at Google, where she uses statistical analysis of mounds of data to come up with ways to improve its search engine.

Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand — and even cool.

Read about this unique 21st century major!

Around here, Khadijah is known as “Harvard girl,” the “smart girl” and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago.

What students don’t know is that she is also a homeless girl.

As long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. Every morning, she upheld her dignity, making sure she didn’t smell or look disheveled.

Read more about her inspirational road to Harvard…

The Biggest Pranks in Geek History

Harvard and Yale’s annual gridiron face-off on Nov. 22 is a big deal for more than one set of storied college rivals. In the decades-old prank-off between archrivals MIT and Caltech, disrupting “the Game” has long been a particular point of pride. It’s not their only pranking outlet, of course: tech students have been wreaking havoc wherever they can since at least 1875. [Time]

Girls Just Being Girls

Don’t get me wrong ladies, we guys probably get worse than this.  However, since this site is catered to males, and I really can do whatever the hell I want on here, survey says?  Yeah, post pictures of drunk chicks making guys wish they were in college again, thus starting off their weeks with a complete distaste for the corporate drudgery that is the real world. It’s not like this is Girls Gone Wild or PlayboyU for Christ’s sake.  Just enjoy these 20 photos of girls just being girls. [Uncoached]

Rolle Wins Rhodes Scholarship

Florida State safety Myron Rolle was awarded a Rhodes scholarship Saturday. He is the first major-college football player of his generation to win what is considered the world’s most prestigious postgraduate academic scholarship. He became the most prominent student-athlete to win the award since Bill Bradley at Princeton in 1965. [NY Times]

Hasheem Thabeet Not Impressed by Harangody or Hansbrough

Went through ESPN the Magazine this weekend, and noticed that Connecticut center Hasheem Thabeet had this to say about Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody and UNC’s Tyler Hansbrough. “Nobody’s better than me, only more experienced. I played Luke Harangody and he was not tough. Tyler Hansbrough? I don’t see nothing.” Two years ago, he just was a gangly freshman from Tanzania.

ACT Scores Are Out Today! Check Your Score Here…

ACT assessment measures high school students’ general educational development and their capability to complete college-level work with the multiple-choice tests covering four skill areas: English, mathematics, reading, and science. Specifically, ACT states that its scores provide an indicator of “college readiness”, and that scores in each of the subtests correspond to skills in entry-level college courses in English, algebra, social science, humanities, and biology.

Ivy League Students Forced to Give Back to Community Due to Recession

While Ivies like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are bleeding endowment money in the market downturn, their graduating seniors are facing a decimated job market upon graduation. What to do?

College students drink – it’s a known fact. But the statistics regarding the level of intoxication in the future leaders of America seem to slip just beneath the radar. How much are you drinking? How much is everyone else drinking? Find out here.

1. Seventy-two percent of college students report that they used alcohol at least once within the 30 days prior to completing the Core survey. Within the last year, 84-percent of students report they drank alcohol.

2. Among college students under the age of 21, 82-percent report using alcohol within the past year and 69-percent report using alcohol within the last 30 days.

Check out all the stats after the jump! (more…)

Recently, I read an article that centered on a Harvard professor’s anger after a recent grad whom he taught (Jared Kushner, the son of a realllly powerful real estate developer) went out and bought the New York Observer — and then slashed the paychecks of the Observer’s freelancers, one of whom was the Harvard professor himself. The professor was pissed that Kushner, who most likely gave him attitude in the classroom, had the money and the audacity to do something that monumental, while the professor was making around $15,500 a year.

“When intellectuals act as clerks and students act as clients, how do college teachers differ from corporate accountants?” the professor angrily writes. “…the sedulous banality of the rich degrades teaching into a service-class preoccupation whose chief duty is preparing clients for monied careers.” (more…)

Getting “Sexiled” By Your Roommate

One day during her freshman year, Yesenia Arellano walked into her dorm room to find her roommate with a guy, just about to have sex.

“He was lying on the bed and she was doing something with her shirt, taking it off or something. I told her, ‘Let me know when you’re done,’ and left,” said Arellano, a second-year biochemistry student.

But this wasn’t anything new for her. In fact, she regularly became a victim of “sexiling,” a casual term that describes kicking a roommate out of the room in order to hook up. [The Daily Bruin]

Rowling Charges Grads to Accept Failure, Cultivate Imagination

One could forgive J.K. Rowling for mistaking Thursday’s afternoon exercises for a Gryffindor reunion.
Despite a persistent drizzle, a lively audience—including more than its typical share of youngsters—gathered under an assortment of University shields, in Tercentenary Theater, to hear the author of the acclaimed “Harry Potter” series deliver the Commencement address. [Harvard Crimson]

Havard Law to Help Legalize Weed

When most people get caught smoking bud (marijuana) they usually follow a set step procedure:

1. They get angry because the cops just took away their weed.
2. They’re angrier because they realize that they’re going to have to pay a huge fine.
3. And they get even more angry because they can’t understand why smoking responsibly should be illegal.

Then they bite their lip, and pay the fines.

After getting busted with possession by an undercover police officer Richard Cusick and R. Keith Stroup followed the first three steps, but refused to lay down to the law. They have now turned to Harvard Law School professor, Charles R Nesson, for guidance. And they will make the argument that the outlawing of marijuana has no “rational basis.” [CollegeOTR]

Which Universities Produce The Most Billionaires?

For every one opening at Harvard’s undergraduate college, there were 14 hopeful high school applicants. Despite the daunting odds, there’s good reason to try to win one of those coveted acceptance letters.

Harvard is consistently ranked as one of the top schools in the country. Its $35 billion endowment makes it the best-funded college in the United States. Oh, and there’s this: Harvard students are more likely to become billionaires than graduates of any other college.

Of the 469 Americans on Forbes’ most recent list of the world’s billionaires, 50 received at least one degree from Harvard. [Forbes]

U of Wisconsin To Cut Down On Football Tailgate Drinking

UW-Madison’s dean of students office plans to continue a pilot program intended to curb students’ excessive drinking at Badger football games during the upcoming 2008-’09 football season.

“Show and Blow,” which launched in fall 2007, requires students with a previous ejection or citation at a home football game to blow into a portable Breathalyzer test before a game to prove their sobriety. [The Daily Cardinal]

Harvard Students Arrested In Gay Rights Protest

Four members of Harvard’s “Right to Serve” tour were arrested this morning at a military recruiting station in Portland, Maine on the charge of criminal trespassing.

The arrested members were Samantha G.M. Barnard ’09, Robert J. Ross ’09, Amary K. Wiggin ’09, and Jacob P. Reitan, a Harvard Divinity School student who first conceived of the tour.

Twenty Harvard students have been traveling since Saturday on a week-long trip up and down the east coast to protest the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy barring openly homosexual or bisexual recruits from enlisting in the armed services.  [Harvard Crimson]

Miami Lands #1 Seed For NCAA Baseball Championship

After hearing the good news that they would be hosting the Coral Gables Regional as the No. 1 national seed of 64 teams for the 2008 NCAA Division I Baseball Championship, Miami players and coaches watching the selection show in the clubhouse were thrown an unexpected curveball.

No. 2 seed Missouri (38-19), No. 3 Mississippi (37-24) and No. 4 Bethune-Cookman (36-20) are set to come to town this weekend in a surprise bracket that left some wondering how the top seed didn’t get matched up with the likes of Mt. St. Mary’s (21-32) or Texas Southern (16-32) in its regional instead of lower No. 1 seeds such as North Carolina or LSU.

Miami will take on Bethune-Cookman in the second game Friday at 4 p.m., following the match-up between Missouri and Mississippi. All games will air on ESPNU, with games at both 12 and 4 p.m. through Sunday, and the final game on Monday if necessary. [The Miami Hurricane]

Sexless Beds at Harvard

Anyone who has attempted to spend a night sharing another person’s bed at Harvard has encountered one major obstacle. No, it’s not Harvard’s famed lack of a vibrant social scene or a dearth of viable partners—not only these, anyway—but rather a lack of space in the beds themselves. <The Crimson>

U of Wisconsin Adopts a New Text Message Alert System

An emergency alert e-mail takes almost 20 minutes to reach the thousands of UW-Madison students and faculty. A text message could shorten that to a few. Factor in police investigation and the decision-making process to employ a mass alert, and it could be nearing a half hour before students know about a gunshot or toxic gas leak, according to Police Chief Susan Riseling. <The Cardinal>

Google Puts Chapel Hill Streets on View

Jennifer Anderson didn’t expect to see her home pictured online. But with the Google’s expansion of Street View to Chapel Hill, Anderson’s home and car now can be viewed by anyone.

It’s kind of creepy,” Anderson said. “I saw my car outside my condo, and I didn’t like it.” <The Daily Tarheel>

State Patty’s Causes Rise in Crime at PSU

Although its student organizers stressed a day of responsible drinking, the second incarnation of State Patty’s Day saw about 45 arrests by State College police between 8 a.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. yesterday. The arrests included five for DUI, six for disorderly conduct, seven for public drunkenness and 17 for underage drinking, police said. There were also several calls for assaults, fights and snowball throwing. <The Daily Collegian>

U Penn Junior Pleads Guilty in Hacking Scheme

In Federal Court Friday Engineering Junior Ryan Goldstein pleaded guilty to helping a hacker crash the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s server in February 2006.

Goldstein pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting another person to gain unauthorized access to a protected computer, a federal misdemeanor. Goldstein was arrested last November, after a grand jury indicted him for conspiracy to commit computer fraud, a more severe offense than the charge to which Goldstein pleaded. <Daily Pennsylvanian>