After Film School, What?

The large, well-established film schools in Southern California and New York always attract droves of new prospective students every year. They walk in all starry eyed hoping for an exciting and rewarding career in the dramatic arts. But if they do get in, they should look at film school graduates who’ve finished their learning and are stepping out into the world for the first time trying to see how far their chops in acting, directing and a number of other film related skills, can take them in the job market.

Film school graduates today are surely better equipped to take on the challenges of their chosen field. And yet, the challenges may be becoming more challenging. Script writing graduates could always count on entry-level positions with film producers before. These days, with the large studios cutting down the amount they’re willing to invest in new scripts from untested writers, these entry-level positions are pretty much out of the question. Fresh graduates still try hard for the few jobs there are. Most come away disappointed. And these are people with Masters degrees in screenwriting.

Those who do get a foot in, need to be willing to spend five years as assistants. The others meanwhile go about trying hard to get just such a position or try to help themselves by writing screenplays in the  hope that they will wow some executive somewhere someday. It can be a pretty discouraging state of affairs if you are involved in it.

Not that it's keeping any film school hopefuls out. In cities like New York and Los Angeles, there are usually 1000 applications for every 100 slots that these schools. And it's rising every year. It isn't just film school either – there are more students trying to get into institutions that teach the production of video games, web series and so on, too. Colleges around the country have tried to cash in on the demand there is for learning to do with film and stage. Which might have been a bad idea. There are all these people skills in film production who are often jobless today.

There are so many graduate film people around today that the AMPAS Academy that hands out the Oscars, has a separate student Academy Awards program these days. Those who aren't established in their professions already submit their entries by the hundred.

Fresh graduates who look in vain for a little support from the establishment often find that they have to produce their own movie before anyone will pay them any attention. The NYU has a competition that awards film school graduates nearly a quarter million dollars to make their own film on.

Expert educators believe that film schools have their curricula all wrong. Film isn't an area where they can ever expect to get a normal regular job. You need the skills necessary to work the market so that you can land a gig. Since no film school teaches these skills, film school graduates most often end up working for regular jobs that have nothing to do with film making.

A New Method in Mathematics Education Rocks Canadian Schools

No one would ever be proud ever to announce in public that they didn't know how to figure out the stock market; they wouldn't be proud to declare that they didn't understand cars; yet, it's completely acceptable for a person to mention in a joking, self-deprecating aside, that he could just never understand math. There is usually even a touch of pride there - kind of the way George Bush always seemed to hold his failings as proof that he was one of the common people. Part of the reason this is so is that math education in this country has never really tried to help children understand what math is all about. When in a math class, there are kids who just get everything on their own, kids who get things after trying hard and kids who just never get anything no matter how hard they try, our math teachers never try to educate us in why this should be so. They just let us carry on with our superstition that math just comes more easily if you are born that way.

This much, psychologists and mathematicians are completely sure of - there hasn't been a normal child born so far who could have been bad at math. Every single normal human child is capable of performing at very high levels in math, if they aren't given the wrong kind of mathematics education.

Considering how terrible American children seem to be in general, at performing in math, the above statement might seem hard to believe. But a new kind of mathematics education called Jump Math, in use in Britain and in Canada, has proven that the only thing we lack is that we don't seem to believe in the abilities of our children and our teachers as much as we should.

One particular problem that's been identified with the American way of teaching math is that teachers ask children to try to analyze and formulate their own concepts as they go along. Our education system seems to not really understand how children need explicit guidance for the first few years. We’re trying to get our children to run before we teach them how to walk.

Jump Math involves breaking every single thing in a math problem down to its smallest possible components. For instance, if you try to teach a child negative numbers and then ask the class what -10 and +3 together make, the children in any class are usually flummoxed. Ask them instead what they would feel their position would be if they were at a game and they lost 10 sets but won 3, and they understand right away.

Jump Math is been used in places in England and Canada for years now. And they have had spectacular levels of success. There you have it. You need to teach math as guided discovery. Every single step needs to be broken down into the simplest sub-steps possible. To do this for a couple of years, the child becomes confident enough that he'll get with all the mathematical analysis that anyone could ever want.

In Your College Search, Should You Go to College Referral Service?

Have you ever seen that ad for Education Connection on TV where that waitress makes her way up from what looks like a fast food job to something far better? She says that she found that Education Connection helped her with her college search so that she could zero in on the right college for her needs. It's a fun commercial. Is going to a college referral service really fun though?

Do they really help you in your college search? The thing is, no referral service has every college out there on its database. They only have a select few - ones that pay them a listing fee. In the education matching industry, such listing fees are common. They even charge additional fees for each new referral - about $20 for each new student they sent to the colleges. Each time a student signs up to a referral service for their college search, a representative sits down with the student, tries to learn what they really need (hopefully), and sends information about that student to all the colleges that he can think of.

Mostly, any referral service these days counts the for-profit universities among its best clients. For-profit colleges are pretty much booming these days. And referral services are making so much money off matching students with these for-profit universities that one of the most successful examples, QuinStreet, has even gone public.

The problem is, there is so much money in this that some referral services will break the law to make an extra buck. There was a case recently where whistleblowers alleged that the University of Phoenix was paying incentives to get recruiters to recommend their college to potential students. That's against the law. And then, there is the matter of how the representatives from these referral services can really be aggressive in the way they interview candidates. They tend to recommend universities that promise far more than they can actually accomplish.

And then of course, since the recruiters get paid commissions for every successful referral that they make, there is the possibility that they will try to use any means possible to get a student to accept a college they have in mind. College is something that involves a lot of money. Getting students to make the wrong choice can cost them a great deal. Students just don't need a high-pressure sales pitch at this point in their lives. And often, going to a college referral service means exactly that.

Baylor College of Medicine Enrolment

Like other medical schools that have gained recognition due to their performance, Baylor College of Medicine attracts thousands of applications from hopeful students each year. The Houston, Texas based institutions turns down most of the applications because it can only admit a small number of students due to its limited resources. In 2008 for example, the college made 172 admissions, and 129 of these were from Texas.

Some of the requirements that one needs to meet in order to gain admission includes an approximate score of 3.85 in GPA, and 34.5 MCAT score. Based on these scores, it is easy to tell that gaining admission to the college is extremely competitive, and only the best can succeed. Being the only medical college with private ownership in the Southwest United States, the school recognizes that many more people would like to attain their medical-related accreditation therein. As such, the college introduced an accelerated pre-clinical curriculum that students complete in just one and half years. Normally, the pre-clinical curriculum is fully covered in two to three years.

While applying for admission in Baylor College of Medicine, one has to include an application fee, which differs from one year to the other. The application fee for the 2010 vacancies was $90. This fee is usually non-refundable regardless of whether one’s application goes through or not. When applying for enrolment vacancies, the hopeful students need to know that the college (just like others) charges tuition fees to all students. Though the tuition fee may change between admission years, students can check the applicable fee from the BCM website. It is worth noting that the students will have to incur other non-stated costs in addition to the tuition fee. Such include accommodation fees, food-related costs, and transport costs.

On gaining admission to the Baylor College of Medicine, a student can expect to benefit from some of the best-rated resources in Texas. The college’s faculty-student ratio was at 1:2.8 in 2010, which is impressive especially considering that the faculty is such an important resource in any college. Even more admirable is the fact that the college has a dedicated team of 1,854 full time faculty members. Additionally, the college emerged 22nd among the best research institutions throughout the United States. In another survey gauging the quality of service provision among primary care providers, the college emerged in 28th position countrywide.

Both male and female student hopefuls have an equal enrolment opportunity. Baylor college of Medicine’s 2010 admissions statistics show that gender distribution was at 50.1 percent male admissions, and 49.9 percent female admission. This means that of the 725 students enrolled, 362 were female, while 363 were male. 

Baylor College of Medicine would make a good school choice for students interested in urology, general surgery, diagnostic radiology, psychiatry, pediatrics, ophthalmology, neurology, internal medicine, emergency medicine, and anesthesiology.

Getting An Environmental Education

There are two main schools of thought on the environment. Some believe in global warming and some say that it is a myth. Oddly enough, this seems to be by political party and not by common sense. Some believe measures to change how we live are useless and a waste of time, and some believe they are essential. Instead of just believing what a politician tells you to believe, get your own environmental education so that you can make up your own mind. Global warming may be debated for a long time, but the size of that landfill nearby is not getting smaller. Learn what you need to know and then make changes in your own life.

Whether you believe in global warming or not, you can not really believe that what we are doing as humans in not having a negative effect on the world. We are pumping pollution into the air around the clock all over the world, and we have toxic waste that is so deadly that we don't know what to do with it. These things are problematic and they are human problems. Global warming may just be a natural trend of the earth, but it could also be our problem. Your environmental education should help you figure that out with out bias and without listening to the opinion of someone else.

Your environmental education should start with scientific results and studies. These are unbiased and done in a controlled manner which means the results can not be skewed. These studies are often hard to read, so you may have to find recaps of these somewhere so you can understand what is going on. Environment education should not totally be done online, because you can find bad information or heavily biased information. Look at both sides and make up your own mind using your own brain. Don't let someone else do the thinking for you.

Once you have made up your own mind through environmental education, you can then decide what you want to do. Perhaps doing just small things to save energy in your own home are all you feel need to be done. This is good because these things do make a difference not only in your bills, but also for everyone else. Perhaps you want to start recycling, which is also a good thing. You can also start buying more items made from recycled materials as your gift to the environment. Every little thing does make a difference, even if it does not feel like it.

It will be up to you to give your children an environmental education as well. They are going to learn things at school, but you don't know what their teacher is going to be telling them. That can be said for any subject or idea presented at school. Keep a close eye on what your kids are bringing home and ask them about what they are doing. Not only does this help you make sure they are getting the environmental education you want for them, it also makes sure the rest of their education is all that you want it to be.