Chen, Grace. "Can Naviance Succeed Improve College and Career Readiness? PublicSchoolReview.com." PublicSchoolReview.com. Public School Review, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
Naviance is a website I lived on in high school. It collects college acceptance data based off of your high school. It takes your GPA and your SAT scores and plots you compared to other students who have applied to the same school in the past. It shows you which of these students were accepted, rejected, and waitlisted. It helps students see what their chances are of getting into different schools which can help them determine which schools to deem safeties, reaches, and matches. Obviously there are more things that colleges take into account other than SATs and GPA but Naviance can still be a helpful tool in my opinion. This tool can be used by both parents and students. Many parents don't know what certain SAT scores signify and Naviance allows them to see what the scores mean relative to other people. If I student or his parent sees early enough that his grades are too low to get into a certain school he can work to increase them. Paul, Pamela. "Being a Legacy Has Its Burden." The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Nov. 2011. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
This article talks about legacy children. It talks about the extra pressure they receive to get into the same schools that their parents went to. Usually parents only push their children to go to the same school they went to if they went to a top school. The article gives the example of a dad who went to Wharton, one of the best business schools in the country. He said that from age 14, he knew that he wanted to go to Wharton so he worked his butt off to get there. While being a legacy does help your chances of getting into a school, especially if your parents donate money, it is far from a guarantee. There are many kids who do very well in school and are legacy and still don't get in. It is very common for people in the generation above mine to say that they don't think that they could have gotten into the school they went to today. This is because so many more people are applying to colleges and so it inherently is becoming more competitive. This article mentions a kid that described how he didnt even apply to the Ivy that he was a legacy at because he didn't think he would get in and didn't want to deal with the embarrassment. Lombardi, Kate Stone. "High Anxiety of Getting Into College." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 Apr. 2007. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
This article talks about a guidance counselors struggles to convince their students who don't get into their first choice schools that their back up schools are still amazing choices. For example, many kids at Emory applied early decision to other schools. The most common being Duke, Vanderbilt, University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown. These kids are very obviously upset when they initially get rejected and its on the guidance counselor to show them that their other options will still get them far in life if they take advantage of all the schools have to offer. It is clear that the guidance counselor in this article works at a school that generally gets their students into good schools. I think this because it is clear that the guidance counselor regards northwestern as a top school and having a 92 average may not get you into the Ivys but can get you into basic ivys or schools a step below. I think that this article would be more meaningful if we saw which schools the girl who was upset was denied from and where she ended up going. Getting rejected from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and ending up at Duke is much different than getting rejected from Swarthmore, Emory, and NYU, and then going to go to Drexel. Chua-Rubernfeld, Sophia. "Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom." New York Post. Mandy Stadtmiller, 18 Jan. 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
My review of literature analyzes the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. This article was written by Amy’s daughter, Sophia, who was at the time, a freshman at Harvard. Sophia starts off by continuing with the humor her mother brought into her book. Her daughter pours out her appreciation for the way her mother raised her. She acknowledges that she may not have achieved all she has without the pressure of her mother. She also comments on the misconceptions she believes the book has produced. She talks of how people have taken her mothers jokes seriously and she tries to clairfy that they are indeed jokes. I loved reading this because I saw how appreciative she was of all her mom did for her. One thing that surprised me was to see her last name. She has a hyphenated last name which surprised me because traditionally the children and the mother take the husbands last name. I understood why Amy didnt, she already had published work with the last name Chua, but it surprises me that she forced her children to have a hyphenated last name when that is not traditionally how things are done, in China or America.
Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E. & Bochner, Arthur P. (2010). Autoethnography: An Overview [40 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1), Art. 10.
An autoethnography is as much about the process as it is the final result. It involves using a personal perspective to analyze a culture while still maintaining a scholarly approach. I used this book as a large inspiration for my autoethnography. While a book is different from a website, the style of writing is fairly similar. For example, I used my experience with the SAT study guide books to analyze the way that the college board advertises their tests. I also talk about naviance, a website that I used all the time in high school to see what colleges I should apply to and then after the fact, looking at my chances of getting in. Ellis’s book also helped me with my interview skills. I was able to turn the interview into a conversation which made my interview subjects feel more relaxed which allowed them to speak freely and not think too hard about their responses. I also think that an interview with follow up questions is much more effective because you can go deeper into one topic and not have a bunch of choppy questions that aren't related to each other. While I appreciate the value of analytical writing, I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my own thoughts and opinions into this website.
Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print. See review of literature for more information on this book.