The Yale Video

You may or may not have seen this, but a few graduates of Yale put together their own admissions video for the College.

It's a bit lengthy, but certainly enjoyable, especially if you're into the High School Musical or Glee scene (or so I've been told, I can't say I've seen either).

Some feedback that's come across my desk about "That's Why I Chose Yale": http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/yale/?scp=1&sq=that's%20why%20i%20chose%20yale&st=cse and http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/02/15/100215ta_talk_mcgrath

Picture of the Day - February 11

A little bit of light snow Tuesday morning.

Tuition announcement

Today, the University announced that tuition for the 2010-2011 academic year will increase 3.8% to $39,919. The 3.8% is the University's smallest percentage increase in 50 years.

The full Unviersity press release is found here.

Also, a letter to students' parents from Father Jenkins, in which he discusses the circumstances of the increase and Notre Dame's general approach to finances, can be found here.

Notre Dame remains dedicated to reading its applications in a need blind fashion (for US citizens and Permanent Residents) and to meeting 100% of those students' demonstrated financial need.

Financial problems at Dartmouth

From yesterday's The Chronicle of Higher Education:

As part of a broad-reaching plan to close a projected budget gap of $100-million, Dartmouth College announced on Monday the layoffs of 76 people and a return to including loans as part of the financial-aid mix for some students. No faculty members will lose their jobs, officials said, and all of the layoffs will come from the ranks of managers and hourly workers...

Here is a .pdf copy of the full article from The Chronicle.

This Too Shall Pass

You may have seen this in the latest edition of ND Magazine, or remember their appearance during a football halftime show earlier this year, but the band OK Go was on campus this fall. OK Go is known for their "eccentric" music videos (mostly this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI) and took some time during fall break to film a video on campus with members of the Band of the Fighting Irish.

YouTube will not let me embed the video to the blog, but links to the video and the ND Magazine article are below:

YouTube: This Too Shall Pass

ND Magazine: A 'massive explosion of joy and music'

The science of Avatar

Maybe you saw Avatar (I still haven't - I'm not sure I will), or maybe you have no idea what it is (James Cameron's latest movie, which, I believe, became the highest grossing movie of all-time last weekend). But apparently, the "world" in which the movie is set has floating mountains and other sci-fi wonders. But are things like that really possible?

Below is a video from WGN TV in Chicago. They interviewed Notre Dame's Morten Eskildsen of the Physics Department. Professor Eskildsen conducts research on superconductors (or, for non-science people like me, "electric stuff that floats with liquid nitrogen"). I think all of this would be pretty interesting - if I understood the scientific jargon!