George Mason University recently announced that it’s dropping the requirement for some undergraduate applicants to submit their SAT scores.

The school, after a three-year review, concluded that SAT scores are a poor indicator of collegiate success for high-achieving high school students.

Three years to figure that out, really?

Dozens of private schools have stopped requiring applicants to take the SAT or ACT amid concerns the tests are not accurate gauges of an applicant’s potential for success. Among public schools, however, George Mason’s stance is somewhat unique.

It’s been disappointing to me that, after all these years since I first became disillusioned with these silly numerical grading systems, I haven’t heard of any innovations in evaluating student performance or potential. How ridiculous is it to reduce a person’s potential to contribute and succeed in an academic environment to just a single numerical metric (or even two, or three)? It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to know that there appears to be some reevaluation going on from within academia (however slowly), and I’m not at all surprised that private instutions are the ones taking the lead. Plus, at this rate, who knows?! In the future, they might even figure out a metric slightly more informative than the GPA. Just give it a few more decades ;o)

Found these videos on You Tube two weeks ago, at the height of the Israeli offensive into Lebanon. I think this is a stunning example of the way new media (or democratized media, as some are calling it) has the potential to change the way we learn about war, it’s causes and it’s atrocities. With media tools such as YouTube (and it’s hundreds of clones), one no longer needs to make an appeal to the juggernaut of traditional media to get their message heard.

As far as I remember the Israeli attack on civilians linked below wasn’t covered by CNN or any of the other major US TV news outlets (please correct me below if I’m wrong), except for maybe a passing mention of ‘reports of civilian deaths.’ There was, however, plenty of coverage of the Hezbollah missile attacks, including video. I speculate that in other parts of the world, the situation was reversed. There’s hope with democratized media, I think, that when no single point controls the message societies can see their own aggressions for what they really are. Or, at the very least, see them as their enemy sees them.

The first is a video of a Hezbollah rocket attack targeting civilians in Haifa, Israel.

The second, an Israeli missle attack on a civilian crowd in Lebanon.

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.

Excerpt from:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/07/better_than_the.html