July 12, 2011, - 4:05 pm
Moron Nation: College Admissions Hits New Low – Twitter Applications
When a college allows you to apply via twitter–substituting 140 characters or less for a college application essay–that should tell you something about the quality of education you’re getting: dumbed-down and nearly non-existent.
MORON Nation, USA: Twitter College Applications
Since a college education is basically worthless now–in terms of getting a job or getting an actual education–I suppose it’s only consistent that they dumb down how you get in along with what you “learn” after you get in (as in, nothing–most college grads fail in the most basic knowledge).
Still, you gotta wonder about schools–and now scholarship applications–that involve Twitter. Makes them look more like retail chain promotions than selection processes to recognize academic achievement and performance.
We already know that Marx has realized his dream–that larger and larger segments of American society are morons very much at home in the lumpenproletariat of idiocy. And now colleges and scholarships are making it official. They say they want to emphasize social networking to students. But social networking is part of what has coarsened American kids and made them more stupid. It’s like colleges requiring kids to perform a rap for admissions. And don’t bet on that being far behind. Hip-hop is already part of the curriculum at most colleges. Here’s a tip: if you’re going to college to learn how to tweet, save your money and stay home. Ditto for any college that agrees to let you tweet in lieu of your college application essay. Most of those doing that probably don’t know what “in lieu of” even means.
At the University of Iowa, a good tweet is worth $37,000.
That’s the price of a full scholarship to the university’s graduate business school, and that’s what a student hopeful can win in a contest that takes tweeting to a new level. The university is asking prospective students to submit a 140-character tweet in place of a second essay.
The school and a handful of others both corporate and academic are part of a growing trend. The plan: Use tweeting to make students get to the point quickly and to improve their social media skills — two qualities that today’s Twitter-savvy marketplace demands.
•Kentucky Fried Chicken offers a Colonel’s Scholars grant based on a tweet responding to “tell us in 140 characters why you deserve a $20,000 scholarship” over four years. The competition received 2,800 applications last year, KFC spokesman Rick Maynard says.
•Scholarship.com, an organization to help students find money for college, offers the Short and Tweet Scholarship, which asks applicants to sum up their college experience in a tweet to win $1,000 or a Kindle.
•The 140 Scholarship, presented by College Scholarships.org, a website to help students search for funding, looks for a tweet highlighting how to use Twitter to improve the world. The winner receives $1,400, and the first and second runners-up each get $140.
At the University of Iowa, the person with the best tweet by the July 28 deadline will receive a full two-year scholarship to the MBA program.
Applicant Seth Goldstein of Columbus, Ohio, submitted his tweet last week and said he was excited for the “fun, unique challenge.”
“It is something different and out of the box,” Goldstein said. “No other MBA schools I have applied to have anything like this.”
Hmmm . . . maybe that’s because they are actually business schools. Not Twitter circuses.
Jodi Schafer, the University of Iowa’s director of MBA admissions and financial aid, says that application essays were becoming unoriginal and often highly edited.
“We’re hoping that incorporating social media in the process will help bring back some of that creativity,” she says.
Yeah, because everyone knows that in 140 characters or less, there is sooooo much room for creativity, individual style, and originality. People never “highly edit” a tweet, right? Morons. This is a grad school education these people are applying for, not a toilet paper slogan contest.
Iowa applicants are encouraged to link to their blogs or anything else that may help answer the question: “What makes you an exceptional … full-time MBA candidate and future MBA hire?”
Well, number one, you’d be exceptional if you said no thanks to a low class, utterly dumbed-down grad school that uses tweets as the basis for admission. This is embarrassing.
One applicant, Kinzie Dekkenga, says she worked on her tweet for five days. “Having to simplify your thoughts down was much harder than I thought,” she says.
Um, if you worked on a tweet for five days, you are a moron. And you should stay far away from grad school. Or better yet, stay in school and away from the real world, where high-tech navel contemplation is a problem, NOT a solution.
I long for the days when education meant actually doing work, writing essays, and reading an entire book. You know–learning? Back in the day, you were discouraged from reading Cliff’s Notes, which was cheating. Now, it’s a way of life.
Tags: 140 Scholarship, a Nation of Morons, college admissions, College Application, College Applications via Twitter, CollegeScholarships.org, Colonel's Scholars, Dumbed Down America, Dumbed Down College Applications, Dumbed Down College Scholarships, Dumbing Down, essay, Jodi Schafer, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Kinzie Dekkenga, MBA program, Moron Nation, morons, second essay, Seth Goldstein, Short and Tweet Scholarship, tweet, Twitter, University of Iowa
“It’s like colleges requiring kids to perform a rap for admissions. And don’t bet on that being far behind.”
Made me lol. Thanks, Debbie!
DS_ROCKS! on July 12, 2011 at 4:41 pm