Dino Grandoni

Former Spectator staff share their experiences and thoughts before graduation.
Today we hear from Mira John, Dino Grandoni, Yipeng Huang, and Nilkanth Patel.

So admission rates came out on this week around April 1 (like they always do) for the Ivies, and yet again Columbia seems to be leading the middle of the Ivy pack at 9.16 percent for CC and SEAS combined, with Princeton Harvard, and Yale posting lower admit rates and the rest posting higher ones. Some things never change, but of course there's plenty of new news 'round the league. more In what most of Princeton presumably hopes is a big April Fools' joke, a first-year at Princeton sues the school for more time to finish exams. If only it were that easy, kid. [Daily Princetonian] Again on April 1, Penn's entire senior class hits "Reply All" on a senior class-wide email thread. [Under the Button] Ferran Adrià is closing El Bulli, which some have considered the best restaurant in the world, to teach a course in "culinary physics" at Harvard. [Washington Post] The Ivy League apparently peaked fashion-wise around 1965. Hippies these Ivy Leaguers were not. [Bows + Arrows via IvyGate] Another point of comparison among the Ivies this week: Truman Scholarships, which were announced last Tuesday. The results? Penn: 2 Harvard, Brown, Yale, Cornell: 1 Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth: 0 That makes for the second straight year without a Truman winner. Sigh... [Truman Scholarship Foundation]

The News desk is reporting that Iran-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh will be allowed to remain out of prison for longer than expected. The Columbia professor was released to family and friends for a 15-day period on a $800,000 bail to celebrate the Iranian New Year, and was scheduled to return to the infamous Evin Prison on April 4. Tajbakhsh, however, is still not allowed to leave Iran. [News]

You have hereby been notified: Big Gov'ment and Ben Franklin demand that you, yes you right there at your computer, crank your clocks back exactly one hour at exactly 3:00 2:00 PM EST tonight—probably trampling all over one or several of your God-given constitutional rights. It's all because of farming or moonbeams or something.

The Queen of Barnard is back in the news! News on the Internet, I mean! Yesterday, a Washington Post blog posted this entry from Debora Spar, in which she defends Barnard and other women's colleges from I-don't-know-who, with strange results. more She admits that American women, in many respects, have caught up to or surpassed men in education. So why go to a women's college?

Another way to study econ, this time without Ben Stein: relieving yourselves! Check out this sign in the women's bathroom on the second floor of Butler. (Bigger pic after jump.)more