[This story was originally posted during Women's History Month last year. Every Wednesday that month we highlighted a woman who is currently dominating her field and showing us that we can really do anything. Like Chelsea Handler, the woman of late night comedy; Kathryn Bigelow, last year's best director; Gwen Stefani, rockstar mommy; and Ellen Degeneres, talk show host and gay rights activist.]

Women’s History Month is (unforch) coming to an end, and this week, it’s time to pay homage to a very different type of hero. All month long we’ve been telling you why we worship various female celebs based on their fierce fashion or sense of humor. To finish out the month, I want to share with you all the story of Khadijah Williams, a freshman at Harvard University who proves that a woman, no matter where she’s from or what means she has access to, can achieve anything with the right amount of determination.

Williams was born in Brooklyn, NY, to a 14-year-old mother who soon moved her to California and gave birth to Jeanine, her younger sister. They slept in shelters and motels and ate out of garbage. Still, her mother sent her to school. Khadijah first realized she had a gift in the 3rd grade when she received amazing scores on a state standardized test, and at the young age of 8 became determined to never let anything stand in her way of an education. Read More »

[Ladies, meet Meredith, the newest addition to the CollegeCandy team. She's a BU student, a movie buff, and an all around fantastic chicadee. She'll be our resident movie gal, giving us the ins and outs of the new releases and telling us whether or not its worth it to fork over $12 for the latest flicks.]

The Social Network isn’t “The Facebook movie,” as I have heard some people call it. The movie poster itself says, “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.” This is a film about power struggles, honesty, and the impact of one student’s claim to fame.

It is also one of the only films that I have seen that really understand college life.

So, there’s this little website called Facebook. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but about 700 of your “friends” definitely have. A young Harvard student by the name of Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, founded this gazillion dollar website.

The Social Network asks how much of Facebook DID Mark Zuckerberg actually invent compared to how much is “borrowed” ideas from his classmates. The film focuses on two mediated interviews in particular: Winklevoss twins and Eduardo Saverin. The film alleges that after being dumped by his girlfriend, Mark makes a website that allows its users to determine which Harvard girl is hotter. The website gains the attention of the privileged Winkelvoss twins, who enlist Zuckerberg to help them with their idea to connect Harvard students through a website. Rather than being an ideal business partner, Mark co-founds Facebook with Eduardo (who will eventually be suing Mark). We then watch Zuckerberg rise to fame in the midst of all this.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Justin Timberlake, impressively portraying the co-founder of Napster, who starts to have his own impact on the company. Read More »

Imagine your time in college without finals exams. Can’t do it? Sound like music to your ears? Well, it may become reality for some extremely lucky students. Harvard is making its professors decide within the first week of class whether or not there will be a final exam at the end of semester. Universities around the country look to Harvard as a trendsetter, so this new policy may be making its way to your campus in the next few years.

We all hate finals, but would we start to miss them if they were gone?

Pro: LESS STRESS! Five days to learn an entire semester’s worth of material in six different classes? Finals week is nothing but a week-long cram session, filled with multiple all-nighters and hours spent camping out in the library. The alternative to exams (projects, term papers, presentations) are much more reflective of what you actually learned and show that you understand the History of Mental Illness. This is what you’ll be doing for your boss in the future… not bubbling circles in with a Number 2 pencil.

Con: The cute, studious guy you find poring over a textbook in the student union (Hellloo study break!) – where will he be if his classes don’t have exams?

Pro: A stronger student-professor relationship. You are no longer just a number in a Excel grading sheet. A professor has to sit down, read what you write (or listen to what you are saying) and evaluate your work. Hopefully they would remember your six-page paper on The New Face of Public Relations and be more inclined to write out a great recommendation for your dream internship next semester. Read More »

Classes are out, exams are over, and I am thrilled to announce that outside my window it is a blissful 78 degrees.  Dearest readers- the summer season is within reach.  With the heat comes a breezy wardrobe, new flings, and a fresh excuse to document all the places you get drunk with those arm-out pictures that crop off half your face.

As you bid adieu to roommates, campus bartenders, and that guy you may or may not have hooked up with last weekend (still waiting for photo evidence), I said goodbye to my favorite Upper East Siders on Gossip Girl (am I saying goodbye to Chuck forever!?) and bawled my eyes out watched in horror as MTV is wrapping up putting The Hills out of it’s misery, one week at a time.

And I know I’m going to be extra cranky as I face three months without Serena’s gravity defying boobs and Miss Blair’s scheming ways.  I feel so abandoned.  What’s that you say?  Retail therapy?  Good thing Victoria’s Secret has a sale!  Also:

-To make room for your new cute things, I suggest you clean out your old tees by making them into stylish and fun bracelets.  You might as well jump-start your reputation as a poolside trendsetter.

-Thinking of transferring schools over the summer?  Have Harvard dreams?  This is how one guy faked his way in. Read More »

How far can lying get you?

Answer: three years at Harvard

It’s a widely accepted fact that many of us do a bit of exaggerating when it comes time to fill out those college applications. Little “white lies”  to make ourselves sound just a bit more (how should I put this?) refined. But 23-year-old former Harvard student, Adam Wheeler, took lying on his college and scholarship apps to a whole new level.

Here’s a list of what people are saying this guy did:

- Falsely claimed to have perfect SAT scores, to have attended MIT and to have prepped at Andover.

- Stole around $45,000 in grants, scholarship and financial aid “under false pretenses.”

- Fabricated recommendations from Harvard professors and a college transcript detailing perfect grades over three years.

- Falsely listed numerous books he had co-authored, lectures he had given, and courses he had taught on his resume. Read More »

[Besides being the month of St. Patrick's Day and (really old) CollegeCandy's editor's birthday, March is Women's History Month. Instead of honoring the great women of our past, however, we at CC want to honor the women they inspired, and who now inspire us. Every Wednesday this month we've highlighted a woman who is currently dominating her field and showing us that we can really do anything. Like Chelsea Handler, the woman of late night comedy; Kathryn Bigelow, this year's best director; and Gwen Stefani, rockstar mommy; and Ellen Degeneres, talk show host and gay rights activist.]

Women’s History Month is (unforch) coming to an end, and this week, it’s time to pay homage to a very different type of hero. All month long we’ve been telling you why we worship various female celebs based on their fierce fashion or sense of humor. To finish out the month, I want to share with you all the story of Khadijah Williams, a freshman at Harvard University who proves that a woman, no matter where she’s from or what means she has access to, can achieve anything with the right amount of determination.

Williams was born in Brooklyn, NY, to a 14-year-old mother who soon moved her to California and gave birth to Jeanine, her younger sister. They slept  in shelters and motels and ate out of garbage. Still, her mother sent her to school. Khadijah first realized she had a gift in the 3rd grade when she received amazing scores on a state standardized test, and at the young age of 8 became determined to never let anything stand in her way of an education. Read More »

See? Weird.

Talk about the British Invasion.

Yesterday, this post on Jezebel pointed me towards this utterly, utterly ridiculous Times of London article that claims college-bound British ladies are increasingly enrolling in American universities—primarily to meet “Ivy League educated males.”

The article is crazy enough that it blames “hit shows such as Gossip Girl, The OC, Dawson’s Creek and even Twilight”—yes, that noted television program, Twilight—for the pseudo-phenomenon it’s investigating. Author Luisa Metcalfe also cites Ivy League hotties including Barack Obama, Jake Gyllenhaal (both of whom went to Columbia. I’m just saying), and “aspiring Dartford College student Dan Humphrey” as bait for English girls.

I repeat: Dartford College. Never mind that Gossip Girl’s Dan actually ended up going to NYU, or that he originally wanted to go to Yale, not “Dartford”—Metcalfe actually writes the word “Dartmouth” just three paragraphs after she initially mangles the name of the beer-happy New Hampshire Ivy, so how did the term Dartford even make it into the final version of this article? Don’t they have copy editors across the pond?

And even if this article is right and female Brits are really applying to American universities just so that they can meet guys with argyle sweaters and perfect teeth—not, you know, because they want to get a good education at a top school—I have to speak up. Read More »

So some of you may be a little bitter this school year. Instead of heading off to your dream school, you are stuck attending your fall-back as your friends suddenly turn all intellectual and boast about the awesome classes at Harvard, Princeton and NYU.

But little do they know, you’re getting the much better deal. While they rack up the student loans, you can enjoy the intellectually stimulating lectures of Ivy League professors without even having to get out of bed.

Two new websites, academicearth.org and openculture.com, are offering videos of lectures from top universities and – prepare yourself – they are totally free! Both websites are organized by topic and by school, offering courses from Berkeley, Harvard and Yale, among others. Want to see how a Princeton professor teaches Bio? Go for it! Want a motivating lecture on poly-sci? They have that too!

Ah, don’t you love living in the era of technology?

Finally all of us “average” people (i.e. those of us who couldn’t score a 2400 on our SATS or find the time to volunteer at eight different organizations during high school) can bask in the glory of partying it up at our party schools while we cyber “sit in on” the smarty-pants classes. If only we could print out that Harvard diploma, too.

Although it’s a pleasure usually reserved for high school students and younger, I still get excited about what to wear on the first day of school.  In college, nobody cares what you wear to class (as exemplified by the large numbers of sweatpants and over-sized t-shirts I see in the lecture halls), but I still like that feeling of picking out a special outfit and preparing myself for another semester.

Apparently I’m not the only one who identifies school with fashion: Harvard has signed a licensing deal to release their own line of clothing. “Harvard Yard,” an homage to the Harvard students of the 60′s, is super preppy and academic…and Harvard’s attempts at getting out of their giant funding hole.

But, dayummmmm, those boys look good! Read More »

Welcome to a brand-new College Candy feature: The Rival Rundown! We’ll be taking a look at the oldest, fiercest, and even funniest rivalries between colleges and universities all over the country. We’re going to be examining everything from mascots to mess halls to the most obnoxious traditions, all with the intent of determining which schools are ballin’ out of control.

And if you’ve always wanted to give props to your school on CC, now’s your chance! Shoot us an email explaining what’s awesome and unique about your school (or what stinks about Rival U) at rivalrundown@collegecandy.com!

What better rivalry is there to begin with than arguably the oldest and most prestigious in the country? That’s right, its Harvard versus Yale, baby! The two Ivy League institutions have been duking it out since 1852 at the inception of the first Harvard-Yale Regatta.  Now, their rivalry extends beyond crew to who gets the top US News & World Report ranking and the largest endowment. Let the hysteria begin!

1. Mascot Matchup

Harvard- The Crimson are…well, a deep red color. Unless you’re hematophobic (fearful of blood), there isn’t much that is particularly intimidating about Crimson. And the “mascot” is technically a charicature of John Harvard, the founder of the institution. Interesting.
Yale- Yalies are ever faithful to their Bulldogs, which has been proudly carried on by seventeen generations of live bulldogs, each named “Handsome Dan.”

Three credits to: Yale–bulldogs are more intimidating and, well…tangible. Read More »