1- What data do you already track about yourself, or have you tracked in the past but no longer pay attention to? Why have you made these choices? What do you get out of it? What are the advantages/disadvantages of self-tracking? Of using digital devices to help us do it? What patterns do you think are present in your life, but don’t have the data to back it up? (For example, the person who found that coffee actually hurts his concentration, or the person who found that watching a bad movie made him feel negative about his own film career).

Since 2012 I started tracking my finances. I created a workbook in Excel to self-track my income and expenses. It has been eight years, and I continue with more rigorous monitoring. Now I have created a dependency on that data. I put everything, to be specific what I spend, what I buy, and what I have to pay. I compare my budget monthly, and it helps me to determine when I should reduce expenses. It is a great help for me to know the progress of my budget; however, it is stressful to track the data every single day. I can’t even make any payments if I don’t have the data available. I want to be more flexible with my financial situation and not depend on the constant and continuous monitoring of my finances.

2- Lookup John Jay on the U.S. News and World Report, as well as any other colleges you may have applied to (and/or attended in the past, if you are a transfer student). What kind of picture does it paint of John Jay? Is that image accurate to your own experience so far? What information were you able to access, and what were you not able to access? Do the rankings/methodology seem fair? Why or why not? What would you change if you were in charge of the ranking algorithm, and why? What additional questions do you have about

This is my first time in college in the United States. I only applied for John Jay, which has the major I was interested in. I did not know about the acceptance rate or rankings, because in my country, the education system is very different. After reading all of the articles Weapon of Math Destruction: Chapter 3, College Rakings, and SAT selling student info, I can understand more about US college and its admission process.

According to US News College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice is ranked #100 in Regional Universities North, #8 in Top Performers on Social Mobility, and #27 in Top Public Schools. It looks that John Jay has a good raking, and that image is accurate to my own experience so far. I was able to find out helpful information, such as the total undergraduate enrollment, tuition and fees, alumni starting salaries, and the acceptance rate. I was not able to access the data where the numbers came from and how they assigned those numbers. Something that I was surprised, it was the acceptance rate. John Jay has an acceptance rate of 41%. What does it mean? Was I lucky to be accepted? Did my application was good enough or was a single number of the data? The article “For Sale: SAT-Takers’ Names. Colleges Buy Student Data and Boost Exclusivity” by Douglas Belkin, published at the Wall Street Journal, explains how colleges buy SAT scores to become a more selective college. The article brings out many problems because of this practice. Students do everything to be part of the “elite colleges,” even parents have done illegal things to put their children into them.

Colleges buy SAT-Takers’ Names to offer fake admissions to students. The article cites: “Then the kids say, ‘well, why did you recruit me if you weren’t going to let me in?’ They do it to increase the number of applications; you’ve got to keep getting your denominator up for your admit rate.”

I do not think this methodology seems fair. Colleges accept students only if they have a good SAT or GPA score. Students’ applications are evaluated based on data (SAT score). What happens if the data goes wrong? Why SAT score is so essential to determine the success of students?

I agree with you when you said: many students get anxious when it comes to taking a test, no matter how hard they study. In general, do you consider that students don’t have to be grade? If yes, how to determine the student’s academic progress?