Triangle Teens

H.S. student transfers for basketball - Story of Len Chenfeld, a white basketball player in NYC who transfered from an elite public school to a private school in Brooklyn to raise his basketball I.Q. “He always tells me how important it is to be passionate about what you do,” Len said of his father. “So if he tried to discourage me from playing ball, he’d be a big hypocrite, right?” (NYT)

Top scholar-athletes honored – How did Colt McCoy earn a 3.2 GPA while quarterbacking the nation’s top football team?  McCoy said he occasionally ran into teachers “who wanted nothing to do with football players.” But he would sit up front to show he was paying attention, and if he could not make a class he would tell the teacher. “You work it out, you do your homework on the road,” McCoy said. More than once, a teacher praised him at the end of a semester, perhaps an acknowledgment that he or she had changed the perception of McCoy, or of college football players. (NYT)

Why do college students drop out? – Only one in five students graduate from a 2-year college and only two in five students graduate from a four year university in six years.“The conventional wisdom is that students leave school because they aren’t willing to work hard and aren’t really interested in more education,” said Jean Johnson, executive vice president of Public Agenda. “What we found was almost precisely the opposite. Most work and go to school at the same time, and most are not getting financial help from their families or the system itself.” (NYT)

Stanford Iphone symphony - Ge Wang, the assistant professor of music who leads the two-year-old Stanford group, says the iPhone may be the first instrument — electronic or acoustic — that millions of people will carry in their pockets. “I can’t bring my guitar or my piano or my cello wherever I go, but I do have my iPhone at all times,” he said. (NYT)