For competitive admission, yes, it's low. 3.75/4.0 is generally considered the minimum target for successful applicants to top-tier colleges. The year I was accepted to my alma mater, the average was a 3.81 for first-years and 3.86 for transfers. To use everyone's favorite example, nearly 90% of Harvard admits from…

The sad thing? I applied to that college and its peers because I knew they were the only ones where I'd get such great aid thanks to their massive endowments. The whole "you never pay sticker price" principle. My state university gave me literally $0 in grant money and was going to saddle me with loans, while all…

Oh man, be glad you didn't go to my college, then. In addition to bragging about your dad's fancy job being a huge thing, it was also basically public knowledge who was on financial aid. My personal favorite was that all first-year students on work-study had to work in the dining halls, so it was literally the poors…

Eh, not sure I agree with that. I worked in New England top-tier college admissions for a while and went to one of those LACs myself, and there has been a spike in need-conscious admissions since 2008. Quite a few colleges that were in the process of transitioning to need-blind halted their plans; Wesleyan, Tufts,…

All things are possible through Christ, except for achieving the requisite minimum GPA and test scores.

This is how I'm coming down on it. I think it's way better than the average apology, but there's still enough evidence in his words to make me think he's still not fully getting it. Passing grade, not worth sainthood.

It's better than the usual, but I still wish it was "I'm sorry I said it" instead of "I am sorry to anyone I hurt." He should be sorry regardless of whether anyone felt hurt. It was a shitty thing to say either way. But yeah, better than the norm.

So like, one subway stop is fancier than another because it only has one human being's urine in the corner instead of multiple contributions. Gotcha.

I feel like that's backwards?

I've been to Waffle Houses throughout the South, and "fancy" never came to mind. I feel like I missed out on something.

Bickford's is only left in a few towns in Massachusetts, except for one New Hampshire location. They're going the way of Abdow's, I think. R.I.P. Big Boy.

Diner solidarity here. In my area of Connecticut, Denny's is your 24-hour choice *if* your town doesn't have an all-night diner. I've only done a midnight stumble for Moons Over My Hammy once, but I have a favorite recuperation booth and TV volume setting at my nearest diner. Why anyone would get reheated…

I guess we must have IHOP in Connecticut, at least according to the map, but hell if I can mentally place one. Denny's is the usual 24-hour drunk spot here if your town doesn't have an all-hours diner.

I've long suspected that the older, aristocratic, New York-based television host with an Asian fetish who's always showing up in blind items is Lipton. Now you're making me wonder even more.

1) Don't pirate shit on company computers, resulting in the entire network being infected, costing us thousands of dollars and making all of our files inaccessible for two days, which omg I still want to kill the little shit for I NEEDED MY FILES.

I sincerely think that for a lot of non-believers, it's just a phrase and doesn't carry weight. There's this weird cultural expectation that people say it after disasters.

If Jesus sent Hurricane Sandy after the liberals in New York, AND He sent the tornado after the conservatives in Oklahoma, what does this say about His voter affiliation?

At least here in my area of Connecticut, you're expected to either a) come into kindergarten reading or b) be a reader in order to get moved up to 1st. We also start teaching Spanish-language reading alongside English no later than 3rd; we started in kindergarten in my school. And I live in one of the state's…

For reading comment threads in particular, this displays like shit on my Kindle Fire HD. Also god-awful on my Android phone. Since I do most of my browsing away from my laptop, I think this is going to severely cut into my Gawker Media time-wasting. I've already pretty much given up on Deadspin. It would be really…

Thank you.