I wrote the following after I pretended to be a teenager and took the SAT. My experiment was to write an essay endorsing evil and see how it got scored. The result was written up by the New York Times.

I work as a private tutor, and every...

Oh my God, Zevran's seeing someone else.

That was my reaction when I first read the New York Times article yesterday about the controversy surrounding the gay romance option in the popular new video game Dragon Age Origins.

The article included a screenshot from the game, a beefcake...

Truth: Palin won the race to become Governor of Alaska.

Truth: The number of registered voters in Alaska is smaller than the population of Staten Island.

Palin won the election through speeches given in fields and door-to-door canvassing. Without a doubt, she did both effectively....

Dismayed by the recent news of David Foster Wallace's death, I've been wondering about suicide prevention. The traditional messages we offer to those who are suffering - you are not alone, help is always available, don't let temporary mindsets seem like life sentences - are crucial but clearly don't work...

With admissions rules and testing procedures changing seasonally as colleges struggle to adjust to the introduction of the new SAT in 2005, it's easy for the press to grow numb to the details. But this summer the College Board quietly announced a new policy that will allow students to take...

As I watched, and failed to enjoy, Apocalypto, I realized that Mel Gibson was producing a spectacle of death that he himself didn't have to endure - after all, he got to wipe away the fake blood and have lunch with the actors after he killed them. The audience,...

Elite private school educations leave students unprepared for a standardized test with which their public school counterparts are innately familiar.

My high school English teacher liked to read Elle while she graded our final exams. There was nary a red pen involved in the process. The Scan-Tron machine puttered...

Nationwide, under 2% of students have learning disabilities severe enough to qualify for extra time on the SAT. In private school Manhattan, the percentage is substantially greater. And that means dramatically higher scores.

At Horace Mann high school in affluent Riverdale, New York, one of the top schools in the...

In New York City, a year of SAT tutoring can carry a price tag of $25,000, all to secure a competitive edge over middle class America.

In my business -- SAT tutoring -- you get used to sighs. A client's mother frets over the sheer amount of work her...