It seems that the interwebs have become inundated with matchmaking sites lately. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here’s another one. The newest site, nChooseTwo allows members to not only list their own crushes (up to 10 at once!), but to suggest matches between your friends and their crushes (or people who you think they would look oh-so-adorable with). The site is open to all students of Harvard and MIT (expanding our opportunities, no?); just register with your student email address. There is no list of names and there are no awkward photos – just the potential to catalyze matches you’ve been mulling over in your head but didn’t know how to initiate.

nChooseTwo

According to the site, “Privacy and security are our top priorities – no information about romantic intent is revealed unless the attraction is mutual, and we are constantly considering user feedback to make our site more useful and more secure.” It’s a win-win situation. No embarrassment if the match is not accepted. Here’s a sample matchmaking scenario from the site:

For example,

say Eve suggests a match between Adam and Beth. Eve shows up as an anonymous matchmaker to Adam and Beth.

If Adam clicks ‘Accept’ and Beth does not, Beth and Eve never find out that Adam clicked ‘Accept’. And vice-versa.

Instead, if Adam and Eve both click Accept, then Eve’s identity is revealed to them. Adam, Beth, and Eve are notified that this match is succesful, and good times are had by all.

Patty's not here, so we'll just have to fend for ourselves.

No harm, no foul. It’s almost time for Valentine’s Day, everyone, so let’s get to matching up our friends and even ourselves! Harvard has the potential for romance. It just needs an anonymous kick-start.

UPDATE: nChooseTwo has extended its services to the BU community!

The Daily Beast has the answer. The popular news website, the brainchild of former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, just released its ranking of the 50 most stressful colleges in the US. Lo and behold, Harvard is ranked #5, only trailing after Stanford, Columbia, MIT and Penn.

(Image courtesy of Google Images)

The five criteria taken into consideration are (excerpts from the actual article):

• The cost: Financial pressure is a huge stress-inducer. Tuition plus room and board, weighted at 35 percent. With 2009-2010 data from the National Center on Education Statistics.

• Competitiveness: How academically rigorous is the school? Weighted at 35 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.

• Acceptance rate: More competitive schools generally produce a more competitive student body. Weighted at 10 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.

• Engineering: Is the school known for its particularly rigorous graduate engineering program? Weighted at 10 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.

• Crime on campus: Adapted from The Daily Beast’s analysis of college crime, weighted at 10 percent and ranked relative to this particular group of colleges. With data from the US Department of Education.

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Is it just me, or was J-term a complete waste of time for most of you?

When Harvard first announced that it had changed its calendar to make room for a month-long winter break, I rejoiced. A whole month? Of doing like, nothing? That’s heaven. No longer would we envy our friends at state schools and other schools who had a nice three weeks of winter vacay because we got a whopping four and a half.

J-term, at least for me, promised to be a time of uber productivity, filled with internship applications, course shopping, career pondering, book reading (for pleasure), on top of seeing friends and family. Did it prove to be productive? Not really. This graph painfully but accurately describes my month of January:

Yeah. Something like that. Needless to say, filling out Dean Hammond’s survey which was sent out to the entire student body in order to evaluate time spent during J-term, was pretty simple for me. What did I do during the break? I…relaxed. Check. Saw friends. Check. Kindofsortof thought about internships. Check. Annnd yeah…I think that’s about it. The other options made me feel pretty worthless (volunteer positions? internship? what?).

So what was the problem? One solution that I put forth in my 500-word-ish-long spiel in the survey was obviously to provide students with more options for staying on campus during J-term. I mean, as much as I love my family, staying with them for 4.5 weeks is just begging for someone’s blood pressure to skyrocket. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy frolicking about in a kind of empty campus? Spending J-term on campus with more student-led programming or offering quirky not-for-credit classes would be a fantastic option for students. See MIT’s Independent Activities Period, which is a program that has been successfully running for four decades! MIT students are given the option to take either for-credit or not-for-credit activities during the month of January. You can take a “Art and Architecture Tour of the Boston Public Library” or attend the “32nd Annual Science Fiction Marathon” or take an introductory language course in Japanese. Such diverse programming without the pressure of grades or credit would give students a truly relaxing yet intellectually stimulating winter break. It would definitely be a nice change from the unfortunate amounts of Hulu and junk food I consumed over J-term.

What do you think? Was J-term fruitful for you? What suggestions do you have?

To infinity and beyond!

MIT may be poor now, but the students are still freakishly brilliant. Students Oliver Yeh and Justin Lee built a $150 weather-balloon-camera-GPS contraption that launched into near-space and took some pretty amazing photos. Check out their time-lapse video, after the jump.

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Unions vs. Harvard: Round Eight

O rly?: Lack of health insurance is linked to mortality?! Madness!

Harvard to give Allston a crap load of money

Hey, MIT is poor too! Party!

The UC Election results are out, people still don’t really care, and people still don’t know what the UC does