Hacker Culture and Mitigation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Hacker Culture and Mitigation - Assignment Example Since hackers as a collection are chiefly creative, people who describe themselves in part by rejection of normal values and operational habits, it has unusually rich and conscious tradition for global cultures (Gertz, 2012). The basis of hacker culture was born in the computer lab as a result of computer programmers doing all in their authority to request, scrounge or steel computing property. They spend hours working on a computer program while neglecting everything else. Computer network gives them a way to associate with other people with their same interest. Before the introduction of computers, hackers’ world set up and visited bullet board system, where an individual could host a bullet board system on his or her computer and let citizens dial into the organization to send message, share data among others (Pino, 2013). Not all hackers try to investigate prohibited computer systems. A number of users use their talents and knowledge to make better software and safety measures. In fact, numerous hackers who once used their power to smash into systems now put that information and cleverness to use by creating more comprehensive security events. In a way, the Internet is a combat zone among kinds of hackers. The bad guys or black hottest go through systems or multiply virus and the good guys boost defense systems and expand potent virus defense software (Holt, 2010). Hackers on both sides over powering open source software programs in which the basic code is accessible for anybody to study, share out and inform. With open course software, hackers can learn from other hackers experiences and assist each other to make programs function much in good health than they did before the introduction of the internet. Software might range from easy applications to more complex application system. Mitigation refers to the attempt to decrease loss of life and possessions by lessening the effect of a disaster. It is also taking action to ensure that the

Case Study attached Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Attached - Case Study Example This is because the sharing process of the information resulted in identification of individual concerns. However, I would have acted as a mediator and invite both Maggie and William in the mediation table. The mediation process would then result in solving of the pertinent issues between Maggie and William. The pertinent leadership issues pertinent in this case are problem solving and team leading and management. This is because Tim, who was managing the diabetes clinic, was faced with a challenge of resolving the relationship conflict between Maggie and William. In addition, Tim was not in a position to create and manage an effective team for the diabetes clinic staff members. In order to manage this situation, I would ensure that I develop the team effectively. This would include identification of weaknesses, strengths, and talents of the staff members (Pingree, 2011). Further, I would embrace the element of communication, which would facilitate in decision-making, and sharing of information. This would create an ethical culture where employees respect each other. The significant issue in the case was team building and management. This is because the staff members in this clinic could not work in unison. In additional, ethical culture was a significant issue in the case. This was evidenced by the conflict in the relationship between Maggie and

Tyler Perry Exploits Black America Essay Example for Free

Tyler Perry Exploits Black America Essay Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, producer and, author Tyler Perry has taken Hollywood by storm. Perry has grossed close to $500 million in domestic box office receipts since 2005 (Smith) with his stage plays that have been turned into movies. Being ranked by Forbes magazine as the sixth highest-paid man in Hollywood (Daniels), Tyler Perry has revolutionized black entertainment by becoming the first black man to own a major movie and television studio in Atlanta, GA (Walker). I like Tyler Perry and enjoyed his early stage productions and films such as â€Å"Daddy’s Little Girl’s† and â€Å"The Family that Preys†. However, I struggle with his portrayal of black people, more specifically on his TBS television show, â€Å"House of Payne†. Perry’s â€Å"House of Payne† exploits African Americans as entertainment, combining slap stick comedy with regressive stereotypes with characters such as Curtis the Coon, Ella the Mammy, Janine the Drug Addicted, selfish Mother and Calvin the â€Å"Happy Negro†, remedial Player. I plan to deconstruct the â€Å"House of Payne† to reveal its minstrelsy nature and demonstrate how â€Å"House of Payne† does nothing to counteract racial assumptions that black people are ignorant, hip hopping, over weight jigaboos that are nothing more than comic relief. Tyler Perry supporters, who are mostly black, church going women, feel as though they can relate to Perry’s characters, strong Christian messages, and are happy that Perry keeps black actors on the big screen, and on television (Smith). Much has been said about Tyler Perry’s â€Å"House of Payne† and how it is a new millennium minstrel show. Minstrel shows consisted of white male actors, in black face that performed what they perceived as blackness. Performers of blackface interpreted blacks to be lazy, buffoonish, cowardly characters that often lied, stole and mangled the English language (Stark). Ultimately minstrel company owners hired black men and women, emphasizing that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance (Mahar). Black minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from that made them a popular hit amongst other blacks. Once minstrel shows began to decline in popularity, blackface continued by way of film (Mahar). One of the most notable actors was Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, also known as â€Å"Stepin Fetchit†. Although he was the first black actor to become a millionaire, the persona of â€Å"Stepin Fetchit†was the quintessential lazy, foolish, shucking and jiving Negro (White). Film critic, Armond White in his essay The Rehabilitation of Stepin Fetchit† asserts: â€Å"Should African-American performers be accountable to political correctness? To what degree should they worry that their antics shape the self-image of young African-Americans? Should they follow any standard other than their own conscience? Should they have a conscience? The psychological rationale for racism cuts two ways—flattering whites and defaming blacks—and it rebounded upon Stepin Fetchit and stained his soul. â€Å" Whites projected stereotypes onto black people and now we help them out: the buffoon, the Mammy and the Jezebel have been replaced with the ghetto fabulous drama queen, the feminized male, the thug and the dope fiend. Television is a powerful agent of information that not only shapes our way of seeing the world, but influences how we view and understand differences (Ford). The stereotyping of African Americans can partly be attributed to television limiting black actors to roles to jezebels, street punks, simple minded servants, and violent criminals. With the success of the Tyler Perry brand, Todd Boyd, Professor of Critical Studies at USC School of Cinematic Arts, asserted that Tyler Perrys works â€Å"are rooted in some of the worst stereotypes that have ever existed† (Svetkey, Watson, Wheat). Donald Bogle, author of Toms, Coons, Mulatoes, Mammies Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, tends to agree: If a white director put out this product, the black audience would be appalled. The main characters in â€Å"House of Payne† are a married couple Curtis and Ella Payne, who are comparable to Ol’ Darkie and his counterpart Mammy in various minstrel shows. ‘Old Darky’ or ‘Old Uncle’ was usually the head of the black family (Stark), just as Curtis is the patriarch on the â€Å"House of Payne†. Curtis or Uncle Curtis is known for his loud over the top delivery, grumpiness, and brash jokes. Coons, are a source of amusement because they are complete buffoons (Toll). Every episode the audience can expect a slap stick performance from Curtis ranging from slapping of other cast members to the tumping his toe and falling over a chair. Ella is the exact replica of Mammy, which is one undeniable fixture in any Tyler Perry production. Ella is dark skinned, overweight, a great cook and singer and is the religious glue that holds the family together. Ella’s matronly demeanor causes for her well- liked by everyone and will put Curtis in his place when he gets irate. Tyler Perry replaces Mammy’s head wrap and apron and puts Ella in clothing that only exaggerates her unhealthy size. One episode, Curtis and Ella go on diets because they are at risk for diabetes and heart attacks. Curtis, who himself is obese, foolishly does a single jumping jack and falls out as if he just ran a marathon and hides snacks and fried food all over the house. Ella, who sticks to the diet for a few days constantly, nags Curtis about the risk factors. The story looks to be headed in a motivational direction as African Americans are twice more likely to develop diabetes than white people (CDC), however the scene ends with both of them abandoning their diets and exit to get a fried chicken sandwich (Perry). Curtis and Ella have a son, Calvin Payne who lacks common sense, motivation, yet is a self-proclaimed ladies’ man. Calvin is similar to â€Å"Happy Negro† who seems to relish in his stupid and immature nature (Stark) that causes any scheme or idea of his own to greatly backfire. Perry relies heavily on the well-worn stereotypes that black people have been subject to and Calvin is another Tyler Perry pattern. Calvin has had numerous relationships throughout the show and eventually gets married to Miranda, but finds out he’s fathered a child out of wedlock with an ex-girlfriend Tracie at the same time his wife reveals she too is pregnant. Perry strips Calvin of a dignified title of married man, father-to-be and to the stereotypical black man who is a low down, cheating â€Å"Baby Daddy†. In the doctor office scene where Calvin, Miranda and Tracie coincidently cross paths, Calvin is surprised that he has a son and asininely asks â€Å"how’d this happened? † The racists Dr. Marcos (who calls Tracie â€Å"Bonqueisha and Soul Sister†) scientifically dissertates that â€Å"when black people are poor, uneducated, unemployed and can’t play basketball, they have nothing to do but have sex† (Perry) and the laugh track spits out entertaining cackle. Where is the humor in that punch line? While some audience members can point out that we all know someone like that what Perry lacks is any compassion or ability to humanize these characters making them a moral, baby making caricatures (Smith). According to the CDC, at the end of 2007, blacks accounted for almost half (46%) of people living with a diagnosis of HIV infection in the 37 states and that is no laughing matter (CDC). Tyler Perry has been quoted saying that his characters are based off of real life people, especially the women he saw growing up as a young boy in New Orleans (Lapowsky). I believe that Perry’s work is a reflection of what he saw as a youth, however I agree with critics like Spike Lee and Edris Elba who maintain that it’s time for Perry’s work to be elevated and cease with the â€Å"coonery and buffoonery† (Svetkey, Watson, Wheat) as Perry’s work continuously delivers monolithic characters that are satirical at best. The House of Payne storyline takes place with three generations living under one roof because Janine, the wife of CJ who is also Curtis’ nephew, burns down their house to claim the insurance money to fuel her crack cocaine habit. She can be compare to the â€Å"wrench† or â€Å"Yaller Gal† who through the show, deserts her family to live as a dope fiend, then after she is rehabilitated, divorces CJ and becomes pregnant by a new man. The boyfriend is revealed to be sterile and after a drunken one night stand with CJ, process of elimination proves CJ is the father. Janine and CJ eventually remarry and by the final season, Janine flirts with the idea of having an affair with her boss. To protect the black women, you must also protect how she is being depicted regularly (Haven). White women are casted in various roles, however dating back to minstrelsy, black women are type casted as loud mouth, promiscuous, drug addicted breeders. It has nothing to do with talent, but choices by the studios and decision makers like Tyler Perry to determine what is projected. The entertainment business is just that, a business. As does any business, the entertainment industry relies heavily on supply and demand. If there is a demand, it is supplied. The support of Tyler Perry proves that there a demand for black entertainment. At the end of his stage play â€Å"Madea’s Family Reunion†, Perry as himself, addressed the audience saying â€Å"as long as yall wanna see Madea, I’ma do Madea† (Perry). In essence, as long as black people keep supporting Tyler Perry shows like â€Å"House of Payne†, he’ll keep feeding his audience the same chitterlings and cornbread. Tyler Perry has capitalized off â€Å"House of Payne† as he exploits stereotypes of African Americans. There are other ways to make us laugh and make money. Until black American stops clinging to such degrading material and demand more substance and social responsibility, just as those before us did with minstrel shows and blackface, Tyler Perry will fill the demand with more characters like Curtis, Ella, Calvin and Janine.

Brick And Mortar Travel Agency Supply Chain Information Technology Essay

Brick And Mortar Travel Agency Supply Chain Information Technology Essay Introduction At the dawn of the internet evolution in the 1990s, myriads of businesses began realizing the huge opportunities that the internet presented to them. They knew the internet could help them re-engineer processes, lower costs, increase profits, up efficiency and effectiveness simultaneously, and raise the bar of customer service, all at the same time. One industry that was quick to ride on the internet bandwagon was travel and tourism, where airline companies had been relying heavily on a network of travel agents to act as a conduit between them and the travelers. With the internet, businesses engaged in travel and tourism began to directly touch base with their clients at real-time, low costs, and with much personal touch. Thus, it can be said that these businesses transitioned from a business-to-business (B2B) brick-and-mortar model to consumers-to-business (C2B) e-commerce model. Many travel agents had to level up their operations in order to survive the shift towards C2B and away f rom B2B. Years after these brick-and-mortar travel agencies caught on the e-commerce bandwagon, however, critical issues about their optimum performance remain. This paper will therefore discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that travel agents possess in a C2B environment. It will explore which strengths must be maintained in order to survive succeeding waves of changes and remain at the crest, which weaknesses must be dealt with to stem decline, which opportunities must be tapped to grow their businesses sustainably, and which threats must be confronted to avoid being sank by competition. This paper will conclude with a set of recommendations on what can be done to leverage the internet as a powerful medium for travel and tourism businesses. Brick and Mortar Travel Agency Supply Chain Online information site wisegeek.com defined brick-and-mortar companies as those that operate out of a physical building, where owners must invest to rent an office space, purchase supplies and fixtures, and pay for expenses needed to keep the business operational (What is Bricks and Mortar?, 2010). The site said that brick-and-mortar are traditional companies that have faced fierce competition since the 1990s, when the internet started to boom, from online companies that are based on the internet and which run businesses for a fraction of the traditional costs (What is Bricks and Mortar?, 2010). The site contrasted brick-and-mortar companies with those online to illustrate the pros and cons of the two business models. Below is a tabular summary of the comparison: Comparison of Brick-and-Mortar and Online Companies Brick-and-Mortar Companies Online Companies Customer Trust Has an advantage of visibility. Clients may think that a business with investments in buildings, employees, and goods are less likely to be fly-by-night. Can face questions about integrity. Clients may think that these companies are transitory and can simply turn their backs on them by refusing to answer phone calls, e-mails, and other media for channeling complaints. Owner Risk Poses significant risk for the owners as businesses require planning, tri-media marketing, and cash-flow to pay for everyday expenses as well as capital outlay. Poses minimal risk for the owners as much of the traditional costs of running a business are not accrued. Competition High start-up costs and high turnover rates as companies struggle to stay afloat amid the competition from online as well as other brick-and-mortar companies. Low start-up costs but high turnover rates if companies cannot find their niche. To describe the processes of a brick-and-mortar company, it is necessary to look at its supply chain. Mamaghani (2009) in Impact of E-commerce on Travel and Tourism: a Historical Analysis described the roles of travel agents, clients, and airlines before the move towards the new medium of the internet. The author said that during the pre-computerized period, travel agents advised clients on travel destinations, provided marketing materials, and acted as an intermediary in the complicated process of arranging travel bookings. Because they were the proverbial middlemen, travel agents were complacent and not keen on leveling up their services to cater to all clients (Mamaghani, 2009). According to Mamaghani (2009): The travel market became segmented as travel agents increasingly targeted corporate customers. Travel agents were able to provide value-added services like negotiation of bulk fares and arranging complex itinerariesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ There were two waves of information technology that have had a major impact on the industry. The first of these is the development of the direct reservation systems, such as the American Airlines SABRE system. The second is the development of online sales channels via the Internet. Travelers Online Marketing In the article Will the Web Replace Your Travel Agent? published in the Medical Economics, author Murray (1996) said that the internet has increasingly become the better alternative to a travel agent for several reasons: web can alert people about travel and destinations that might have escaped agents radar either because they are obscure or do not offer commissions, many travel websites offer extras you wont discover elsewhere, and that the web is increasingly replacing trip marketing materials that can be updated real-time on the internet (Murray, 1996). Because of the many advantages that being online bring to a C2B company, Fred Mawer (2005) said that the people who rely on travel agents alone will soon be a minority. He said that there are specific advantages to booking travels online: financial the internet reduces overheads for companies and many charge less for online bookings, availability ability to find thousands of choices in a minute, and details good websites provide more detailed and clearer information than any other source (Mawer, 2005). Author Carl Gibeily (2002) wrote online traveling has been the only way to fly not just in the United States but also in the Middle East and other parts of the globe. Expensive Advertisement for Brick-and-Mortar Companies One of the traditional costs that brick-and-mortar companies incur is advertising. According to traveladvertising.com, an online community for travel agents, there are three categories of advertising that agents must use to reach out to their clients or potential clients. These forms of advertising include print advertising for magazines, newspapers, leaflets, poster campaigns advertising; media advertising for TV and radio; and new media advertising for the internet (traveladvertising.com, n.d.). Brick-and-mortar companies, because they do not have online presence, concentrate their resources on funding print and media advertising, thus, depriving them of the immense benefits of new media advertising. Descriptions of each category by traveladvertsiing.com are contained in a tabular summary below: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Advertising for Travel Agents Print Media New Media Targeted towards a specific readership Limited shelf life Limited exposure Costly especially when placed in premium publications that target a specific audience Targeted at a large population and wide geography Target population cannot be narrowed down as ad will be exposed to diverse people with varied income levels Costly and cannot be afforded by small-scale agents with no national or international presence Targeted at a very large population across countries Target population can be narrowed down by providing contents that are relevant to the audience Relatively inexpensive as costs include ad design, website development, and system maintenance Pros and Cons of C2B According to William Sieglein (2000), C2B businesses that allow people to shop online provides flexibility, better prices and more selections for consumers but presents a great concern for security. He said that the exchange of personal information such as credit card number, home address and phone numbers pose threats in purchasing products off the World Wide Web. As information travels through the internet, it may be intercepted, stolen and used for identity theft. To provide a secured business environment online, C2B companies must ensure that that sensitive information that consumers provide online will be powerfully protected from unauthorized parties. Companies selling products online must assure consumers that the information is stored on their secure, well-configured safe zone of their network. These zones, most often referred to as demilitarized zone, should have secured firewall configurations. Strong access controls should also be in place, and this includes user identification and authentication. Server hardening, data storage encryption, and intrusion detections must likewise be practiced persistently. What can be the repercussions of not protecting your C2B business environments? A handful of adverse effects that can impinge on the growth of a company both on the short and long term. First, reputation of the company would be dragged into the mud. Reputation is a valuable resource of online companies. If a company is deemed to be engaging in deceitful transactions or is unable to block possible deceitful transactions in its website, then consumers can easily and rather swiftly stay clear of the website. Consumers can rapidly spread news about their bad experiences with the company to thousands of other consumers and potential consumers online via social networking sites and consumer feedback mechanisms. These happenings will subsequently result in lessened patronage for the site. Second, the company can be embroiled in a lengthy dispute settlement or costly legal battle whenever complaints about the security features of its site pop up. Dispute settlement and court cases will of course drain the company of precious resources. It can also tarnish the companys name in case that the proceedings conclude that the companys systems were not fail-safe. Third, leaks in the security features of a C2B can channel confidential information to competitors, allowing them an inside look into the companys processes and giving them the chance to spoil operations to their advantage. As a consequence, companies will have to shed money to shed money to contain the damage, investigate the incident, fortify security measures, and pursue legal actions against parties found to have breached the companys protection measures. Because the internet is a public place that is easily accessible by many people, C2B companies must provide their consumers several options to protect their identity and other personal information while transacting in the companys website. According to Dholakia, Dholakia, and Mundorf (2002), consumers may control the amount of information they make public on the internet by using four strategies: identifiability, confidentiality, anonymity/pseudonimity, and secrecy. The strategies are described in detail below: 4 Consumer Strategies for Protecting Their Identities Online Accuracy of Personal Information Externalized Amount of Personal Information Externalized High Low High Identifiability Consumer is willing to disclose all personal information with accuracy. Businesses can acquire high degree identity knowledge on the consumer Anonymity/Pseudonimity Consumers disclose and fabricate all kinds of information that are supposedly about themselves on the internet Consumers are avoiding identifiability and trust is not given to the C2B website Website should not trust the information provided for by the consumer Low Confidentiality Consumer gives little personal information with high accuracy The sites brand equity, reputations of the marketer, favorable endorsements and other elements may lead the consumer to trust the website Secrecy Consumers may share very little and potentially inaccurate personal information The level of accuracy and willingness to share information online clearly pose some serious problems for C2B companies. For instance, consumers may use information of another person in entering into transactions. In this case, it is very important that C2B travel companies state in its sales terms of conditions what types of responsibilities, if any, it will own up to. C2B Case Analysis: Priceline.com Priceline.com Incorporated is a multinational company listed in NASDAQ that provides online travel services across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa (priceline.com, n.d.). Its main purpose is to allow clients to save on airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, vacation packages and cruises than any other Internet travel service (priceline.com, n.d.). According to Chan, Lee, Dillon Chang (2001, p.10), Priceline.com introduced to the world a novel online application called the demand collection system, which allows consumers to bid for the prices of unsold airline tickets by naming the price for which they want to buy the tickets. By pioneering this consumer-oriented, dynamic, and customized pricing system, Priceline.com reinvented traditional commerce that often imposed fixed prices on consumers. The authors categorized the company as C2B in which consumer specifies the requirements to a business, which provides a product that meets these requirements. These requirements could be as simple as an acceptable price, or could involve considerable customization of an existing standard product, or creation of a new product (p. 8). The business model of Priceline.com is different from others that are into consumer-to-consumer, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer. The following is a tabular summary of various online business models (Chan, Lee, Dillon Chang, 2001, pp. 6-8). Online Business Model Matrix Business Consumer Business B2B: TPN Buyer and seller are business organizations. Can be buyer-oriented, seller-oriented or a virtual marketplace. B2C: Amazon Seller is a business organization while the buyer is a consumer. Emulates physical retailing and is often called electronic retailing. Consumer C2B: Priceline Consumer is a seller while buyer is a business organization. Consumers set out requirements to businesses, which then attempt to satisfy the requirements. C2C: eBay Seller and buyer are consumers. Virtual communities are formed where members host auctions or bid for products. Many things can be inferred from the business model of Priceline.com. First, the online travel service company performs the traditional roles of a travel agent. The huge difference between traditional travel agents and Priceline.com however is that the latter harnesses the huge potentials of the internet. Priceline.com uses the new media to deliver services in a much more efficient manner than a traditional travel agent and on a wider scale. Note that traditional agents are mere intermediaries who act as go-between, taking orders from consumers, presenting the orders to businesses, helping consumers decide on what to buy according to their budget and tastes by presenting varied options. Priceline.com does just that, yet in a much quicker manner. Second, Priceline.com empowers the consumers and allows businesses to stay in touch with consumers desires. Traditional travel agents may opt to cater to only a few groups like corporate clients that are sure to give them a steady flow of huge income. They may choose to disregard small-time infrequent travelers. With Priceline.com, however, all kinds of consumers are entertained. By specifying travel requirements and details, consumers will get a response from various travel companies that can meet the requirements and details they specified. Consumers are also empowered because they can sway businesses to provide products and services according to specifications and demands. Businesses also become in tuned with consumers demands in this type of business model. Because they learn of consumers demand real-time, they can rapidly customize products and services to respond to their markets. Third, Priceline.com presents enormous challenges in terms of technology. The company relies heavily on the internet in terms of providing services. Thus, it is imperative that it protects its systems against attacks, frauds, and phishing activities to safeguard the integrity of its operations as well as gain and keep the trust of its partners. Disruptions and downtimes caused by any technological problems will also cost Priceline.com. It should therefore continuously perform and maintain risk management programs. Review of Literature Internet The advent of online business was made possible by one medium, the internet. The development of the internet started in the 1950s when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, was asked by the Department of Defense to develop a system to allow the United States to mount a counter attack in the event of a Soviet Union nuclear first strike (Boudreaux Sloboda, 1999). By 1965, DARPA sponsored A Cooperative Net-work of Time Sharing Computers that became the predecessor of the internet. Over the years, scientists, researchers and hobbyists contributed their talents to the development of the internet to become the vast network that we have today (Boudreaux Sloboda, 1999). E-Commerce The internet has created for businesses a level-playing field where the midgets can compete with the titans, where the start-ups can flourish for a fraction of a cost to challenge the old-timers. Indeed, the internet is a grand stage for entrepreneurs to showcase their bright ideas to the business world. Joshi and Yermish (2000) mentioned five occurrences that have been shaping the Internet as a business world. These occurrences are facilitating the transition towards the new media in terms of offering and availing of products and services. The authors identified these occurrences as (1) the separation of the information about products and services from the physical products and services themselves, (2) products and services are becoming information-based, (3) internet bridges distance between consumers and business organizations, (4) internet is a medium for rapidly responding to consumers and markets, and (5) internet allows consumers to become agents of marketing (Joshi Yermish, 2000). The following is a tabular summary of descriptions for each occurrence: Occurrences that Have Made the Internet a Business World Increased Separation of the Flow of Information Information about products and services is distinct from actual products and services. Moreover, information travels to consumers and buyers faster than the provision of the physical orders themselves. Increased Focus on Information Flows Products and services are technologically intensive and may not be necessarily material objects. They may be delivered solely on the internet, from the internet or to the internet. Reduced Distance The third aspect to the new economy is the shrinking physical distances. In the new economy, proximity requirements have been almost totally removed as (in theory at least) everyone is connected with everyone else. Rapid Response Businesses are provided with real-time feedback from consumers while consumers get swift response from businesses. Rapid response allows businesses to be consumer-focused, service-oriented, and flexible as they are fed information about their performance and the competitions operations in a fast manner. Using the Customer as a Marketing Agent Because internet is a medium where consumers can provide feedback and get response real-time, consumers may act as a marketing agent for a company. They can easily talk about favorable services and positive experiences they have had with a company and then go on sharing these experiences or talking about these services online, where thousands of people may be able to chance upon their insights. Matthewson (2002, pp.45-46) sets out the steps in achieving best practices in online buying process where consumers go to the companies to buy goods and services: customer acquisition, segmentation and targeting, promotions, online ordering, order fulfillment and after-sales support, and up-sell and cross-sell. Although the internet is a powerful medium, harnessing it does not guarantee success. Brynjolfsson Urban (2001, pp. 121-122) outlined practices that can make companies lead or lag in the industry. Some of the leading practices include focusing on matching appropriate technology to business strategy and customer requirements; ensuring that appropriate technology capability and capacity were internally in place or available through partnering; building technology platforms to support Internet, intranet, and extranet applications, with a view to reinforcing, improving, or changing the value propositions of their core business; early adoption of Web technologies to achieve a comp etitive advantage; and learning the technology in the context of developing an information or marketing strategy (Brynjolfsson Urban, 2001, pp.121-122). Lagging IT practices include having the IT department responsible for e-business developments; having underfunded and undervalued IT and e-business developments; treating IT and Web-based technologies as a cost center rather than a profit center; and positioning the CIO as a specialist functional manager (pp. 121-122). Travel Agent SWOT Analysis in C2B Model In a C2B business environment, travel agents with online presence clearly possess a great deal of strengths. However, with competition from small-time and big-ticket players ever-present, travel agents must constantly be on the lookout. This is because on the online environment, other travel agents can easily duplicate their strengths, bank on their weaknesses, seize opportunities faster, and thwart threats more formidably, all in swift turn-around time. Below is a tabular analysis of the SWOT of travel agents operating in an online business environment. SWOT Analysis Internal External Maximize Strengths The strengths of a travel agent in an online C2B model include abilities to rapidly communicate with consumers, get their travel requirements, deliver these requirements to businesses, receive feedback from consumers for services and products delivered, and create possibilities for future collaborations. Opportunities The opportunities would include the chance to cater to untapped segments of both the local and global marketplace. Minimize Weaknesses The weaknesses would include the need to respond to consumers and businesses 24 hours a day and seven days a week at quick turn-around time. Threats The threats would of course include security concerns and competition from other C2B that continuously enter the industry. Conclusion Internet is a potent tool for surviving and competing in the travel industry. However, companies and agents must know how to use this medium to their advantage as the internet has its kinks that can spell big troubles. To stay afloat in the travel industry, agents and companies must bank on the strengths of the internet and develop strategic plans that would help them sustain operations both in the short and long term (Chopra. Van Mieghem, 2000).

The Engineering of Machu Picchu Essay -- Civil Engineering

On July 24, 1911 an antiquity site located in the mountains surrounding Cusco, Peru, was rediscovered by explorer Hiram Bingham almost half a century after it was constructed. Since 1911 Machu Picchu has come into prominence as a tourist site because of its interesting history and its mysterious abandonment. Much of Machu Picchu has been restored since its discovery to give tourists a window into what it would have been like to live there at its prime. Machu Picchu was built by the great Inca civilization in 1450 and it is believed that it was used as an imperial retreat for the Inca Emperor. Historians now believe that the abrupt abandonment of Machu Picchu was a result of the Spanish conquest, but one of the reasons that it is so well preserved is that the Spanish conquistadors never found it. Despite its location, only 43 miles from the Peruvian capital of Cuzco, for almost half a century it remained a mystery to all, but a few. Via advanced construction techniques the Inca were a ble to keep the inherent problems at Machu Picchu checked and by doing this they were able to expand the infrastructure at Machu Picchu to keep the population sustainable. Historians found Machu Picchu so fascinating because of its immaculate preservation, a result of the Inca construction techniques. When Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in 1911 he was taken aback by its beautiful construction. One component of its beauty is its stonework. This stonework prevented damage that other antiquity sites suffered and led to the state that Machu Picchu is in today. This site was preserved relatively to other Inca sites was because while the Spanish Conquistadors sacked other sites they did not find Machu Picchu and it remained undiscovered until Hi... .../worldgeography.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1498440?terms=terraces. â€Å"Terraces at Machu Picchu.† In ABC-CLIO. Accessed February 9, 2014. http://worldgeography.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/790018?terms=machu+picchu. â€Å"Water Supply and Drainage at Machu Picchu.† Water History.org. Accessed February 20, 2014. http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/machu/. Annotation: Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel By: Kenneth R. Wright Secondary Source Non-fiction Book Kenneth R. Wright is the Chief engineer at Wright Water Engineers in Denver and is an expert Paleo-Hydrologist at Machu Picchu and Mesa Verde There is no bias An Interview With Kenneth R. Wright on PBS.org Secondary Source Interview Kenneth R. Wright is the Chief engineer at Wright Water Engineers in Denver and is an expert Paleo-Hydrologist at Machu Picchu and Mesa Verde There is no bias

Free Essays: The World is Far From Perfect in Candide :: Candide essays

The World is Far From Perfect in Candide Candide is a great man that has encountered and accomplished many things. Candide has traveled far and wide through out his quest. He has encountered many things. He has been treated poorly by the government by being flogged multiple times by a two thousand-man army. To have his teacher lynched in front of his very eyes. He has met many people in his quest some nice and some not nice. Over all he was reunited with his friends and his true love. Voltaire's illustrate disenchantment of the old order though Candide's dealings with the church, government and the people. Voltaire's illustrates his disenchantment of the old order through Candide's dealing with the church. As an old man states,"Religion! Why of course we have a religion" (Voltaire 79). He states that he believes in one religion. He strongly stresses that there is only one religion that he and his people believe in and no others are accepted. The old man also states, "We never pray, we have nothing to ask of god, since he has given us everything we need" (Voltaire 79). They the people of Eldorado are optimistic because they have all they need, but you will never have all you need. You will always need something; you will never be complete. Some people through out his quests believed in one way of life and no other. Voltaire's disenchantment of the old order through Candide's dealings with the government. As Candide states "He was an admiral, but why execute the admiral because he did not have enough deaths to his credit." (Voltaire 111) They expect their soldiers to live up to their expectations by killing a certain amount of people. It should not be determined on the amount of people you kill, but by the way you use your power to conquer other countries. Cunegonde's brother states "The rulers of Paraguay accept as few Spanish Jesuit as they can." (Voltaire 66) The government is not in the right by choosing certain people to enter their country. Their government is racially selective, they do not want people entering their country that are not the same race or religion. Through out Candide's quests the government has caused him many hardships.

Death in the Woods, by Sherwood Anderson :: essays research papers

The story â€Å"Death in the Woods†, written by Sherwood Anderson, is a story told by a man who has told it one to many times. As a young boy in a small town he notices an older women named Grimes, who he will tell us the story about. She was the type of person that nobody noticed in town. She led a quite life and never really talked to anyone other then the butcher. The narrator then goes on to describe how she meets her husband Jack Grimes. He was a tough guy that she meets while working for an abusive German farmer. The narrator tells you a long story about how he helps her from getting way from the abusive German. They bonded after a few incidents and then got married. They had a few boys and started their own farm where just like before she fed the animals, just as she did for the German. Her husband tried to socialize with the town people but it did not work out. He then rebelled by stealing their horses. He even threatened to fight them after they would not make conversation with him. This maybe a good reason why one of his sons had been put in jail already, setting a real good example. Their family, the Grimes used to own a saw mill but, it fell through in the last couple of years so all of their money was gone which forced them to all to have to work hard. The young man narrating then tells us about his encounter with the elderly woman. One cold winter day she made her way to town to go the store. She went to butcher, ironically she and the butcher were social with each other and he gave her some extra food. On her way back through the woods she stopped for a minute to rest due the heavy bag. She feels asleep and did not wake up. She froze to death. Her dogs did find here and eat their food from her bag. This is very ironic because all she did was feed animals all her life. She did at the German’s farm, her farm/family and the dogs and now she is dead because of it. In story the young man describes how he arrived with the other men from town when they found her. He saw her frozen and dead.

Micheal Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) in Gary, Indiana, U. S. was an American singer. He was the 7th of nine children in the family. He went Gardner Elementary School in California 1969 to study, then he was home schooled. By the early 1960s, his brother had begun performing around the city; by 1964, Michael and Marlon had joined in the band called The Jackson 5.In his life, he had contributed to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for many year. Micheal Jackson Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. Michael began his musical career at the age of 5. In 1964, Michael and Marlon joined the Jackson Brothers—a band formed by brothers Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine—as backup musicians playing congas and tambourine.Jackson later began performing backup vocals and dancing. When he was eight, Jackson began sharing the lead vocals with his older brother Jermaine, and the group's name was changed to The Jackson 5. In these early years the Jackson 5, Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and lead singer Michael played local clubs and bars in Gary Indiana. Soon he will be discover by the world. In Micheal Jackson life, there are many thing made him famous.. In his carrer, there are many thing made him famous.He won seven Grammys and eight American Music Awards thank the ablum called the Thriller released in late 1982, which was 1983's best-selling album worldwide. On March 25, 1983, Michael Jackson reunited with his brothers for a legendary live performance which was taped for a Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever television special. It is best remembered for Jackson's solo performance of â€Å"Billie Jean† which gave him his first Emmy nomination. In the show, he performed â€Å"The Moonwalk† that made his famous in his carrer and show.Beside his carrer he had time for other things. Michael like d to read books. He had more than 10,000 books in his Neverland library. He enjoyed helping other people especially ill children because he didn't have a normal childhood. He gave more than 500 million dollars to more than 40 charities with different causes. He liked shopping, traveling, arts, rare collections, music, climbing trees, animals. Even through he gone, he still an idol to everyone and will remenber forever. Micheal Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) in Gary, Indiana, U. S. was an American singer. He was the 7th of nine children in the family. He went Gardner Elementary School in California 1969 to study, then he was home schooled. By the early 1960s, his brother had begun performing around the city; by 1964, Michael and Marlon had joined in the band called The Jackson 5.In his life, he had contributed to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for many year. Micheal Jackson Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. Michael began his musical career at the age of 5. In 1964, Michael and Marlon joined the Jackson Brothers—a band formed by brothers Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine—as backup musicians playing congas and tambourine.Jackson later began performing backup vocals and dancing. When he was eight, Jackson began sharing the lead vocals with his older brother Jermaine, and the group's name was changed to The Jackson 5. In these early years the Jackson 5, Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and lead singer Michael played local clubs and bars in Gary Indiana. Soon he will be discover by the world. In Micheal Jackson life, there are many thing made him famous.. In his carrer, there are many thing made him famous.He won seven Grammys and eight American Music Awards thank the ablum called the Thriller released in late 1982, which was 1983's best-selling album worldwide. On March 25, 1983, Michael Jackson reunited with his brothers for a legendary live performance which was taped for a Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever television special. It is best remembered for Jackson's solo performance of â€Å"Billie Jean† which gave him his first Emmy nomination. In the show, he performed â€Å"The Moonwalk† that made his famous in his carrer and show.Beside his carrer he had time for other things. Michael like d to read books. He had more than 10,000 books in his Neverland library. He enjoyed helping other people especially ill children because he didn't have a normal childhood. He gave more than 500 million dollars to more than 40 charities with different causes. He liked shopping, traveling, arts, rare collections, music, climbing trees, animals. Even through he gone, he still an idol to everyone and will remenber forever.

Effectiveness of Time and Financial Management Essay

Chapter 1 I. Introduction A. General Statement to the Effectiveness of Time and Financial Management on selected scholars of Adamson University 1. Profile of the Selected Scholars B. Statement of the problem ( How can they cope up with the demands of their respective courses? C. Objectives of the study D. Relevance of the study E. Definition of terms Chapter 2 II. Survey of Related Literature A. Foreign studies 1. Working Students/Student Assistants 2. Scholars B. Local Studies 1. Working Students/Student Assistants 2. Scholars Chapter 3 III. Methods on how to measure effectiveness of time and financial management A. Results of Survey/Questionnaire to the Selected Scholars of Adamson University 1. Graphical Representation 2. Analysis of the results IV. Conclusion Chapter 3 Methods on how to measure Effectiveness of Time and Financial Management The researchers chose 7 different scholars to conduct a survey about the chosen topic. Most of the respondents came from student assistant’s category and the others came from the category of academic scholars. These scholars were given scholarships from Ozanam Study Grant Program and Megaworld Foundation. On the range of their ages, 17-22 years old were the students who were given an opportunity they wanted to have. The scholars being interviewed have a daily allowance of more or less 150 pesos. On the Graph 1.1 being shown below are some of the expenses of the following students. Graph 1.1 A little number of respondents said that they stay in boarding houses that cost them Php 1,600 to Php 1,700. Literally, the cost was being solved by their parents. 3 out of 7 students said that both of their parents are self-employed. 1 respondent said that his/her parents run a business and another corresponds to unemployed parents. The rest of the students match up on other answers like their father/mother neither is an overseas Filipino worker, a tricycle driver, a plain housewife nor was deceased. Researchers proceed to the monthly income of their parents in able to measure the financial background of each and every respondent. Graph 1.2 illustrates the possible monthly income of the parents of these learners. Graph 1.2 As you can see, there is an equality of 14,000 and lower and 15,000-20,000 income. It is based on the survey being conducted by the researchers and from the occupation of their parents. On the part of their financial management, they spent the biggest part of their allowance for their food (50%) followed by their transportation and some other expenses. This shows that food is very important especially for the scholars like them. Food is an essential and they must not ignore because of the responsibilities they have in the university. The primary reason of the pupils asked in preferring themselves in being a scholar of Adamson University is that because they wanted to help their parents in decreasing the expenses. In this reason, an individual can determine that financial or money matters are the first basis in order for them to have financial management. Other reasons are for them to gain independency. The effectiveness of financial management is measured by proper usage of money and thinking a creative way of using up money.  The researchers also find ways on evaluating time supervision of scholars. Because of a more number of student assistants being interviewed, most of their time is allotted on their duties. Here is Graph 1.3 that shows how long an ordinary scholar uses his /her time in the university. Graph 1.3 Take a look of the graph that has been illustrated by the researchers. Student D and F are academic scholars. According to the information gathered from the survey, these students are academic scholars. As academic scholars, their worlds are focused on studying. They usually spend time in resting, studying and even have a time for leisure. On the other hand, the remaining students (A, B , C and E) make use of their time in duties and offices. Equalizing time in each activity of a student like them is not easy to do. Like on the Graph 1.3, student assistants are divided in different opinions. Some of them were able to balance their time and others cannot. Same answer was derived by academic scholars. However, they also answered it depends on the situation. Situations are unpredictable and make equalization of time in different planned activities. Somehow, all of them have a time for rest and have a break after long hours from school. Lastly, as a scholar, grade is the most important or basis in acquiring scholarships. Grades of these scholars are not affected by activities being done in school. Therefore, these learners have a good strategic measures in managing their time and studies. Chapter 4 Conclusion Based on the presented and interpreted data above, the following conclusions were drawn: 1. That most of the scholars spend their money more on food  for it is an essential need. 2. That most of the scholars wanted to help their parents to reduce the number of expenses. 3. That most of the scholars allot their time to school by doing different duties but assures that grades of them will not be affected. Chapter 2 Survey of Related Literature

Mcdonald’s Healthier Happy Meals Essay

In order to successfully make these changes McDonald’s hired a research group to conduct an extensive research and present them with a cost effective solution. The Research Questions The questions the company had to look into to resolve this issue was: * How can they make the meals for the children healthier while maintaining the convenience that fast food is known for? * How can they cut the calories from their existing meals? * How can they make healthy food desirable to children? * How can they keep these healthier options cost effective? * What would be the best marketing strategy to launch these healthier changes? The Hypothesis A hypothesis explores a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation (Merriam-Webster, 2013). In the exploration to raise a question and find an answer, the company has to face the question: how can they make the meals for the children healthier while maintaining the convenience that fast food is known for? Through the years McDonald’s has added a couple new features to their menu like a wider selection in desserts, a value menu, and select new refreshing healthier choices to their fast food chain. But the question now is, how can they further cut the calories from these meals? Yes, McDonald’s has gained a fine respect in the fast food industry for upgrading to healthier choices, but now the kids menu may need some revamping on their own. If the regular menu can provide healthier choice selections like salads, less than 400 calories, and weight watcher approved items, what can they do about happy meals? A solution to providing a healthier selection is to offer a more beneficial meal that kids can enjoy. Apple bags, celery sticks, carrots, reduced milk, baked instead of fried items and healthier meat. Those are just a couple of suggestions to an issue that is easy to solve. The main purpose is to change the world one step at a time, and healthier living for is the new road to take. The Variables Local societies are becoming more health conscience and looking for healthier options when going out to eat. Even though McDonald’s did not follow the popular approach by luring people in through the use of famous celebrities, people felt that offering toys with their Happy Meals were unacceptable. The variables in a research scenario are considered to be independent (IV) and dependent variables (DV). In this research scenario the independent variables are the food and the marketing strategy, while the amount of calories and interest of the children are the dependent variables. Many children were attracted to McDonald’s Happy Meals for the toy they got with it and this is what their marketing strategy revolved around. In April 2012, The Time’s released the article â€Å"Why we’re eating fewer happy meals†. The article’s main focus was McDonald’s use of toys with their Happy Meals and the use of a clown who â€Å"is hell-bent on the creepy mission of luring children into McDonald’s, where they’ll be fattened up and primed for a lifetime of regular fast-food dining visits† (Tuttle, 2012, p. 1). Along with improving their Happy Meals, McDonald’s has also changed their marketing strategy. They still offer the toys but it is no longer their main focal point. Instead they now show Ronald McDonald playing around, participating in healthy activities and proclaiming that a healthier life style is a lot of fun.

Coney Island Hospital Essay Example

Coney Island Hospital Essay Example Coney Island Hospital Paper Coney Island Hospital Paper Abstract   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Coney Island Hospital is one of the best medical centers in Brooklyn area. It is well known for its excellent medical performance, which has been constantly improved since the 19th century, when the hospital was founded. Coney Island Hospital   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Coney Island Hospital is known for the excellence of its services, which he has constantly provided to its patients since the end of the 19th century. The hospital carries stable unblemished reputation and is fairly considered to be one of the best medical institutions in Brooklyn.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   â€Å"In the late 19th century, as swarms of summer beachgoers made the Coney Island beaches and Amusement Parks their place of respite from the heat of the city, a first-aid station and later a Reception Hospital were erected along the busy shorefront† (Coney Island Hospital, 2005a). Coney Island Hospital is mentioned by many other medical institutions and informational resources as the reputable medical center which offers numerous quality medical services to its patients (Coney Island Hospital, 2005a). Coney Island Hospital’s mission is to provide the residents of the Southern Brooklyn with the cost-effective high quality medical services. Moreover, the hospital promotes the vision of equality in relations with patients, â€Å"in a respectful way to all, regardless of ability to pay† (Coney Island Hospital, 2005c).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The hospital has numerous facilities and specialties: emergency services, women’s health services, medical and surgical specialties, pediatric services, cardiology services, nuclear medicine, behavioral health services, complementary medicine, occupational therapy, social work, EEG lab, and even its own blood bank (Coney Island Hospital, 2005d). Moreover, Coney Island Hospital is well known for its extremely advanced nuclear medical department. The department of nuclear medicine is one of the best and the most technologically advanced in the hospital. It is located on the fifth floor of the main hospital’s building, and makes it possible to perform whole body bone scans for spreading cancer, osteomyelitis scanning, gallium scanning of the whole body for the detection of infections, thyroid scans, and thyroid cancer treatment with the application of radioactive iodine, etc. (Coney Island Hospital, 2005d). The hospital is the member of the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation (Coney Island Hospital, 2005b). It is a for-profit organization, but as it protects its financial interests, it also promotes the principles of social equality towards all patients. There are several unique features which make Coney Island Hospital different from other similar medical entities. First, the hospital staff includes interpreters, who help medical specialists communicate with Russian, Chinese, Albanian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu patients, and those of other nationalities and backgrounds. Second, the hospital employs an American-Russian Sign Language interpreter to assist deaf patients in their communication with medical personnel (Coney Island Hospital, 2005d). The hospital offers affordable medical services to low-income patients without any regard to their immigration status (Coney Island Hospital, 2005c). Moreover, the hospital is involved into various financial cooperative programs aimed at improving its technical state and maintaining its cost-effective performance. The major source of the hospital’s income is patients’ insurance and small fees the hospital takes from those who do not have insurance. For example, a patient’s visit may cost around $15 (Coney Island Hospital, 2005c); in this way the hospital creates affordable conditions for those who require medical assistance, and supports its for-profit status.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Conclusion   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The physical location of the hospital requires that the hospital staff is able to communicate with multinational patients: southern Brooklyn has historically been the refuge for the immigrants from the Soviet Union (Coney Island Hospital, 2005a). Coney Island Hospital is well known beyond Brooklyn for the highest quality of its medical services and respectful treatment of all patients regardless of their financial and social status. References Coney Island Hospital. (2005a). 97 years of service to the shorefront community. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from coneyislandhospital.us/index.php Coney Island Hospital. (2005b). About CIH. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from coneyislandhospital.us/page.php?CPID=2 Coney Island Hospital. (2005c). Insurance information. Retrieved February, 2008 from coneyislandhospital.us/page.php?CPID=24 Coney Island Hospital. (2005d). Services and specialties. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from coneyislandhospital.us/services.php

Which States Require the ACT Full List and Advice

Which States Require the ACT Full List and Advice SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Over the past five years, the number of states that administer the ACT statewide has more than doubled: there are now 12 states that require every junior to take the test and eight more that either require the test in some districts or offer it as a free option for students who wish to take it. This post explains why these programs exist, which states have them, and how you can take advantage of them if you live in one of these states. Why Do Some States Require the ACT? In 2001, when states were first implementing statewide assessment programs, Illinois and Colorado decided that, rather than creating their own tests for high school juniors, they would contract with ACT, Inc. to use the ACT as a statewide assessment. (The ACT is generally considered more content based than the SAT, and therefore a better for for assessments.) This plan had the added advantages of providing every student with the chance to take a college admissions test and, ideally, encouraging students who might not have otherwise considered college to apply. Colorado and Illinois were followed by Kentucky, Wyoming, and Michigan in 2007 and then North Dakota and Tennessee in 2009 (although Colorado, Illinois, and Michigan have since switched to the SAT). Since then, the number of states using the ACT as a statewide assessment has almost doubled, and the SAT has created an equivalent program called SAT School Day. The spread of the ACT as a state assessment helped it surpass the SAT as the most popular college admissions test in the US 2011-2017 (although recently it's been overtaken by the SAT once more). For the 2019-2020 school year, 20 states have a contract with ACT, Inc. to provide free ACT testing to some or all high school juniors at public schools. Which States Require the ACT? Of the 12 states that administer the ACT statewide, more than half include the writing (the rest do not). There are also a few states that don't require the test of all students but allow districts to opt in to the program or give students the choice of which test to take. States that require all students to take the ACT with Writing Alabama Hawaii Montana Nebraska Nevada North Carolina North Dakota Utah Wisconsin States that require all students to take the ACT (no Writing) Kentucky Louisiana Mississippi Wyoming States with other arrangements Arkansas - offered but not required; no Writing Kansas - offered but not required; no Writing Minnesota - SAT or ACT offered Missouri - determined by district; not funded Ohio - SAT or ACT required; district determines which test Oklahoma - SAT with Essay or ACT with Writing required; district determines which test South Carolina - SAT or ACT required Tennessee - SAT or ACT required (districts may provide either SAT or ACT or allow students to choose) What Does Statewide Testing Mean For Your ACT Prep? The short answer is that it doesn’t make a huge difference: the ACT is the same whether you take it on a state-administered date or one of the regular test days. However, if you do live in one of the states listed above, you may want to tweak your approach to take advantage of some of the state resources available to you. Here are a few things to keep in mind. You'll Be Able to Take the Test for Free If the cost of taking the ACT is a financial burden for your family, the opportunity to take the test for free is a valuable one, and you should take advantage by scheduling your studying accordingly. Remember that you'll also be able to send four free score reports. You may also be eligible for a fee waiver, thus giving you the chance to take the test up to 3 times for free. You Might Practice for the ACT in School Because the statewide ACTs can double as an assessment for schools and teachers, you may do some in-class preparation for the test. This instruction can help make you more familiar with the test, which is a key step in preparing for the ACT. High school teachers aren't always the most knowledgeable about the ACT, however, so if a teacher tells you something about the test that seems off or contradicts what you've learned in your prep, make sure to double check it! There Could Be Other Free Prep Materials or Classes Available to You Even if your school doesn't offer in-class ACT prep there might be other resources you can take advantage of like free prep books or after school classes. (For example, students in Utah have access to free ACT study materials on Shmoop.) Check with a counselor or teacher at your school to find out if you're eligible for extra study help. Again, though, you should be mindful of whether the materials are good quality. The Curve Won't Be Affected One key thing that won't be affected by whether your state offers free ACT testing is the score curve. Many students believe that the curve is easier on state-mandated test dates because more low-scoring students take the test. Though it's true that scores on these dates are generally lower, the curve isn't actually affected. It's based on years worth of data, not a single test date. What's Next? Make sure you know when to start studying for the ACT and check out these 5 tips to get you started. Not sure what ACT score you should be shooting for? Calculate your target score with this helpful guide. Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? We have the industry's leading ACT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and ACT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible. Check out our 5-day free trial today:

Do Colleges Average Your ACT Score

Do Colleges Average Your ACT Score SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Like most students who take the ACT, you may have taken the test more than once or are thinking about taking it multiple times. How will colleges look at your multiple test scores? Will they look at all your scores? Just your highest score? Will they average your scores and use that number?Standardized test scores are an important part of applying to college, but it’s not always clear how colleges will determine your ACT scores if you’ve taken the test more than once. Will colleges average your ACT scores if you take the test multiple times? In short, no.Colleges don’t take the average of your scores. Instead, they will look at your â€Å"best† score;however, there are multiple ways a school can determine your best ACT score.In this article, I’ll go over the different methods schools use to look at multiple ACT scores, if they require you to send all your ACT scores, and how you can use this information to your advantage and help strengthen your college applications. Do You Need to Send Schools All Your ACT Scores? Before you start wondering what colleges do with multiple ACT scores, the first thing you need to know is whether they require you to send the results of every ACT you took in the first place. Infact, most schools do NOTrequire you to send in all your scores, and ACT, Inc. makes it easy to choose which scores you want to send with an option referred to asScore Choice. (Note that the phrase "Score Choice" is technically more associated with the SAT Score Choice program, but the ACT has a similar policy for its own test score reporting.) Schools that require you to send in all of your ACT scores will be referred to as "All Scores" schools. Both types of schools are discussed in more detail below. Score Choice ACT Score Choice gives you the option to send schools only the ACT scores you want them to see,rather than sending scores from every ACT you took. On the score report request form, you will be asked to list your college of choice and the test date you want to send on each line. For schools that allow Score Choice, if you did poorly on one test date, you don’t need to send that score to schools, and they will never see it. This means that if you take the ACT sixtimes, you can choose to send only your best score, or your best two scores, or as many scores as you'd like. Be aware that ifyou are using Score Choice and choose to send your scores from a specific test, you must send your scores for the entire test; you cannot only send individual section scores to schools. All Scores Some schools, including certain highly selective schools like Yale and Stanford, requireyou to send all your ACT scores.This means that you cannot use Score Choice, and youmust send them the scoresofevery ACT you took, even if there was a particular test date when you didn’t score as well as you usually do. So, if you took the ACT six times, you need to send these schoolsyour results from each of those six test dates. Check out our complete list of the schools that require you to send all your ACT scores. Only some schools require you to send all your ACT scores What Do Colleges Do If You Send Multiple ACT Scores? You may end up sending a school more than one ACT score, either because theyrequire it or because you earnedmultiple strong scores and want schools to see them. So what do colleges do if they receive more than one ACT score from you? There are several options, and each isexplained below. Highest Sitting Most schools, if you send them more than one ACT score, will simply use yourhighest ACT composite score from a single test date. So, if you took the ACT three times and received composite scores of 28, 29, and 30, the school would use your composite and section scores of the test date when you received a 30. Superscoring Another method that some schools use to determine your best score is called superscoring.When a school uses superscoring, that means they consideryour highest section scores across all the dates you took the ACT and combine theminto a superscore. Look at the example below to see how superscoring works. English Math Reading Science Composite Exam 1 25 31 30 27 28 Exam 2 27 29 32 28 29 Exam 3 30 33 30 27 30 Superscore 30 33 32 28 31 This student took the ACT three times, and, as you can see, her composite superscore is higher than any of the composite ACT scores for individual test dates. This is because superscoring combined all of her highest section scores from across the three tests. If you take the ACT with Writing, that section isalso included in superscoring. For schools that use superscoring, this student would be considered to have a composite ACT score of 31, and her section scores would be each of those listed under the Superscore row. Superscoring benefits you because schools combine your best scores from each section of the ACT into one superscore, even if those scores didn’t occur in the same test.Wondering which colleges use superscoring? We have a complete list of schools that superscore the ACT. Will Schools Look at Your Other Scores? Regardless of whether a school uses superscoring or highest sitting, will they look at your "non-best" ACT scores as well? There's no clear-cut answer to this question since it varies for each school and often for each applicant; however,many times schools will look at your other test scores, even if your best score is the one they give the most weight to. This is particularly true for schools that require all scores sent. In these cases, your scores still won't be averaged, but schools mayreview all your scores and make inferences if there were any outliers. For example, if you take the ACT three times and get composite scores of 32, 27, and 33, most schools will use 33 as your "official" ACT score, but they may wonder why you got a 27 for one test. One outlier score will usually have a small, if any, impact on your application, but it's still important to never blow off an ACT examjust because you think schools will only look at your best score. As mentioned above, schools that allow Score Choice only see the scores you send them, so you can take the ACT several times and only send your highest scorein order for that to be the only resultsthey see. The next sections give more recommendations on howyou can use school score policies toplan and improve your ACT preparation methods. Can You Take the ACT as Many Times as You Want? Since most schools will useyour best ACT score, either by using superscoring or highest sitting, does that mean you can take the ACT as many times as you want in order to maximize your chances of getting a high score? Not exactly. You are allowed to take the ACT up to 12 times, and schools will continue touse your best score from those tests, whether by using superscoring or highest sitting.However, itisnot recommended that you actually take the ACT 12 times. Generally, you shouldn’t take the ACT more than five or six times. Taking the ACT more than six times can cause schools to think you don’t take the test seriously or have trouble improving your scores. It can also becomevery stressful and time-consuming,not to mention extremely expensive, because you have to keep paying to take the ACT and to send your scores to schools.Taking the ACT as many times as you can is particularly a bad idea if one of yourschools requires All Scores sentbecause itincreases the chance of you having an off-day and getting a lower than usual score, which those schools will see and which can possibly hurt your chances of being admitted. Instead of taking the ACT as many times as you can, you should instead look at your test prep methods and how effective they are. Is your studying targeting and improving your weak areas? Are you learning what mistakes you make and how to avoid them? By putting time and effort into studying effectively, you will be able to reach your target ACT score more easily than simply taking the ACT over and over.In general, we recommend taking the ACT two-three times to get your best score, regardless of whether the schools you’re applying to use superscoring or highest sitting to determine your best score. Don't just take the ACT as many times as you can; it can hurt your college applications. How Can You Use Score Policies to Improve Your ACT Prep? If you know which schools you want to apply to, you can look at their score policies and use them to help guide your test-taking strategy. If the schools you’re applying to use superscoring, then you can maximize your superscore by studying for and gaining a strong score in one ACT section at a time.For a more in-depth explanation of this strategy, check out our guide on how superscoring can affect your test strategy. If a school uses highest sitting, then you should continue to study each section of the ACT in order to maximize your composite score. For schools that require All Scores sent, you will want to make sure you are well-prepared each time you take the ACT. Those schools will see all of your exam scores, so you don’t want one bad test day to hurt your college applications. You will also want to keep studying for each section of the ACT, even if you are only trying to improve your score in one specific section. You don't want scores from your other sections to drop on a retake. Even if the schools you’re applying to allow superscoring orScore Choice, you should always take the ACT seriously.As mentioned above, a very low score canbe a red flag to schools, and it’s also just a waste of your time and money. Conclusion Most students take the ACT multiple times, and schools have different policies for reviewing multiple test scores. Most schools don't require you to send scores from all the ACTs you took. Score Choice is a way for you to choose which ACT results you want schools to see. If you send multiple ACT scores, schoolswon’t average them, but instead will useone of two methods to determine your "best score." Some schools combine your highest section scores from multiple tests into a Superscore. This is known as Superscoring. Other schools look at your highest score from a single test date. Knowing which scoring policy schools use can help you structure your test prep and test-taking strategies to maximize your ACT scores for college applications. What's Next? First, what’s a good ACT score? Read our article on good, bad, and excellent ACT scores so you can identify and prepare for your target score. Wondering when you should take the ACT? Read this article to figure out the best dates for you. Check out our complete study plan for the ACTso you can keep up with your studying and make the most of every test date! Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points?We have the industry's leading ACT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and ACT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible. Check out our 5-day free trial today:

Allomorph Word Forms and Sounds

Allomorph Word Forms and Sounds In phonology, an allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme. (A morpheme is the smallest unit of a language.) For example, the plural in English has three different morphs, making plural an allomorph, because there are alternatives. Not all plurals are formed in the same way; theyre made in English with three different morphs: /s/, /z/, and  [É™z], as in kicks, cats, and sizes, respectively.   For example, when we find a group of different  morphs, all versions of one morpheme, we can use the prefix  allo-  ( one of a closely related set) and describe them as allomorphs of that morpheme. Take the morpheme plural. Note that it can be attached to a number of lexical morphemes to produce structures like cat   plural, bus   plural, sheep   plural, and man   plural. In each of these examples, the actual forms of the morphs that result from the morpheme plural are different. Yet they are all allomorphs of the one morpheme. So, in addition to /s/ and /É™z/, another allomorph of plural in English seems to be a zero-morph because the plural form of  sheep  is actually sheep   ∅. When we look at man   plural, we have a vowel change in the word...as the morph that produces the irregular plural form  men. (George Yule, The Study of Language, 4th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2010) Past Tense Allomorphs Past tense is another morpheme that has multiple morphs and is thus an allomorph. When you form the past tense, you add the sounds /t/, /d/, and /É™d/ to words to put them in past tense, such as in talked, grabbed, and wanted, respectively. Completely arbitrary allomorphs, such as English  went  (go  Ã‚  past tense), are relatively rare in the  lexicon, and occur almost exclusively with a few very frequent words. This unpredictable kind of allomorphy is called  suppletion. (Paul Georg Meyer, Synchronic English Linguistics: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005) Pronunciation Can Change Depending on the context, allomorphs can vary in shape and pronunciation without changing meaning, and the formal relation between phonological allomorphs is called an  alternation.  [A]n underlying morpheme can have multiple surface level allomorphs (recall that the prefix allo means other). That is, what we think of as a single unit (a single morpheme) can actually have more than one  pronunciation  (multiple allomorphs)...We can use the following analogy:  phoneme:  allophone   morpheme: allomorph. (Paul W. Justice, Relevant Linguistics: An Introduction to the Structure and Use of English for Teachers, 2nd ed. CSLI, 2004) For example, [t]he  indefinite article  is a good example of a morpheme with more than one allomorph. It is  realized  by the two forms  a  and  an. The sound at the beginning of the following word determines the allomorph that is selected. If the word following the indefinite article begins with a  consonant, the allomorph  a  is selected, but if it begins with a  vowel  the allomorph  an  is used instead... [A]llomorphs of a morpheme are in  complementary distribution. This means that they cannot substitute for each other. Hence, we cannot replace one allomorph of a morpheme by another allomorph of that morpheme and change meaning. (Francis Katamba, English Words: Structure, History, Usage, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2004) More on the Term Itself   The terms adjectival use is  allomorphic. Its etymology derives from the Greek,  Ã‚  other form.

How to Overcome Insecurity in the Workplace

How to Overcome Insecurity in the Workplace Workplace insecurity is a thing- even for people who wouldn’t normally consider themselves â€Å"insecure.† Particularly for women, feeling less than on the job is a constant struggle- and usually, the feelings aren’t even warranted. Help yourself diagnose the most common workplace insecurities and figure out how you can overcome them. You’ll be much more productive and fulfilled if you do.1. Lack of TalentOkay, so right away you can probably write this off. You got hired for this job, didn’t you? So you can’t possibly be as underqualified or untalented as you think. Take a step back and stop comparing yourself and your work to that of your peers. Remember that your skill set and experience is unique and might bring something slightly different to the table than those of your coworkers- even if those might seem more impressive from where you’re sitting. And if you’re still feeling like you could know and do more†¦ learn a n ew skill or get a new qualification in an online course.2. Lack of AdvancementYou’re watching people get promoted all around you and you’re worried that you’re not advancing as fast as others. Don’t let the envy or resentment pull you down. Focus on your work. Sit down with your boss and have a chat about what you need to do to grow and start moving forward. Get clear on your expectations and then figure out how to exceed them!3. Lack of MoneyYou’re not supposed to talk about money in the office environment, but chances are you’ve been observant enough to know (ballpark) what the people around you are making. If this makes you feel inadequate, remember to make the focus on you: what could you be doing to qualify for a raise? Talk to your boss. Look around for other jobs, especially if you feel you’re not being rewarded for your skillset and work level.4. Lack of PopularityIf you feel your social skills aren’t quite up to par, s tart stepping up. Ask how you can be of help to coworkers. Go the extra mile. They will remember when the tables are turned and you need help. Plus, you can use their gratitude to build rapport and a better, warmer relationship.If you’re really stuck, there are lots of resources out there for improving your public speaking and social skills. Make use of them! And if you feel invisible on the job, start looking for ways to make yourself stand out a bit more. Take on high profile projects, come early, stay late, etc. A few calculated risks can put you in a much better position to be noticed and then valued.Remember that everyone makes mistakes and everyone is afraid of getting fired- at least at some point. Show up on time, do your job well, present yourself personably and professionally, and you should be in good stead. When in doubt, it’s always a good idea to solicit constructive feedback. Ask questions. Find allies. Trust your gut instincts.But more than anything: do your job and do it well. Go above and beyond. Rise above. There’s no better way to combat your insecurity than to achieve beyond even your own expectations. Just remember to take a proper moment to celebrate those achievements every time they occur.

How to Write a DBQ Essay Key Strategies and Tips

How to Write a DBQ Essay Key Strategies and Tips SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips The DBQ, or document-based-question, is a somewhat unusually-formatted timed essay on the AP History Exams: AP US History, AP European History, and AP World History.Because of its unfamiliarity, many students are at a loss as to how to even prepare, let alone how to write a successful DBQ essay on test day. Never fear! I, the DBQ wizard and master, have a wealth of preparation strategies for you, as well as advice on how to cram everything you need to cover into your limited DBQ writing time on exam day. When you're done reading this guide, you'll know exactly how to write a DBQ. For a general overview of the DBQ- what it is, its purpose, itsformat, etc.- see my article â€Å"What is a DBQ?† Table of Contents What Should My Study Timeline Be? Preparing for the DBQ Establish a Baseline Foundational Skills Rubric Breakdown Take Another Practice DBQ How Can I Succeed on Test Day? Reading the Question and Documents Planning Your Essay Writing Your Essay Key Takeaways What Should My DBQ Study Timeline Be? Your AP exam study timeline depends on a few things. First, how much time you have to study per week, and how many hours you want to study in total? If you don’t have much time per week, start a little earlier; if you will be able to devote a substantial amount of time per week (10-15 hours) to prep, you can wait until later in the year. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the earlier you start studying for yourAP test, the less material you will have covered in class.Make sure you continually review older material as the school year goes on to keep things fresh in your mind, but in terms of DBQ prep it probably doesn’t make sense to start before February or January at the absolute earliest. Another factor is how much you need to work on. I recommend youcomplete a baseline DBQ around early February to see where you need to focus your efforts. If, for example, you got a six out of seven and missed one point for doing further document analysis, you won’t need to spend too much time studying how to write aDBQ. Maybe just do a document analysis exercise every few weeksand check in a couple months later with another timed practice DBQ to make sure you’ve got it. However, if you got a two or three out of seven, you’ll know you have more work to do, and you’ll probably want to devote at least an hour or two every week to honing your skills. The general flow of your preparation should be: take a practice DBQ, do focused skills practice, take another practice DBQ, do focused skills practice, take another practice DBQ, and so on. How often you take the practice DBQs and how many times you repeat the cycle really depends on how much preparation you need, and how often you want to check your progress. Take practice DBQs often enough that the format stays familiar, but not so much that you’ve done barely any skills practice in between. He's ready to start studying! Preparing for the DBQ The general preparation process is to diagnose, practice, test, and repeat. First, you’ll figure out what you need to work on by establishing a baseline level for your DBQ skills. Then, you’ll practice building skills. Finally, you’ll take another DBQ to see how you've improved and what you still need to work on. In this next section, I’ll go over the whole process. First, I’ll give guidance on how to establish a baseline. Then I’ll go over some basic, foundational essay-writing skills and how to build them. After that I’ll break down the DBQ rubric.You’ll be acing practice DBQs before you know it! Want to get a perfect 5 on your AP exam and an A in class? We can help. PrepScholar Tutors is the world's best tutoring service. We combine world-class expert tutors with our proprietary teaching techniques. Our students have gotten A's on thousands of classes, perfect 5's on AP tests, and ludicrously high SAT Subject Test scores. Whether you need help with science, math, English, social science, or more, we've got you covered. Get better grades today with PrepScholar Tutors. #1: Establish a Baseline The first thing you need to do is to establish a baseline- figure out where you are at with respect to your DBQ skills. This will let you know where you need to focus your preparation efforts. To do this, you will take a timed, practice DBQ and have a trusted teacher or advisor grade it according to the appropriate rubric. AP US History For the AP US History DBQ, you’ll be given a 15-minute reading period and 45 minutes of writing time. A selection of practice questions from the exam can be found online at the College Board, including a DBQ. (Go to page 136 in the linked document for the practice prompt.) If you’ve already seen this practice question, perhaps in class, you might use the 2015 DBQ question. Other available College Board DBQs are going to be in the old format (find them in the â€Å"Free-Response Questions† documents). This is fine if you need to use them, but be sure to use the new rubric(which is out of seven points, rather thannine)to grade. I advise you to save all these links, or even download all the Free Response Questions and the Scoring Guides, for reference because you will be using them again and again for practice. AP European History For this exam, you’ll be given a 15-minute reading period and 45 minutes of writing time. The College Board has provided practice questions for the exam, including a DBQ (see page 200 in the linked document). If you’ve already seen this question, the only other questions available through the College Board are in the old format, because the 2016 DBQ is in a new, seven-point format identical to the AP US History exam. Just be sure to use the new DBQ rubric if you want to use any of the old prompts provided by the College Board. (DBQs are in the documents titled â€Å"Free-Response Questions.†) I advise you to save all these links (or even download all the Free Response Questions and the Scoring Guides) for reference, because you will be using them again and again for practice. Who knows- maybe this will be one of your documents! AP World History For this exam, you’ll be given a 15-minute reading period and 45 minutes of writing time.As for the other two history exams, the College Board has provided practice questions. See page 166 for the DBQ. If you’ve already seen this question, the only other questions available through the College Board are in the old format, because the 2017 World History DBQ is in a new, seven-point format identical to the AP US History and AP European History exams. So be sure to use the new DBQ rubric if you want to use any of the old prompts provided by the College Board. (DBQs are in the documents titled â€Å"Free-Response Questions.†) I advise you to save all these links (or even download all the Free Response Questions and the Scoring Guides) for reference, because you will be using them again and again for practice. Finding a Trusted Advisor to Look at Your Papers A history teacher would be a great resource, but if they are not available to you in this capacity, here are some other ideas: An English teacher. Ask a librarian at your school or public library! If they can’t help you, they may be able to direct you to resources who can. You could also ask a school guidance counselor to direct you to in-school resources you could use. A tutor. This is especially helpful if they are familiar with the test, although even if they aren’t, they can still advise- the DBQ is mostly testing academic writing skills under pressure. Your parent(s)! Again, ideally your trusted advisor will be familiar with the AP, but if you have used your parents for writing help in the past they can also assist here. You might try an older friend who has already taken the exam and did well...although bear in mind that some people are better at doing than scoring and/or explaining! Can I Prepare For My Baseline? If you know nothing about the DBQ and you’d like to do a little basic familiarization before you establish your baseline, that’s completely fine. There’s no point in taking a practice exam if you are going to panic and muddle your way through it; it won’t give a useful picture of your skills. For a basic orientation, check out my article for a basic introduction to the DBQ including DBQ format. If you want to look at one or two sample essays, see my article for a list of DBQ example essay resources. Keepin mind that you should use a fresh prompt you haven’t seen to establish your baseline, though, so if you do look at samples don’t use those prompts to set your baseline. I would also check out this page aboutthe various â€Å"task† words associated with AP essay questions. This page was created primarily for the AP European History Long Essay question, but the definitions are still useful for the DBQ on all the history exams, particularly since these are the definitions provided by the College Board. Once you feel oriented, take your practice exam! Don’t worry if you don’t do well on your first practice! That’s what studying is for. The point of establishing a baseline is not to make you feel bad, but to empower you to focus your efforts on the areas you need to work on.Even if you need to work on all the areas, that is completely fine and doable! Every skill you need for the DBQ can be built. In the following section, we’ll go over these skills and how to build them for each exam. You need a stronger foundation than this sand castle. #2: Develop Foundational Skills In this section, I’ll discuss the foundational writing skills you need to write a DBQ. I’ll start with some general information on crafting an effective thesis, since this is a skill you will need for any DBQ exam (and for your entire academic life). Then, I’ll go over outlining essays, with some sample outline ideas for the DBQ. After I’ll touch on time management. Finally, I’ll briefly discuss how to non-awkwardly integrate information from your documents into your writing. It sounds like a lot, but not only are these skills vital to your academic career in general, you probably already have the basic building blocks to master them in your arsenal! Writing An Effective Thesis Writing a good thesis is a skill you will need to developfor all your DBQs, and for any essay you write, on the AP or otherwise. Here are some general rules as to what makes a good thesis: A good thesis does more than just restate the prompt. Let’s say our class prompt is: â€Å"Analyze the primary factors that led to the French Revolution.† Gregory writes, â€Å"There were many factors that caused the French Revolution† as his thesis. This is not an effective thesis. All it does is vaguely restate the prompt. A good thesis makes a plausible claim that you can defend in an essay-length piece of writing. Maybe Karen writes, â€Å"Marie Antoinette caused the French Revolution when she said ‘Let them eat cake’ because it made people mad.† This is not an effective thesis, either. For one thing, Marie Antoinette never said that. More importantly, how are you going to write an entire essay on how one offhand comment by Marie Antoinette caused the entire Revolution? This is both implausible and overly simplistic. A good thesisanswers the question. If LaToya writes, â€Å"The Reign of Terror led to the ultimate demise of the French Revolution and ultimately paved the way for NapoleonBonaparteto seize control of France,† she may be making a reasonable, defensible claim, but it doesn’t answer the question, which is not about what happened after the Revolution, but what caused it! A good thesis makes it clear where you are going in your essay. Let’s say Juan writes, â€Å"The French Revolution, while caused by a variety of political, social, and economic factors, was primarily incited by the emergence of the highly educated Bourgeois class.†This thesis provides a mini-roadmap for the entire essay, laying out that Juan is going to discuss the political, social, and economic factors that led to the Revolution, in that order, and that he will argue that the members of the Bourgeois class were the ultimate inciters of the Revolution. This is a great thesis! It answers the question, makes an overarching point, and provides a clear idea of what the writer isgoing to discuss in the essay. To review: a good thesis makes a claim, responds to the prompt, and lays out what you will discuss in your essay. If you feel like you have trouble telling the difference between a good thesis and a not-so-good one, here are a few resources you can consult: This site from SUNY Empire has an exercise in choosing the best thesis from several options. It’s meant for research papers, but the general rules as to what makes a good thesis apply. About.com has another exercise in choosing thesis statements specifically for short essays. Note, however, that most of the correct answers here would be â€Å"good† thesis statements as opposed to â€Å"super† thesis statements. This guide from the University of Iowa provides some really helpful tips on writing a thesis for a history paper. So how do you practice your thesis statement skills for the DBQ? While you should definitely practice looking at DBQ questions and documents and writing a thesis in response to those, you may also find it useful to write some practice thesis statements in response to the Free-Response Questions. While you won’t be taking any documents into account in your argument for the Free-Response Questions, it’s good practice on how to construct an effective thesis in general. You could even try writing multiple thesis statements in response to the same prompt! It is a great exercise to see how you could approach the prompt from different angles. Time yourself for 5-10 minutes to mimic the time pressure of the AP exam. If possible, havea trusted advisor or friend look over your practice statements and give you feedback. Barring that, looking over the scoring guidelines for old prompts (accessible from the same page on the College Board where past free-response questions can be found) will provide you with useful tips on what might make a good thesis in response to a given prompt. Once you can write a thesis, you need to be able to support it- that's where outlining comes in! This is not a good outline. Outlining and Formatting Your Essay You may be the greatest document analyst and thesis-writer in the world, but if you don’t know how to put it all together in a DBQ essay outline, you won’t be able to write a cohesive, high-scoring essay on test day. A good outline will clearly lay out your thesis and how you are going to support that thesis in your body paragraphs. It will keep your writing organized and prevent you from forgetting anything you want to mention! For some general tips on writing outlines, this page from Roane State has some useful information.While the general principles of outlining an essay hold, the DBQ format is going to have its own unique outlining considerations.To that end, I’ve provided some brief sample outlines that will help you hit all the important points. Sample DBQ Outline Introduction Thesis. The most important part of your intro! Body 1 - contextual information Any outside historical/contextual information Body 2 - First point Documents analysis that support the first point If three body paragraphs: use about three documents, do deeper analysis on two Body 3 - Second point Documents analysis that support the second point Use about three documents, do deeper analysis on two Be sure to mention your outside example if you have not done so yet! Body 4 (optional) - Third point Documents and analysis that support third point Conclusion Re-state thesis Draw a comparison to another time period or situation (synthesis) Depending on your number of body paragraphs and your main points, you may include different numbers of documents in each paragraph, or switch around where you place your contextual information, your outside example, or your synthesis. There’s no one right way to outline, just so long as each of your body paragraphs has a clear point that you support with documents, and you remember to do a deeper analysis on four documents, bring in outside historical information, and make a comparison to another historical situation or time (you will see these last points further explained in the rubric breakdown). Of course, all the organizational skills in the world won't help you if you can't write your entire essay in the time allotted. The next section will cover time management skills. You can be as organized as this library! Time Management Skills for Essay Writing Do you know all of your essay-writing skills, but just can’t get a DBQ essay together in a 15-minute planning period and 40 minutes of writing? There could be a few things at play here: Do you find yourself spending a lot of time staring at a blank paper? If you feel like you don’t know where to start, spend one-two minutes brainstorming as soon as you read the question and the documents. Write anything here- don’t censor yourself. No one will look at those notes but you! After you’ve brainstormed for a bit, try to organize those thoughts into a thesis, and then into body paragraphs. It’s better to start working and change things around than to waste time agonizing that you don’t know the perfect thing to say. Are you too anxious to start writing, or does anxiety distract you in the middle of your writing time? Do you just feel overwhelmed? Sounds like test anxiety. Lots of people have this. (Including me! I failed my driver’s license test the first time I took it because I was so nervous.) You might talk to a guidance counselor about your anxiety. They will be able to provide advice and direct you to resources you can use. There are also some valuable test anxiety resources online: try our guide to mindfulness (it's focused on the SAT, but the same concepts apply on any high-pressure test) and check outtips from Minnesota State University, these strategies from TeensHealth, or this plan for reducing anxiety from West Virginia University. Are you only two thirds of the way through your essay when 40 minutes have passed? You are probably spending too long on your outline, biting off more than you can chew, or both. If you find yourself spending 20+ minutes outlining, you need to practice bringing down your outline time. Remember, an outline is just a guide for your essay- it is fine to switch things around as you are writing. It doesn’t need to be perfect. To cut down on your outline time, practice just outlining for shorter and shorter time intervals. When you can write one in 20 minutes, bring it down to 18, then down to 16. You may also be trying to cover too much in your paper. If you have five body paragraphs, you need to scale things back to three. If you are spending twenty minutes writing two paragraphs of contextual information, you need to trim it down to a few relevant sentences. Be mindful of where you are spending a lot of time, and target those areas. You don’t know the problem- you just can’t get it done! If you can’t exactly pinpoint what’s taking you so long, I advise you to simply practice writing DBQs in less and less time. Start with 20 minutes for your outline and 50 for your essay, (or longer, if you need). Then when you can do it in 20 and 50, move back to 18 minutes and 45 for writing, then to 15 and 40. You absolutely can learn to manage your time effectively so that you can write a great DBQ in the time allotted. On to the next skill! Integrating Citations The final skill that isn’t explicitly covered in the rubric, but will make a big difference in your essay quality, is integrating document citations into your essay. In other words, how do you reference the information in the documents in a clear, non-awkward way? It is usually better to use the author or title of the document to identify a document instead of writing â€Å"Document A.† So instead of writing â€Å"Document A describes the riot as...,† you might say, â€Å"In Sven Svenson’s description of the riot†¦Ã¢â‚¬  When you quote a document directly without otherwise identifying it, you may want to include a parenthetical citation. For example, you might write, â€Å"The strikers were described as ‘valiant and true’ by the working class citizens of the city (Document E).† Now that we’ve reviewed the essential, foundational skills of the DBQ, I’ll move into the rubric breakdowns. We’ll discuss each skill the AP graders will be looking for when they score your exam. All of the history exams share a DBQ rubric, so the guidelines are identical. Don't worry, you won't need a magnifying glass to examine the rubric. #3: Learn the DBQ Rubric The DBQ rubrichas four sections for a total of seven points. Part A: Thesis - 2 Points One point is for having a thesis that works and is historically defensible. This just means that your thesis can be reasonably supported by the documents and historical fact. So please don’t make the main point of your essay that JFK was a member of the Illuminati or that Pope Urban II was an alien. Per the College Board, your thesis needs to be located in your introduction or your conclusion. You’ve probably been taught to place your thesis in your intro, so stick with what you’re used to. Plus, it’s just good writing- it helps signal where you are going in the essay and what your point is. You can receive another point for having a super thesis. The College Board describes this as having a thesis that takes into account â€Å"historical complexity.† Historical complexity is really just the idea that historical evidence does not always agree about everything, and that there are reasons for agreement, disagreement, etc. How will you know whether the historical evidence agrees or disagrees? The documents! Suppose you are responding to a prompt about women’s suffrage (suffrage is the right to vote, for those of you who haven’t gotten to that unit in class yet): â€Å"Analyze the responses to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States.† Included among your documents, you have a letter from a suffragette passionately explaining why she feels women should have the vote, a copy of a suffragette’s speech at a women’s meeting, a letter from one congressman to another debating the pros and cons of suffrage, and a political cartoon displaying the death of society and the end of the ‘natural’ order at the hands of female voters. A simple but effective thesis might be something like, â€Å"Though ultimately successful, the women’s suffrage movement sharply divided the country between those who believed women’s suffrage was unnatural and those who believed it was an inherent right of women.† This is good: it answers the question and clearly states the two responses to suffrage that are going to be analyzed in the essay. A super thesis, however, would take the relationships between the documents (and the people behind the documents!) into account. It might be something like, â€Å"The dramatic contrast between those who responded in favor of women’s suffrage and those who fought against it revealed a fundamental rift in American society centered on the role of women- whether women were ‘naturally’ meant to be socially and civilly subordinate to men, or whether they were in fact equals.† This is a â€Å"super† thesis because it gets into the specifics of the relationship between historical factors and shows the broader picture- that is, what responses to women’s suffrage revealed about the role of women in the United States overall. It goes beyond just analyzing the specific issues to a â€Å"so what†? It doesn’t just take a position about history, it tells the reader why they should care. In this case, our super thesis tells us that the reader should care about women’s suffrage because the issue reveals a fundamental conflict in America over the position of women in society. Part B: Document Analysis - 2 Points One point for using six or seven of the documents in your essay to support your argument. Easy-peasy!However, make sure you aren’t just summarizing documents in a list, but are tying them back to the main points of your paragraphs. It's best to avoid writing things like,â€Å"Document A says X, and Document B says Y, and Document C says Z.† Instead, you mightwrite something like,â€Å"The anonymous author of Document C expresses his support and admiration for the suffragettes but also expresses fear that giving women the right to vote will lead to conflict in the home, highlighting the common fear that women’s suffrage would lead to upheaval in women’s traditional role in society.† Any summarizing should be connected a point. Essentially, any explanation of what a document says needs to be tied to a â€Å"so what?† If it’s not clear to you why what you are writing about a document is related to your main point, it’s not going to be clear to the AP grader. You can get an additional point here for doing further analysis on 4 of the documents. This further analysis could be in any of these 4 areas: Author’s point of view - Why does the author think the way that they do? What is their position in society and how does this influence what they are saying? Author’s purpose - Why is the author writing what they are writing? What are they trying to convince their audience of? Historical context - What broader historical facts are relevant to this document? Audience - Who is the intended audience for this document? Who is the author addressing or trying to convince? Be sure to tie any further analysis back to your main argument! And remember, you only have to do this for four documents for full credit, but it’s fine to do it for more if you can. Want to get a perfect 5 on your AP exam and an A in class? We can help. PrepScholar Tutors is the world's best tutoring service. We combine world-class expert tutors with our proprietary teaching techniques. Our students have gotten A's on thousands of classes, perfect 5's on AP tests, and ludicrously high SAT Subject Test scores. Whether you need help with science, math, English, social science, or more, we've got you covered. Get better grades today with PrepScholar Tutors. Practicing Document Analysis So how do you practice document analysis?By analyzing documents! Luckily for AP test takers everywhere, New York State has an exam called the Regents Exam that has its own DBQ section. Before they write the essay, however, New York students have to answer short answer questions about the documents. Answering Regents exam DBQ short-answer questions is good practice for basic document analysis. While most of the questions are pretty basic, it’s a good warm-up in terms of thinking more deeply about the documents and how to use them.This set of Regent-style DBQsfrom the Teacher’s Project are mostly about US History, but the practice could be good for other tests too. This prompt from the Morningside center also has some good document comprehensions questions about a US-History based prompt. Note: While the document short-answer questions are useful for thinking about basic document analysis, I wouldn’t advise completing entire Regents exam DBQ essay prompts for practice, because the format and rubric are both somewhat different from the AP. Your AP history textbook may also have documents with questions that you can use to practice. Flip around in there! This otter is ready to swim in the waters of the DBQ. When you want to do a deeper dive on the documents, you can also pull out those old College Board DBQ prompts. Read the documents carefully. Write down everything that comes to your attention. Do further analysis- author’s point of view, purpose, audience, and historical context- on all the documents for practice, even though you will only need to do additional analysis on four on test day.Of course, you might not be able to do all kinds of further analysis on things like maps and graphs, which is fine. You might also try thinking about how you would arrange those observations in an argument, or even try writing a practice outline! This exercise would combine your thesis and document-analysis skills practice. When you’ve analyzed everything you can possibly think of for all the documents, pull up the Scoring Guide for that prompt. It helpfully has an entire list of analysis points for each document. Consider what they identified that you missed. Do you seem way off-base in your interpretation? If so, how did it happen? Part C: Using Evidence Beyond the Documents - 2 Points Don’t be freaked out by the fact that this is two points! One point is just for context - if you can locate the issue within its broader historical situation.You do need to write several sentences to a paragraph about it, but don’t stress; all you really need to know to be able to get this point is information about major historical trends over time, and you will need to know this anyways for the multiple choice section.If the question is about the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, for example, be sure to include some of the general information you know about the Great Depression! Boom. Contextualized. The otherpoint is for naming a specific, relevant example in your essay that does not appear in the documents. To practice your outside information skills, pull up your College Board prompts! Read through the prompt and documents and then write down all of the contextualizing facts and as many specific examples as you can think of. I advise timing yourself- maybe 5-10 minutes to read the documents and prompt and list your outside knowledge- to imitate the time pressure of the DBQ. When you’ve exhausted your knowledge, make sure to fact-check your examples and your contextual information! You don’t want to use incorrect information on test day. If you can’t remember any examples or contextual information about that topic, look some up! This will help fill in holes in your knowledge. Part D: Synthesis - 1 Point All you need to do for synthesis is relate your argument about this specific time period to a different time period, geographical area, historical movement, etc. It is probably easiest to do this in the conclusion of the essay. If your essay is about the Great Depression, you might relate it to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. You do need to do more than just mention your synthesis connection. You need to make it meaningful. How are the two things you are comparing similar? What does one reveal about the other? Is there a key difference that highlights something important? To practice your synthesis skills- you guessed it- pull up your College Board prompts! Read through the prompt and documents and then identify what historical connections you could make for your synthesis point. Be sure to write a few words on why the connection is significant! A great way to make sure that your synthesis connection makes sense is to explain it to someone else. If you explain what you think the connection is and they get it, you’re probably on the right track. You can also look at sample responses and the scoring guide for the old prompts to see what other connections students and AP graders made. That's a wrap on the rubric! Let's move on toskill-building strategy. Don't let the DBQ turn you into a dissolving ghost-person, though. #4: Focus on Your Skill-Building Strategy You’ve probably noticed that my advice on how to practice individual rubric skills is pretty similar: pull out a prompt and do a timed exercise focusing on just that skill. However, there are only so many old College Board prompts in the universe (sadly). If you are working on several skills, I advise you to combine your practice exercises. What do I mean? Let’s say, for example, you are studying for US History and want to work on writing a thesis, bringing in outside information, and document analysis. Set your timer for 15-20 minutes, pull up a prompt, and: Write 2-3 potential thesis statements in response to the prompt Write all the contextual historical information you can think of, and a few specific examples Write down analysis notes on all the documents. Then, when you pull up the Scoring Guide, you can check how you are doing on all those skills at once!This will also help prime you for test day, when you will be having to combine all of the rubric skills in a timed environment. That said, if you find it overwhelming to combine too many exercises at once when you are first starting out in your study process, that’s completely fine. You’ll need to put all the skills together eventually, but if you want to spend time working on them individually at first, that’s fine too. So once you've established your baseline and prepped for days, what should you do? It's time to take another practice DBQ to see how you've improved! I know you're tired, but you can do it! #5: Take Another Practice DBQ So, you established a baseline, identified the skills you need to work on, and practiced writing a thesis statement and analyzing documents for hours. What now? Take another timed, practice DBQ from a prompt you haven’t seen before to check how you’ve improved. Recruit your same trusted advisor to grade your exam and give feedback. After, work on any skills that still need to be honed. Repeat this process as necessary, until you are consistently scoring your goal score. Then you just need to make sure you maintain your skills until test day by doing an occasional practice DBQ. Eventually, test day will come- read on for my DBQ-test-taking tips. How Can I Succeed On DBQ Test Day? Once you’ve prepped your brains out, you still have to take the test! I know, I know. But I’ve got some advice on how to make sure all of your hard work pays off on test day- both some general tips and some specific advice on how to write a DBQ. #1: General Test-Taking Tips Most of these are probably tips you’ve heard before, but they bear repeating: Get a good night’s sleep for the two nights preceding the exam. This will keep your memory sharp! Eat a good breakfast (and lunch, if the exam is in the afternoon) before the exam with protein and whole grains. This will keep your blood sugar from crashing and making you tired during the exam. Don’t study the night before the exam if you can help it. Instead, do something relaxing. You’ve been preparing, and you will have an easier time on exam day if you aren’t stressed from trying to cram the night before. This dude knows he needs to get a good night's rest! #2: DBQ Plan and Strategies Below I’ve laid out how to use your time during the DBQ exam. I’ll provide tips on reading the question and docs, planning your essay, and writing! Be sure to keep an eye on the clock throughout so you can track your general progress. Reading the Question and the Documents: 5-6 min First thing’s first: read the question carefully, two or even three times. You may want to circle the task words (â€Å"analyze,† â€Å"describe,† â€Å"evaluate,† â€Å"compare†) to make sure they stand out. You could also quickly jot down some contextual information you already know before moving on to the documents, but if you can’t remember any right then, move on to the docs and let them jog your memory. It’s fine to have a general idea of a thesis after you read the question, but if you don’t, move on to the docs and let them guide you in the right direction. Next,move on to the documents. Mark them as you read- circle things that seem important, jot thoughts and notes in the margins. After you’ve passed over the documents once, you should choose the four documents you are going to analyze more deeply and read them again. You probably won’t be analyzing the author’s purpose for sources like maps and charts. Good choices are documents in which the author’s social or political position and stake in the issue at hand are clear. Get ready to go down the document rabbit hole. Planning Your Essay: 9-11 min Once you’ve read the question and you have preliminary notes on the documents, it’s time to start working on a thesis.If you still aren’t sure what to talk about, spend a minute or so brainstorming. Write down themes and concepts that seem important and create a thesis from those.Remember, your thesis needs to answer the question and make a claim! When you’ve got a thesis, it’s time to work on an outline. Once you’ve got some appropriate topics for your body paragraphs, use your notes on the documents to populate your outline. Which documents support which ideas? You don’t need to use every little thought you had about the document when you read it, but you should be sure to use every document. Here's three things to make sure of: Make sure your outline notes where you are going to include your contextual information (often placed in the first body paragraph, but this is up to you), your specific example (likely in one of the body paragraphs), and your synthesis (the conclusion is a good place for this). Make sure you’ve also integrated the four documents you are going to further analyze and how to analyze them. Make sure you use all the documents! I can’t stress this enough. Take a quick pass over your outline and the docs and make sure all of the docs appear in your outline. If you go over the planning time a couple of minutes, it’s not the end of the world. This probably just means you have a really thorough outline! But be ready to write pretty fast. Writing the Essay - 45 min If you have a good outline, the hard part is out of the way! You just need to make sure you get all of your great ideas down in the test booklet. Don’t get too bogged down in writing a super-exciting introduction. You won’t get points for it, so trying to be fancy will just waste time. Spend maybe one or two sentences introducing the issue, then get right to your thesis. For your body paragraphs, make sure your topic sentences clearly state the point of the paragraph. Then you can get right into your evidence and your document analysis. As you write, make sure to keep an eye on the time. You want to be a little more than halfway through at the 20-minute mark of the writing period, so you have a couple minutes to go back and edit your essay at the end. Keep in mind that it’s more important to clearly lay out your argument than to use flowery language. Sentences that are shorter and to the point are completely fine. If you are short on time, the conclusion is the least important part of your essay. Even just one sentence to wrap things up is fine just so long as you’ve hit all the points you need to (i.e. don’t skip your conclusion if you still need to put in your synthesis example). When you are done, make one last past through your essay. Make sure you included everything that was in your outline and hit all the rubric skills! Then take a deep breath and pat yourself on the back. You did it!! Have a cupcake to celebrate. KeyTips for How to Write a DBQ I realize I've bombarded you with information, so here are the key points to take away: Remember the drill for prep: establish a baseline, build skills, take another practice DBQ, repeat skill-building as necessary. Make sure that you know the rubric inside and out so you will remember to hit all the necessary points on test day! It’s easy to lose points just for forgetting something like your synthesis point. On test day, keep yourself on track time-wise! This may seem like a lot, but you can learn how to ace your DBQ! With a combination of preparation and good test-taking strategy, you will get the score you’re aiming for. The more you practice, the more natural it will seem, until every DBQ is a breeze. What's Next? If you want more information about the DBQ, see my introductory guide to the DBQ.Haven't registered for the test yet? See our article for help registering for AP exams. For more on studying for the AP US History exam, check out the best AP US History notes to study with. Studying for World History? See these AP World History study tips from one of our experts. Want to improve your SAT score by 160points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: