Good News!

Good news! Well. It's not exactly news. But anyway, here goes. I have been admitted to University of Wisconsin-Madison!

Macam terpilih masuk Hogwarts saja.

So yes, I am now officially a Badger (School mascot). Quote Wikipedia "Badgers are short-legged, heavy-set omnivores in the weasel family."

Bucky the Badger

I have been busy over the past few weeks trying to sort out my admissions documents. Trust me, there were LOTS of them. The paperwork is just endless. Luckily, I was having my semester break, so I spent my break settling the problem. It's not a huge problem now that it's out of the way.

Anyway. I have been getting a lot of these questions from my friends and relatives - "Where is Wisconsin?", "Wah, University of Wisconsin ah? Good school or not?". I think, I will try to answer those two most common questions in my blog today.

Okay first of all, Wisconsin is a state in the US. There, indicated in the map below.

It is situated near north and a little bit mid-east of US (Oddly though, they call Wisconsin as part of the Midwest states). At the west of Wisconsin, is the more well-known state of Minnesota, and to the east, Michigan. It is flanked by two of the five "Great Lakes", Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. And down south Wisconsin are the neighboring states of Iowa and Illinois.

Done. Now question number two - "Is University of Wisconsin-Madison a good school?"

Well. Since I haven't started to study there yet. I can't exactly tell you how good it is. But as far as the world ranking is concerned, it is one of the top schools in the world. Below are some rankings of UW-Madison, just to name a few surveys.

QS World University Rankings (2010) - 48th

Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2010) - 43rd

Times Higher Education World University Reputation Rankings (2010) - 25th

Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Rankings of World Universities (2010) - 17th

So, although it is not as good as Harvard, I'd still take any school that is in the top 50 of the world rankings, simply because it takes a lot to stay at the top of the rankings chart. Remember, Malaysian Universities can't even make it to the top 200 in the world.

Oh, another note. University of Wisconsin-Madison is informally known as one of the "Public Ivy" schools. Because it is a public university (unlike the other universities in the Ivy League, which are all private universities), and the quality of instruction it gives is on par with the Ivies. Then again, we'll see when I get there, since I am not a student there yet.

Okay. I think that is all.



Oh by the way, another good news. If you were wondering why have I been blogging so much lately, it is because I have decided to spend my time better (which is to blog) instead of doing something useless (which is to stare at my computer screen). So, starting today, I am going to start a series of weekly blog posts, called "People", featuring peoples (duh) that I follow, watch, read, (insert verb here), etc. Essentially, people that I feature will be the ones that have significant effects in my own personal development (intellectual or otherwise), ones that have taught me great lessons, or ones that I just think that everyone should know.

That, followed by another post on any random topic, will give you at least 2 blog posts per week. 2 brain stew per week! What more can you ask for? (Hint: 3 blog posts per week, that is what.)

Alright. Off I go.



Till next time, cheers~



p.s. If you have anything that you want me to write about, you can leave a comment below. I will see if that is possible. :)