improve your self to begin improving the world

[lei.talk]

There's only one corner of the universe
you can be certain of improving,
and that's your own self.

So you have to begin there,
not outside,
not on other people.

That comes afterwards,
when you have worked on your own corner.

- Aldous Huxley

87-year-old earns second master's degree
Cal State's oldest grad receives master's degree in history

DEBORAH SULLIVAN BRENNAN

With age comes wisdom, and, for Wally Taibleson, advanced degrees.

Taibleson, 87, graduates from Cal State San Marcos on Saturday with a master's degree in history, breaking his own record as the university's eldest graduate.

Taibleson set the record when he completed his bachelor's degree in history in 2002 at age 79. He went on to earn his first master's degree, in literature and writing studies, in 2006, finished his graduate degree in history and has applied to enter a third master's program ---- in education ---- this fall.

"The reason I'm going to school at all is because I want to improve my mind," Taibleson said this week. "There's nothing like education. It's limitless. Things that never meant anything to you become important."

Although higher education often serves as the prelude to a career, for Taibleson it was the sequel.

He moved to Carlsbad from Illinois in 1986 after retiring as vice chairman of the board of a packaging company ---- a post he attained with no higher education beyond an accounting certificate.

Two years later, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He said that as he recuperated from a series of surgeries that sapped his energy and restricted his speech, his "level of involvement in things was low."

At the suggestion of his son, Jim, and late wife Clare, he enrolled in classes at MiraCosta College, and soon became immersed in a passionate pursuit of knowledge.

"He is the embodiment of self-improvement," his son, Jim Taibleson, a professor of finance and accounting at New York University said in a phone interview Thursday. "He is the embodiment of personal responsibility, of intellectual curiosity."

Jim Taibleson said his father's academic venture both enriched and extended his life, allowing him to survive his brush with illness and the loss of his wife of 56 years to a stroke in 2000. Frank and indomitable, Wally Taibleson acknowledges that he's bucking the norm for an octogenarian.

"How many people my age are doing anything besides watching TV and eating meals and waiting to die?" he asked. "Well, we're all going to die!"

Taibleson embraced education with a rare passion, his professors and peers said this week, going beyond required reading to delve more deeply into course subjects.

"I don't know anyone who has quite the drive to learn that Wally does," said Jeff Charles, an associate professor of history at the university and the chairman of Taibleson's master's thesis on "Doc" Giannini, the younger brother of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini, and his role in the financial development of the movie industry.

Charles said Taibleson's intellectual intensity challenges presumptions that education is a youthful endeavor.

"Perhaps this kind of formal education is wasted on the young, and maybe the older you get the more you can appreciate what you can learn," Charles said.

Generations older than many of his classmates, Taibleson gained the respect of fellow students, his professors said.

"Students are sometimes surprised to be sitting next to someone his age in class, but they quickly realize that he is a committed student who is going to challenge them intellectually, and he's got life experience that most of us don't have," said Dawn Formo, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Taibleson's thesis adviser on his literature and writing degree.

With first-hand knowledge of the 20th century, Taibleson said, he often offered a counterpoint to textbook interpretations of historical events.

"Because of the fact that I lived through these things, I was a factor in the class," he said. "And in most cases, it was an appreciated one, because I put it in context."

Over the years, Taibleson has developed and maintained friendships with his younger classmates, who say his persistence motivates them to remain dedicated to their studies.

"If he's able to do it, then there's no excuse for anybody else to say I can't, or I don't have the ability to," said Jonathan Bachtel, 28, of Fallbrook, who will also graduate with a master's degree in history Saturday. "He's really an inspiration to all of us."

Woman earns college diploma at age 94
TERENCE CHEA

It's never too late to earn your college degree. Just ask 94-year-old Hazel Soares.

The San Leandro woman was one of about 500 students to pick up diplomas Saturday during a commencement ceremony at Mills College, an Oakland liberal arts college for women that also offers coed graduate programs.

"It's taken me quite a long time because I've had a busy life," Soares said. "I'm finally achieving it, and it makes me feel really good."

Soares, who has six children and more than 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is believed to be the world's second-oldest person to graduate from college.

Nola Ochs of Kansas became the oldest when she graduated from Fort Hays State University three years ago at age 95, according to the Guinness World Records book. Ochs, now 98, topped that academic feat Saturday, when she received her master's degree in liberal studies from Fort Hays.

The nonagenarians are earning their degrees as the Obama administration pushes to once again make the United States the world leader in college attainment by 2020.

Born in Richmond in 1915, Soares said she had wanted to attend college right after she graduated from Roosevelt High School in Oakland in 1932, but that was during the Great Depression.

"Unless you had some help, it would have been impossible to go to college," Soares said. "However I never lost the desire to go."

Soares married twice, raised six children and worked as a nurse and event organizer before she retired and decided to return to pursue her dream of obtaining a college education.

She spent six years taking courses at Chabot College in Hayward before earning her associate's degree when she was 85. Then she enrolled at Mills College in 2007.

"We are really amazed and very proud of my mom," said Regina Hungerford, Soares' youngest child. "The biggest thing that we can all learn is that we're never too old."

At Saturday's commencement, she was congratulated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who delivered the keynote speech. She was cheered by her classmates and more than 40 family members.

"She's really an incredible inspiration," said Sandeep Brar, who also graduated Saturday.

Soares doesn't plan to relax now that she finally has her degree. The art history major hopes to work as a docent at a San Francisco Bay area museum.

Soares said she doesn't know the source of her longevity -- no one in her family has lived as long as she has. She still drives, and she visits her doctor only once every three years to make sure she's OK. She said she doesn't take any prescription medications.

She hopes others realize that it's never too late to get a college education.

"There's no reason why you could not go back," Soares said. "Some people do give up the idea or postpone the idea. It's too late. It's too much work. They may not realize that once you try it it's exciting to go to school."

[Piparskeggr]

There is hope for me yet!

[Psychonaut]

So you have to begin there,
not outside,
not on other people.

As a lifelong student of martial arts, this was one of the first lessons learned, and is one that applies equally to all facets of life. As a former instructor, if I could not execute a technique perfectly, nor best a student in sparring, from where would my authority as an instr uctor derive? Again, in the military, I was taught that a leader must be an exemplar in both appearance, behavior and performance. These fundamental principles of meritocracy have thoroughly shaped my thought and have led me to consistently strive to overcome myself and become better than I am.

It is by these precepts that I live my life:

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.

"Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?

"Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"

—Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann

[lei.talk]

Sunday, Dec 6, 2009 20:01 ET
I live in a van down by Duke University
How do I afford grad school without going into debt?
A '94 Econoline, bulk food and creative civil disobedience

By Ken Ilgunas

Photos by Ken Ilgunas

I was lying on the floor of my van where the middle pilot chairs used to be, trying to hide from view. This is it, I thought. They know. I'm going to get kicked out of Duke.

Moments before, I had been cooking a pot of spaghetti stew on top of a plastic, three-drawer storage container, which held all my food and my few meager possessions. I figured the campus security guard had parked next to me because he spotted the blue flame from my propane stove through the van's tinted windows and shades.

I held my breath as he shut off the engine and opened his door. I was in my boxer shorts, splayed across my stain-speckled carpet like a scarecrow toppled by the wind.

As I listened to what sounded like a pair of Gestapo jackboots approach the driver-side door, I thought about how I'd almost gotten away with it. For two whole months, I had been secretly living in my van on campus.

For some, van-dwelling may conjure images of pop-culture losers forced into desperate measures during troubled times: losers like Uncle Rico from "Napoleon Dynamite" or Saturday Night Live's Chris Farley who'd famously exclaim, "I live in a van down by the river!" before crashing through a coffee table, or perhaps the once ubiquitous inhabitants of multicolored VW buses, welcoming strangers with complimentary coke lines and invitations to writhing, hairy, back-seat orgies.

In my van there were no orgies or coke lines, no overweight motivational speakers. To me, the van was what Kon-Tiki was to Heyerdahl, what the GMC van was to the A-Team, what Walden was to Thoreau. It was an adventure.

Living in a van was my grand social experiment. I wanted to see if I could -- in an age of rampant consumerism and fiscal irresponsibility -- afford the unaffordable: an education.

I pledged that I wouldn't take out loans. Nor would I accept money from anybody, especially my mother, who, appalled by my experiment, offered to rent me an apartment each time I called home. My heat would be a sleeping bag; my air conditioning, an open window. I'd shower at the gym, eat the bare minimum and find a job to pay tuition. And -- for fear of being caught -- I wouldn't tell anybody.

Living on the cheap wasn't merely a way to save money and stave off debt; I wanted to live adventurously. I wanted to test my limits. I wanted to find the line between my wants and my needs. I wanted, as Thoreau put it, "to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

It wouldn't be hard for me to remain frugal. After buying the van and making my first tuition payment, I was only a few dollars away from having to rummage through Dumpsters to find my next meal. I was -- by conventional first-world definitions -- poor. While I faced little risk of malnutrition or disease like the truly poor, I still I didn't own an iPod, and I smelled sometimes.

My experiment began in the spring semester of 2009 when I enrolled in the graduate liberal studies department. Months before, I had just finished paying off $32,000 in undergraduate student loans -- no easy feat for an English major.

To pay off my debt, I'd found jobs that provided free room and board. I moved to Coldfoot, Alaska -- 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 250 from the nearest store -- where I worked as a lodge cleaner, a tour guide and a cook. Later, I worked on a trail crew in Mississippi in an AmeriCorps program. Between jobs I hitchhiked more than 7,000 miles to avoid paying airfare. When I couldn't find work, I moved in with friends. My clothes came from donation bins, I had friends cut my hair, and I'd pick up odd jobs when I could. Nearly every dime I made went into my loans.

I hated my debt more than anything. I dragged it with me wherever I went. While I was still leading an exciting, adventurous life, I knew I could never truly be free until my debt was gone.

I finally got out of the red when I landed a well-paying job with the Park Service as a backcountry ranger. Finally, after two and a half years of work, my debt was gone. I had four grand in the bank that was mine. All mine. It was the first time I had actual money that hadn't been borrowed or given to me since I was a 13-year-old paperboy.

The more money I had borrowed, I came to realize, the more freedom I had surrendered. Yet, I still considered my education -- as costly as it was -- to be priceless. So now, motivated to go back to school yet determined not to go back into debt, I had to think outside the box. Or, as Henry David Thoreau might suggest, inside one.

In "Walden", Thoreau mentioned a 6 foot-by-3 foot box he had seen by the railroad in which laborers locked up their tools at night. A man could live comfortably in one of these boxes, he thought. Nor would he have to borrow money and surrender freedom to afford a "larger and more luxurious box."

And so: I decided to buy a van. Though I had never lived in one, I knew I had the personality for it. I had a penchant for rugged living, a sixth sense for cheapness, and an unequaled tolerance for squalor.

My first order of business upon moving to Duke was to find my "Walden on Wheels." After a two-hour bus ride into the North Carolinian countryside, I caught sight of the '94 Ford Econoline that I had found advertised on Craigslist. Googly-eyed, I sauntered up to it and lovingly trailed fingertips over dents and chipped paint. The classy cabernet sauvignon veneer at the top slowly, sensuously faded downward into lustrous black. I got behind the wheel and revved up the fuel-funneling beast. There was a grumble, a cough, then a smooth and steady mechanical growl. It was big, it was beautiful, and -- best of all -- it was $1,500.

I bought it immediately. So began what I'd call "radical living."

I removed the two middle pilot chairs to create a living space, installed a coat hook, and spent $5 on a sheet of black cloth to hang behind my front and passenger seats so that -- between the sheet, tinted windows, and shades -- no one would be able to see me inside. I neatly folded my clothes into a suitcase, and I hung up my dress shirts and pants on another hook I screwed into the wall.

I at first failed to notice the TV and VCR (that I would never use) placed between the two front chairs. Nor did I know about the 12-disc CD changer hiding under the passenger seat until weeks later.

Just when I thought I had uncovered all the van's secrets, I found a mysterious button toward the back. When I pushed it, the back seat grumbled, vibrated and -- much to my jubilation -- began slowly transforming into a bed. I half-expected to see a disco ball descend from the ceiling and hear '70s porn music blare from the speakers.

Fortuitously, I was assigned a parking lot in a remote area on campus next to a cluster of apartments where I hoped campus security would presume I lived.

Over time, my van felt less like a novelty and more like a home. At night I was whirred to sleep by crescendos of cicadas. In the morning, I awoke to a medley of birdsong so loud and cheery you would have thought my little hermitage was tucked away in a copse of trees. During rainstorms, I listened to millions of raindrops drum against the roof and watched them wiggle like sperm down my windows.

I loved cooking in the van. As an adept backcountry camper, I could easily whip up an assortment of economical and delicious meals on my backpacking stove. For breakfast, cereal with powdered milk and oatmeal with peanut butter became staples; for dinner, spaghetti stew with peanut butter, vegetable stew with peanut butter, and even rice and bean tacos with peanut butter. Without proper refrigeration, I cut out meat, dairy and beer from my diet entirely. I became leaner, got sick less and had more energy than ever before.

By buying food in bulk I reduced my food bill to $4.34 cents a day. I was meticulous with my expenditures. I saved every receipt and wrote down everything I bought. Not including tuition, I lived (and lived comfortably) on $103 a week, which covered my necessities: food, gas, car insurance, a cellphone and visits to the laundromat.

The idea of "thrift," once an American ideal, now seems almost quaint to many college students, particularly those at elite schools. The typical student today is not so frugal. Few know where the money they're spending is coming from and even fewer know how deep they're in debt. They're detached from the source of their money. That's because there is no source. They're getting paid by their future selves.

My "radical living" experiment convinced me that the things plunging students further into debt -- the iPhones, designer clothes, and even "needs" like heat and air conditioning, for instance -- were by no means "necessary." And I found it easier to "do without" than I ever thought it would be. Easier by far than the jobs I'd been forced to take in order to pay off my loans.

Most undergrads imagine they'll effortlessly pay off their loans when they start getting paid the big bucks; they're living in a state of denial, disregarding the implications of a tough job market and how many extra years of work their spending sprees have sentenced them to. But "facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored," as Aldous Huxley famously said.

I have sympathy for my fellow students. I did many of the same things when I was an undergrad. Plus, escaping student debt -- no matter how frugal they try to be -- is nearly impossible. Even if they do resort to purchasing a large creepy van, most will still have to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to pay for tuition.

While I found a way to afford graduate school, I by no means had the same financial responsibilities as the average student. I was so poor when I applied that my department took pity on me and significantly reduced the cost of my tuition. I even found a well-paying part-time job working for a government-sponsored program, tutoring inner-city kids.

Governments and financial aid departments normally aren't so helpful. For decades, the government has let legions of college students -- students who wished to better themselves and contribute to society -- go into soul-crippling debt. Schools don't make it any easier with steep hikes in tuition and baffling room and board costs. Students are oftentimes forced to pay for insanely priced meal plans and are barred from moving to cheaper housing off-campus. At Duke, the cheapest on-campus meal plan charges them 3.5 times more a day than it cost to feed me. Their dorm rooms cost 18 times more than my parking permit.

Here, the average undergraduate student who's taken out loans graduates with more than $23,000 in debt -- about the national average. The cost of education at Duke, as at most schools across the country, is disgracefully high. Tuition costs (not factoring in financial aid) more than $37,000 a year. Additionally, students have to pay at least another $10,000 for books, meal plans, fees and dorms.

Duke's egregiously hefty price tag is no anomaly. Nor is it unusual for students to unflinchingly take out massive loans that'll take them years, sometimes decades, to pay off. Willingness to go into debt, of course, isn't just confined to students; we're a nation in debt, collectively and individually. Going into debt today is as American as the 40-hour work week; or the stampede of Wal-Mart warriors on Black Friday; or the hillocks of gifts under a Christmas tree. An army of loan drones we've become, marching from one unpaid-for purchase to the next in quest of a sense of fulfillment that fades long before the bill arrives. We're little different from the Spanish explorers who dedicated their lives to the quest for El Dorado, which was always just around the next bend in the river, yet never there at all.

I refused to join those ranks. I became a deserter, an eccentric, an outsider. At Duke, I felt like an ascetic in the midst of wealth, a heretic in the Church of the Consumer. I had to hide.

Because I was so paranoid about campus security finding out about my experiment, I kept myself apart from other students. Whenever I did talk with a fellow classmate, I found myself souring the conversation with preposterous lies -- lies I'd tell to protect myself. Whenever someone asked me where I lived, I'd say "off campus," or I'd make up an address before changing the subject. I found it easier to avoid people altogether.

I worried that if students caught wind of my experiment, a Facebook group would be created for "People who've had a confirmed sighting of the campus van-dweller." Campus security would find out, deem my lodgings illegal and promptly kick me out of the van and into some conventional and unaffordable style of living, wherein I'd have to buy a rug to tie the room together.

Deprived of human companionship, I cloistered myself in my van and in libraries where I was alone with my thoughts and my books. Time for self-reflection, study and solitude was what I thought I'd wanted all along.

But of all the things that I gave up for "radical living," I found it fitting that the one thing I wanted most was that which couldn't be bought. When a trio of laughing males drunkenly stumbled past my van, probably hoisting one another up like injured comrades after battle, I thought of my friends back home. On winter nights, when the windows were coated with a frosty glaze, I'd wish for a woman to share the warmth of my sleeping bag.

While I have plenty of good things to say about simplicity, living in a van wasn't all high-minded idealism in action. Washing dishes became so troublesome I stopped altogether, letting specks of dried spaghetti sauce and globs of peanut butter season the next meal. There was no place to go to the bathroom at night. I never figured out exactly where to put my dirty laundry. Once, when a swarm of ants overtook my storage containers, I tossed and turned all night, imagining them spelunking into my orifices like cave divers while I slept. New, strange, unidentifiable smells greeted me each evening. Upon opening the side doors, a covey of odors would escape from the van like spirits unleashed from a cursed ark.

But no adventure is without bouts of loneliness, discomfort and the ubiquitous threat of food poisoning. I loved my van. Because of it, I could afford grad school. So naturally I was nervous as I listened to the security guard's weapons jingle as he ambled by my windshield.

But he just kept walking.

I was overcome by an odd sense of dissatisfaction. Deep down, I think I wanted him to discover me. I wanted a showdown. I wanted to wave my arms at the dean and cry, "Impound my van? Over my dead body! I'll take you straight to the Supreme Court!" Fellow students would rally behind me. We'd stage car-dwelling protests and after winning back my right to remain voluntarily poor, people would begin to consider me the campus sage. I'd wear loose white clothing, grow my beard, and speak in aphorisms to the underclassmen who journeyed the mile on foot to my sacred parking space where I'd serve them tea.

Today I still live in the van. I haven't taken out loans or borrowed money from anyone. Really, the only thing that's different is that I've set up my laundry area by the passenger seat. Also, after another summer with the Park Service, I have more money than I possibly need. Now, instead of being poor, I am radically frugal. Sometimes, though, I think it would be nice to have an ironing board, plumbing and a wood stove.

It would be nice. A middle-class family might think it would be nice to have an in-ground swimming pool. A millionaire might think it would be nice to have a yacht. The billionaire, a private jet. Someone, somewhere might think it would be nice to have food to feed her family tonight. Someone, somewhere might think it would be nice to live in a van in order to afford to go to a wonderful school. I could begin satisfying my desires and buying comforts, but I've learned to appreciate what little I have instead of longing for what I do not.

Admittedly, now that I have money I buy the fancy peanut butter from Whole Foods, and I've even purchased an expensive pair of hiking boots. But most things are the same: I still cook spartan meals, I don't have an iPod, and I park in the very same spot. And I still have my secret. Well, that is, until now.

[Psychonaut]

Now that is easily one of the most inspiring stories I've read in some time!

[nisse]

Living in a van was my grand social experiment. I wanted to see if I could -- in an age of rampant consumerism and fiscal irresponsibility -- afford the unaffordable: an education.
I pledged that I wouldn't take out loans. Nor would I accept money from anybody, especially my mother, who, appalled by my experiment, offered to rent me an apartment each time I called home. My heat would be a sleeping bag; my air conditioning, an open window. I'd shower at the gym, eat the bare minimum and find a job to pay tuition. And -- for fear of being caught -- I wouldn't tell anybody.

Living on the cheap wasn't merely a way to save money and stave off debt; I wanted to live adventurously. I wanted to test my limits. I wanted to find the line between my wants and my needs. I wanted, as Thoreau put it, "to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

Pfft...so what did he want again? No one who really wants an education would willingly limit how much time they can spend on it by putting up artificial barriers as he had - if he really wanted to learn he would have kept his well-paid park ranger job and bought books.

...but cool

[Austin]

I wish more old people would die off already. More people over the age of 60 are staying at their jobs and continuing to work, I wish they would die already and open up the positions to the younger generations.

What good is a university degree if all the high paying jobs are reserved for people who are 60 or older and will continue to work till they drop dead in the office?

America is the land of the 40-60 something. If you are under 35 you are a second class citizen in many respects and are outnumbered 5-1.

[Eldritch]

I wish more old people would die off already. More people over the age of 60 are staying at their jobs and continuing to work, I wish they would die already and open up the positions to the younger generations.

What good is a university degree if all the high paying jobs are reserved for people who are 60 or older and will continue to work till they drop dead in the office?

America is the land of the 40-60 something. If you are under 35 you are a second class citizen in many respects and are outnumbered 5-1.

Because people are healthier than before, and therefore can remain productive for a longer time?

That is a good thing. The more generational overlap there is (in anything/anywhere) the more chance of breaking the old cycle of each generation just making all the same mistakes all over again.

[Austin]

Because people are helthier than before, and therefore can remain productive for a longer time?

That is a good thing. The more generational overlap there is (in anything/enywhere) the more chance of breaking the old cycle of each generation just making all the same mistakes all over again.

I agree/disagree. America and Europe's generational overlap is good when it comes to youths lives being almost completely micro-managed and subsidized by their elders as this creates a more civil/cohesive society with less blunders by young people. Yet this also means that the Western youth and the Wests overall regeneration power numerically speaking is dwindling to a standstill.

In America and Western Europe youth are not emphasized. It is a society that near completely caters to the established 40 something or older.

Young people in the West are told to go get a university education only to find out upon receiving it that their grandfathers generation is almost entirely still in the workforce thanks to living off five or more prescription pills a day and a few cups of coffee.

Then you realize you are an educated young person in a society that hates young people because most of its population is over 40. The laws are meant to destroy people in their 20's. Draconian marijuana and drinking laws have utterly devastated so many youths lives already that it will be a miracle if one out of ten twenty somethings make it to thirty without having been to court over some mundane anti-youth law.

All the while the older generation sits there worrying about their social security benefits, not pondering the fact that they are not only going to lose their beloved social security but also their country as they proverbially shit all over their future countrymen.

[lei.talk]

By Zara Kessler, Jennifer Wren

While affluent schoolmates relied on pricey classes and tutors, Victoria Nneji, 17, of Durham, N.C., pored over test-prep manuals at the bookstore to get ready for her SATs. "I wanted a good college," says Victoria, whose mom is a nurse, "but I didn't have those resources."

She was just the sort of kid Jason Shah wanted to help. The Harvard University senior started INeedAPencil.com-a website offering free SAT-prep materials-in 2007 after visiting an impoverished school. "It got to me," says Shah, who raised $10,000 in seed money and contracted with tutors to develop hundreds of math, reading and writing problems.

Since then, more than 30,000 students have used the site, Shah says, some of whom have raised their test scores 200 points. "It gives low-income students tremendous power," says Leandrew Robinson, who ran a college-prep program in Berkeley, Calif.

Just ask Victoria. After scoring an 1860 out of 2400 on her SATs, she took the test again after using Shah's service-and got a 2010. Today she's a freshman at Columbia University-her dream school. "Jason," she says, "gave me an opportunity."