Travel Hack For Student| Flying Low Cost with HelloWings

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As you finish your Bachelor’s degree or MBA, it’s time to return home with the glory to find the dream job! But wait, your tuition and living cost already cost you a fortune, so how to fund yourself while going around Asian countries for interviews? The general truth is that a better degree gives you a better salary, but not until you have a job. Before that the status of a broke college graduate still exists. And traveling between countries that require plane travel is where Travel Hack will take us today.

One of the frustrating things about full-service airlines is that when you want to just travel one-way, it is incredibly expensive to do so. Luckily, with the advent of budget or LCCs (Low-Cost Carriers), they have given travelers more options. However, there are still routes that have not been completely disrupted. For example, Taipei to Hong Kong is one of the busiest routes in the world and the price of a round-trip ticket between Taiwan and Hong Kong has come down significantly. I still remember the days when a round trip ticket cost US$400-500 on Cathay Pacific. There are now far more options and with direct links between Taiwan and China, round trip tickets on full-service airlines hover around US$180-200. But, if you want to fly just one-way, instead of being half, it is actually more. On EVA air, my preferred carrier, the cost of a round trip ticket was about US$172 vs US$304 for one-way–baffling logic.

I checked Hong Kong Airlines, which is a subsidiary of Hainan Airlines. It sells one-way tickets, but it would still set me back US$130, better than EVA but I am still being penalized for flying one-way.

I decided to see if I could “hack” this route. I turned to HelloWings.com, which as far as I know, is the only price comparison search engine for budget airlines. Using HelloWings.com simplifies the research of figuring out which budget or LCC airline flies where, as well as being able to compare prices across a long travel period. Part of the logic behind budget airlines is that they specialize in a few high traffic routes and offer the most competitive prices.

It turns out that there are no budget airlines that fly the Taipei-Hong Kong route, but with a bit of out of the box thinking, I tried Taipei and Macau, which is about an hour away from Hong Kong by jet ferry. It turns out that Tiger Airways flies a direct Taipei to Macau flight. The price ranges from US$51 to US$300, but the lowest price that I could find was US$51.93. The cost of a jet ferry from Macau to Hong Kong is HKD 140 or around US$18. The total travel time is about 3 hours, but there is an added bonus that you’d get to arrive in Hong Kong Central, which saves the trouble of dragging luggage through the 300m of crowds between Airport Express and MTR.

Compare Airlines (Taipei to Macau vs. Taipei to Hong Kong)

TPE – Macau

5

Taipa temporary ferry terminal (3km from Macau airport)

Walking – FREE!

Taxi ~ USD$2.50

Jet Ferry

Econ. Class:

4

Weekdays – US$18

Weekend & Holidays -US$20

Night Service – US$22

3

Form Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal to Central

MTR Sheung Wan to Central:

HKD 4.5 ~ US$0.58

Total cost of trip to Hong Kong Central, including transportation into the city: US$74.81

 

TPE to HK

Hong Kong Airlines – US$136 one way

China Airlines – US$160 one way

EVA Air  – US$171 one way

Airport Express to Central

2

Airport to Hong Kong station is US$13

Airport to Kowloon station is US$12

Bus to Central

6

Total cost of trip to Hong Kong Central, including transportation into the city: US$149.58

50% off for your trip to Hong Kong: Travel Hack of the day.

HelloWings Promo

Harvard Law School will no longer require the LSAT for admission

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Harvard Law School will no longer require the LSAT for admission

 HARVARD LAW SCHOOL WILL NO LONGER REQUIRE THE LSAT FOR ADMISSION
 

For 70 years, the LSAT has been a rite of passage to legal education, a test designed to gauge students’ ability to learn the law.

But its dominance could change. Beginning this fall, Harvard Law School will allow applicants to submit their scores from either the Graduate Record Examination or the Law School Admission Test.

The significant change in admissions, a pilot program at Harvard, is part of a broader strategy to expand access. Because many students consider graduate school as well as law school, and because the GRE is offered often and in many places worldwide, the decision could make it easier and less expensive for people to apply, school officials said.

Harvard’s decision was announced this week, just before the arm of the American Bar Association that accredits law schools considers changing its standards to allow tests other than the LSAT.

Last year, the University of Arizona College of Law became the first law school in the country to allow applicants to submit GRE scores rather than LSAT scores. Two other schools followed. But for Harvard, which has one of the best law schools in the world, to do so could upend the admissions process for legal education.

“This is a very big deal,” said Bill Henderson, a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University at Bloomington, who has written extensively about legal education and rankings. “This is a wise move. It makes them better off,” by allowing them to consider applicants in a more comprehensive way without worrying that their median LSAT score, and hence their ranking, will drop. It means they can look for leaders and academic brilliance and countless other qualities, even if those don’t always align with extraordinarily high LSAT scores. “It loosens the vise grip of these numerical admissions criteria on the legal academy. … This is really exciting, good news.

“I can’t imagine other top law schools not following suit.”

In a sense, it brings admissions full circle: “You go back to the 1940s, 1950s, Harvard and Yale were the folks that put these tests in place to begin with. In the postwar years, they were getting this tremendous rush of applicants,” Henderson said, and they were gauging aptitude for the law largely based on whether students were able to pass the first year. And the LSAT was a huge success, he said, providing an excellent measure that allowed both students and schools a way to determine that without wasting a year. The trouble came in more recent years, he said, as schools developed a lopsided dependence on the test scores because of their effect on rankings.

Something else has flipped since that time: the volume of applicants.

Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, thinks many law schools have already been considering this change “because schools across the board have been struggling with applications — not only applications, but the quality of applicants.”

The other schools “have come under criticism for basically just trying to expand their consumer base” by not requiring the LSAT, McEntee said. “That criticism is clearly not going to apply to Harvard.”

Nationally, he said, law schools have struggled in recent years in the wake of the Great Recession as people learned that job prospects were threatened.

“Schools are trying to find new ways to find people. Will other schools follow? Probably,” McEntee said.

By the end of last week, there were more than 42,000 applicants for the 2017-2018 academic year, a decrease of 1.5 percent from the year before, according to the Law School Admission Council.

The current numbers aren’t directly comparable with past numbers because of the way they are tallied, but there has been a significant decline in applicants; nearly 89,000 people applied in the fall 2006 admissions cycle, according to the Law School Admission Council.

Harvard, by contrast, had a 5 percent increase in applicant volume both last year and this year, said Jessica Soban, associate dean for admissions and strategic initiatives.

“Regardless of the number of applicants we have, this initiative is about making sure the most qualified candidates continue to consider us,” she said. “We have been out pretty publicly with a message that some of the cutting-edge legal issues rely on an understanding of science and technology and engineering problems. These are the questions that require not only great legal training, but the technical underpinnings really do help to understand the issues.” She said the school is “up to double digits” in people coming with science and technical backgrounds, and many of them may have initially considered other graduate degrees.

About 17 percent of its current first-year class is made up of international students, she said, so broader access to the GRE was a significant factor.

A study by the school examined the GRE scores of current and former students who took both the GRE and the LSAT and determined that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades.

“Harvard Law School is continually working to eliminate barriers as we search for the most talented candidates for law and leadership,” Dean Martha Minow said in a statement. “For many students, preparing for and taking both the GRE and the LSAT is unaffordable.

“All students benefit when we can diversify our community in terms of academic background, country of origin, and financial circumstances. Also, given the promise of the revolutions in biology, computer science, and engineering, law needs students with science, technology, engineering and math backgrounds. For these students, international students, multidisciplinary scholars, and joint-degree students, the GRE is a familiar and accessible test, and using it is a great way to reach candidates not only for law school, but for tackling the issues and opportunities society will be facing.”

It’s all part of broader efforts, Soban said, to make the school more accessible. Some of the changes include using Skype for interviews, wiping out the requirement of a deposit for accepted students and beginning a deferred-admission pilot program to encourage applications from juniors at Harvard College who commit to two years of work experience before law school.

“The decision has the potential to create a domino effect among other law schools,” Jeff Thomas, executive director of pre-law programs at Kaplan Test Prep, wrote in an email. “When Harvard changes their admissions strategy, other law schools take notice.”

If other schools follow, it would provide more options for students. The GRE is offered almost every day, Thomas noted, compared with the LSAT, which is available only a few times a year.

Kaplan Test Prep surveyed 125 law schools in May, and 56 percent said they had no plans to adopt the GRE as an admissions alternative to the LSAT. Just 14 percent said they planned to do it. But the remaining 30 percent said they were not sure, which Thomas said signified a lot of room to grow. “We think that number is likely to increase over the next few months,” he said.

The council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, an agency of the ABA, has planned a meeting from Thursday through Saturday in California at which the question of whether the LSAT is fundamental will be considered.

Barry Currier, the section’s managing director, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that his organization “will consider changes to Standard 503 dealing with admission tests at its meeting this weekend and whether to put these changes out for notice and comment. For that reason, at this point we will defer for now any comment on any individual law school’s proposal or pilot program on testing of prospective students.”

Minow said in a statement, “We look forward to working with the American Bar Association on finding the most effective ways to encourage the best students to enter the legal profession.”

Source: By Susan Svrluga – The Washington Post

Grammar Tips: Than Vs. Then

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Than Vs. Then

Two acquaintances who share many of the same features may be difficult to distinguish from one another. How can you tell them apart? One way is to get to know them better. Even identical twins have unique characteristics in their physical appearance and personality. A lot of people make errors with the nearly identical than/then pair, but you don’t have to be one of them. Just use the same strategy you use to tell one person from another—get to know them!

Than

A conjunction is a word that connects two clauses or coordinates words in the same clause. Than is a conjunction used to introduce the second part of an unequal comparison. It also introduces the rejected choice in expressions of preference. Finally, than can mean “except” or “when.”

Amanda is shorter than Annabelle is. She would rather die than wear high heels.

Than can also function as a preposition. A preposition connects a noun or pronoun to a verb or adjective in a sentence, usually to express a spatial or temporal relationship. As a preposition, than means “in relation to” or “by comparison with.” Here’s a (technically correct) construction you may not have seen before:

Annabelle is a friend than whom there is none more caring.
then-or-than

Than appears in a lot of idioms. Many of them, such as “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” or “more dead than alive,” feature comparisons. You’ve probably heard some of the most popular ones (e.g., “easier said than done,” “better late than never”) but many may be new to you. For example, have you heard of “more sinned against than sinning”? Wouldn’t it be a fun project to find out how these colorful expressions started?

Then

Then often functions as an adverb. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Dictionaries define then lots of different ways: in that case, at that time, next in order of place or time, at the same time, soon afterward, in addition, or as a consequence.

Standing next to Edwin is Ethan, then my roommate Claire, then me. Edwin told me, “If we are having fun together, then you should take lots of photographs.” There were no digital cameras then!

Sometimes, then is an adjective or a noun. As an adjective, or describing word, it means “being such, existing, or being at the time indicated.” As a noun, it means “that time.”

My then roommate Claire moved out and I have not seen her since then.

Then appears in some idioms too. One means “on the other hand”: Edwin is funny, but then I laugh at everything. Another idiom means “at that exact time and place, or at once”: Ethan asked me if I wanted to take a road trip, and I went home to pack my suitcase right then and there.

Then and than have many similar characteristics. They are spelled alike, except for the E in then and the A in than. However, telling them apart is not impossible. They have different characteristics: How you define than is definitely not the same as how you define then! They have different “personalities” in that they function as different parts of speech. Do you feel that you know them better now?

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