Jay Shah

Dear Businessweek, last week you ranked my school as the number six best school in America to attend for undergraduate business. Thanks for the honor! Before I get my party hat on, let me take a few moments to understand what exactly I owe this honor to.

Twitter is a pulse on the human race. Each day, half a billion tweets are posted on the internet - some discuss the stock market while others fuel revolutions. As a result, hundreds of academic papers have been published describing how to use Twitter to predict everything from the spread of the flu to the outcome of political elections. After reading so many articles I began to wonder, can Twitter sentiment predict our quality of life?

Imagine yourself on a stage. A sizable audience comprised of all your peers sits quietly before you; co-workers, ex-girlfriends, and roommates are eagerly waiting for you to begin your act. The performance? Reading to them your Facebook status. How large would you guess your audience is? 

It's that time of the year in college where your commitments start to wind down - the impending doom of final exams is in the air and the warm weather now requires me to wear deodorant. Coincidentally, I bet you're also planning next year's commitments - registering for classes and maybe even running in some elections.

The stock market is in some ways a promise land - a place where any individual, of any wealth, can try their luck in the financial markets. It is romanticized in rags to riches stories, idolized by millions of students, and open to anybody who has as little as $100 to invest. It is no surprise that the stock market is the first place profit-seeking academics flock to when they think they understand consumer behavior. I recently had my own idea (I guess I joined the bandwagon too) to see if I could beat the stock market. 

Is it possible to measure impact of student leaders based on how much they are mentioned on the university website? After all, the more a student impacts the school, the more likely they are to be mentioned on the internet, right? Right.

When I was 6 years old, my parents took away my training wheels.

Each day after dinner, my father ran behind me and my bike, simultaneously cheering and instructing his son to pedal just a few feet forward. And each day ended with fresh bruises and cuts, to which my mother ceremoniously applied healing agents and band aids. In a few weeks though, I could bike without support – the wounds healed, the bandages fell off, and my parents no longer accompanied me on my bike.

My last two years of high school were spent at a residential math and science magnet school (Check out Texas Academy of Math and Science). It was a unique life experience that taught me much about friendships, intellectual curiosity, and many other abstract concepts that I won’t bore you with. More importantly, it led to my participation in academic research (and the birth of this blog post).