Brasil!

We arrived in Brazil today, everything went rather smoothly. There were a few hangups with the apartment, but everything is manageable and we think we are prepared to have a very successful trip.

My paper is going to focus on the role that rankings, the vestibular and prestige play in the equal access to education in Brazil’s colleges and universities, both public and private. Prestige and rankings take on different forms and meanings in Brazil and are not directly correlated to their US counterparts, however, figuring out the similarities and how they coincide similarly to access will nonetheless further our understanding of affirmative action and access. I am coming from the position of trying to mold what prestige and rankings mean here in the United States. My ultimate goal would be to incorporate diversity into the language of what is considered prestigious here in the United States, so that colleges and universities that hope to be successful and prestigious will have no choice but to take the diversity of their student population into consideration when dealing with admissions policy.

On a more personal note, Brazil is as beautiful as advertised. The people are all extremely helpful, kind and patient with us, even though none of us speak Portuguese. The natural landscape surrounding Rio is stunningly gorgeous. At one point today we were walking down a street and emerged at a marina with dozens of colorful boats in front of us, a picturesque alley to our right, and off in the distance past the boats was the giant Christo statue on top of a hill that was peaking through a low marine layer of clouds. It was all very majestic. We all stopped and stared with our mouths open until the tourist inside of us reached for our cameras to document the experience. Hopefully some of these pictures will be up soon so that you all can more closely share in our experiences.