Team C		95/100

SINDLER, STEPHANIE        Senior HSS ECO  L     9.0  ssindler 
BONCEK, EMILY LOUISE      Junior CMU SHS  L     9.0  eboncek 
CHANG, KELLY LAN          Junior CIT ECE  L     9.0  klchang 
MOSCA, LEANDRA FAITH      Senior HSS SDS  L     9.0  lmosca   
CHANG, CHRISTOPHER J.     Junior CFA MUS  L     9.0  cjchang 

1. Survey of Carnegie Mellon Faculty Regarding Attendance and Student
   Performance (On-Campus)

   A. Interest.		20/20

      Attendance policies vary widely with department and even within
      major.

      Your description points out one possible confound: small
      discussion based classes tend to make attendance requirements
      more than large lecture based classes.  It might not be clear
      whether student performance differences are due to class format
      or to attendance policies.

      Another issue is how to compare grades across fields and levels.
      Is a "B" in statistics the same as a "B" in english?  Is a "A"
      in a 300 level class the same as an "A" in a 400 level class?
      etc.

      For these reasons it may be difficult to relate attendance
      directly to students performance, but it is worth a try.

      I like that you would survey faculty or classes rather than
      students.

      
   B. Research Questions.	20/20

      Research questions seem fine.  You may have to decide whether
      you want to ask faculty about *current* classes, or *past*
      classes.  For *past* classes faculty may be able to provide
      final grade distributions or summaries.  For *current* classes,
      faculty can only provide midterm grades (safe to assume you will
      do the survey after midterm).

   C. References.	10/10

      ok.  some of these will provide good benchmarks against which to
      judge your results.

2. Pittsburgh High School Students' Interest in Local Colleges

   A. Interest.	   20/20

      Seems interesting as part of the general question of whether the
      Pittsburgh region is gaining or losing young people.

      Thinking about a way to sample high school students will be
      important. 

   B. Research Questions.	20/20

      The question "does attending hs in pgh affect student's desire
      to attend college here" is probably un-answerable within the
      context of a survey that you can conduct (for example, you
      probably can't survey non-pgh-area high schools).  

      It might be better to survey hs students here about
      where/whether they will attend post-secondary education
      generally, and the reasons for their decisions.  Then compare
      answers for students bound for pgh colleges, vs others.

      It may be as important to find out why people are leaving the
      pgh area to go to college, as to find out why they are staying.

      There may also be differences in college attendance patterns,
      between private and public high schools.

   C. References.     	  5/10

      seem fine.  aren't references #1 and #4 the same? 

      The city of pittsburgh and pittsburgh public schools have
      developed the "Promise" program, which is basically a college
      scholarship based on years of attendance in pgh schools.  There
      should be some data on college attendance patterns in
      promotional or reporting materials for the "promise" program, at
      the pps website, the city website, etc.  This would make good
      additional reference material.