Community Service Credit Form - Staples High School: Fill & Download for Free

Shapewear-- girdles and wireframe brassières were considered necessary for women who'd had children. My Mom (b. 1941) says that women in the 50's considered a rounded bottom louche and suggestive... therefore women wore girdles that flattened their derrieres. Mom said that no respectable white girl pierced her ears; only "gypsies" did that. Many bras had a rigid "bulletcone" quality that lifted and pointed the breasts. Possibly an echo of the torpedoes, nosecones and bullets of WWII?Gender roles in the 1950's were much more prescribed than they are today, and nearly-inviolable. The lives, tasks, language, habits, careers, pastimes and appearances of males and females were thought to be necessarily, desirably different. Many American women, when they graduated high school, perceived that their further career choices were pretty much limited to being either a secretary, a nurse or a schoolteacher. The 1950's saw an amazingly large number of Wild-Western-themed shows on television, and many young males who watched them went on to maintain a John-Wayne-like stoicism and machismo into their adult lives. When Milton Berle did a transvestite character on his weekly TV show, it was quite the statement indeed.Men and women very often wore hats out in public, and many women wore gloves. Teenaged girls were often taught how to stand, sit, walk, talk, laugh, flatter a boy, pose for a photo, and how to enter and exit a car in a gracious, "feminine" manner. Men and women kept a cloth handkerchief on their person at all waking times. Men of all ages very often wore oil-based brilliantines in their hair. (My Mom recounts that her schoolroom walls were often shiny from where boys had leaned back against them). The barbershop was a shrine of masculinity, where all males got their hair cut; no self-respecting male would dream of having his hair cut in a woman's salon. Unisex hair salons didn't yet exist. It would’ve been unthinkable for a boy to wear an earring. Clothing for both sexes was generally worn more snugly than it is today, and it was more tailored and gender-specific in cut. No-one wore cotton t-shirts in "respectable" public environments... they were viewed then as being men's underwear, unseemly to reveal. Blue-jeans were popular, but then considered to be decidedly downscale and ultra-casual wear. Schools maintained strict, inviolable dress-codes then; a boy's hair was to be kept very short-- hair that touched the collar was thought to be unmanly and antisocial. Girls were made to wear dresses and skirts, usually puffed-out by stiff crinolines... often forbidden to wear slacks. Men's (and women's) trousers were not worn on the hip, as they are today; the waistband came to well above the navel.. ie., one's "true waist". Most women's dresses nipped in to emphasize the true waist-- the "wasp waist"-- a look rarely seen today. The 1950's marked the first time that people's underwear was held up by elastic, not by snaps, buttons, bows and clasps alone.It was widely perceived, rightly or wrongly, that Christianity was the unwritten "default" religion of the USA, and many, maybe even most, public schools led children through a spoken Christian prayer and the Pledge Of Allegiance before class commenced. Going to church on Sundays was seen as being the mark of any good American character. If you didn’t attend one Sunday, a pastor or deacon was likely to telephone you about your absence.Many, maybe even most, young American men would do a stint in the military in those days; indeed, it was how you showed society you'd become a man. (In the 1950's, people still believed that one owed society visible "gestures", gestures that would be recognized, admired and remembered). In the 1950's, only men who'd been in the military typically wore tattoos; other than that, it was seen as the symbol of rough, low-class breeding. Women almost never had tattoos put on in the 50's; it would've branded her sluttish, beatnik-ish or roughly low-class.Most who were raised during the American 1950’s will tell you that guns and gun ownership were just not seen to be a problem. Sport shooting, skeet-shooting and wild game hunting were seen as a wholesome pastime for many families, including for their prepubescents. My father recounts how a high school boy might receive a .22 or 30.06 rifle for Christmas… then proudly take it to school for his schoolmates and the adult school faculty to admire. Mass shootings in schools were just… unheard of.The 1950's was the first time, for many American families, that they'd owned an electric automatic clothes-washing machine or gasoline-powered lawnmower. Microwave ovens existed then, but were very expensive and only the toy of the wealthy. Dinner dishes were mostly washed by hand in the kitchen sink. Most homes, schools and businesses of the 1950's did not have air-conditioning; electric fans and "swamp coolers" (water-evaporative coolers) were instead used, and the children of poorer families would even sleep on the kitchen linoleum in summer... which was somewhat cool. One could always go to the cinema, which were always famously cool with air-conditioning. Even into the 1950's, many American families had no electric refrigerators, and a man would come semi-weekly to install a big chunk of ice into the family "icebox". Many of those who owned true electric self-cooling refrigerators kept the machine on the back porch: in those days many models were surmounted by a visible fan/motor that whirred and chugged very loudly. Coal was still a major source of home-heating for many families in winter.Perfumery was seen as a luxury item on a par with furs and diamonds, and it was often sprayed only on special occasions. Usually a woman, in her youth, would choose a single fragrance which she would wear as a "signature" for the rest of her life. Only the most sybaritic of American men would be caught dead wearing a fragrance any fancier than OLD SPICE or CANOE.The locus of fine art tastes shifted from Paris to New York in the 1950's, with Abstract Expressionism seen as the bold style suitable for a country who'd just won WWII. Trends in the fine art world were then of more concern to average Americans than they are today.Smoking was very common in all ages of adults, teens to the most elderly seniors, and advertisers even implied that doctors were recommending it for health. Many pregnant women drank and smoked during their pregnancies with no social question, and smoking was considered okay in many environments: cinemas, theaters, college lecture halls, stores, buses, taxis, restaurants, airplanes, hotels, and even doctor's offices. No-one in the Fifties ever asked, "Mind if I smoke?" There was less of a stigma about routine, daily alcohol-drinking in adults... it was easy to become a "society alcoholic": someone who basically drank all day and all evening in various social settings-- even the workplace-- and this was not frowned upon; indeed, it was the done thing in many "respectable" American circles.People of all ages played cards much more back then, and every college student learned to play bridge. Lofty intellectualism-- especially regarding psychiatry-- enjoyed a certain vogue in the 1950's, mostly due to the fact that many young men of the decade were able to attend college financed by the G.I. Bill, in return for their WWII service. In many American families, they would've been the very first to have ever gotten a tertiary education. In the 1950's, it was not yet supposed that everybody can and should go to college.In the Fifties, porn-- at least of the safe PLAYBOY variety-- gradually became more visible. Many men overseas in WWII had enjoyed a sexual freedom they were loath to forswear upon returning to American white-picket prudishness. (Today, the pinup model Bettie Page is thought of as a charming 1950's icon... when in fact during that decade she was a decidedly "underground" character, approved of only by a limited cognoscenti).Barbiturates for "relaxation" and amphetamines for "pep"--- now viewed as powerful, addicting and dangerous substances---- were widely handed out by doctors, as was Valium, one of the then-new benzodiazepines (opium substitutes). A woman visiting a doctor for clinical depression might well be told simply, "Sweetheart, take these pills...and go buy yourself a pretty new dress." The mentally ill were greatly stigmatized, often "put away" in sanatoriums of widely varying comfortableness, and the drugs used to treat them were crude and inexact by today's standards; No SSRI's or advanced drugs for Bipolar ("manic-depression") or schizophrenia existed. Often psychotic individuals were only administered more-or-less palliative drugs that simply sedated and disoriented them into submission. In the 1950's, the pre-frontal lobotomy (inserting a blade up someone's nose, through their eye-sockets, or down through an incision in their foreheads, to permanently sever the fore-part of their brains from the rest of the brain) was seen as the only hope for the severely mentally ill, and was even sometimes performed on epileptics, depressives, homosexuals, the mentally retarded and severe alcoholics. It was often a way to "silence" those whose worrisome testimonies were thought to have no remedy. Electro-convulsive therapy ("shock treatment") was administered far more often in those days, and the tech behind it was much more generalized and unpredictable in result than it is today. The hallucinogen LSD had been discovered in 1947, and in the 1950's was entirely legal in the USA, though at that time it was seen as exclusively an adjunct to psychotherapy... definitely not a street or recreational or "cultural" drug. Marijuana, heroin and cocaine were then still thought of as the récherché, lurid vices of urban libertines and sordid fringe-groups... they hadn't yet become commonplace and available in most suburban environments.Racial segregation in nearly every avenue of society was the norm, both in America's Southern AND Northern states; only America's biggest urban centers were free of COLORED ONLY restrooms, luncheon counters and water-fountains. The word “black” only became a commonly-accepted racial denominator in about 1965, and before that, African-Americans were invariably called “Negroes”. Many cinemas and theaters, especially in the South, ordered black patrons to sit only up in the balcony. Only a handful of blacks and whites ever dated or intermarried, and the abuse they might receive would've been plentiful; so-called "miscegenation" was even forbidden by law in many states. In the 1950's, racial lynchings (punishments of death meted out by vigilante groups working outside the due process of law) still occurred, and the American public was still divided as to whether they might be permissible, appropriate punishments. Most American states forbade black people to vote in local, state and federal elections. Ironically, the music of black artists soared in popularity then; a typical scenario of that era would be a dance party in which the band was all black, and the kids dancing were all white. Nat "King" Cole was a handsome, fatherly celebrity of the day and a genius musician, but his weekly TV show failed in the 50's... because commercial sponsors like Max Factor and Procter & Gamble dared not advertise during a show featuring a black host. If a white and black person did appear in the same camera-shot, they were forbidden to touch each other. Many cities, North and South, had ghettoized neighborhoods, not only for blacks, but also for Jews, Hispanics, Italians, Irish Catholics and Asians; vestiges of this are still seen today in many large American metropolises. Often it was railroad train-tracks that divided the "desirable" neighborhoods from the "ethnic" ones. Many American Jews who are middle-aged today can remember how daring it was for their parents to move the family into a neighborhood thought to be exclusively WASP. The homeless were called "hoboes" and "bums" in the 1950's. Ethnic slurs, in jokes and conversation, were not then viewed as being terribly offensive, as they are today, nor were the stereotypes portrayed in the media: Today, for example, viewers are aghast when they watch Mickey Rooney's broad, clichéd portrayal of a Japanese man in 1961's BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. But to an audience who'd dropped two atom bombs on Japan a scant 16 years earlier, the dopey portrayal was seen as hilarious fair-play.Shoe stores would often, trendily, have an in-house X-ray machine, whereby feet could be examined for proper shoe fit... ignorant of the fact that the device leaked potentially lethal radiation. Deadly DDT was widely, innocently used as a blanket crop insecticide: some people who were children during that time even talk about dancing in the mist behind a truck that was spraying it.Train travel, cross-country, was still widely popular for Americans. Both air and train travel were a quite formal affair; one dressed up for them and behaved there in an extra-polite fashion. Both trains and airplanes served comparatively lavish, upscale meals, served on china with metal cutlery. The porters and waitstaff aboard these trains were almost always black.Americans were generally much thinner then: just look at any crowd photo from that era and compare it to our own. And this is true even though gym memberships and street jogging were not nearly so common as they are today. Family meals were a fixed ritual at specific hours, and people did not snack all day the way they do today. Americans ate far less sugar then than they do today. Sweetened soft drinks were considered something of a special treat... not an all-day-long drink as they are today. Muffins of the 1950's were only slightly-sweet dinner sides, not the cake-y sugarbombs that they are today.Food was cheap in the 1950's, at least if compared to modern prices: Glance at a restaurant menu from the period and rarely will you see any item costing more than $3.00. $10.00 would've brought you lobster thermidor with a range of sides. Gasoline was very inexpensive in the 50's; someone like a bohemian Jack Kerouac could take a desultory road-trip across the whole country in those days, and paying for the necessary gas would've been the absolute least of his concerns. Most Americans bought American cars in those days, and many who lived during this time say that those cars broke down far more often than the cars of today do. In the 1950’s, many Americans parked their cars… and left the doors unlocked; at home in their driveways they might even leave the keys in the ignition.Men were usually considered the dominant sex, and it was the duty of wives and children to support them emotionally and bolster their egos. His law within the household was never questioned. Corporal punishment of children was then seen as a very normal and desirable form of behavior modification, both at home and at school; rarely did a parent challenge any punishment meted to their child at school. In fact, as the chestnut went, if you were punished at school, you could expect double that punishment when you got home. When Dr. Benjamin Spock in 1946 suggested that parents not spank their children, it was a radically new idea. Many women did not work outside the home-- to be a professional housewife and mother was seen as a normal, respectable thing. Very often wives were not privy to the information surrounding household finances; that was a man's privilege and province. For a man "to provide for his family" was seen as the highest masculine good. If a woman became widowed, she could find herself totally in the dark as to how their finances had been thereto apportioned. Many women did not have their own checking, bank accounts and credit cards, and if they did, all their withdrawals had to be countersigned by their husbands. Married women very often identified themselves in public with their husband's names, e.g., "I am Mrs. Robert Johnson". Issues like domestic abuse, substance abuse, date-rape, incest, sexual harassment in the workplace, infidelity, extramarital pregnancy, infertility, dysmenorrhea, erectile dysfunction (then called "impotence", as if a man's penile activity were indicative of his very effectiveness in life), miscarriages and paedophilia-- all now blithely popular daytime TV themes-- were almost never discussed publically then, based on the social idea that one shouldn't "air one's dirty linen in public". Indeed, within some homes of the 1950's, sexuality in general was never alluded to at any time, even with teenagers entering puberty. Young girls of the 1950's began menstruating at a later age than they do today in the Millennial world, and no-one is 100% sure what accounts for the change. 1950's magazine advertisements for feminine napkins might simply show a glamorous model in a haute-couture ballgown, and the only verbiage on the page would be "MODESS..... because." The product, and its use, never mentioned.Men of the 1950's were thought to have no place in the delivery room when their babies were born; women's bodies were a complicated mystery understood only by her and her OB/Gyn. The general attitude then was that, his laboring wife entrusted to the hospital, a husband should find a bar, get very tipsy, hand out cigars, and later return to his wife's side where she, coiffed and cosmetized, would have a surprise addition, bathed, powdered and blanketed, waiting for him. The sex of a newborn was always a surprise in the Fifties. That a man would later play the role of a "Mr. Mom" was never considered.Those today who were children in the American Fifties often remark on how their parents seemed to raise them with a kind of "benign neglect": School-age children were expected to play outdoors in their non-school hours... A mom didn't want them underfoot or lollygagging in their bedrooms. Most today report that their neighborhoods were thought to be 100% safe for unsupervised children; that there might be kidnappers and paedophiles lurking around every corner was not even part of the mental equation. Children could walk and ride their bicycles considerable distances away from their homes, unsupervised. Parents, the wisdom went, wanted children to develop a sense of independence, and thus did not micro-manage their children's playtime. There was the expectation then amongst parents, that a child's playtime was desirably supposed to introduce kids to a number of disappointments, injuries, bullyings and fracases... firming up their "character" for future adult life.Divorce was far less common in the 1950's, and those who did divorce were seen as being brazen, impious or as life failures, and could even find themselves social pariahs. For a young couple to marry and have kids in their late-teens was not then thought of as being shockingly early; in the 1950's, the sanction of marriage was thought to be the only situation in which "decent" people could have sex. There was then more of a double-standard surrounding sexuality; it was often thought of as something men wanted... and women grudgingly permitted. Sexual education might be sketchy for many young people of school age, and many women of the era did not yet think of sex as something that a woman should want and enjoy. Emerging studies in human sexuality by Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson revealed, to the country's shock, that what citizens claimed they did and preferred sexually... was significantly different from what people were actually engaging in, or personally countenanced.The 1950's marked the first time in human history in which extended families no longer lived together under one roof. The rise of "Levittowns"--- cookie-cutter suburban residential areas-- proliferated at that time, and the idea of "the nuclear family" was born: a house containing one heterosexual couple, and their kids only, with no grandparents or aunts and uncles necessarily living there, too. Whether this nuclear family concept has enriched or impoverished a child's growing up, or a couple's marriage, remains debatable.There was much encouragement in women's magazines for wives to make "colorful" specialty foods for their families... even though those foods were generally comprised of generically available staples: wieners, JELL-O, RITZ crackers, VELVEETA, cottage-cheese, ketchup, liver, maraschino cherries, ice cream, tuna fish, etc. "Designer" beers and wines were unheard-of; California wines were considered always inferior to French ones. Food was rarely spicy or piquant or "challenging". Supermarkets offered few or no foreign or "gourmet" items. Chinese food and pizza were very new and exciting restaurant foods for many Americans. In the 1950's, wives did not feel that synthetic or frozen foods were of poor quality; indeed, most homemakers felt that frozen peas, bleached sliced white bread, margarine, instant coffee, spraycan cheese, TANG, etc. were "living the modern way". In the 1950's, indeed, many households began to turn up their noses at "ethnic" or “old fashioned” foods their parents might've eaten, like brains, tongue, gefilte fish, tripe, sweetbreads, lutefisk, aspic, rutabaga, borscht, etc. Lard's popularity was eclipsed by hydrogenated vegetable fat-- "Crisco". In the 1950's, everyone drank coffee made from Robusta beans, not Arabica as has become the vogue today; it did have a different taste, as many can confirm. It is widely claimed that fresh produce in those days was less "pretty", shiny and eye-appealing than it is today, but it was more flavorful. In the 1950’s, many stores of all kinds were closed on Sundays, and those that remained open might enforce “blue laws”, forbidding some products to be sold… Obvious things like alcohol products, but sometimes some very curious items, too, like kitchen utensils and hardware such as nails and screws.Everyone’s telephone then was a wired landline, and telephone numbers always carried a regional prefix: as in, "KL5-3956", referring to one's location in a city... "KL" referring to "Klondike" or some other verbal descriptor. The initials served as helpful mnemonics, corresponding to numbered finger-holes on the telephone’s dial. Nowadays, those prefixes of the 1950's-- Klondike, Gramercy, Pershing, Oxford, Lawndale, Butterfield, Murray Hill, etc.--- surely sound quaint. Many American towns in the 1950's had a phone network linked by a real live local operator, often a woman who knew everybody in the town by name--- and their comings and goings. In my Dad's town, (he was born in 1942) he could literally phone the operator and ask her, "Have you seen my Mom this afternoon?"... and she would recognize his voice, and quite possibly know where Mom was. For phone customers, this intimacy could prove either a comfort... or a worry.Though launched in the late-1940's, television, and television culture and lore, really boomed in the 1950's. It was the new, big thing, and Hollywood film studios even worried that it would reduce cinema attendances. In America, there were usually only three television stations to watch, all in black-and-white, and broadcasts generally only lasted from 6:30am 'til midnight. Most TV stations signed-off each night with a Christian sermonette from a pastor followed by the playing of the national anthem. The point is, most Americans got all their information from the same limited sources: three TV networks, AM radio, and a slender score of mainstream popular magazines; this meant public tastes and political leanings enjoyed very little diversity compared to today. It is scant exaggeration to say: Everybody watched and read the same things. This relative paucity of media meant that public opinion could be very carefully shaped indeed, and the news press in those days could, and did, withhold virtually any information from the public that they saw fit, for example, the extramarital dalliances and shady malfeasances of US presidents and public figures. (Had, let's say, something as worrisome as global warming, Ebola or serial killers loomed in the 1950's, the media could have very easily "blackouted" that information, or many pertinent details thereof, altogether from public awareness.) This "enforced innocence" meant that most Americans were fiercely, unquestioningly patriotic, and most media of the era showed them little of the goings-on outside the USA. It was in the 1950's that Americans adopted unquestioningly the impression of themselves as the best country on earth, and it was that decade especially in which a certain insularity crept across the country, with Americans becoming less and less interested in what other countries were doing. US presidents, before the Fifties, might have spoken with a quasi-British accent-- as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt did, but after VE-Day and VJ-Day, they never did again.(When you listen today to the diatribes of the American far-right on TV and AM talk radio, you do well to note that the speakers were surely raised within the media paradigm described above, or its 1960's vestiges; they are merely parroting the ideals-- however illusory or incomplete--- that were legacied them as children.)Speaking of radio, in the 1950's, the weekly hit-list of pop songs were compiled at the local level by the station deejays themselves. This meant you could have "regional hits", something unheard of today with corporations owning everything, and the 'Net homogenizing everything. Local boys forming a pop combo had a very real chance of hearing their record played on the local radio. Back then, a particular song could be a smash in L.A. or New York.... and never ever heard in Texas. Mom says that pop songs in 1961 Texas... lagged TWO YEARS behind the songs that were popular on the West Coast.The professional recording industry blossomed in the 1950's; monophonic 78rpm thick shellac 10" discs were gradually replaced by stereophonic, "high-fidelity" 33⅓rpm Longplay 12″ discs and 45rpm 5" singles, a standard not superseded until the mid-1980's.Young people who admitted being gay were seen as being an obscene shame to the family, a menace to society, and some gay youth were sent to sanitariums for shock treatments, hormone and “aversive” therapies (read: being shown slides of same-sex nudes… then administered a nauseating drug, or shocked with electricity). Most gay young men felt very alone in their hometowns, and had to content themselves with the beefcake photos seen in "male physique and health" magazines. Most gay men and women in those days would eventually marry heterosexually, whether for social disguise, or from the desperate hope that it might "straighten them out". Media figures like movie and TV stars who were gay would masquerade as straight, and their film studios would stage highly visible heterosexual "dates"— marriages, too— as press photo opportunities: The mere whiff that a star might be homosexual could spell instant death to his/her career.A girl who became pregnant out of wedlock was also seen as shameful, and some families even staged elaborate ruses--- sending a girl out of town "to stay with her aunt for a while"--- to prevent shameful rumors. Keeping up appearances-- a veneer of "normalcy"-- within one's community was de rigueur in the American Fifties, and those who fell short of society's expectations could expect dire social consequences. Whether a person of our day today longs to return to the "Fab 50's" has very much to do with who s/he is... it is by no means a universal nostalgia.

The rich will get richer, the poor will get smarter.This answer is USA-centric but most of the trends apply to other English-speaking countries (esp. Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) and to a lesser extent Europe.1) Higher education is highly cyclical. The good news: we are fairly late into a business cycle. That means higher tax receipts. The bad news for traditional universities catering to 18-22 year-olds: the end of the Millenial Baby Boom means that the population of traditional college students will dip. I heard that the anticipated recovery date is 2023. For schools like mine which cater to 30-40 year -olds, these are much better times.2) Elite schools will change less than anyone. Top schools like Ivies, Stanford, McGill, Cambridge, Oxford and even flagship state schools get to pick their students. They can fill every admissions slot. They will only adjust based upon what their major donors or star faculty want.3) At the bottom of the barrel, the community Colleges constantly innovate. They add new training programs based upon the needs of major employers in their service areas. That leads to entry level jobs. The Community colleges then try to adjust Associates Programs to apply courses from these training toward the degrees. The goal is to help entry level employees make supervisor.4) Adult education-oriented schools are trying to up our game. My university recently adopted a Bachelors of Applied Science in Management. One explicit goal is to bring more courses in from the Community Colleges and help students finish their Bachelors degree faster. Schools like mine are aggressively pursuing articulation agreements to make transferring and degree completion easier. The goal is to take the supervisors and get them promotions into the lower rungs of management.5) State universities are following suit to varying degrees. Some state schools work very hard to offer flexibility and help students finish their degree. Some schools pretty much expect students to start over and refuse to accept transfer credits even from sister schools in their own state. Most non-flagship state schools lie somewhere in the middle.6) One key point that addresses your original question: getting a degree from a non-elite school is a route toward Middle Management, not the top. Sure, the business press loves to celebrate the few people coming from humble backgrounds to the C-suite, but these are the exception. A nice Bachelors from a satellite campus will help a Staples Manager make store GM, and an MBA can become a District Manager, but the CEO is likely to come from an elite school. Elite schools offer connections, facilities travel opportunities and social opportunities that the brightest student from a non-elite school could not even imagine. Likewise, top investment banks recruit people from elite circles to schmooze people travelling in elite circles. Even if you are the smartest person in the room, you are unlikely to be able to crash that club.Thanks for the A2A @Jerry

American Express' FICO Score Requirements, Starwood Preferred Guest's Amex and Inside Industry Scoop on Credit Scores.My friend, Mike Arrington, had a credit card issue. He helps a lot of people. He helps me a lot. He invites me and my friends to tech conferences so when he tweeted-blogged-Quora'd:"My credit score is 748 and amex has repeatedly declined me for a card.""Damnit Amex, Give Me A Credit Card" -- Mike Arrington, TechCrunchI was inclined to spend 70 minutes answering this question (see below). You see, I am a thankful person. Mr Mike has let me walk in dozens upon dozens of tech founders. If you help me, help the startup community, I am all in for helping you with your effort to get an SPG Amex, mentor you on FICO credit score + debunk the urban myths about credit scores, credit rules and credit underwriting policy.Mr Arrington now has an Amex earning him massive SPG points!*. Yup, he probably put down as his job title when he first got rejected...photo credit Mark Chua.hiLarryAss, hilarious because this title, "blogger" doesn't make the risk dept at Amex jump for joy.*:-) After texting Amex executives, Mike Arrington got one at 11:45 am Oct 26, 2010.Tweets Oct-24-2010 to Oct-26-2010Who am I to give advice to a Stanford University, Law graduate, (Mike)!?!I read the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act), my company lobbies Congress, my company promotes FICO preparation, my company is #1 in doing lead generation for credit card account, my company never sells private information. I also helped another friend IRL, "Valerie" and her two college age daughters. Valerie's an anchor on a network called "CNN"My 'advice' is FCRA based. There are very few people with the patience to toil on the front lines of financial literacy. It does not help that FCRA does not make common sense.This Quora answer to "What FICO score is needed?" took me 70 minutes. It explains an American system that is set up to befuddle consumers. To make matters worse, American credit has a business model that, in short, sells derogatory credit information.SO NOW READ WHAT I WROTE!!!Mike Arrington's Wordpress article addressed a specific cry for help along with a tweet request for assistance (Yes, during the golden age of twitter, people would read and respond ;-)"Damnit Amex, Give Me A Credit Card" -- Mike Arrington, TechCrunchThe one key to these castles are yours. They access free SXSW hotel rooms, free airfare to Austin. And for me and my tech founders: Free access to $15,000,000 credit lines. I hate, love/ hate all the urban myths about credit (sorry if I scream but its frustrating when I know Fair Credit Reporting Act laws but people, fight, me, all, the, time.I am not sorry the laws are old. I am sorry we have not passed LCECSPA. Here are the Urban myths because you do not know FCRA:URBAN MYTH #1: Asking what credit score you need implies everyone at score level 748.6 gets in. It simply does not work like that. American Express (company) uses FICO Credit Score as one metric among many for the credit accept/reject decision.I bet they turn down applicants as high as FICO 770.URBAN MYTH #2: Asking what score gets approved implies that you as a person have one score. This is not true.Fair Isaac has been on record saying 15 banks that use their scoring system can give you 15 different scores.Yes, urban myths one and two are the same, but I wanted to re-iterate that since it's such a big myth - I won't repeat myself anymore :-)URBAN MYTH #3: Entrepreneurs get turned down.This is true. If you're the business owner, you're gonna have bad credit sometimes and a founder's FICO cut-off will treat you, the tech CEO, harshly. Plus, lol, analyst say, "Cool, lets give him $75,000 in credit line, un collateralized"I repeat: all people with a FICO of 745 are not treated equally ... FICO is just one metric.For example, Michael Arrington (investor, journalist) the blogger might get turned down because his credit application form signals 'entrepreneur'. Entrepreneurs are treated a certain way by a bank.Myth 3 is compounded in FORBES. Read about founder, Mike Arrington's credit rejection in ForbesAmerican Express Loses Credit With Top Bloggerand the Amex rebuttalAmex's Ad Agency Asks Us To Remove Post, Threatens Future Business | TechCrunchbased on the original blogger complaintDamnit Amex, Give Me A Credit CardMyth 3 might never go away because myth three goes against common sense. On my credit application, I am still "National Account Manager at United College Marketing Services". Also, the channel that the credit application came from matters. When I say channel, I mean location American Express received the credit application.This leads to my next point...URBAN MYTH #4: A lot of people think a credit app is a credit app.It is not true.Where and how you apply matters!I'd fill it out with a black roller ball, 1mm pen and use a fine tip sharpie on a PAPER APPLICATION.I'd photocopy my drivers license and staple it to the paper credit app (*Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA))I'd have the Starwood Preferred Guest (loyalty program) line's front desk manager do it for me and I'd include my starwood preferred number bold in sharpieImagine you are the CEO of Amex. I hand you a piece of paper. Or I hand you an electronic credit applicationURBAN MYTH #5: Internet is best for service.Wrong!Dead wrong.You have ZERO rights via email / phone / electronic fax / web browser / text message / smoke signals via twitter / blog via techcrunchThe Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) only reserves your rights via paper snail mail licked with a piece of US Postage stamp.Mike Arrington's blog post is the exception that augments, propagates, promotes and accelerates this urban myth. Do not use the web. Do not use email. And for goodness sakes, do not call. Do not use the Internet.Use a postage stamp!!!!!!!!!The 31 Envelope SystemThe 'forever' stamp is truly the only method seen as legal according to FCRA. Guess how many consumers such as Mike Arrington interact using United States postage stamps?THE SYSTEM IS SET UP FOR YOU TO FAIL. The system is set up knowing super majority of consumers will not mail a letter to a PO box. True story, I see non Stanford Law School (educated) consumers failing at credit, daily.** FUN WITH FICO **I am going to make the bold statement: give me 10 stamps and I will raise the average VC's FICO score 80 points. Give me 31 stamps and I will raise more money that a Y-combinator startup company.:-DGoogle "9 VCs and their Secret FICO score"Or '9 Supermodels and their Secret FICO Score'http://whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/blog/2010/09/08/9-supermodels-and-their-secret-fico-score/I speak at NFL Rookie Camp on credit and credit scores as a millionaire. I should know because I am one.I mentor lawyers and Congressmen who write credit laws. My mentor was a Yale lawyer named Mark McCormack #MMPQQThe 31 Envelope System** FUN WITH FICO END**URBAN MYTH #6: Your credit score is dynamic.It is not as dynamic as you would think.Credit scores are incredibly static.As a rule of thumb: once you have good credit you keep good credit.Once you have bad credit you might as well click on the butt (at duck9 cuz you're gonna take it in the buttocks):see stanford grad startup SwishMark - #3 largest payday lender in Americasee http://duck9.com/ass.htmURBAN MYTH #7: A college student is more likely to get a Starwood Hotels & Resorts (company) credit card than Mike Arrington.:-) update Mike got one at 11:45 am (Oct 26, 2010). I tweeted Oct 25 2010 back when people read their at replies Re: 11:11 Nov 11Tweets Oct-24-2010 to Oct-26-2010College students get mentored to build their FICO. The really smart founder, Mike Arrington, who has a Stanford Law degree was using common sense.Urban myth #7 is actually true if that college student was using Larry Chiang as their mentor MMPQQ (mentor mention per quora question). Nick Lee got a credit card. See his answer BELOW.URBAN MYTH #8: Congress doesn't read the FCRA, FCBA, or the CARD ActThis is NOT an urban myth. Just like bloggers, the only people that read it are the people that wrote it. Cato Institute quizzes Congresspeople about the Constitution and gives out copies of it.When I testified before U.S. Congress on privacy (thx Billy Tauzin / Tom Campbell / Tom Udall) I cited and sourced FCRA a half dozen times ... they thought I was a genius. Robert Pitofsky said some overly positive things about me and my effort to debunk credit myths to college students. He was Federal Trade Commission Chairman.thx for reading this far!!BONUS URBAN MYTH #9: college students are protected by the CARD Act (HR 627, House (of Representatives) Resolution #627)This is true.I passed this law because college students were dropping out more due to credit card debt than academic disqualification.MYTH 9(a): The problem is that there is a catch 22 of what comes first ... getting a credit card or adding positive pieces of information to the Credit History Bureaus.Hmmm, maybe that is a company idea.UPDATE: OCT 2, 2013.Based on my support and my augmenting HR 627, zero traditional freshman, zero sophomores and zero juniors will drop out of college due to college credit card debt.Zero.Previously, it had spiked as high as 7.6%. Thanks to my mentorship, my weirdness' and my acting Paris Hilton-ie, the United States of America will have zero college drop outs due to owing credit card debt.Currently, if you drop out of college due to a $300 credit card bill (the max credit line is under $500!), you didn't drop out because you owe, you dropped out because of other reasons. Before HR 627, credit lines could be as high as $78,000. See the historic practice of Capital One laying away college studentsThe Secret Tenth Urban Myth left off My Quora Answer.I used to work for Amex. I would be pretty surprised if you weren't able to get an SPG. Can't provide too much more detail without giving away the precise risk formulae that they use (note that it's more than just a FICO Credit Score), but, based on your stats, there are a lot of accounts in the SPG portfolio with worse credit / less credit history.edit: I can't comment on answers anonymously but Larry Chiang's answer totally nails itMyth #11.another credit myth is one that Fair Isaac promotes. They say the average FICO average is 723. They have removed it, the false FICO average claim, from "MyFico" website. I think it was Craig Watts that said it.Good luck in the system that has been engineered against you.Good luck in a system where an oligopoly holds super majority of the credit report data.Good luck in a system where credit scoring is run by a monopoly.