Quick Start Guide - Boston University: Fill & Download for Free

Material ResourcesMany universities have student incubators on campus to help students with product and business development. If your school has an engineering department, this would be an excellent place to start.For example, the Rochester Institute of Technology offers its students an intensive program to support business and technological innovation. Wayne State University has created a program for technology startups in Detroit called Tech Town; the UC Davis College of Engineering helps innovative students get on the fast track with resource and funding support; and Boston University’s incubator accepts student tech startups as well as others in the bio-medical engineering and related fields.Many colleges and universities also offer student innovation grants, like this one from Purdue University, and this one from Georgia College. Use your favorite search engine to find about more about the numerous grants available to student inventors.The takeaway is that most colleges and universities will have some resources available on or near campus that they can guide you to. Additionally, many - like Wayne State - have created programs for the broader community, so you should also investigate those connections. Sometimes a town’s or city’s chamber of commerce and other business groups (e.g., Rotary Club) offer grants and resources for young entrepreneurs, especially with patentable ideas.You also want to check with your school advisor or a knowledgeable faculty member regarding the patent rights to anything you’re working on. It’s not uncommon to find that if you’re a student using school facilities and resources, the rights to your innovation could belong to the university, so make sure you check into that carefully before proceeding.Legal ResourcesFirst, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has developed a partnership program with multiple law schools across the country to assist independent inventors and small companies who qualify for pro bono (free!) patent services. You would need to contact each school directly, so here’s the list.Additional information about the patent pro bono program is available here. This is a very useful interactive map where you can also find information about participating law schools, relevant news and events, and general information specifically tailored for under-resourced inventors.Second, many colleges and universities that are not partnered with the USPTO program still offer students - and sometimes non-students - assistance. For instance, schools like the University of Illinois have long offered student innovators free help in completing patent applications.If your school has a law school, contact them for guidance. Even if they haven’t (yet) partnered with the USPTO, they’ll likely have some on-campus resources, or be able to guide you to someone who can help you with the process.If your school doesn’t have a law school, there are other options. Many universities have a Student Legal Services office on campus. While many don’t offer legal assistance for patents or intellectual property, they may be able to guide you to another resource that can help you.Another great resource is the engineering and science faculty. It’s not uncommon to find faculty members who have had some direct experience with filing patents. You can also sometimes discover programs that are designed to promote innovation and involve patent filing, which are offered only through their department.Finally, public and university libraries offer a wealth of materials beyond books to help you. Engage a librarian to help you access applications, template applications, and other information and tools you’ll need to successfully complete your journey along the startup highway. Such information includes events such as workshops, talks, and other programs that are usually free or offered for a nominal admission price.Hope this helps! Let me know if I can help you with any additional questions or concerns about how to invent and patent something new. Feel free to message me, or check out LawTrades for a quick and affordable way to patent your idea.

I live a few blocks from Harvard Square. Housing prices are crazy, but I was lucky enough to buy before they exploded. Thanks to the commercial success of Kendall Sq, Cambridge has a strong tax base, so our taxes are reasonable — about half of neighboring Somerville’s per dollar, so about the same as Somerville’s per square foot.The Harvard academic calendar is part of our life. During Commencement, the area is flooded with oversized and overpriced cars driven by out of town drivers who don’t know how to navigate and how to behave. During freshman move-in, cars double park. During spring dorm move-out, lots of stuff is available for free on the sidewalks. When Summer School starts, ambitious high schoolers and their parents flood Harvard Square. Whenever parents are around, restaurant reservations are hard to get. There are brief lulls in the summer after Commencement and again after Summer School ends when the city empties out. Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years are similar.The tourist season, on the other hand, is largely driven by European vacation schedules. You hear a lot of Italian, French, and Spanish in the streets during their various spring breaks. Those restaurants which are listed in guide books have long lines, and make good money selling overpriced hamburgers. East Asian tourists usually come in tour bus-fuls, and their passengers block the sidewalks as they’re loading and unloading.There are lots of restaurants in the area at every level.All the Harvard museums are interesting, though admittedly the Yale art museums are much bigger and more complete (but then, they don’t have the Boston Museum of Fine Arts across the river). Local residents can visit them for free.The Harvard libraries are fantastic, but only some are open to the public. The biggest research library (HCL/Widener) is only open to current affiliates, alums (for free), and serious researchers (for a price).Cambridge is a hybrid of city and suburban living. Most of it is low-rise, and very walkable, yet high density. You don’t need a car, but if you want, there are shopping malls nearby.The Red Line subway line stops in Harvard Square, and gets you to downtown Boston in a quarter hour or so. With a change at South Station, you can get to the airport quickly and efficiently.

In relation to what? And what do you mean by “good?”Overall, the first thing I had to do when reading this question is google “NYIT.” It shows that it’s not recognizable to most. Maybe employers in the New York area might know it, but frankly, out of the area, I would say very little do.I produced a piece on what colleges are the best earlier this year. I’ll copy and paste it here to help maybe understand what I consider at least is a “good college.”I’m sorry if you were hoping for “yes, it’s a good college,” but again, it depends on what you mean by “good.” It could be considered good to some, but overall, I am always looking at “the best.” So, please understand why my answer may be this way.Which Top American Colleges are Truly the Best to Earn a Degree in 2016?For over 20 years, I’ve analyzed the many lists and surveys* about the Top Universities in the United States and the World. A recent inquiry from one of our valued clients reminded me there is significant need to “educate” people in Hong Kong and the world about these rankings and share what I’ve learned. As a result, I’ve decided to aggregate some of my best advice and share it with all of you.It was incredibly important for me to spend this time finally because the landscape is confusing.As you can see from the listing in Wikipedia on College Rankings, there are 19 different rankings they list right away. And these are ONLY the global rankings.If you examine the Regional and National rankings, there are many separate articles that elaborate on how individual nations evaluate higher institutions of education. For example, 3 publications are known to rate colleges in the article on university rankings in the uk: Mayfield University Consultants have created The Complete University Guide, the top UK newspaper regularly publishes a College Guide and The Sunday Times publishes the Good University Guide (and note, this is only one of the 29 different countries they list).The USA has become known for Top UniversitiesAt the same time, the U.S. rankings have become almost the default list of schools for “the world.” As written earlier, the United States supposedly hosts many of the Top Universities. We explain how US universities outdo their european counterparts even using UK based publications. In the same article cited above, the US’s set of rankings was the most exhaustive. It listed 16 different sets of rankings plus a number of “others” which pushes the list to potentially over 20 that are “well known.”There’s the grandaddy of them all: US News & World Report. It’s been around since 1983. This list has so much power that Michael Luca in 2011 claimed that:“The ranking order of universities has been shown to have great effect; a one-rank improvement leads to a 0.9% increase in number of applicants.”In the most recent National Rankings (within the US), they listed Princeton University in New Jersey as #1:And their Top Liberal Arts rankings places Williams College in Massachussetts as #1:While the publication lists their methodology very clearly on their website, do you ever wonder if their location in New York city has anything to do with the fact that all 6 of these Top Universities are in the East Coast? Hmmm…However, if you look at the Top 5 Employers in the world, the #1 company is based in the west coast and founded by two “west coast university” grads. Hmmm (again)…Google was founded by two Stanford graduates. Why is this University which has the lowest admissions rates of all collegesfailing to place in the top 3 in the most recent “grandaddy of all rankings?” Shouldn’t the most sought after university in the world be #1?Also, if you look at the following wired magazine article which analyzes all the universities where Google employs its staff, you can see that it is definitely not Princeton. The schools that “feed” google are the likely candidates like Stanford & UC Berkeley or two other tech behemoths: MIT & Carnegie Mellon. However, UCLA grads also find a way to get into Google more than the average college graduate. However, if you look at the graphic and read the story, you will hear that there are a good number of x-Microsoft employees now at Google. Where do Microsoft employees normally graduate? Well, below, you will see some analysis on the UW and that’s where a significant number of Microsoft staff finished college.In 2003 through approximately 2006, I was the #2 sales person in a Real Estate office in Bellevue, Washington. I sold a $1.75 million dollar home to Adrian Beltre, an MLB all star. In the contract though during the sales process, the seller was this gentleman who was being recruited by Google. He was one of the top minds at Microsoft, but after I “googled” him, I found that the search engine company was being sued by the PC Operating system company for “stealing away” talent from the old wall street darling. Let’s just say it wasn’t going to be the only Microsoft employee that Google stole away. Hundreds, if not thousands of Microsoftees were becoming Googlers, but again, where did the Microsoft employees start? The UW.How about “Visvesvaraya Technological University”? Well, obviously IBM has or its HR recruiters. The graph above clearly shows many somewhat lesser known universities are still good to its graduates.How about Goethe-Univ Frankfurt am Main? The German University ranked #10 in a New York Times list which was compiled by asking recruiters from 20 different nations in terms of the “employability” of their graduates.However, what do “we” seriously mean by the “Top Universities?”Many people don’t realize that it’s not just what our parents or what our friends think are the top institutions of higher learning (unless they are heads of venture capital firms or managers of human resource teams).In actuality, what REALLY matters is what do recruiters or hiring decision makers think? In other realms like venture capital, what really matters is what do the people who are funding startups believe? And if you’re pursuing additional university education, what do the graduate school admissions folks believe are the top universities in the world. It doesn’t exactly matter what you learned, but it truly matters what others believe you may have acquired at your “high quality institution of learning.”So, the above list that identifies the German University should be taken seriously despite the lack of awareness of the institution listed at #10.Obviously, you have heard of the rest of the Top 10:HarvardYaleCambridgeOxfordStanfordMITColumbiaPrincetonImperial CollegeImperial College though? As an American, I didn’t hear about the University until entering the Test Preparation industry. So, despite its top ranking in the UK, is it a school I would take seriously as a Hong Kong or Asian parent?How about Penn State?Well, the Wall Street Journal published an article in 2010 asking which schools were the best according to HR recruiters. They ranked these as the Top Universities they would choose candidates:Penn State UniversityTexas A&MUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignPurdue UniversityArizona State UniversityUniversity of MichiganGeorgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)University of Maryland, College ParkUniversity of FloridaCarnegie Mellon UniversityBrigham Young University (BYU)Ohio State UniversityVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityCornell UniversityUniversity of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Wisconsin, MadisonUCLATexas TechNorth Carolina State University, RaleighUniversity of Virginia (Tie for 19th)Rutgers UniversityUniversity of Notre DameMassachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT)University of Southern California (USC)Washington State University (Wazzu)University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Tie for 25th)What REALLY matters as a parent?Another reason why it’s important for me to share this knowledge is because I am also a parent of two future college graduates. My twin boys are 14 years old and I want to give them the opportunities I didn’t have. For 20+ years, I’ve been questioned about my University degree. Despite graduating in the top 10% of my class, receiving multiple accolades and being a nationally ranked debater as a high school candidate (along with obtaining admissions into the #1 University in my area: University of Washington), I decided to attend the University of Puget Sound. The university was in the Top 40 Colleges that Changes Lives. However, it didn’t “change my life” because of its reputation. It changed my life because despite the hundreds of thousands I poured into the tuition and living fees, nobody recognized the institution after they asked me “What University did you attend?” I constantly had to justify my background and prove to my peers who I was. It made me work harder than most. It may have also slowed down my career growth along with limiting my opportunities due to the brand value.And while I want my children to work harder, I don’t want them to be questioned. As a result, I constantly look for the “better institutions” that will help them “open more doors” as I have for many of my past students who have gone onto Stanford, Yale,Seoul National University, Yonsei and many other top universities.So, what are the Universities that will open the doors? I would argue the number one factor is:#1 – Brand Awareness in ANY CountryAs stated earlier, it is critical for a company human resources recruiter or manager to recognize your university. Additionally, you should have “instant respect” from all the other decision makers in the companies or the folks who might be supporting your kids with future companies. Resumes are passed around inside companies when applicants are being screened. The talk many times will be”XYZ graduated from Stanford. We should look at her.” When someone asks “Where did you graduate from?” your answer should instantly garner attention.If your child was to work in North Carolina after college and then want to go and work in possibly Sweden for a few years, what University should she choose? What if she thought coming back to Hong Kong was ideal or maybe even making a pitstop in Australia for a few years? What would be the best education choice for her?Times Education has their “World Reputation Rankings 2015” which defines:The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2015 employ the world’s largest invitation-only academic opinion survey to provide the definitive list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands.The list shows Harvard as #1 (and definitely not surprising):The other 4 on the list are obviously not pushovers for Universities, but again, the Top 4 outrank the University that is the hardest to get in (as far as the USA is concerned) and the one that significantly helped in producing what we all use to even find information about University rankings.For further support in terms of brands HR Managers or CEO’s recognize, using “big data,” The Global Language Monitor tries to:“…understan[d] that new technologies and techniques [are] necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known.”The company has evaluated the top brands in education and have come up with “brand power” lists of the top institutions of higher learning. In a recent report, they quoted the book: “2016 TrendTopper MediaBuzz of the Top 419 College Brands, 10th Edition.” It claimed that public college brands are now dominating the upper echelon. While MIT still claimed the #1 spot, the following public universities landed in the Top 10:University of California, Los Angeles – UCLA (#2)UC Berkeley (#3)UC Davis (#4)UC San Diego (#5)University of Texas, Austin (#7)University of Washington (#9)In its own report, it evaluated “Big Data textual analysis based on billions of webpages, millions of blogs, the top 375,000 global print and electronic media, and new social media formats as they appear.” With this comprehensive gauge, it determined that the top 100 brands were:2014 Rank, University, Rank in 2013Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1Harvard University 2University of California, Berkeley 5University of Chicago 7University of Texas, Austin 8University of California at Los Angeles 14University of California, Davis 18Stanford University 4New York University 15Northwestern University 34University of Pennsylvania 11University of California, San Diego 19University of Washington 13Columbia University 3University of Wisconsin, Madison 16University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 25Princeton University 10Dartmouth College 73University of Virginia 32University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 23Yale University 6University of Minnesota 20Cornell University 9Michigan State University 31Washington University in St. Louis 47Georgia Institute of Technology 21University of Southern California 30Ohio State University, Columbus 12University of Illinois — Urbana, Champaign 26Johns Hopkins University 22Purdue University 28Indiana University, Bloomington 44University of Colorado, Boulder 43George Washington University 38Texas A&M University 40University of California, Santa Barbara 56University of California, Irvine 49Arizona State University 101Boston College 25Boston University 33Georgetown University 35Pennsylvania State University 39University of Georgia 29University of Iowa 36University of Pittsburgh 37University of Miami 45Iowa State University 64Florida State University 46University of Oregon 50Wake Forest University 94University of Missouri, Columbia 58University of Massachusetts, Amherst 66University of Notre Dame 42Rutgers, the State University of NJ 41Carnegie Mellon University 51University of South Carolina, Columbia 55Loyola University Maryland 79American University 70Oregon State University 60California Institute of Technology 53Duke University 24George Mason University 59Rochester Inst. of Technology 98Californis State U, Long Beach 141Virginia Tech 17Brown University 48University of Florida 72Loyola University, Chicago 80Vanderbilt University 57University of Connecticut 179Syracuse University 52Missouri U. of Science and Technology 72University of California, Riverside 69University of Maryland, College Park 63University of Oklahoma 93Brigham Young University, Provo 106University of Arizona 67Central Michigan University 54Washington State University 143Northeastern University 81CUNY-Brooklyn 121Villanova University 89Colorado State University 132University of California, Santa Cruz 68University of Delaware 74University of Rochester 62Howard University 84St. Joseph’s University 133Case Western Reserve University 76University of Tennessee 77Miami University, OH 89Southern Methodist University 87Emory University 71Stony Brook University 88Cal Poly—San Luis Obispo 139University of Alabama 116University of New Hampshire 95University of Phoenix 27University of Kentucky 75Binghamton– SUNY 130Unfortunately, lower branded universities are just not recognized. I saw an advertisement while writing article about the University of Sydney. They displayed a banner with the following:However, why would you want to brag you are 56th? It’s like saying I finished behind 55 others.So…What if my child was not destined to be one of the chosen 5% of Stanford or the other small percentage selected at the other top 4 institutions? Well, as an American and someone who’s focused on these rankings throughout all my career, the following will be a list of Universities that are “recognized” significantly throughout the world.Here are a golden 40 on top of the Prestigious 5 presented earlier (Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT & Stanford).Golden 40 Top Ranked University BrandsThese should be strong enough universities to carry your child throughout life. Their brand power is above many of the ones listed already. The list is not in any specific order per se. However, there are some that might be considered a bit better in terms of brands:University of California, BerkeleyCalifornia Institute of Technology (i.e., Cal Tech)University of ChicagoDuke UniversityUniversity of Texas, AustinUniversity of California at Los AngelesNew York University (i.e., NYU)Northwestern UniversityUniversity of Pennsylvania (i.e., UPenn)University of California, San DiegoUniversity of Washington (i.e., UW)Columbia UniversityUniversity of Wisconsin, MadisonUniversity of Michigan, Ann ArborPrinceton UniversityDartmouth CollegeUniversity of VirginiaUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel HillYale UniversityCornell UniversityWashington University in St. LouisGeorgia Institute of Technology (i.e., Georgia Tech)University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Illinois — Urbana, ChampaignJohns Hopkins UniversityPurdue UniversityUniversity of Colorado, BoulderBoston CollegeBoston UniversityGeorgetown UniversityWake Forest UniversityUniversity of Missouri, ColumbiaUniversity of Notre DameCarnegie Mellon UniversityRochester Inst. of TechnologyVirginia TechBrown UniversityVanderbilt UniversityUniversity of Maryland, College ParkEmory UniversityUniversity Brand’s Impact – Case in Point, the University of WashingtonFor example, in many rankings lists, the University of Washington is not as visible as top ones like Harvard or even Northwestern. However, everywhere I’ve worked from Seoul to Shanghai to here in Hong Kong, the northwest school is recognized as a reputable alma mater. While the admissions rates there are higher than most of the Top 10 or even 20, it deserves its #13 ranking in the Global Language Monitor surveys.Why?Think about it. The first ever president of the United States was George WASHINGTON. The capital of the United States is WASHINGTON, D.C. Also, the University that is commonly confused with the University of Washington (Washington University in St. Louis) is actually quite strong. And since it’s confused with it, the UW gets credit for the latter’s success academically. Also, the Seattle based institution of higher education has received tons of money from its symbolic prodigal “son” Bill Gates. As of January of 2007 (8 years ago) the University received 242 million (USD) in donations and was collecting close to $1 million a day in donations. Also, as a very entreprenuerial city (home of Microsoft, Starbucks, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more, Nordstroms, Brooks Sports, Costco, MSNBC, Nintendo, PACCAR, R.E.I., Raleigh, Expedia, Brown-Haley [makers of Almond Roca], Callison, Holland America, Alaska Airlines, Safeco, PEMCO, Getty Images, Jones Soda, Cray Supercomputers, T-Mobile, Weyerhaeuser, Zillow: Real Estate, Apartments, Mortgages & Home Values, ZymoGenetics), the city also produces many other future business leaders at a rapid pace. While quiet at times, it produces some of the most savvy brilliant minds including Gates (as mentioned) or Rich Barton. To top it all off, it also has one of the best Medical schools in the entire country.The other universities in the above list provide very similar value in their regions and throughout the world. In future posts, we’ll explain.#2 – Alumni NetworkWhy did Bill Gates become the richest person in the entire world (and stay there for many of the past 20+ years)? Well, it wasn’t because he was antagonistic like Steve Jobs. Many people attribute jobs as being one of the most brilliant people in recent memory in terms of the technology space, but I would argue it’s Gates regardless of his wealth.From the Wikipedia article about Gates:He is the son of William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. Gates’ ancestral origin includes English, German, and Irish, Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates’s maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president.I’ve told this story to many students in my illustrious 10 year teaching career. The main reason is because I point out that Gates was born with a “silver spoon in his mouth.” He didn’t rise from the ghettos of America. He went to Lakeside School – probably the best private school in the Seattle area. His father was the partner of a large law firm and as you can see from the Wiki article, his mom served on the Board of Directors of the United Way. At Lakeside, he met co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen. Allen currently is worth over $17 billion, the 38th richest person in the world. Before he dropped out of Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer who was CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. Basically, Gates networked his company into one of the most powerful companies in the world. Without being able to meet some of the brightest minds in the various education settings he had been connected to, he would most likely have found worst team members and possibly even failed.Harvard, Yale and the many others we’ve listed above have incredible alumni networks. They operate very tightly and filter one another by their own University degree. It’s not a bad filter given that many times their selectivity based on simply the university one attended does vet out very smart and talented people.As popular Harvard professor Steven Pinker wrote:First, an Ivy degree is treated as a certification of intelligence and self-discipline. Apparently adding a few Harvard students to a team raises its average intelligence and makes it more effective at solving problems. That, the employers feel, is more valuable than specific knowledge, which smart people can pick up quickly in any case.Did you know President Obama went to Harvard? How about his wife? Yes, Michelle Obama did as well. It probably didn’t hurt on the way to two terms of President of the most powerful nation on earth that many of his friends were Harvard grads and so were his wife’s.With this said, I would argue the following Top Liberal Arts Colleges also deserve mention:As we wrote before, the “Little Three Ivies:” Williams, Amherst, & Wesleyan.SwarthmoreBowdoinMiddleburyPomonaWellesleyCarletonDavidsonHaverfordVassarHamiltonHarvey MuddSmithWashington and LeeColbyColgateGrinnellBryn MawrColoradoWhitman