Money was a major factor when international students are considering whether to apply to colleges abroad. It was for Ana Tere del Toro, a high school senior from Mexico. School is considerably cheaper at home, there are more scholarship opportunities and the applicant pool is less competitive.

New management by an outside company may help some of Philadelphia's failing schools make the grade. A recent study by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government professor Paul Peterson and Harvard graduate student Matt Chingos shows that students in schools managed by for-profit companies performed better in math than those in regular public schools.

The statistics are staggering: Only 7 percent of black eighth-graders perform at grade level in math, there is a 33-percent chance that a black boy born in 2001 will go to prison and 60 percent of black, male, high-school dropouts have spent time in prison.

For most Penn students, the homeless are accepted as a fact of life in West Philadelphia, one of the things seen but not quite registered on a daily basis. That's why it's gratifying to hear about Penn students' recent outreach efforts to homeless Philadelphia residents.

Opponents of the proposed Campus Inn extended-stay hotel project at 40th and Pine streets will have to wait a little longer to make their case. Their appeal of a Historical Commission decision allowing the project to move forward was scheduled to be heard yesterday before the Department of Licenses & Inspections Review Board.

President Barack Obama's stimulus plan may provide funds for the Philadelphia Police Department to hire additional officers. The bill, which was signed into law last week, allocates $1 billion nationally for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services of the U.

Robin Harris wasn't looking to change jobs. She was more than content chairing the three-person Collegiate Sports Practice at Ice Miller, LLP, and raising three-year-old twin daughters with her husband in Kansas City. Then last fall, the phone rang. "When someone representing the Ivy League calls, you need to listen," she said.

The person sitting nearby in the library promising to keep an eye on a laptop during a Mark's Café break may not be as trustworthy as he seems - and the Undergraduate Assembly is trying to make students more aware of that. In efforts to combat a jump in laptop theft on campus over the last few years, the UA recently unveiled a pilot laptop-lock program in Van Pelt Library.

Janice Dow is a College sophomore from Los Angeles. Her e-mail address is dow@dailypennsylvanian.com

Forget Moneyball. While baseball is largely a game of numbers, no quantitative value can be assigned to the upbeat attitude humming within the Quakers' locker room only days before the season begins Saturday against Davidson and Georgetown. "We want to go down there and execute," junior Steve Gable, a co-captain and the team's starting second baseman, said.

Penn is taking its initiative to help the environment beyond the dining halls to the food trucks on campus. The Undergraduate Assembly is working with the Penn Environmental Group to encourage food trucks to use environmentally friendly containers rather than Styrofoam.

To the untrained eye, fencing might look something like two beekeepers vying to strike each other with swords. There is, of course, slightly more to it than this interpretation implies. In light of the men's team's Ivy League victory on Sunday, perhaps the sport deserves a closer look.

At first glance, cosmology - or the study of the universe - and particle physics - the study of subatomic particles and the forces affecting them - have little in common due to size differences. However, the Physics and Astronomy Department has undertaken a new program to allow cosmologists and particle physicists to assist each other in solving some of physics' thorniest problems.

With their spring break trip to sunny California on the horizon, the men's tennis team only has to endure the frigid Philadelphia air for so much longer. Of course, the northeastern terrain - or rather, the indoor sanctuary - has served the team well thus far.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this year's Penn Reading Project is certainly the shortest work to date. Rather than reading (or, in most cases, not) a book, as entering freshman have done for the past 10 years, the class of 2013 will be asked to "read" The Gross Clinic - a painting by Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins.

Is Twitter a way to stay in contact with your buddies or a manifestation of the human poetic narrative? This question and others came up for discussion as Kelly Writers House Fellow Robert Coover concluded his two-day introduction to the Penn community with an interview yesterday at KWH.

Yesterday, 2,700 Africans died of malaria, 144 South African women were raped and 14,500 children under 15 were infected with AIDS. International development efforts need both more time and more money to help eliminate these tragedies. Thus the College Dean's Advisory Board announcement that it will be developing an international-development minor must be met with praise.