With the New England Patriots and New York Giants facing off in Super Bowl XLVI next month, we wanted to see where they stacked up, in terms of colleges and universities. Neither town fumbles with its wide array of schools, which have turned both areas into hubs for higher education.

The Boston, Mass., area – home to the New England Patriots – boasts elite schools including Harvard University and MIT (both in nearby Cambridge), private and public two-year and four-year universities, community colleges, and technical schools. The team plays outside of Boston, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.

Here’s our Super Bowl-worthy lineup of historic and innovative colleges and universities in Boston.

Boston University

Number of students: 33,480

Founded: 1839 (It actually began as a Methodist seminary in Vermont and moved to Boston in 1867.)

Majors: Boston University has more than 250 fields of study.

Cool fact: Boston University has seven Nobel Prize winners, including Martin Luther King Jr. (who earned his Ph.D. from the school in 1955), and 22 Pulitzer Prize winners among its faculty and alumni.

Emerson College

Number of students: 4,290

Founded: 1880

Majors: Majors in the School of Communications and School of Arts are among its most popular.

Cool fact: Emerson has a well-developed comedy community that consists of several different comedy troupes.

University of Massachusetts Boston

Number of students: 15,400

Founded: 1964

Majors: UMass Boston has eight colleges and graduate schools, with the top five bachelor’s degrees awarded in management, psychology, nursing, criminal justice, and English.

Cool fact: The University has been recognized for its advocacy of human and civil rights, and works to promote social justice worldwide.

Berklee College of Music

Number of students: 4,131

Founded: 1945

Majors: The largest independent college of contemporary music in the world, offers majors in composition, contemporary writing and production, electronic production and design, film scoring, jazz composition, music business/management, music education, music production and engineering, music therapy, performance, professional music, and songwriting.

Cool fact: Berklee alumni earned 30 Grammy nominations in 2011.

If you go to or are applying to these or other schools in the Boston area, we would love to hear from you in the comments section below. Look for schools in the New York Giants area in our next blog post.

-Lori Johnston (additional reporting by Delaney Young)

When LSU and Alabama vie for the BCS National Championship tonight at New Orleans’ Superdome, we’ll see again how they match up on the field as football teams. LSU won when it played Alabama during the regular season, back in November, with a 9-6 victory. This football championship and other bowl games that have happened during the holidays are times that students, alumni, and fans look forward to so they can cheer on their schools.

As for LSU (ranked No. 1) and Alabama (ranked No. 2), both are in the Southeastern Conference and have a recent history of performing well in football (recently, LSU was national champion in 2007, Alabama in 2009). Here’s a look at how else the schools match up:

University of Alabama

Football Coach: Nick Saban

Mascot: Crimson Tide

School location: Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Number of students: More than 31,000

Year founded: 1831

Famous alumni: The Help author Kathryn Stockett, football players Joe Namath and Bart Starr, Broadway actor and Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz

LSU

Football Coach: Les Miles

Mascot: Tigers

School location: Baton Rouge, La.

Number of students: More than 26,000

Year founded: 1853

Famous alumni: Former President Hubert Humphrey, political strategist James Carville, basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, composer Bill Conti

If you’re watching a game, see what you think of the school’s commercials, or tell us if you’ve liked any other school commercials during the recent bowl games!

–Lori Johnston

So many people admire Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away last week, for his innovation and impact on our culture and even education. And though he didn’t finish college himself, he had a connection – through his wife – to helping students make it to college.

Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a co-founder of College Track. College Track is an after-school program that since 1997 has helped more than 1,100 high school students in California, Colorado, and Louisiana get into college. The first group of minority students it worked with headed off to college in 2001, and hundreds have followed since then.

The organization even drew Justin Bieber, who performed at a College Track benefit concert in June 2011 (that event and other fundraisers helped College Track raise $2 million). Will.i.am also spoke in May 2011 to graduates assisted by College Track. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Jobs family provided “significant” financial donations to found and run College Track. Jobs’ wife remains chairwoman of the board.

College Track assists mostly low-income students who would be the first in their family to go to college. The organization starts working with students before their 9th grade year in these cities – California’s East Palo Alto, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as New Orleans, and Aurora, Colorado. It provides all types of resources – academic, social, and financial (student earn up to $1,400 for each year they participate to go toward college) – to help students find a way to go to college. Here’s how it has succeeded:

• 100 percent of its seniors graduate high school

• 90 percent go to a four-year college

• 85 percent are the first person in their family to earn a college degree

• 70 percent graduate from college within six years

Many college students helped by College Track (see these videos with students’ stories) are serving as interns and volunteers, sharing their knowledge with current high school students.

Of course, many people are wondering which philanthropies or organizations will receive some of the billions of dollars that was part of Steve Jobs’ fortune. We’ll see if College Track is a beneficiary. In the meantime, if you know of someone in any of those cities in middle school who want to commit themselves to graduating and going to college but need a little assistance, they can apply online.

A student who graduated from high school in 2007 posted a comment on College Track’s website: “To succeed, you need to find something to hold onto to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. That place for me is College Track.”

–Lori Johnston

You don’t have to look far on a college campus to see how Steve Jobs (ironically a college dropout himself) has helped revolutionize higher education.

During just two hours today at the University of Georgia, where I am an adjunct journalism professor, I saw many students serving as living reminders of Jobs’ creations:

• A female student jogging on the perimeter of campus, with an iPod attached to her arm under a T-shirt and those omnipresent white Apple earbuds sticking out of her ears.

• A group of students huddled in a classroom hallway watching a video on the small iPhone screen.

• Groups of students texting or reading Facebook or Twitter messages from their iPhones while waiting for campus buses outside the football stadium and student center.

• A guy sleeping in the student center with a MacBook Pro in his lap and iTunes piping music into his earphones.

• Students with MacBook screens open, finishing assignments or assigned reading from their laptops, able to squeeze in the work before class begins.

• Mac desktops lined up on workstations in classrooms, where students are learning video editing using Mac software, updating class blogs, working together on group projects and completing other assignments.

• Professors and students toting iPads loaded with apps, textbooks and assigned reading, often making it more affordable to buy the downloadable version instead of a traditional textbook.

The technology advancements that defined Jobs’ career help make the college learning experience more vibrant, in the moment, and even affordable. When I required my magazine writing students to subscribe to a magazine this semester, one iPad owner discovered the iPad subscription was cheaper.

Earlier this week, I sent a message to students about a class assignment, and within seconds, a student responded via iPhone. That accessibility is something that professors and students often appreciate, turning learning into a 24-7 experience.

Many students are bringing Apples to classes these days–and they’re just not giving them to the teachers.

–Lori Johnston (Photos by Michael Barone)

At last Princess Beatrice is in the news for something other than her questionable taste in fashion that was on display at her royal cousin’s wedding this summer: The 23-year-old daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson graduated from Goldsmiths College a BA Honors degree in history and the history of ideas.

Check out Bea with her proud parents. For royals, don’t they look normal?

For me, this news item evoked two reactions:

1. Even a mortarboard and tassel is better than that ridiculous Philip Treacy number.
2. What in the bloody heck is “the history of ideas”?

While I can’t even begin to explain the first one–though I am on the hunt for a Treacy replica as part of my Halloween costume this year–I have a much better shot at the second one, thanks to a quick visit to the Goldsmiths College website. The history and the history of ideas program is described as such:

This degree combines a broader study of history in general with a more specific focus on the nature of ideas and their role in history, their impact on the historical process, and their relationship to material and economic conditions, political power-structures, philosophy, art, religion, literature, science, and sexuality.

Bet you’re awake now with that last word, huh?

I was still a bit confused, and I thought maybe this was a program that got lost in translation as it traveled across the pond. But as it turns out, the University of Washington just happens to have had a program in Comparative History of Ideas for the past 30-odd years. The departmental website describes the program in this way:

By introducing students to the interrelation of ideas and society, Comparative History of Ideas demonstrates the need to consider intellectual problems from many perspectives. The goal of the program is to provide the tools of critical thinking to each student. The program hopes to engender an attitude of personal engagement and creativity within students. We encourage them to think for themselves, and to think critically about the world and the categories we use to understand it.

So, it’s a program that teaches critical thinking about . . . other people’s critical thinking? Still stumped, I checked out the course list for the upcoming year. Wow! It’s got classes in everything from feminist theory to media studies to animal ethics to…hip hop. OK, so the hip hop course still has be stumped, but overall, it sounds like like a really interesting program that probably required tons of research and writing. I definitely see how this program goes hand in hand with the history department–just not sure what type of career this might lead to for the royal graduate.

As it turns out, Princess Beatrice doesn’t really know, either. According to a spokesperson, Princess Beatrice will be taking on a series of internships to strengthen her skills in business and philanthropy. Brilliant.

–Barbara Bellesi

Can you remember when you read your first Harry Potter book? What about when you saw the first movie with Daniel Radcliffe, who was such a cute little kid when he took on role of the famous wizard? It might seem like Harry Potter has been with you almost your entire life – through elementary school, middle school, and high school. The first book came out in 1997 and the first film in 2001.

Now that the last movie – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – is out at theaters, it’s the end of an era for Harry Potter. It’s a bittersweet moment for a lot of Harry Potter fans, and that may include you, too!

This final Harry Potter chapter in film is getting a ton of attention with publications like Entertainment Weekly looking back at great Potter moments and how the film’s stars have all grown up. Radcliffe is on Broadway, for example, and we’ve written often about Emma Watson’s (or Hermione’s) college pursuits.

When the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out last year, we had fun imagining how Potter and his friends would stand out in the college admissions process. And while the series’ finale (spoiler alert!) doesn’t have Harry, Hermione, Ron, or other Hogwarts students heading off a special wizard university, the end of Harry Potter could add to your feeling that it’s the end of an era for you, too, as you finish high school.

Rupert Grint’s (aka Ron Weasley) recent comment to Larry King on CNN shows that he and other cast members feel the same way. He says: “It was kind of like the last day of school, and I remember packing up my dressing room and putting all these kind of odd birthday cards and toys that I’d kind of collected over the years …  It was quite a big kind of shock, really, kind of, leaving it behind.”

As you say goodbye to Harry Potter, savor the impact the book series and films might have had on your childhood.

Maybe those hefty books encouraged you to read more. Maybe you formed friendships with other Potter fans, who also stood in line – wearing broken glasses, wizard-like cloaks, and a fake lightning-bolt-shaped scar on your heads – for the midnight showings of the movies. Maybe it helped you and your parents find something to enjoy together throughout your school years.

And as you head off to college, you’ll savor those memories, but now it’s time for the next era of your life, just as the stars are moving onto a new chapter in their careers. And if you get nostalgic during fall semester, don’t worry – Rowling’s Pottermore site is set to launch in October!

–Lori Johnston

If you’re spending your summer scooping  ice cream, keeping a close watch on kids at a pool, or lathering on the bug spray for another nightly campfire as a camp counselor, consider yourself in A-list company, as all these jobs have been filled by celebrities before they got their big breaks. After all, before they were pulling in the big bucks, stars and musicians had to find ways to make money during the summer, too. So whose footsteps are you following in this summer, before heading back to high school or college?

John Krasinski: “The Office” cutie went off to camp when he was a teenager, serving as a counselor at Camp Chickami in Massachusetts. He told Access Hollywood: “I had a summer job that I loved. I was like 16 and I was somehow given the responsibility of the 13-year-olds. So we were just a couple years apart from probably hanging out and I had to be like ‘no don’t do that.’ And then I’d go do it. It was this weird, bizarre thing where I probably could have been beaten up by half of them and it was a really fun. It was a fun summer.”

Tina Fey: No joke – the Emmy award-winning actress and Sarah Palin look-a-like worked at a swim club’s snack bar as a teen.

Gwen Stefani: Stefani served up Dilly Bars, soft-serve cones (my favorite is chocolate-covered!) and more while working for Dairy Queen. When her brother Eric formed No Doubt with other Dairy Queen workers, she joined as another vocalist, People reported. We’re thinking her success calls for a special summertime Blizzard in the fashionable singer’s honor!

Mick Jagger: The Rolling Stones front man also got into the frozen treat business. He sold ice cream from a cart. We guess it was memorable – a couple of years ago, he reportedly offered to buy a vintage ice cream van, but the owner turned him down.

Sean Connery: Before he was 007, the debonair actor was in a life-saving role as a lifeguard, his bio says.

So if you’re getting ready to head to work today, think of these future celebrities heading to camp or dishing out ice cream. Are you one of them? Dish up what you’re doing this summer in our comments section below.

–Lori Johnston

We know it’s tempting to update your status or post photos from your summer vacation on Facebook or other social media sites to share your fun and even your slightly crazy side, but whether you’re in high school or college, you need to think about holding back from making all your escapades public. Hasn’t former Congressman Anthony Weiner taught us anything?

We love being your source of information and discussion about going to college and surviving in college, and we want to caution you about how actions during summer vacation or beyond could impact your college experience or career decision.

Keep Your Shirt On

Cathie Black, former president of Hearst Magazines (who was also chancellor of NYC Public Schools briefly this year) gives this frank advice in Ivanka Trump’s book The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life:

“If you’ve put up pictures of yourself [on social media] dancing topless and drinking your little head off, they’re out there for all to see. You can’t get all indignant if a professor or a potential employer seeks out your Facebook or Twitter or MySpace account. You can’t say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be looking at that.’ If you’re an employer and you have a choice of ten applicants or one hundred and ten, you’re going to choose the one who keeps her shirt on. End of story.”

Well said, Ms. Black!

Pause Before Your Prank

During my freshman year of college, my friends and I constantly drove past a gas station and convenience store in our town bearing the name of another friend – Sam’s Gas. One night, we decided that we wanted to remove the store’s sign from the road, throw it in our trunk and put it in his apartment. I had never stolen anything, and I remember driving to the store thinking it was ridiculous that we were going to do it, but I wasn’t bold enough to say no to my friends. Thankfully, the sign was too heavy and large to fit into our car, saving us from stealing the sign, which could very well have turned a harmless prank into possible arrests.

If you’ve been known as the class clown or are a little mischievous, realize that the pranks you’re involved in during your senior year of college could get you involved with the police. Even if they don’t involve illegal activity, it could tarnish your reputation. Save your cash for books (and beer if you are of age), not bail.

Remember: A Tat Can’t Be Easily Erased

Some students have turned getting a tattoo a college rite of passage, as it symbolizes your independence and a right to express your personality. While some professions are a lot more accepting, others want tattoos to be covered up, regardless of whether you’re working in a part-time job, as an intern, or after you graduate. So in making this decision (especially if it’s made spontaneously and late at night), try to remember that you need to consider where it is placed.

Case in point: A basketball player for UC-Irvine, Darren Moore, got a Spiderman tattoo that covers most of his upper body. Good luck to him with that! Remember, an image that’s important to you in college may not reflect your interests and personality after you graduate, but you’ll still have to bear it unless you pay for its–ouch!–removal.

–Lori Johnston