Sorority recruitment wrapped up on Sept. 7 with 173 women receiving bids. Recruitment this year was marked by a higher retention rate — the number of people who stick through formal recruitment — and by more women applying for recruitment sooner.

Winning the Grand Prize in MIT’s $200K Clean Energy Prize contest in May was only the beginning of an MIT startup’s success. CoolChip Technologies, which develops cooling systems for electronics, was automatically entered as a finalist in the MIT $100K Business Plan Contest as a result of winning the CEP. CoolChip has also been covered by CNN Money, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Electronic Engineering Times since their CEP win. At the end of August, however, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education cast a shadow over the success of the young company.

Alchemist, originally on loan for the duration of MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration, can now call the Institute home. The sculpture, which sits between the Student Center and Massachusetts Avenue, represents a thinking man comprised of numbers and math functions.

MIT is in a five-way tie for fifth place in U.S. News and World Report’s 2012 national university rankings. The Institute took the No. 5 spot along with Caltech, Stanford, UChicago, and UPenn. Havard and Princeton tied for the No. 1 spot, followed by Yale in third and Columbia in fourth.