  The MINOS Collaboration continues its search for $\nu_e$ appearance in the
NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) beam at Fermilab. Neutrinos in the beam
interact in the Near Detector, located 1 km from the beam source, allowing us
to characterize the backgrounds present in our analysis. In particular, we can
estimate the number of $\nu_e$ candidate events we expect to see in the Far
Detector (735 km away, in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota) in the
presence or absence of $\nu_\mu \rightarrow \nu_e$ oscillation. Recent efforts
to improve the sensitivity of the analysis, including upgrades to the event
identification algorithm and fitting procedure, are discussed, and the latest
results from the search are presented.
