151–160 of 480 posts
When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, you can expect that they are going to throttle back once they're away from home with way more free time than is normal. From my kid's experience: she was up at 6:30am, in AP classes by 7:30am (three more to go during the day). Classes were done by 3:00, then sports practice…
When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, you can expect that they are going to throttle back once they're away from home with way more free time than is normal. From my kid's experience: she was up at 6:30am, in AP classes by 7:30am (three more to go during the day). Classes were done by 3:00, then sports practice…
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Why only students who got in based on ethnicity? What about students who only got in because their parents are wealthy or alumni? Or students who get in because of athletics but wouldn't otherwise meet academic admissions criteria? I don't know why there's all this focus (and pushback) on race based admissions when there are multiple other meritless avenues for students to get into college. That people focus on eliminating one and not the others is very telling.
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For some reason that doesn't make me feel better. If college is supposed to prepare kids for the real world, we should be creating environments that simulate the real world as much as possible. Creating a consequence free semester is the polar opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, you get a job, and you're on probation for your "first semester" when the scrutiny is at its highest. You don't get the…
Genuine take: maybe it would be more efficient for the economy and society, as well as better for everyone involved individuall, to make room for the ease in period as well, with a clearly communicated end towards the same, so people can acclimatize? Speaking as someone who grew up in a slightly more cruel world, but still received way more kindness than previous generations (did not die of previously deadly respirat…
How about we work on making things not suck
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For some reason that doesn't make me feel better. If college is supposed to prepare kids for the real world, we should be creating environments that simulate the real world as much as possible. Creating a consequence free semester is the polar opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, you get a job, and you're on probation for your "first semester" when the scrutiny is at its highest. You don't get the…
Genuine take: maybe it would be more efficient for the economy and society, as well as better for everyone involved individuall, to make room for the ease in period as well, with a clearly communicated end towards the same, so people can acclimatize? Speaking as someone who grew up in a slightly more cruel world, but still received way more kindness than previous generations (did not die of previously deadly respirat…
The idea of “ease in” periods is nice, but it’s incredibly challenging when the business is understaffed (and hence hiring) for a specific role. You don’t have a lot of extra bandwidth on the existing team to cover for the new guy while he settles in.
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The UC system and many other of the top universities in the country have also stopped looking at SAT scores. Growing up with no one in my family having gone to college I had no idea how any of this stuff worked or anybody to tell me its important. Eventually I moved to a middle class suburb and saw kids hire private tutors for it. Meanwhile I remember 2 days before I had mine scheduled and had to find someone to beg…
I'm a fan of selection by lottery for kids that can clear some reasonable bar.
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Sorry if this seems naive but do students in America actually work that hard these days? Modern television and social media seem to suggest they are all on drugs and doing God knows what
This is fairly representative experience for high achieving students. When I was in high school, I was typically up at 6:30 AM to get to my 7:00 AM AP class. Classes can end anywhere from 3-4 pm, depending on your course work. After school clubs and activities ranged from commitment. But we were under the assumption that it mattered a lot for college admissions, so many of us participated in 2-3. Once you got home, y…
Frankly reading about students with six hobbies and after school activities and volunteering is exhausting. I can’t emphasize this enough: that kind of grind is wasteful, and makes you look just like everyone else.
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Check your racism guy
For people that find this controversial: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2023.2... "Our findings reveal that gradeless learning can increase motivation and reduce surface learning but has no significant effect on students’ later academic achievements."
For some reason that doesn't make me feel better. If college is supposed to prepare kids for the real world, we should be creating environments that simulate the real world as much as possible. Creating a consequence free semester is the polar opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, you get a job, and you're on probation for your "first semester" when the scrutiny is at its highest. You don't get the…
It should be the mission of every school, but somehow they all missed that. Given, teachers were often abysmal themselves in these topics, but things can be learned just like other stuff.
Just to be clear, a semester here is 3 months only, right?
https://ro.umich.edu/sites/default/files/calendar/pdfs/Cal_2...
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Naw. Adult life is so much easier with regards to competitive pressure compared to getting into a good college. The real world is Pass/Fail, much to the chagrin of plenty of HNers.
Sometimes I wonder where all these HNers work. The majority of "slightly below top companies" seem to consist of mediocre workers, which is fine. Employees are just doing their job and if they fuck up, even badly, it's not too difficult for them to get a new job. Meanwhile a student getting a few subpar grades, often for reasons beyond their control, should somehow be punished forever.
While HN, VCs, SJSU, and Tech are obviously not composed of the same population or applying the same restrictions, it’s certainly reasonable to highlight one similarity: the potential glory of one’s role at work directly impacts how competitive it is. That we’re currently in a nightmarish layoff cycle due to the ZIRP bubble popping and due to businesses replacing costly (and glorious) creative roles with more economical PREs (prompt reliability engineers) is amplifying this effect more strongly in Tech than in other industries, because Tech — just like the Investing industry that’s underpinned it for so long — has been saturated with glory and competitiveness.
I spent my career in tech working in the roles that do not offer glory — IT, rather than Product; Cost Centers, rather than Profit Centers — but even within IT, there were a couple of roles that had more glory and were much more competitive in their selection and evaluation criteria than others. At my final IT job, we were less strict about credentials and competitiveness with directors and vice presidents than we were about the high-glory role of enterprise architect. So while I do empathize with HN’s bias, having myself once pursued glory in tech, such competitiveness is abnormal in most jobs in most fields.