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With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

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Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#131

Post by throwawayqdhd »

FlyingSideKick wrote: post #71

My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially su…

I don't think grades are important at all. But the effort and discipline that leads to good grades, especially if they're in a setting that requires self-motivation (such as college - you have mom and dad breathing down your neck in school).

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#133

Post by dragonwriter »

xyzzyz wrote: post #129
tikhonj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot. This is a purely empirical question to which you seem to have simply assumed an answer. While there are difficulties to studying this question empirically there have been solid studies to this effect. I've seen a few solid survey papers on personnel selection methods; a solid exa…

Apparently most of the validity of GPA is captured by GMA, because the incremental validity of GPA is negligible (less than .01). Just because GPA is basically a worse IQ test doesn’t mean that it’s useless. In fact, if you assume that IQ tests are useful in hiring, this actually makes GPA more useful, since US employers can freely use GPA in hiring, while use of IQ is significantly more complicated.

> In fact, if you assume that IQ tests are useful in hiring, this actually makes GPA more useful, since US employers can freely use GPA in hiring, while use of IQ is significantly more complicated.

Except that's not at all true of the underlying legal standard, and if GPA is essentially an IQ test, it is illegal in the exact same conditions as IQ tests, and any temporary advantage attend from the fact that plaintiff's lawyers haven't yet recognized that GPA is factually nearly identical to an IQ test, and some employer is going to get a big surprise when they first do realize that.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#134

Post by sadamznintern »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #113
latencyloser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went to a "lower-tier" school. I hate how true this feels sometimes. My colleagues who went to big name schools all seem to be in some sort of "club" together. At least, they have shared experiences that I have no such ability to relate to. They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force. That being said, the only time I feel this is in social settings and it's usually minor. P…

> They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force. By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them. I don't work in the Bay Area, I work in Phoenix. I imagine it's a different world out there: instead of saving 90% of my income and living in a van, I own a home and save 75%. Instead…

>By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them.

That life looks like living in Seattle or the Bay or New York, making somewhere between $180-$230k a year first year out of undergrad, being able to travel for concerts and live in luxe Airbnbs with your similarly elite and pedigreed friends.

>Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies.

I think this is a reasonable viewpoint if you believe society (or even people) cares about how skilled you are in your craft. Unfortunately, society doesn't, and rather only cares about how much you make.

As such, society will always consider a jet-setting Facebook or Google new grad making $250k her first year because of a signing bonus or negotiation skills superior to someone who graduated from ASU working at Amazon/Cisco/HP/etc companies making $150k or god forbid, even less. There's a lifestyle difference that I'll never be able to match.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#135

Post by poster123 »

For each course on a transcript, the average grade earned should be shown, so that the reader can adjust grades earned for easy or harsh grading. It would be nice to see the average SAT or ACT score in the class too, to see if the "harsh" or "easy" grading is just a reflection of the quality of the students. Put this data in a csv file that employers could download, and I think smart employers would use it.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#136

Post by alexbeloi »

zach wrote: post #56

> "Academic researchers say that uptick is a sign of grade inflation, not of smarter students." I don't think this is right. There is good evidence that the highest percentiles of students (the ones populating the competitive colleges mentioned) are indeed smarter, because they have standardized test scores to match. First off, the bar for a PSAT score that gets National Merit recognition has risen significantly for…

IQ scores are also increasing[0].

Are we actually smarter than our grandparents? Or has the education system trained us to be better test takers (one of the suggested contributing factors).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#137

Post by alexbeloi »

traviswingo wrote: post #87
FlyingSideKick wrote: post #71

My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially su…

I think your grandfather was a wise man. I have frequently noticed the best employees I’ve hired are not the top students. They’re self starters, independent, and “street smart.” I actually never ask about education, simply because true intelligence doesn’t come from a classroom. The valedictorian will frequently bother me for the next task or to sign off on something, the 3.0 gpa figures it out on her own. Obviously…

The valedictorian is an 'executor', and likely very good at that crushing tasks to get the job done. The self-starter is creative and malleable and likely very good at complex problems with lots of unknowns.

Those people aren't interchangeable and it's preferable to have both to run smoothly. It sounds like you're speaking from a position of upper management, where you don't have the time to be managing an executor type person and you'd prefer more independent people directly under you.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#138

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

madengr wrote: post #117
lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so ignorant to the advancements in pedagogy over the past several decades as to be insulting. Part of, if maybe not the biggest or only factor, the increase in grades is we are just hugely better at teaching than we were 30 or 40 years ago. Teaching for mastery, the idea of reversing the role of homework vs tests (in terms of relative difficulty and exposure to new information) to better facilitate self learn…

I used that argument back in 4th grade to my parents: “Math is harder for me since there have been more advancements since you were kids”. I can only speak for electrical engineering, but the basics have not changed in 100 years. Crack open a text book from 100 years ago and you’ll find the same control theory, circuit analysis, electromagnetics, etc. The difference may be vacuum tubes vs. transistors, but the analys…

That's patently false, and your example is a straw man. Sure your grade school arithmetic hasn't increased much, but I'd assure you university maths have.

As far as EE goes, I mean sure macro-electronic theory is pretty much the same, but micro-electronics didn't even exist 100 years ago. This is now a standard required class. Digital signal processing again, didn't even exist 100 years ago, now we teach it to sophomores. The foundations that were the same have persisted and the field has done nothing but expand; this trend is replicated across most disciplines.

The data doesn't support your assessment of declining analytical skills. The ability for abstract thought has been monotonically increasing for the past 100 years.[0] I understand the appeal, oh kids these days aren't disrupting anything, my job is safe. The issue is, there's not much data to support the platitude. Globalization means you're competing with billions more people, education achievement has to increase to match; or be left behind.

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_...

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#139

Post by Smoofer »

zach wrote: post #56

> "Academic researchers say that uptick is a sign of grade inflation, not of smarter students." I don't think this is right. There is good evidence that the highest percentiles of students (the ones populating the competitive colleges mentioned) are indeed smarter, because they have standardized test scores to match. First off, the bar for a PSAT score that gets National Merit recognition has risen significantly for…

I'm unsure whether this is exactly grade inflation, but both of those graphs can be explained by increased access to information.

Obviously people studied before, but our collective information about these standardized tests has become readily accessible.

Now, general test taking tips, test-specific guides, and even full courses on tests are available to everyone rather than those who could afford a book or a private tutor.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#140

Post by amdsn »

hashkb wrote: post #55
cobookman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's similar to Georgia Tech. Undergrad Eng courses are curved to a C+. With the average GPA being a bit below a 3.0. We used to joke at all the pre med students as to why they chose Georgia Tech as just about every other school had gpa inflation. And grad schools don't take Tech's lower grades into account.

Which was totally fair given how the HOPE scholarship works. Not that I am bitter.

Except now STEM courses are weighted as of 2017 in all GA university system schools:

Effective fall 2017, when calculating the HOPE and Zell Miller Scholarship postsecondary Grade Point Average (GPA), an additional weight of 0.5 will be added to grades of B, C, and D for approved degree level science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses

I think it's good since it doesn't affect their Institute GPA but can help them keep the scholarship. I knew a lot of people who lost HOPE/Zell and the increased financial burden made keeping their grades up that much harder.

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