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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

#151

Post by commandlinefan »

latencyloser wrote: post #54
hitekker wrote: post #39

For college students, I absolutely recommend transferring up if your GPA is above 3.8 and you're attending a lower-tier school. Your alma mater will resonate throughout your career. Your GPA will disappear after your first or second job. Better to get a C at MIT than an A at RPI.

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…

> As someone who went to a "lower-tier" school. I hate how true this feels sometimes.

So much so that I often feel like I would have been better off never having gone to college in the first place than having gone somewhere not in the top 50 (or even in the top 10). Presenting yourself with no degree at all as a "tenacious, self-taught fighter" feels better than "I went to the University of Bubba because MIT said you're not smart enough" (plus MIT is really far from where I grew up and really expensive). On the other hand, I've worked with plenty of really smart programmers who don't have a degree who've felt that not having one has held them back - although I've always wondered why they don't just go back and get one.

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

#152

Post by majos »

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 suspect that lower GPA students have higher variance but lower expectation outcomes than higher GPA students. Higher GPA students, at least when the coursework is serious, tend to be at least one of extremely bright and extremely conscientious (I would guess most are a little of the former and more of the latter).

The conscientious and prudent possibly have less tolerance for or interest in risk, so they're less likely to hit a home run, but their floor is pretty high.

At a more general level, I'm not fond of the common idea that people who are proficient in area x are probably deficient in area y (where area y is usually implied to be more important). It often seems to me like a face-saving technique for aficionados of area y.

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

#153

Post by commandlinefan »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #121
hitekker wrote: post #39

For college students, I absolutely recommend transferring up if your GPA is above 3.8 and you're attending a lower-tier school. Your alma mater will resonate throughout your career. Your GPA will disappear after your first or second job. Better to get a C at MIT than an A at RPI.

Unfortunately, if you have "only" a 3.8 good luck transferring. I looked into it my freshman year (I had a 3.89 :/) but getting into any of the top-tier schools is even more difficult as a transfer than out of high school, especially since I hadn't started a company or done cutting edge research yet. Unfortunately, my school is going to resonate (poorly) throughout my career now.

Well, it's not really as bad as some of these folks might be making it seem - the ones who say that what matters is what you can do more than where you went to school are more right than wrong. If anything, you'll worry more about your own "lower tier" education than anybody you actually work with. There'll be a few snobs, but their opinions won't matter enough to hurt you. I started taking classes in community college while I was still in high school (they had a special program for kids with an aptitude for math and science), and had completed an associates degree from a "junior college" before I finished high school. Only thing was, my two-year degree GPA was nothing to brag about at that point. Maybe if I was smarter, I would have just started back over as a freshman at a four-year university, but I wasn't either that smart or that motivated, so I transferred to a four-year college that would accept me with the academic transcript I had. (Also one close to home). Although I managed to bring my GPA up before I graduated, I still went to a college that doesn't even show up on the "US News and World Report" list of the "smart people" colleges. I don't think it's really hurt me; it might have slowed me down just a bit and cost me some opportunities that I'll never know I would actually have had, but I'm very comfortable where I am - don't sweat it, study hard, learn a lot, and enjoy being young.

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

#154

Post by BeetleB »

noobiemcfoob wrote: post #5

There is much weight to the argument that the requirements to be a successful student have gone down, I'm inclined to believe that the requirements have skyrocketed. Students today are faced with an ever ballooning bulk of knowledge with which they are supposed to find the boundaries and gain control of enough interconnected parts to become a useful contributor to society. There's a lot of noise in the system, but th…

>There is much weight to the argument that the requirements to be a successful student have gone down, I'm inclined to believe that the requirements have skyrocketed.

I'm not so sure you are talking about the same thing as grade inflation. For a particular course, in most fields, the content has not changed in 20-30 years.

Most of my undergrad engineering classes have not changed in 20-30 years (with the exception of the software ones). I'm pretty sure if I look at the curriculum of, say, a circuits/EM/communications course today it will be the same as it was 2 decades ago. Math courses definitely have not changed much.

I agree with you about the ballooning bulk of knowledge to be successful, but not to get a better grade for a given course.

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

#155

Post by jiaweihli »

stcredzero wrote: post #110
s-shellfish wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a 3.98 GPA for my MSc computer science but honestly it took me a long time to be able to learn how to demonstrate that ability face to face. Some people just crumple under other people, brain shorts out, whatever you want to call it. That doesn't make us bad developers or computer scientists, just makes us humans who prefer figuring stuff out at a computer, and gradually growing trust with how to solve problems…

Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. I used to say that being a great programmer was being a professional forgetter -- in that you had to know how to forget vital details without getting yourself hurt. So, like a professional tumbler, or a stunt-person specializing in falls. It isn't about the falling. Anyone can fall. It's the expert who can fall without getting hurt. If yo…

> It's the expert who can fall without getting hurt.

This is great, I'm definitely using this analogy in the future.

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

#156

Post by ChrisLomont »

dragonwriter wrote: post #133
xyzzyz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

>it is illegal in the exact same conditions as IQ tests

And IQ tests are legal to give during hiring, in just about any form, if that result correlates to useful for that job. Since we're talking about jobs where IQ/GPA may well correlate to candidate quality for that position, this is not an issue.

You have to first show there is no correlation between GPA or IQ and job performance to claim it's not legal.

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

#157

Post by BeetleB »

latencyloser wrote: post #54
hitekker wrote: post #39

For college students, I absolutely recommend transferring up if your GPA is above 3.8 and you're attending a lower-tier school. Your alma mater will resonate throughout your career. Your GPA will disappear after your first or second job. Better to get a C at MIT than an A at RPI.

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…

>That being said, the only time I feel this is in social settings and it's usually minor. People ask where I went to school and then I usually get an "oh?" back, as they've never heard of it. But it's never really impacted my professional life to my knowledge.

I work at a top tech firm, and while we hire across the board, at the micro level I have seen strong biases by some managers for the top tech schools. As an example, I once forwarded the resume of an undergrad whose GPA was decent (not stellar), but whose resume indicated strong initiative and interests related to software (Lisp, etc - material not taught in that school). He made lots of excuses not to even interview this person. And later hired someone with a really low GPA (low 2.x), but he was from Berkeley! This person did well in the interview, but the candidate from a lower ranked school never even got an interview.

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

#158

Post by commandlinefan »

tracer4201 wrote: post #120
bhouston wrote: post #69

I do a lot of interviews and I am pretty sure that quite a few students are cheating to get high grades. There is no way that I get a student who has a A average in computer science and then I ask them to do some simple coding and they outright fail. The some people cheap right in the interview, I step out of the office and then quick come back and I see they have their cell phone out to copy from. I am sure cheating…

As someone who has interviewed and been rejected several times, I don't think cheating is why someone with good grades would do poorly at a coding interview. Some people are good test takers on paper. Ask me to whiteboard some code, and I genuinely get stuck on trivial problems because whiteboarding coding questions is not what I am great at. I've worked at Amazon and now I am at Google - after alot if stress, anxiet…

> whiteboarding coding questions

Ah, you haven't figured out the trick. When somebody asks you to whiteboard something, write down all the nouns they said, draw boxes around each noun, and draw lines randomly between the boxes. Keep talking and pointing at the boxes and the lines, and then draw circles around some of the boxes (but keep talking - this is important). Point emphatically at some of the boxes, underline some of the words, and redraw some of the lines - bonus points if you can use different colored markers. As long as you keep talking, the interviewer will get bored, assume you drew something smart, and offer you a six figure salary.

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

#159

Post by analog31 »

JTbane wrote: post #8

It seems there is a moral hazard involved here- administrators pressuring professors to pass more students, which leads to grade inflation. All this to retain students and keep the tuition money flowing. I'd love to hear from front-line profs about this issue- does grade inflation need to be addressed?

I taught for one semester at a big ten university, many years ago. And I live in a college town, so I have a lot of friends and relatives who are teachers.

It's widely held that student evaluations are proportional to the grades that the students expect to get. My office mate, and a professor, were co-teaching a course, and they got into shouting matches about grades, because the professor was up for tenure, and wanted better evaluations from his students.

In addition, students will badger their teachers for better grades, and dealing with it adds to the workload and stress of teaching. After each exam, I had a line of students at my door, asking me to review the grader's marks.

My view is that it's always marginally easier to give out higher grades, even if there's no overt pressure from above.

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

#160

Post by akhilcacharya »

commandlinefan wrote: post #153
akhilcacharya wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, if you have "only" a 3.8 good luck transferring. I looked into it my freshman year (I had a 3.89 :/) but getting into any of the top-tier schools is even more difficult as a transfer than out of high school, especially since I hadn't started a company or done cutting edge research yet. Unfortunately, my school is going to resonate (poorly) throughout my career now.

Well, it's not really as bad as some of these folks might be making it seem - the ones who say that what matters is what you can do more than where you went to school are more right than wrong. If anything, you'll worry more about your own "lower tier" education than anybody you actually work with. There'll be a few snobs, but their opinions won't matter enough to hurt you. I started taking classes in community colle…

> I started taking classes in community college while I was still in high school (they had a special program for kids with an aptitude for math and science), and had completed an associates degree from a "junior college" before I finished high school.

I did this too, so I can definitely relate there. Went to undergrad 15 miles from home and commuted my last year.

> and enjoy being young.

I'm afraid only the elites get to enjoy themselves when they're young. The rest of us aren't so lucky.

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