With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by lev99 » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

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…

I think 2.9-3.3 is the ideal range. I pass on anything less than a 2.5 or more than a 3.7 unless there is something else in their resume that makes up for it.

GPA signals a lot about a candidate.

If they graduate with a low GPA it means they are okay staying with a path of life they are not succeeding in. I'd prefer if they dropped out and did something nonacademic, because that signals they noticed something wasn't for them and searched for a better fit.

If they graduate with a very high GPA it signals they are a perfectionist, that they do well in highly structured settings, that they are obsessive about stats, and that they highly value authority.

A 3.0 with a good attitude and success in life outside of academia signals that they can identify important metrics of success and complete them, but are not obsessive about them. It signals that they do not take authority too seriously (parents are often the largest motivators for people with very high gpas). The goal is to determine how the 2.9-3.3 spent their extra time not chasing stats, and if those experiences will bring anything to the team. I look for things like internships, team sports, volunteer work, part time work, clubs, and awards.

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

#162

Post by BeetleB » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

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…

>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.

As someone who has interviewed and been a TA at a top school, I would not be so quick to dismiss - especially for a broader definition of cheating.

In the school I went to (and I've anecdotally heard this is common for many top schools): Most professors don't change their homework sets and often don't change their exams either. The place was loaded with students who would get the assignments from older students and just memorize. As a TA, I remember one student who consistently only got the answers correct for questions that came from previous semesters, and got all the more original questions wrong - even trivial ones.

He was an extreme case, but the sentiment was strong in the student population, and is just as another commenter out there described: People who got to top schools tend to optimize for GPA, and not for learning. Most of my fellow students would refuse to learn anything beyond what was needed to get an A.

I get what you're saying: Live coding is not for everyone. But I also get what the GP is saying.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #146

traviswingo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We hired someone like this, thinking their “street smarts” would give them an edge and make them a good employee. What happened instead is that they struggled with discipline. They were late to client meetings, they missed important deadlines (rest of us had to pick up the slack), you name it. They were indeed street smart and stood out in terms of creativity, but their lack of what is typically called “work ethics”…

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #141

traviswingo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would you prefer a self starter with a 4.0 GPA or a 2.0 GPA?

The self starter with a 4.0 GPA is a highly paid lawyer, or something, and is not in your applicant pool.

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

#165

Post by recursive » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

make3 wrote: post #89

paulie_a wrote: post #81

I occasionally interview people and review resumes. There are two things I don't even bother looking at: where you went to school and what your GPA was.

then you're one of the only ones

I am also one of the only ones.

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

#166

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #150

wenc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a significant tendency on HN to unduly discount good grades. I think this is a mistaken tendency due to univariate, linear thinking. Grades are not everything, but they are not nothing. The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking. Good grades can be a proxy for metaskills like discipline, cognitive ability, etc. They don't always measure these things perfectly, but the corre…

Yeah, compensating factors are a must. If you have a screening function that correlates with both ability to do the job and GPA independently, though, then conditional on passing the screen, the better candidates have a lower GPA. You've essentially got a noisy test for the sum of ability + GPA, so if the sum is high and they have a low GPA, the source of passing the combined test has to come from higher ability. Thi…

> SAT scores are not generally correlated between Math and Verbal, but if you screen based off "incoming Freshman to a particular college", an inverse correlation comes up. This is because admittance is based off the sum of the scores

Your second point is correct, but your background is wrong; SAT math and verbal scores in the general population are strongly positively correlated, not uncorrelated.

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

#167

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #138

madengr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sopho…

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by randcraw » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

It's time to do away with grades entirely. Do what many Indian schools do -- report your score as a class percentile. At end of term, you don't get a grade, only a percentile. No curve. No score inflation. No bias.

What's more, each school should report your score only relative to those of your peers. You should be compared only to other engineers, to other history majors, to other biology majors, etc. Because performance in physics is incomparable to english, education, or art, it's absurd to contrive a relative metric of comparison (AKA grades) to conflate them when none can possibly be meaningful or fair. Grades do an injustice to everyone.

As for comparing students from one school to the next, entrenched standardized tests like GREs have become a nightmare. Especially in terms of STEM curricula, schools often differ radically in how much they challenge the students and how far their skills develop by graduation. There simply is no way a three hour multiple choice test like a GRE can accurately reveal the difference between someone who attended Columbia vs Lehigh, for example. But a big difference there is. (I know since I attended both.) To pretend that some quick A/B/C/D/E test, which explores none of the practical skills learned in labs or projects, can accurately AND reliably reveal a meaningful difference among 'peers' -- this does a disservice to everyone.

Finally, there's no better illustration of disparity in the academic ranks than the rise of for-profit degree mills during the past couple of decades. The pretense that millions are not being cheated by these 'schools' is simply an abomination. I blame unchecked grade inflation and academic elitism for the tolerance for slap dash scholarship assessment that the sorry state of these 'schools' has revealed. As long as we avoid a precise and accurate accounting of the scholarly performance of the individual and the academic product of the university, we will continue to confuse student merit and invite charlatan schools to victimize their customers.

Somehow all these forms of false credentialism must end, and soon, or 'college' really will become the stinking albatross that Mark Cuban and others claim they are.

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

#169

Post by sadamznintern » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #143

sadamznintern wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 peopl…

Thanks for sharing. Still curious how sustainable the lifestyle is if you're married, or if it's possible at all. Any thoughts? The folks in Phoenix out here can't make that type of money unless they're a Principle Software Engineer/Architect/VP or higher if they can manage to negotiate it otherwise it's reserved to management. Anecdotally, I've seen the CEO of Recruiting.com underpay his seniors heavily.

Most people don't get married in their early/mid 20's anymore. At least if they work at FB/Google and are native-born Americans. And if they do, their partner makes about as much at a similar company.

> The folks in Phoenix out here can't make that type of money unless they're a Principle Software Engineer/Architect/VP or higher

If they work at Amazon they can as an L6 or above.

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

#170

Post by chillacy » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

randcraw wrote: post #168

It's time to do away with grades entirely. Do what many Indian schools do -- report your score as a class percentile. At end of term, you don't get a grade, only a percentile. No curve. No score inflation. No bias. What's more, each school should report your score only relative to those of your peers. You should be compared only to other engineers, to other history majors, to other biology majors, etc. Because perfor…

One of the smartest guys I knew from high school went to a top college for CS and went from being an valedictorian A student to getting Bs and Cs for the first time in his life. It greatly affected his perception of himself and he dropped out of the industry after getting his degree in CS. But he's actually a more capable programmer than lots of top graduates, so I agree that there should be some way of comparing students from one school to the next.