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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

#181

Post by duxup »

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…

The getting good grades system is very much a structured system as far as education goes. That's not necessarily wrong, but when you get out of school some folks when they get outside that system seem to struggle with knowing what to do. That's not to say they fail, but sometimes seem a bit off, waiting for the associated praise and looking for a similar system to fit into. Folks who weren't invested in such a system and maybe were more comfortable with the more nebulous world of life sometimes adapt a bit quicker.

One company I worked for loved to bring in recent MBA grads. These kids had little work experience (IMO MBAs should not be given without something like 10 years actual work experience) outside their internships or whatever. They showed up and loved to try to introduce rigid systems for success, random rules, and / or just had no initiative outside being told what exactly to do and what would get them a good "grade" (some seemed uncomfortable with anything but academic like measurements).

Granted some did just fine but it was very much the old FedEx commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA

Give me some people who have had to make some decisions, fail and start over please.

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

#182

Post by autotune »

mos_basik wrote: post #126
sudosteph wrote: post #59

I spent so much time and energy stressing over my very mediocre GPA. I had undiagnosed adhd at the time and struggled immensely with turning things in on time. I usually did above average on tests, but when there are only a few homework assignments in a semester and no-late work policy, one zero really hurts. I was able to work it back up from a 2.2 in sophomore year to a 3.0 by graduation, but that was only because…

This is encouraging to read. Right now I'm at what feels like the nadir of a similar situation, and am trying to figure out the right steps forward. I attended Caltech for CS, struggled with chronic late submissions, cratering self worth and other issues over about three years, took several short leaves ending with a medical leave and was diagnosed with ADHD. Got on medication, got a development job for about a year…

>I'm still not sure if that was the right decision. Part of me says I'm living in LA and I have a year of work on my resume, a bunch of knowledge from the tech CS program, a couple of mildly interesting personal projects on my GitHub, and I should be ok; I just need to put myself out there.

Your GitHub projects are extremely valuable, some of the more interesting companies have scripts that automatically search for open source contributors to widely used projects on GitHub . I didn't even go to college and am paid at a competitive level for my experience with recruiters contacting me daily on LinkedIn, though I'm not a pure software developer (DevOps). Keep working on those GitHub projects, solve algorithm questions on LeetCode/Hackerrank/ any of the competitive programming sites, always be learning something new. The debt and stress with a college degree isn't worth it when no sane project owner on GH will reject a PR due to college credentials, thereby continuing to increase the value of your own resume in addition to your work experience.

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

#183

Post by jedberg »

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…

Those tests have gotten easier. In fact, the SAT folks specifically made it easier because they were losing market share. Too many people were taking the ACT instead, so the SAT went back to their old format and then made it easer.

https://www.fairtest.org/sat-losing-marketshare-act-testopti...

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

#184

Post by dqpb »

A single grade serves at least three purposes:

- To give students feedback about their progress

- To competitively rank students knowledge

- To competitively rank students organizational/bureaucratic hoop jumping skills

To conflate these three things is incompetence to the highest degree. Whoever invented this system, and everyone who has ever gone along with it should be deeply ashamed.

Of course, this is an oversimplification - there are many more confounding variables packed into a single stupid grade than just these three. I really can't overstate how stupid this system is. It's not even a system.

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

#185

Post by Jach »

alexbeloi wrote: post #136
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

No they're not[0].

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

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

#186

Post by sodafountan »

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.

I'm a college dropout who's been in a position where I've had to interview people and make hiring decisions. I always hire based on who I'd most like to work with. Sometimes that candidate has a degree from a very prestigious university, other times they don't, but I always hire the person who I think I'll learn the most from or whom I think will add the most value to the company. Grades and the school you went to never tell me those things, it's your interview and personal projects that tell me that.

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

#187

Post by sodafountan »

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 couldn't care less about your GPA or what school you went to, some of the best people I know never attended school at all.

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

#188

Post by sodafountan »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #48
tfigment wrote: post #11

Still only matters for first job and then if you have nothing else to show. As a hiring manager, its a minus for me to see unless its for intern. But surprising how often i see on cvs. (Speaking as former top of ChE class and frequent outlier to be removed on grading curves.)

Your GPA is just about around 5 characters or so on your CV, why not put it there? It seems odd to leave it out, but it definitely doesn’t need to be the focus of your CV.

Because it's an arbitrary number that's increasingly becoming meaningless.

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

#189

Post by dragonwriter »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #156
dragonwriter wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> And IQ tests are legal to give during hiring, in just about any form, if that result correlates to useful for that job

No, “correlates to useful” is not the standard; there also needs to not be a less discriminatory alternative available.

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

No, you don't: business necessity is an affirmative defense to disparate impact discrimination claims; once the unequal impact is proven, the challenged employer is required to prove the link to job performance. If they succeed, the challenging party has the burden of showing the existence of a less discriminatory alternative.

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

#190

Post by ggg9990 »

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…

The majority of great employees don't have 4.0 GPAs, but the majority of 2.5 GPA graduates don't make great employees.
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