Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 278 posts

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

#191

Post by jvanderbot »

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…

My advisor said if you were getting a 4.0, you were wasting your valuable research and development time on homework. Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead.

Of course, GPA didn't improve his tenure chance as much as our R&D so, take that into consideration.

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

#192

Post by pkaye »

ScottBurson wrote: post #164
pkaye wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case what makes you think any self starter will be in your applicant pool?

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

#193

Post by ng12 »

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…

The absolute best engineer I've ever had the pleasure of working with went to the most no-name of all no-name schools. He now works on cool stuff at a big name company and is very famous within his domain. It really doesn't matter.

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

#194

Post by jadedhacker »

Capitalism has resulted in such fierce competition that now even its feeder system for employees is being compromised. There are few marks of distinction that matter anymore, resulting in ever greater precarity for even the middle classes that thought they were immune.

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

#195

Post by mike00632 »

To any young person worrying about the importance of their grades for eventually getting a good job, don't. Most everyone starts out with an entry level job and then other factors are immediately more important. Hiring considerations are more like: relevant job experience > total experience > references > whether they went to school > whether they finished school > what they went to school for > where they went to school > ... > GPA.

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

#196

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

pkaye wrote: post #192
ScottBurson wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In that case what makes you think any self starter will be in your applicant pool?

I've gotta learn how large software projects come together somewhere.

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

#197

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

losteric wrote: post #175
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 think you're assuming those advances in theory are universally available in practice. They are not. My experience as a public school student was far worse than when my parents went to school - double or worse class sizes, no teaching assistants, and occasionally the same textbooks my parents used. "Experienced" teachers were the worst - it often seemed like the only thing they changed over the years was to stop cor…

I mean YMMV applies, instruction quality is certainly going to be dependent on the institution; but that's certainly the opposite of my experience at a public (though well ranked) public university.

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

#198

Post by imsofuture »

sodafountan wrote: post #187
make3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep. Some of the best people I know either didn't graduate, or graduated in fields more or less entirely unrelated to what they do.

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

#199

Post by ThrustVectoring »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #166
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, lots of tests end up correlated with the general intelligence factor.

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

#200

Post by Leherenn »

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…

I think maths is relatively unique in that it is a really old subject that mostly doesn't depend on hardware. Sure computers have moved maths forward, but there's a lot you can do without.

High school maths is pretty much Antiquity level, though much more formal. First couple of uni years are mostly 17-18th centuries maths. Last 2 undergraduate years is 19th and early 20th centuries.

A few areas have changed though, particularly statistics I think, also computer science if you consider it part of mathematics, but have a look at a textbook from a 100 year ago, and you'll feel right at home except for the style.

Post reply on HN