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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

#231

Post by electricslpnsld »

sheepmullet wrote: post #218
joeax wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. Can you cite some research studies that conclusively show this to be the case? I'd like to counter by saying that companies like Google have largely ignored GPA as a measure of aptitude. From the article (link below): "Google doesn't even ask for GPA or test scores from candidates anymore, unless someone's a year or two out of…

> I'd like to counter by saying that companies like Google have largely ignored GPA as a measure of aptitude. I think you have misinterpreted the situation. What it's actually showing is once you have restricted the pool of applicants to the top 10% of the field GPA does not matter within the restricted subset. I can't think of anyone I know that could do well in the Google interview process but could not get good gr…

> I can't think of anyone I know that could do well in the Google interview process but could not get good grades.

In most of the Google offices the percentage of employees with PhDs is hirer than the percentage of employees with a bachelor's alone (Seattle and NYC look like the only office where BS holders are the majority). While Google might not be explicitly selecting for GPA alone, academic achievement seems correlated with employment at Google.

[1] https://hackerlife.co/company/google/san-francisco-bay-area-...

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

#232

Post by eganist »

wenc wrote: post #90
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…

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…

> We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.

I had exactly one of these guys. The reason I hired him was because he demonstrated mid-flight during a code review interview an immense capability to apply newly learned knowledge. I gave him a few (code) classes despite his background up until that point being nothing more than infrastructure-scripting, let him know he could ask absolutely any questions he wished, and would be scored on findings after he confirms he's completed the review.

Killed it. He was a bit rough around the edges in terms of social skills but I'd hire him again given the opportunity and given what he'd produced for me. He got picked up by a rather large firm in the Austin area whose name fits the pattern "A _ _ _ e"

Other hires aside from him were of the good-grades, great-work variety, but he was the exception who produced great work without that background.

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

#233

Post by maxk42 »

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

Another one of the only ones here.

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

#234

Post by taneq »

noonespecial wrote: post #94
taneq wrote: post #2

" Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super... [laughs maniacally] ... no one will be." - Syndrome, The Incredibles

Except that Syndrome's plan was to use technology to actually make everyone better , which in a way is admirable. What we have here is that we leave everyone mediocre but tell them all that they are super. Now we are left with no way to measure the people who really have put in the work to become better.

Yeah, this is more like "when nobody's super, everyone is."

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

#235

Post by internetman55 »

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.

I'm not a hiring manager but id pick A RPI student for engineering work.

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

#236

Post by walshemj »

a_c_s wrote: post #46
rxhernandez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the Cal Polys has an engineering program which curves the average grade to a C+ which automatically disqualifies the average from many engineering jobs.

A curve distorts grades: they tell you how the person performed relative to their peers not relative to their mastery of the material.

Well it tells you how well they did to the rest of the cohort grade inflation means you cant easily compare candidates across time.

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

#237

Post by internetman55 »

BeetleB wrote: post #162
tracer4201 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Sometimes you just have to admit that if you're a 4.0 student at a top school you might have bigger opportunities than learning extra material for enrichment. You might not, but you also might. Imo

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

#238

Post by hashkb »

amdsn wrote: post #140
hashkb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

That's still stupid. The freshman writing courses at GT are harder than graduate CS at UGA or Valdosta.

Edit: Valdosta doesn't offer graduate CS. But imagine that it did.

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

#239

Post by ArtWomb »

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…

Even Fortune 500 companies with major R&D budgets will tell you point blank they would rather a handful of decent engineers from Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, etc. Than the top student from MIT or Harvard.

They are simply easier to manage in day to day operations. And perhaps more adept at handling the stress of juggling a dozen plus projects simultaneously.

The corollary is that for real innovation. Your probability of a breakthrough increases by having a few geniuses at the chalkboard. But most companies aren't seeking Manhattan Project or Xerox PARC levels of radical technological advancement.

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

#240

Post by anoncoward111 »

cperciva wrote: post #177

Not all universities! Simon Fraser University uses a 4.33 point scale (A = 4.00, A+ = 4.33) and its average GPA in 2017 (2.83) is only slightly above the average GPA in 1992 (2.80). Over that 25 year period, the university-wide average grade awarded has varied between a low of 2.77 and a high of 2.85. Students complain. They complain a lot. We know that we're losing pre-med students to UBC -- which awards much higher…

Yikes, that is really depressing that admissions committees aren't able to distinguish between what is effectively the "DOGEcoin is more valuable than x because everyone gets billions of coins!"

Ultimately I think everyone should be judged on merit, like an audition, or based on a portfolio. But many businesses with deep pockets still award these types of positions based on nepotism and personal connections

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