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Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

nytimes.com

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Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#81

Post by dominotw »

TrackerFF wrote: post #25

When I studied business in college, I'd say that half of my senior year class were gunning for the same banking and consulting gigs. In either case, it was known and understood that those types of employers were obsessed with your grades. Unless you happened to have the most amazing and prestigious internship / experience, your GPA would make or break your chances at such firms. At the same time, we knew from interns…

not very different from grinding leetcode to land a gig at FAANG

We are not really different from 'those types of employers'

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#82

Post by michaelt »

throwawaysea wrote: post #20
meowface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often it's more about laziness and motivation than lack of skill. A high percentage of college students can write a mediocre or above 10 page paper but also just really don't want to. They'd rather do something fun and pay someone if it doesn't cost them much. Answering (typically) multiple choice questions and short-response questions is a totally different thing. I never used such a service, but I do see the appeal…

That suggests that these assignments are more like busy work, since the students are otherwise talented and qualified? Maybe it is a good thing after all?

Perhaps doing the assignment improves the student's understanding of the course material, which the professor thinks is a good thing, but it's possible to pass the course with only a mediocre understanding of the material?

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#83

Post by swiley »

I only had one proffessor that wrote reasonable writting assignments and actually graded them based on content. You could tell most writting assignments were getting graded entierly on APA formatting and word count (if the "writting" assignment wasn't just "fill in the blanks in this word document using so many words per question.")

Near the end durring capstone people wrote the most useless wordy documents because they had just spent 4 years learning how to draw small simple ideas out into paragraphs instead of comming up with enough ideas to fill a paragraph. It's not surprising that many of them are hiring other people to write them, the whole exercise seems silly.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#84

Post by trashcan »

TrackerFF wrote: post #65
yardie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I studied Engineering, however, I didn't see much of this culture. When I studied engineering I saw almost the same culture. Firms were looking for the same students with similar GPAs and sadly I was not one of them. I distinctly remember going to the campus job fair and having my resume repeatedly being put into the "maybe" pile. My academic work wasn't amazing but my extracurriculars were a few engineering p…

My academic background from Engineering was in Electrical Engineering, so very much a "traditional" background, i.e where most firms hiring were rather old and stodgy, compared to modern high-tech SV companies. The reputable firms usually had a more or less firm cut-off around 3.0, while smaller firms were more lenient. Most reputable finance and consulting firms wouldn't even look at your CV unless you had a 3.5 I t…

When I spoke to Microsoft (circa 2004), they said I needed a bachelor's degree from a respected college like UW, or relevant job experience to even apply. I was attending a community college at the time so I volunteered to work at a tech company for free, and ended up making that a career.

Maybe things have changed but I was very disappointed.

(If academic performance is relevant I had a GPA equivalent of 4.0 or 3.6 depending on how it was measured, about a 96% average across my classes)

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#85

Post by peter303 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #25

When I studied business in college, I'd say that half of my senior year class were gunning for the same banking and consulting gigs. In either case, it was known and understood that those types of employers were obsessed with your grades. Unless you happened to have the most amazing and prestigious internship / experience, your GPA would make or break your chances at such firms. At the same time, we knew from interns…

I dont think engineers can fake it in a real world tech job. I can spot a phony software engineer rather quickly.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#86

Post by Zanneth »

BurningFrog wrote: post #19

Once you realize the point of college is not to learn things, it's to get the degree, all of this makes sense.

Not everyone is just in it for the degree. Some people actually want to learn things, expand their mind, and meet people who are trying to do the same. We should treat these kinds of students with respect and hold everyone else to the same standard they hold themselves, which means disallowing and discouraging cheating whenever possible.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#88

Post by sandworm101 »

omarhaneef wrote: post #72
TrackerFF wrote: post #25

When I studied business in college, I'd say that half of my senior year class were gunning for the same banking and consulting gigs. In either case, it was known and understood that those types of employers were obsessed with your grades. Unless you happened to have the most amazing and prestigious internship / experience, your GPA would make or break your chances at such firms. At the same time, we knew from interns…

As someone on the other side of this, recruiting for a big bank, it was depressing. The reason we defaulted to the GPA was exactly because it was so easy to do the work. Let me explain. When we visited a school (usually Columbia or NYU for me) we had 100s, usually over a 1000, resumes. When I talked to the students, they were all bright, smart, interesting and motivated. From their resumes I got the impression any of…

>> When I talked to the students, they were all bright, smart, interesting and motivated.

Lol. You obviously were not talking to them very much. Half of elite grads are boring dullards these days. They lack confidence and originality. They only bother with "projects" when they think those projects make great resume items. They never attempt anything that they think might fail. Someone who has never bombed a class or exam, never reached too far, doesn't have enough experience yet. Also, if typos on resumes cause you to drop applicants then you are missing out on great people. You think any of the kids who hire resume writers have typos? A typo is evidence that the applicant actually wrote it themselves. That's a plus imho.

The legal field has a trick in interviews, but it is applicable to any field: Ask the applicant to tell a story about something they saw happen. The one who could put a narrative together on the fly, the one that could organize their thoughts as they spoke, those are the people you want. Unless you are hiring ditch diggers, effective communication means more than base skills, let alone typo avoidance.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#89

Post by tomohawk »

6thaccount2 wrote: post #28
TrackerFF wrote: post #25

When I studied business in college, I'd say that half of my senior year class were gunning for the same banking and consulting gigs. In either case, it was known and understood that those types of employers were obsessed with your grades. Unless you happened to have the most amazing and prestigious internship / experience, your GPA would make or break your chances at such firms. At the same time, we knew from interns…

Engineering is a bit different. I found that most of the classes had professors that switched up the problems significantly every year to where old tests didn't help much. Memorization is useless when there are a nearly infinite amount of different circuit problems that can go on the test. You have to actually understand the material and how to apply it in diverse situations. You also typically find that most require…

Our engineering college had a policy that all old tests had to be on file at the library. It prevented professors from just recycling exams and deprived the cheater groups of their advantage. The science colleges did not do that, and cheating was rampant for those classes.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#90

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sandworm101 wrote: post #88
omarhaneef wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone on the other side of this, recruiting for a big bank, it was depressing. The reason we defaulted to the GPA was exactly because it was so easy to do the work. Let me explain. When we visited a school (usually Columbia or NYU for me) we had 100s, usually over a 1000, resumes. When I talked to the students, they were all bright, smart, interesting and motivated. From their resumes I got the impression any of…

>> When I talked to the students, they were all bright, smart, interesting and motivated. Lol. You obviously were not talking to them very much. Half of elite grads are boring dullards these days. They lack confidence and originality. They only bother with "projects" when they think those projects make great resume items. They never attempt anything that they think might fail. Someone who has never bombed a class or…

Half of elite grads are boring dullards these days. They lack confidence and originality.

Sounds like exactly what large consulting and banking institutions are looking for.

They want fresh grads they can put through their corporate training program, send the most sycophantic to a top MBA program, chew them up (albeit with great pay) for 10 years and throw most of them away, keeping a few as partners.

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