Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

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…

So why not try random instead? It sounds like a great opportunity for an experiment. Say you have 20 slots, pick 10 using the GPA/nitpick method, and 10 at random, and then compare the results 5 or 10 years later.

I’ve done that a few times when I’ve had to hire people very quickly.

I numbered each resume without reading it and drew lots. We had 6 people interview ~30 people for 10 slots. Each person had 15 minutes to talk. Candidates were out of the running if 3 people said “no”. We stopped when we had 10 people.

It worked out pretty good, but made HR angry. We ended up with 2 bozos, but the rest were pretty great.

I worked at another place years ago where we would mentor call center agents to become DBAs and Unix people. Those folks were all awesome, and a few had GEDs only. One of them called me to thank me for the opportunity, he just became a CIO!

Personally, if you have the time, you can mentor and get better results from a marginally qualified, engaged candidate than a person with the right credentials.

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

#92

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

rajacombinator wrote: post #76

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…

Do you think your view was common in any way? GPA is a deeply flawed metric but I don’t think most people have any awareness of this.

There are plenty of jobs in banking that don’t require much beyond the ability to get a BA in whatever and a personality that tends to follow the rules.

Even in tech jobs, the narrow scope of jobs for compliance reasons enables all sorts of wacky. I had a buddy who basically performed a single task related to zoning SAN volumes and made an obscene salary for doing so.

GPA correlates to a personality that the function in the bureaucracy.

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

#93

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

6thaccount2 wrote: post #44

SeanBoocock wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think so. I was shocked to discover that over a 1/3rd of the computer science classes I TA'd as a grad student were cheating, repeatedly, on homework assignments and tests. I had come from a culture as an undergrad (and graduate student at another university) where cheating even once was a potential expellable offense. At the very least you would fail the class. In the comp sci classes I TA'd the professor wou…

Interesting. At my university it was most certainly fail the course and possibly expulsion.

At my school it was seen as a political issue.

If you got stuck in a section that was dominated by a particular group of students, you were screwed because the class had a hard curve and the group openly and blatantly cheated.

We had a faculty mentor from a different department sit in and witness what happened in an midterm, and escalated it to the administration, who made an accommodation for us.

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

#94

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

Many people here are writing about classmates that didn't care, coasted, cheated, etc., painting a picture of that as the norm. I'm sure that goes on, but it's by no means universal, or even (in my experience) dominant. I went to a middle of the road public university because I got a full scholarship. I thought I was smart, the smartest in any room-- for about a month. (It says how young & dense I was that it took so long) Then I realized I was surrounded by people who were at least as smart, plenty of them smarter, harder working (and I wasn't lazy) and intellectually curious. I was humbled (and better for it). I have also worked in higher ed technology and in contact with many students as a result, and my experience with them was the same.

So absolutely there are cynical grade chasers, and worse those that pay their way to do it. But a very large portion are not. You probably just don't know it because they aren't loudly bragging about how they got the easiest professor, coasted to an A, plagiarizes a paper without getting caught, etc. They're just doing the work.

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

#95

Post by bsanr2 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:48 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #91

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not try random instead? It sounds like a great opportunity for an experiment. Say you have 20 slots, pick 10 using the GPA/nitpick method, and 10 at random, and then compare the results 5 or 10 years later.

I’ve done that a few times when I’ve had to hire people very quickly. I numbered each resume without reading it and drew lots. We had 6 people interview ~30 people for 10 slots. Each person had 15 minutes to talk. Candidates were out of the running if 3 people said “no”. We stopped when we had 10 people. It worked out pretty good, but made HR angry. We ended up with 2 bozos, but the rest were pretty great. I worked a…

Investment > innate capability

You would think the tech industry, with its endless graveyard of technically-superior-but-undermarketed or under-supported products would recognize this.

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

#96

Post by bsanr2 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:50 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #92

rajacombinator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think your view was common in any way? GPA is a deeply flawed metric but I don’t think most people have any awareness of this.

There are plenty of jobs in banking that don’t require much beyond the ability to get a BA in whatever and a personality that tends to follow the rules. Even in tech jobs, the narrow scope of jobs for compliance reasons enables all sorts of wacky. I had a buddy who basically performed a single task related to zoning SAN volumes and made an obscene salary for doing so. GPA correlates to a personality that the function…

I see these type of comments as an underemployed college grad and don't know how to feel.

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

#97

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:52 AM UTC

woopwoop wrote: post #16

lettergram wrote: post #2

One of my family members paid their way through school writing papers for others... in the 80s. I don’t think this is a new thing. I used to do consulting / tutoring for programming. Tutoring was $50 per hour, consulting was $100 per hour. Probably 50% of the students I tutored asked me to write programs for them. I’d tell them my consulting rate, in an attempt to persuade them against this path and most wouldn’t bat…

Instructors are often unbelievably naive about this, saying things to the effect of "Cheaters are really obvious, so there can't be that much of it." No, the cheaters that you catch are really obvious.

I occasionally teach a college course as an adjunct (fun, and a little extra spending money). I don't know how wide spread cheating is, though if it were extremely common then students wouldn't struggle so much with some of the material. But personally, while I have an "instant F" policy if caught, I didn't really care: My philosophy and that of many other instructors is not one of indignant, "surely I'd know!" about cheating, It's that it's the student's time, their future debt. If they want to waste it, that's on them.

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

#98

Post by hugey010 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:20 AM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #80

cco wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never had to read and understand some data, analyze it, and then communicate your results via written word in your career? I'm totally willing to grant you that the majority of careers do not require this skill but most white collar work does. Agreed that essays are overused but I'm just surprised to hear you downplay them so much.

The handful of times I've been asked to analyze something, the result has been a list or graph with some accompanying description. I had a coworker who had a reputation for long emails. It was clear, based on hallway comments, that no one was reading them. People don't appear to have much tolerance for essays unless there's good reason for it.

Agreed. When I write an email, I usually address the topic generically, then list options or reasons or whatever, then give a takeaway or action item. Most people seem to only read the topic statement. Not sure if I have lazy coworkers or I'm not an effective emailer.

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

#99

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

cbanek wrote: post #77

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…

In my time in school for Engineering (UIUC), I think the "gaming the system" was mostly with the group projects. Many high level classes such as processor design made people form into groups of 2, 3, or 4 people to do a project. Of course like most group work, the workload is terribly lopsided toward the competent people, while the less competent people go get pizza and drinks for the others, and take up a little bit…

> Of course like most group work, the workload is terribly lopsided toward the competent people, while the less competent people go get pizza and drinks for the others, and take up a little bit of work (which usually has to get rewritten anyway). Everyone ends up with the same grade.

I was never assigned a group project in college that I didn't feel was a complete waste of time, but this situation is actually pretty easy to avoid if the professor cares.

one of my professors would require group members to individually submit reviews of their teammates with each milestone on the project. basically "did they do their fair share, less, or more?" if on average your team felt you went above and beyond the call of duty, your individual grade would be the group grade multiplied by r > 1, and the opposite if everyone felt you were a slacker. the scores were normalized so if everyone rated each other as exceptional, r would just be 1. it didn't make the distribution of work perfect, but it made everyone pretty interested in at least appearing to contribute.

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

#100

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #96

Spooky23 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of jobs in banking that don’t require much beyond the ability to get a BA in whatever and a personality that tends to follow the rules. Even in tech jobs, the narrow scope of jobs for compliance reasons enables all sorts of wacky. I had a buddy who basically performed a single task related to zoning SAN volumes and made an obscene salary for doing so. GPA correlates to a personality that the function…

I see these type of comments as an underemployed college grad and don't know how to feel.

step one is don't feel bad. it really is a numbers game. some of the companies you're applying to don't actually want to hire anyone for the position right now. some of them are desperate to get anyone with a pulse yesterday. it's all about timing, but you don't usually have a way of knowing when the time is right.

just keep rolling the dice; you'll get a bite eventually. I got an internship that lead to my first full-time job when I had a 2.4 GPA. I just happened to have experience with relevant tech that was rare in the area and they gave me a shot.