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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

#111

Post by rahimnathwani »

hugey010 wrote: post #98
nitwit005 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TO: hugey010@...

SUBJECT: Put the action statement in the subject line, starting tomorrow

Your colleagues read your emails in sequence. You care that they have read the action statement so they can follow up or disagree. Putting it first will get it read.

Put the action statement in the subject line, starting tomorrow. You can also repeat it at the end.

If you have a better suggestion, let me know today please.

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

#112

Post by kwhitefoot »

I'm just glad I went to a very traditional uni that didn't do this essay stuff. We had tutorials, open note exams, and final year project reports.

Not much of that can be bought from outside and even if you did it wouldn't help you much because it all had to be defended in a viva voce.

I suppose you could buy the notes but the final quantum mechanics exam was pretty much of the character take what you have studied and answer questions that had not been discussed in the course. If you weren't familiar with the notes then I think you would have struggled as in fact many of my contemporaries did.

Well my tutor did assign me a project to be done in the long vacation after my second year but he didn't 'mark' it, we discussed it and I had to defend my conclusions. It didn't affect any grades anyway because the uni didn't do grades. There were end of year exams to check that you were keeping up but the class of your degree depended only on the final and the final year project report and its associated viva.

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

#113

Post by kwhitefoot »

user764743 wrote: post #14

To counter this sort of cheating, one of my prof had us defend our papers in a one on one 'podcast' interview with him for 10-15 minutes and then graded the paper based on our performance.

This is how tutorials work in traditional unis in the UK (or used to anyway) except that sometimes there is no paper just a discussion of the topics one is studying.

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

#114

Post by 6thaccount2 »

tomohawk wrote: post #89
6thaccount2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like a really good policy. Despite what I previously said, some people who have friends that are older seem to get an advantage as if they have enough tests, they might see a familiar problem and generally be aware of the steps to solve it and about how complex it will be without having to reason it out from scratch. This can have a big impact on some exams depending on the professor.

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

#115

Post by wallace_f »

tomohawk wrote: post #89
6thaccount2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is an excellent policy. May I ask which school?

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

#116

Post by omarhaneef »

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 think people do that. I just recommended a few, and others recommended a few and then HR took those in and whittled it down and invited some to interview.

Random somehow seems even more unfair and arbitrary.

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

#117

Post by mathattack »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #67
mathattack wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And these same folks continue gaming the system once employed by these banks. Go figure.

Isn't a lot of banking basically about gaming the system?

Yes, including one’s own employer. Anything for the external validation. (GPA or bonus)

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

#118

Post by tnecniv »

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…

I agree with you mostly, but to add my own take:

I've seen the cutoff for more desirable engineering jobs being 3.5, which is also basically the cutoff for competitive grad schools. The real distinguishing factor at that point is what kind of lab work / extracurricular projects you've produced, and it's a lot harder to hide behind a group then.

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

#119

Post by tnecniv »

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.

I think this varies a lot by professor. Typically failing a student involves a lot of extra paperwork on the professor's part. Doubly so if it's for academic dishonesty.

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

#120

Post by omarhaneef »

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.

It felt like most other people had the same view. That is also why personal networks could be used to differentiate. I don't know what it looks like now though, or if there is more concern about just reproducing what people already look like by tapping into personal networks.
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