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Job application asked for my SAT scores

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Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#211

Post by margalabargala »

reaperducer wrote: post #187
margalabargala wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are people who were forced to learn cursive smarter? They're just older. Doing this may well expose you to age discrimination lawsuits, since it's just sneaky indirect age filtering. Another example would be if you required a minimum SAT score of 1601. Sure, someone could have gone off and taken the SAT as an adult or a young child but in reality it is mainly an age filter.

Are people who were forced to learn cursive smarter? By definition, people who know more things are smarter than people who know fewer things. That's just how it works. For centuries, people have striven to improve themselves through the acquisition of knowledge and skills. It is a quirk of recent generations that so many members take pride in their lack of knowledge. I'm repeatedly bewildered by my Millennial collea…

I may be able to help with that bewilderment.

Imagine, you have two people. Person A knows cursive, person B does not. Person B knows the ins and outs of Newtonian physics, person A does not.

Which person is smarter? Which person would the cursive test say is smarter?

What you seem to have mistook for people not knowing things without shame, is people valuing knowledge not by the preponderance of its quantity but by its total when multiplied by its utility.

Otherwise I do not envy the shame you must feel at lacking the knowledge of which plants are edible, how to.clean a carcass, how to fashion a needle from bone and an axe from stone, the mixture of clays to use to make your bricks, and all manner of other once-necessary tidbits whose usefulness has lapsed for the general population.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#212

Post by apparent »

WalterBright wrote: post #209
hammock wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SAT is actually a lot easier today than it was when most of us took it. It is an hour or more shorter in length, the long reading passages have been replaced with short paragraphs, calculators are allowed, and vocabulary has been removed.

> calculators are allowed OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway. > vocabulary has been removed. I flipped through a book that coached on SAT vocabulary. I knew all the words. Oh well. I never learned vocabulary as an explicit task. I simply read a lot. I remember one question on the SAT verbal because it irked me. It asked an analogy question which required knowledge of mixed alcoholic drinks. Since I was fa…

> Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway.

Graphing calculators can be used to quickly solve certain problems, like simultaneous equations or quadratics. They can also be used to plug in multiple-choice answers to see which one is correct, without knowing how to solve a problem the normal way (or not taking the time to, at any rate).

The new adaptive digital SAT complicates things a bit, in that some questions are not multiple choice.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#213

Post by chasd00 »

WalterBright wrote: post #146
delichon wrote: post #28

Last month 2,400 University of California faculty asked for admissions to resume using the SAT "to ensure foundational fluency." Of course many employers want to ensure that too, especially when college degrees don't anymore. The widening abilities gap followed the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT, a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability. This outcome was explicitly predicted by the Academic…

I always enjoy the advocates who claim that students have mastered their subjects, but "don't test well". Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!"?

I would be much more ok with someone who failed the test but knew how to pilot a plane vs someone who aced the test but can’t figure out how to get the engine started.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#214

Post by WalterBright »

Maxatar wrote: post #204
WalterBright wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are never going to let you into a cockpit until you pass ground school, which involves a lot of math. > A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon. A teacher that cannot explain how calculus works cannot teach it to anybody. > a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer wh…

This has to be a joke... Ground school most certainly does not involve a lot of math, it's not like there's any calculus or algebra involved... it's basic arithmetic. Furthermore it's categorically false that you need to pass ground school before you're allowed to fly. Are you just making things up? >A teacher that cannot explain how calculus works cannot teach it to anybody. This is a strawman argument, I never made…

> categorically false

Google sez: "The U.S. Air Force strictly requires you to complete and pass formal academic ground training before you ever touch the controls of an aircraft"

They're not going to risk an aircraft on an incompetent student.

> A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon

I stand by my statement.

> logical fallacy

A implies B meaning B implies A is indeed a logical fallacy. But that does not rule out B implies A. A and B can be strongly related to each other.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#215

Post by eikenberry »

paytonjjones wrote: post #156
eikenberry wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a lossy testing filter better than just failing out those who can't make it? Maybe allow for larger freshmen classes and smaller latter classes or adopt community colleges and have all students start there and advance into the UC system sophomore year on. Instead they bring back what is basically an IQ test for admission.

Apply the same question to jobs and it's easy to see: why is a lossy [interview] filter better than just [firing] those who can't make it? This has enormous costs to the institution, the teachers/mentors, and of course to the person failing out. And that's not even factoring in the social and psychological costs.

Disagree. Hiring and firing is better than a bad interview process. The reason we don't have that is due to regulations and litigiousness (and the laws that facilitate it).

IMO failing to get the opportunity is worse than getting the opportunity and failing at it.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#216

Post by hammock »

WalterBright wrote: post #209
hammock wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SAT is actually a lot easier today than it was when most of us took it. It is an hour or more shorter in length, the long reading passages have been replaced with short paragraphs, calculators are allowed, and vocabulary has been removed.

> calculators are allowed OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway. > vocabulary has been removed. I flipped through a book that coached on SAT vocabulary. I knew all the words. Oh well. I never learned vocabulary as an explicit task. I simply read a lot. I remember one question on the SAT verbal because it irked me. It asked an analogy question which required knowledge of mixed alcoholic drinks. Since I was fa…

> OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway.

No, they removed all the non-calculator “thinking” and “logic” math questions. It’s calculator stuff now.

They really nerfed the crap out of the SAT. It’s so soft

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#217

Post by chasd00 »

WalterBright wrote: post #202
stephenbez wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High graduation rates are an important metric to administrators. If a professor gave a failing grade to 1/3 of the class they would be in hot water.

Caltech did not grade on a curve. I recall one class were half the class failed.

I’ve had classes like that or ones that start with 75 students and end with 5 and I went to a very easy state school (late 90s)

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#218

Post by WalterBright »

Maxatar wrote: post #210
WalterBright wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess times have changed. When I took the SAT, I did zero prep work. Nobody else I knew did prep work, either. Paul Graham recently posted SAT advice along the form of "when you finish the test and have more time, go back over the test and check for mistakes." I was kinda astonished at this advice, isn't it obvious? A strategy I also employed was to do the easy problems first, so I don't miss a question that would…

Yes, if you took your SAT among a cohort of people where none of you practiced for the SAT, then what you're saying holds true. That's not really the case anymore. Top tier students nowadays prepare for the SAT, they don't go into it blind and haven't done so for the better part of 20 years.

I didn't get a perfect score, but it was good enough to get what I wanted.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#219

Post by WalterBright »

hammock wrote: post #216
WalterBright wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> calculators are allowed OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway. > vocabulary has been removed. I flipped through a book that coached on SAT vocabulary. I knew all the words. Oh well. I never learned vocabulary as an explicit task. I simply read a lot. I remember one question on the SAT verbal because it irked me. It asked an analogy question which required knowledge of mixed alcoholic drinks. Since I was fa…

> OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway. No, they removed all the non-calculator “thinking” and “logic” math questions. It’s calculator stuff now. They really nerfed the crap out of the SAT. It’s so soft

too bad everything is dumbed down.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#220

Post by firstplacelast »

thisislife2 wrote: post #121
ogou wrote: post #23

I have seen company descriptions in job ads that list college achievements of founders. They are invariably young Asian men. I understand that it's a cultural signifier and don't judge them. But, I also understand that I will never hear back from them because I don't share that background. So, I never apply to any job listing that references college experience of either side, other than wanting a degree in general.

Someone once told me that American work culture used to be based more on intern-ship / apprentice type hiring but now obsess with formal degrees. I wonder how much of this shift in culture is influenced by the Korean, Chinese and Indian immigrants, as a formal education is a prerequisite to compete in these countries' job market? For example, it is quite common in India for employers to ask for our 10th and 12th stan…

I don't think other cultures are driving much of the trend for educational check marks. I remember my dad and uncle talking about the awkwardness of being asked where they did their MBA's by colleagues/clients in the late 90s/early 00's and them trying to figure out how to navigate that as they didn't even have bachelors degrees. And I doubt whoever replaced them when they retired had less than an MBA.

Between increased regulation and greater competition for jobs, the degree requirements keep going up in a lot of/most industries. I also think there is a tendency for those that have reached a level of educational attainment to push back on others without equal numbers of checkmarks. Once a role is populated by MBA, PhD, MS or even BS, individuals don't like to see others doing the same work with less credentials. Maybe it's a 'I had to do this, so you do too' mentality or a sense that it devalues their own credentials.

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