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Job application asked for my SAT scores

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Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#271

Post by zerr »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
doctorpangloss wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how many elected leaders are in STEM? would high SAT scores and grades exclude many US presidents and congressmen? (yes) winning elections seems kind of important to me. so if you were just like, selecting for leadership - and many of our leaders are brilliant people, just not in the sense of being good at taking tests - would that be good or bad? or... what is your real opinion? what are you actually mad about? obvi…

> not in the sense of being good at taking tests The trick to doing well on the SATs is to pay attention in class.

The trick is to prepare specifically for SATs.

One would say the tests (and job interviews) should have been designed with the original intent of testing candidates AS IS, i.e. preparing specifically for such tests should have been considered as cheating... But at some point it turned into prep gymnastics, and measuring how desperate the candidates are.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#272

Post by jimbokun »

analog31 wrote: post #77
jawns wrote: post #48

As a manager, there are several qualities that I value highly in an engineer, and they all happen to begin with the letter C: Competent, Consistent, Curious, Caring, and Clear Communicators. While SAT scores might act as a proxy for competency and possibly curiosity, they're not going to tell you much about whether the person is consistently reliable, whether they care about others and cooperate well, or whether thei…

C = Competitiveness. I met an HR manager who had worked for a local but well known company with a reputation for caring about things like GPA and SAT scores. She told me that remembering your SAT scores after college was a sign of a competitive attitude.

In the same sense that the high school quarterback continues to talk about the Big Game now that he’s an overweight retail employee making minimum wage years later.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#273

Post by jimbokun »

buildsjets wrote: post #40

You cannot use the SAT as a metric to compare different cohorts. SAT scoring has been revised many times over the years. When I took it the highest possible score was 1600. From 2004 through 2016 the highest score was 2400. Now it is back to 1600 again. Plus, both the content and the format of the exam has changed many times over the years. At times, there was no essay requirement, at times the essay was required, an…

Sure but if you also give the year they can work out the percentile for your cohort.

Although that probably also outs your company at risk for age discrimination.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#274

Post by Newlaptop »

hammock wrote: post #195
WalterBright wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the notion that tests do not test relevant skills. In my long career I've noticed a strong correlation between SAT scores and academic performance as well as job performance. > I don't think the comparison to flight school is relevant enough in this context because it's a too different of a world to traditional academia. My dad kept his flight school tests for flying all sorts of airplanes. They bear a lo…

> I don't buy the notion that tests do not test relevant skills. In my long career I've noticed a strong correlation between SAT scores and academic performance as well as job performance. SAT tests intelligence (aptitude), not skills. Which is why it correlates with job performance, where intelligence can (over some time) matter as much or more than a starting point of relevant skills.

I just checked, and the SAT math section covers algebra, trigonometry and statistics.

Look at this list:

  Quadratic equations and functions (vertex form, roots, discriminant)
  Polynomial operations and factoring
  Exponential functions and growth/decay
  Radical and rational expressions
  Function notation, composite and inverse functions
  Nonlinear graphs and their transformations
A genius student who had never been taught those subjects wouldn't even know what the symbols meant. A mediocre student who had studied SAT-style questions for weeks leading up to the test would likely outperform a high IQ student who last solved those types of problems over a year prior.

Standardized tests can be a great resource for assessing students, but they're not just testing for intelligence. Test-prep courses average increasing SAT scores by about 200 points. That's not because they're increasing the intelligence of the people taking them.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#275

Post by jimbokun »

cyberax wrote: post #71
annzabelle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the increase in competitiveness being a good thing. Excessive filtering at all levels has meant that eccentrics or absent minded professor types are not making it into research roles, and creatives or mad geniuses are filtered out before they have the chance to make an impact. There are a lot of people who are extremely bright and creative, but just don't have it all together the whole time from ages…

The US education has always been competitive. In sports. Its school system has always been a state-sponsored daycare. SAT/ACT tests reflect this. I can get a perfect score in SAT math easily. And I likely could do that as a kid (I never took standardized tests at school). I wouldn't have been able to get the perfect scores in the Chinese gaokao or Korean/Japanese tests. > There are a lot of people who are extremely b…

The US has always been able to identify the truly talented students and get them into the best learning environments.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#276

Post by Maxatar »

BobbyJo wrote: post #238
Maxatar wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really comparable... the overwhelming majority of flight tests involve flying an aircraft. There is no meaningful way someone can be excellent at flying an aircraft but can't pass a test which involves flying an aircraft. The same can't be said for many other tests. If the test involves the practical application of the very skill being tested, then that test has direct relevance to he competency of said skill. Bu…

The overwhelming majority of math tests involve doing math, so I'm not sure your critique is useful in this context.

Given that I'm not responding to any claim about the efficacy of math tests... it's actually your statement which is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#277

Post by Maxatar »

jimbokun wrote: post #266
Maxatar wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really comparable... the overwhelming majority of flight tests involve flying an aircraft. There is no meaningful way someone can be excellent at flying an aircraft but can't pass a test which involves flying an aircraft. The same can't be said for many other tests. If the test involves the practical application of the very skill being tested, then that test has direct relevance to he competency of said skill. Bu…

Is there a reason you left out the SAT and ACT? Because both have been shown to have predictive power for success in college.

Because I'm not trying to make a universal claim about all tests.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#278

Post by rayiner »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #186
rayiner wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much of this shift in culture is influenced by the Korean, Chinese and Indian immigrants I think there’s an influence, but it’s amplifying a pre-existing trend. Bureaucratic societies favor formal credentials. The U.S. has become much more bureaucratic since the mid-20th century, and credentialism has grown. Reliance on degrees and other formal credentials also enables the universities to achieve polit…

how many uncredentialed people's families go to private school with what you pay them? it's one thing to hire some people for some roles with this sort of, diamond in the rough mentality. obviously that can be a good idea. but in my experience, if you try to take leadership in that way, you are spending most of your time persuading other people that it's a good idea, which they will reject, and consequently, it's of…

What you’re describing is the culture of credentialism. You can’t change it by yourself and it’s hard to fight against. But that’s my point.

The problem with credentialism is that the credential becomes the end, not a means to an end. There is a huge problem in India that there are far more people with credentials (often of dubious worth) than jobs for those people. The culture is very focused on “the track,” where you get the credential then go to the job unlocked by the credential. But the problem is that there’s very few people actually starting the businesses and creating jobs that would hire degree holders.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#279

Post by Maxatar »

WalterBright wrote: post #260
Maxatar wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are making things up... thanks for confirming that. While I appreciate that you reviewed what Google "sez"... you have misunderstood the relevant context which is that the U.S. Air Force also requires that you complete Initial Flight Training (IFT) before you start the Air Force's own formal training program (UPT). In IFT you will not be required to pass ground school before you get to fly. Furthermore, even i…

Ground school comes first at IFT https://www.baseops.net/militarypilot/usaf_ift.html Note that a tree implies it is made of wood. If you find a stick of wood, odds are it came from a tree.

>Ground school comes first at IFT

There is no singular "IFT"... you happened to find one IFT among hundreds across the U.S. that has such a syllabus, great... but it does not come first as requirement mandated either by law/regulation or convention. Here is the syllabus for a different FAA Part 61 and 141 approved IFT program that uses an integrated approach with the following quote:

"Each Module contains both a flight and ground lesson. This presents an integrated flight training process and will promote easier learning and a more efficient flight training program"

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ad1e29b372b96bedc6b1...

>Note that a tree implies it is made of wood. If you find a stick of wood, odds are it came from a tree.

This is false, not all trees are made of wood (palm trees) and there are natural sources of wood that don't come from trees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_plant

But of course... instead of just admitting you were wrong to make that logical fallacy... free to continue doubling down and making things up.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#280

Post by jibal »

Maxatar wrote: post #234
WalterBright wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So you are making things up... thanks for confirming that. While I appreciate that you reviewed what Google "sez"... you have misunderstood the relevant context which is that the U.S. Air Force also requires that you complete Initial Flight Training (IFT) before you start the Air Force's own formal training program (UPT). In IFT you will not be required to pass ground school before you get to fly. Furthermore, even i…

In addition to affirmation of the consequent he's also employing attacking a strawman, petitio principii, faulty analogy, and goalpost shifting, at least. His followup example "Note that a tree implies it is made of wood. If you find a stick of wood, odds are it came from a tree." is hilarious. No doubt there are numerous other examples completely unrelated to coders and whiteboard tests where A implies B and B is highly correlated to A, but their existence tells us nothing about coders and whiteboard tests and doesn't justify a blatant fallacy of affirmation of the consequent.

Here's something to consider: just because someone is good at writing compilers or designing a language, that doesn't entail anything about the quality of their arguments.

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