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Job application asked for my SAT scores

mrmarket.lol

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Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#291

Post by halostatue »

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.

For one semester.

Maybe two.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#292

Post by klausa »

tptacek wrote: post #287
klausa wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen you comment along those lines before, and I think you're both right, and terribly wrong. By all measures, the way you describe any hiring processes you've designed and had input on designing the metric and the work sample, probably is both high in signal, and not very arbitrary in scoring. They sound genuinely and refreshingly good. Maybe one day I'll interact with one :) But man, that is very much not how…

I agree that there aren't many places that are serious about work-sample testing and far too many that using them as a hiring hazing ritual, but that doesn't make me "terribly wrong", just more distinctively right. We've hired resume-blind at Fly.io for 6 years using work samples with fixed rubrics.

Sure, it was a rhetorical flourish that maybe didn't land :)

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#293

Post by Pay08 »

onetimeusename wrote: post #282
thisislife2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have suspected the influence is real. For a reference point, the majority of students at top tier US universities are Asian at this point, broadly. Not every top tier university but there's a trend to have about 30-40% Asian American students and then roughly 1/3 international which is heavily weighted toward China and India. This constitutes the largest group usually. So it's quite likely that universities adapt t…

Have university faculty become mostly Asian too?

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#294

Post by labcomputer »

halostatue wrote: post #289
jimbokun wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Back in the dark ages of the 80s when I was taking the SAT and ACT, these tests were considered good predictors for the first semester's performance. That's it. I did well on both tests and did well on my first semester. It's the semesters after where my performance tanked because I didn't have some of the work habits that solid B students had. (I will also be clear and say that at least some of the problem is attrib…

Well, sure, but first semester performance is also a good predictor of second semester performance. And second semester of third, and so on.

But more to the point: If you do poorly in your first semester and drop out, then it doesn’t really matter if the SAT would have done a good job of predicting your second semester performance.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#295

Post by Morromist »

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 did very well with my SAT

but to get to the city we had to take it was a 2 hour long drive through twisted roads that made me carsick. I lived in a small town far away from the city. By the time I got there my breakfast I had quickly eaten gave me a stomach ache, I had woken up far earlier than usual and not gotten my 7 hours too. I certainly would have done a lot better if I had lived in the big city.

Another factor: if you wanted to pay the fee you could just take the test over and over again until you got a great score. So kids with poor parents obviously had a huge disadvantage. Also kids who had the time and money could study for it with prep books - I did, while some of my friends were flipping burgers while still in highschool. Its not surprising I got a higher score than them, but it said nothing about my intellegence or understanding compaired to theirs.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#296

Post by skirmish »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #193
amazingamazing wrote: post #5

Company is Alpha Vantage: https://beaverhand.com/apply/alpha-vantage-gtm-team-various-...

> Low ego: There can be significant economic upside to this role as things progress, but the nature of this role day-to-day may involve things that can be less exciting / more mundane (it's a job, after all!) What does this mean?

Have to make sure all coworker's coffee cups are full.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#297

Post by labcomputer »

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…

I’m very curious where you get the idea that flying does not involve algebra or trigonometry or calculus.

How would you calculate a crosswind component from the runway heading and reported wind speed and direction without trig? How would you think pilots measured their distance to non-directional beacons before GPS and DMEs existed?

How would you solve for fuel remaining without algebra? How would you estimate the best speed to fly with a given headwind to maximize fuel onboard at the intended destination without calculus?

A very basic principle of glider flying involves finding the tangent to a curve. Is calculus not applicable there?

Fuel consumption is often estimated by numerical integration of fuel flow rate. That doesn’t require an analytic solution of the integral, but I think most pilots have at least a passing familiarity with the concept.

> Furthermore it's categorically false that you need to pass ground school before you're allowed to fly.

I interpreted the parent’s statement to mean “before you fly solo.”

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#298

Post by somenameforme »

apparent wrote: post #224
hammock wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

The fact that it's not all multiple choice now makes it somewhat harder. Multiple choice questions make it much faster to solve some questions because you can simply plug in possible answers. They also make it easier to know that you're right, if you solve a problem and the answer you got is one of the choices (though they do sometimes include common mistaken answers to fool students).

No idea what the SAT is like now a days (based on the comments in this thread) but 'back in the day' if you knew enough about a problem to understand the math needed to solve it, which is needed to plug in the answer, then it'd generally be faster to just solve than working backwards since the number of steps would typically be less than repeatedly plugging in. And most/all questions also had a 'None of the above' option that was the answer a fair chunk of the time.

Another practical thing is that tests seem to trend substantially higher in difficulty when multiple choice. I was part of the first class at my university that took a calculus program which was multiple choice and we thought it was going to be a cake walk. But suddenly like every single test problem was using obscure trigonometric tricks on top of the basic calculus itself. And of course no partial credit for getting everything 95% right and missing one really disguised trig trick at the end. Grades for the class were significantly lower than prior years, because those tests were just nuts - and I'm a very much a math guy.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#299

Post by zx8080 »

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…

But numbers are so easy to compare! Don't take this joy from HRs and recruiters!

/s

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#300

Post by somenameforme »

Newlaptop wrote: post #274
hammock wrote: post #195

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. 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 t…

Somebody who goes to take a test on something they know that they know nothing about could be called many things, but genius is not one, even moreso when they're paying for the privilege of taking that test. What is on the SAT is no secret, so people are free to prepare as little or as much as they might like. If somebody can't be assed to prepare for such a critical test, then they're probably going to be the sort of person who can't be assed to do much of anything in life. And the internet has also largely relegated the inequities in access to training quite obsolete. You can get free high quality training materials on everything for free.
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