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With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

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Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#201

Post by vonseel »

wenc wrote: post #90
FlyingSideKick wrote: post #71

My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially su…

There's a significant tendency on HN to unduly discount good grades. I think this is a mistaken tendency due to univariate, linear thinking. Grades are not everything, but they are not nothing. The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking. Good grades can be a proxy for metaskills like discipline, cognitive ability, etc. They don't always measure these things perfectly, but the corre…

> in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA.

And the fact that it’s hard for a company to determine what those factors are is a problem in itself. Was the student immature at time of college (partied too much, disinterested in academics/chosen subjects are two problems that come to mind)? Did he work a full/part-time job while taking classes? Did he have a child? Did she care for someone else’s child or a younger sibling? Catch my drift?

Overall, I agree with most of what you are saying, but I also agree with the previous post. You seem eloquent and well-spoken, in fact it’s a bit off-putting.

> The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking.

I understand your argument, but this colorful language only weakens your argument, unless you’re writing a paper for class. In conversation, you’d be better off rephrasing in a less formal manner.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#202

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sodafountan wrote: post #188
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your GPA is just about around 5 characters or so on your CV, why not put it there? It seems odd to leave it out, but it definitely doesn’t need to be the focus of your CV.

Because it's an arbitrary number that's increasingly becoming meaningless.

For me when I was reviewing CVs, if it wasn’t there, I would wonder what they are trying to hide. If it was there, as long as it wasn’t especially low (for the school in question), then I would ignore it. There is no difference between a high and normal GPA, but a low GPA is probably some kind of flag.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#203

Post by vilmosi »

Jach wrote: post #185
alexbeloi wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ scores are also increasing[0]. Are we actually smarter than our grandparents? Or has the education system trained us to be better test takers (one of the suggested contributing factors). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

No they're not[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_p...

I guess it depends on the country and timescale you're looking at. But they are increasing.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#204

Post by commandlinefan »

tfigment wrote: post #11

Still only matters for first job and then if you have nothing else to show. As a hiring manager, its a minus for me to see unless its for intern. But surprising how often i see on cvs. (Speaking as former top of ChE class and frequent outlier to be removed on grading curves.)

I really hate the catch-22 that this sort of thinking puts applicants into - just like the "I would never hire anybody who had a degree or who had a certification" assertion you see on here so often. Since you're just as likely (if not more likely) to find somebody who's going to pass over you or weight you negatively for NOT including your GPA (on the assumption that you're not including it because you have something to hide), applicants are in a difficult position of trying to gauge whether or not they're facing somebody who weighs certain accomplishments _negatively_. Ignoring a credential is one thing, but counting it against somebody strikes me more as sour grapes.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#205

Post by mrkstu »

wenc wrote: post #119
ataturk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked my way through college and still got a 3.75 in a double major of Math and CS. My girlfriend at the time got a 4.0 at her college but had a full tuition scholarship and did it by dropping any hard math course that wasn't absolutely required. We both later got PhDs in our respective fields. I used to help her with her homework a lot. Who was more well-rounded? I challenged myself with some of the courses I too…

Again, multivariate thinking is important. GPA alone doesn't predict everything, but it is one predictor in a complicated function and it may have varying sensitivities in different ranges as well as have interacting terms with other variables. One needs to factor in all the other predictors, as you alluded to in your story.

The question is how do you reliably gather a rich dataset that encompasses those variables. It is an un-solved problem vs shortcuts like GPA and prestige of their attended institutions.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#206

Post by xyzzyz »

dragonwriter wrote: post #133
xyzzyz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently most of the validity of GPA is captured by GMA, because the incremental validity of GPA is negligible (less than .01). Just because GPA is basically a worse IQ test doesn’t mean that it’s useless. In fact, if you assume that IQ tests are useful in hiring, this actually makes GPA more useful, since US employers can freely use GPA in hiring, while use of IQ is significantly more complicated.

> In fact, if you assume that IQ tests are useful in hiring, this actually makes GPA more useful, since US employers can freely use GPA in hiring, while use of IQ is significantly more complicated. Except that's not at all true of the underlying legal standard, and if GPA is essentially an IQ test, it is illegal in the exact same conditions as IQ tests, and any temporary advantage attend from the fact that plaintiff'…

That’s the theory; in practice hardly anyone does IQ tests, while employers asking for GPA is an extremely common occurrence. What matters for them is not what is legal, but how likely something is going to cause you legal problems.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#207

Post by joeax »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #22

If something like the Flynn Effect[0] is real and persistent, it could make sense that grade inflation is natural, and that fewer truly qualified students would be able to get university placements, scholarships, and so on, just because there are far greater numbers of deserving, materially higher-achieving students now, but the number of available “prestigious” outcomes has not grown as fast. [0]: https://en.m.wikip…

I read about some years ago, that due to grade inflation, kids in high school are pressured to distinguish themselves further through more extracurriculars, volunteer work, even internships.

And you are right, the population is growing, but the number of prestigious universities has not, furthering the competitiveness. There aren't opening new Harvards.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#208

Post by commandlinefan »

recursive wrote: post #165
make3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then you're one of the only ones

I am also one of the only ones.

Yeah, same here - as much as it pains me to admit it, I'm pretty impressed when I see that somebody graduated from MIT or CMU. And, honestly, when I've worked with people who did graduate from "top" schools, they were smarter than I was/am (but on the plus side, I got to learn a lot from them). On the plus side, there aren't that many of them, and there are lots of jobs for the rest of us.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#209

Post by athenot »

FlyingSideKick wrote: post #71

My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially su…

A strong predictor for success I've noticed in others (and in myself) is: give a shit.

I.e. deeply care about what you are working on. Some individuals care so much about the field they are in that they disregard the proxy metrics that judge their level (grades, awards, titles...). For some, the strong academic path happens to perfectly match up to their pursuit of passion. Others see the academic part as a hindrance to their passion and end up equally successful.

On the flip side, following some proxy metric in order to achieve passionate success doesn't work. You can't aquire passion with good grades† and dropping out of education because that's the cool thing to do ALSO doesn't buy one passionate success.

Yes this reeks of survival bias, but every single successful person I know is really passionate about the field they are in. They are always thirsty to learn more and go deeper.

†: as with everything, there are exceptions: individuals who are highly motivated by peer recognition. Everyone is different and we can't generalize too broadly.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#210

Post by commandlinefan »

sodafountan wrote: post #187
make3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then you're one of the only ones

I couldn't care less about your GPA or what school you went to, some of the best people I know never attended school at all.

Well, unless you're leaving something out, you just said that the less education a person has, the more capable they are - so, reductio ad absurdum, the most capable people in the world are middle-school drop-outs. But I suspect you're trying to suggest that education and competence are completely uncorrelated (which is a claim that would be hard to back up, incidentally) and that "something else" is an indicator of competence/intelligence/capability, but you're not specifying what you think that is.
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