With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by TangoTrotFox » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #138

madengr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used that argument back in 4th grade to my parents: “Math is harder for me since there have been more advancements since you were kids”. I can only speak for electrical engineering, but the basics have not changed in 100 years. Crack open a text book from 100 years ago and you’ll find the same control theory, circuit analysis, electromagnetics, etc. The difference may be vacuum tubes vs. transistors, but the analys…

That's patently false, and your example is a straw man. Sure your grade school arithmetic hasn't increased much, but I'd assure you university maths have . As far as EE goes, I mean sure macro-electronic theory is pretty much the same, but micro-electronics didn't even exist 100 years ago. This is now a standard required class. Digital signal processing again, didn't even exist 100 years ago, now we teach it to sopho…

Interestingly enough, IQs are now decreasing in the western world and have been since around the mid 90s. There were numerous studies showing this quite clearly in 2013 (when that talk was given) but now it seems every study is corroborating it. Perhaps we can assume he simply felt it required more research as an explanation for why he would give such an ostensibly misleading talk.

Linking to another comment chain here [1] on this topic as this is something multiple people have also brought up as an argument against grade inflation. Unfortunately, it makes the inflation look even more absurd.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447692

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

#262

Post by vostok » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 5:30 AM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #258

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…

The most solid career path I'm familiar with is to go straight from college into a software development role at a FAANG company, then mostly coast, optionally diverge to some other highly payed role else ware, and eventually come back to the FAANG company at a higher pay grade. You'll be able to live a lavish lifestyle, be a millionaire by 30, and really not have to work that hard. To get this job you really have to…

That's true in the average case, but it's not true in the literal sense. I know people who did not graduate college and whose first jobs were at Facebook/Google.

If you're talking about the average case then you might as well say 3.5 GPA rather than 3.0 GPA. I don't have access to any of the data so this is just speculation.

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

#263

Post by wutangson1 » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

zach wrote: post #56

> "Academic researchers say that uptick is a sign of grade inflation, not of smarter students." I don't think this is right. There is good evidence that the highest percentiles of students (the ones populating the competitive colleges mentioned) are indeed smarter, because they have standardized test scores to match. First off, the bar for a PSAT score that gets National Merit recognition has risen significantly for…

out of curiosity, with regards to rising GMAT scores, does that really reflect that 'our student are even more capable'? The scores supposedly correspond to a percentage of the test taking population one scored higher than, right? So, how is it that in 2005-2010, the reported avg HBS score was a 710, and now it is much higher? Because this goes for all the top 5 (if not top 10 or 20). If a 720 then corresponded to doing better than 96% of the test taking population, where did all these other top 4% of test takers world wide come from in the last 10 years?

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

#264

Post by TangoTrotFox » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 6:14 AM UTC

I think there's a very simple explanation for this.

In past times universities were very elite educational institutions that few attended. Today college is seen as basically high school 2.0. There's a lot of numbers in this [1] report from the census. [1] Today 33% of Americans have a bachelor's or higher degree, and 12% have a masters or doctorate. Those numbers also continue to skyrocket. In 1970 only about 10% of people had any degree and advanced degrees were a rare sight indeed. In other words we have more people with masters or better than had any degree in the 70s.

The explosive normalization of post-secondary school education has turned into a massive industry. College is now a half a trillion dollar industry per year, and rapidly growing. This has shifted students from being trialing and exceptional aspirants to... customers. And there is immense pressure to keep these customers happy. For instance many universities rely on student evaluations to measure teachers, yet those evaluations often work as a strong proxy to difficulty which works as a strong proxy to grades. You can see this connection in crystal clear fashion on any of the countless 'rate my professor' type sites.

[1] - https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

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

#265

Post by abvdasker » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 6:15 AM UTC

I've found that GPA is completely irrelevant in the private sector but the school you attended still makes a big difference, particularly if it's in the very top tier.

Some companies will not even consider engineering candidates who did not come from a narrow list of schools (Ivies and similarly prestigious institutions). I know for a fact that Oracle has such a list along with several major finance companies.

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

#266

Post by bernardino » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 6:23 AM UTC

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #256

bernardino wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned that being able to sit down on your desk and focus on a topic or problem set and learn through trial and error with no distractions for hours is what will determine if you get good grades or not, and it's becoming extremely hard to do so. Most of my friends resort to drugs to focus but for me, that does not prefer drugs because it makes me feel artificial, it's been tough - it's like strengthening muscles i…

> Most of my friends resort to drugs to focus but for me, that does not prefer drugs because it makes me feel artificial, it's been tough - it's like strengthening muscles in your brain in order to focus for long periods of time and those muscles for me are weak. This is desirable. People who use psychostimulants to focus are using it as a crutch. You can train your mind to focus, it just requires a larger time inves…

Definitely! I should have started earlier in regard to training my mind to focus. Being in college, it seems I don't have the upper hand because so. It's all good though - I sort of argue that taking psycho-stimulants means you are entangled in that toxic cultural thinking of always going and being in the noise. I suppose then there's something sweet about failing a course without using psycho-stimulants.

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

#267

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

#268

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #243

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #82

Poisonously, kids have become commoditized and all that distinguishes them are 'Schools and Grades'. 'Schools and Grades' are really the product here. Kids are the sellers. Companies are the buyers. Until companies stop valuing kids solely by their 'School and Grade', this cycle will continue. To make this an interesting conversation, how DO companies hire great people without relying on their 'School and Grades'? Ar…

In essence what is happening here is that rich parents/kids (or just very heavily indebted ones) are buying their degrees now, which have basically become shitcoins. X% of employers are still believing the high worth of these shitcoin degrees, and for some reason, the bubble has yet to explode. It's like, there's no difference in skill between buying bitcoin early vs a valueless coin. But, there is a massive differen…

[deleted]

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

#269

Post by ryeguy_24 » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 11:22 AM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #243

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #82

Poisonously, kids have become commoditized and all that distinguishes them are 'Schools and Grades'. 'Schools and Grades' are really the product here. Kids are the sellers. Companies are the buyers. Until companies stop valuing kids solely by their 'School and Grade', this cycle will continue. To make this an interesting conversation, how DO companies hire great people without relying on their 'School and Grades'? Ar…

In essence what is happening here is that rich parents/kids (or just very heavily indebted ones) are buying their degrees now, which have basically become shitcoins. X% of employers are still believing the high worth of these shitcoin degrees, and for some reason, the bubble has yet to explode. It's like, there's no difference in skill between buying bitcoin early vs a valueless coin. But, there is a massive differen…

Agree. However, the difference is, once these 'shitcoins' get "bought" initially by the Goldman Sachs, Googles, and Mckinseys, the college grads then become truly valuable. So, now, we have this reinforcement problem, where the college grads get to work at the top firms for a few years because of their degree, and now, they are hot on the job market. And then, we further propagate the correlation between good degrees and good jobs.

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

#270

Post by anoncoward111 » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 11:52 AM UTC

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #269

anoncoward111 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In essence what is happening here is that rich parents/kids (or just very heavily indebted ones) are buying their degrees now, which have basically become shitcoins. X% of employers are still believing the high worth of these shitcoin degrees, and for some reason, the bubble has yet to explode. It's like, there's no difference in skill between buying bitcoin early vs a valueless coin. But, there is a massive differen…

Agree. However, the difference is, once these 'shitcoins' get "bought" initially by the Goldman Sachs, Googles, and Mckinseys, the college grads then become truly valuable. So, now, we have this reinforcement problem, where the college grads get to work at the top firms for a few years because of their degree, and now, they are hot on the job market. And then, we further propagate the correlation between good degrees…

I totally have seen this happen first hand as well. I would say there is a proportion of "shitcoin degree-holders who turn out to be valuable workers" and "shitcoin degree-holders who turn out to be costly but we keep them around anyway".

I think the real problem here is that investment capital (i.e money) is still so centralized in the hands of the fortune 500 and some investment banks. Most "run-of-the-mill" startups won't be differentiated by uniqueness of idea or ability to execute-- they'll just be differentiated by how much money they're given and how many rich dudes are in their network.

I really dream of the day that 10 high school graduates from Detroit can form a company and bootstrap their way to 100,000 users with a net profit of $1,000,000 a year.

I'm not sure such an example exists.