Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Job application asked for my SAT scores

mrmarket.lol

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 403 posts

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#391

Post by neogodless »

boring_twenties wrote: post #250

> Since 2023 or so, I've noticed more and more tech companies and hyper-growth startups dropping bachelor's degree requirements. Those requirements were never real, anyway. I don't have any degree. The last time I was seriously questioned about it during an interview was 2004.

While it does not come up in interviews, it does seem to come up during resume filtering. (Plenty of jobs I'm otherwise easily qualified for that I didn't get contacted for, even back when basically having a pulse and knowing code could get you any job you wanted.)

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#392

Post by Izkata »

chasd00 wrote: post #243
apparent wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4.0, what no APs? Insta-rejected. /s

If I may rant. My oldest son will be a junior in HS next year at a STEM magnet (Townview SEM in Dallas). I think even one of his electives is an AP, It’s kind of ridiculous. APs in HS seem pointless if you can’t apply the credit to your college degree plan. As if a University is going to let a STEM major out of calculus because they took the AP in HS…

At my highschol, "Honors" classes were the ones that didn't get college credit and "AP" classes allowed you to take a placement test at the end to get college credit.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#393

Post by apparent »

Izkata wrote: post #392
chasd00 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may rant. My oldest son will be a junior in HS next year at a STEM magnet (Townview SEM in Dallas). I think even one of his electives is an AP, It’s kind of ridiculous. APs in HS seem pointless if you can’t apply the credit to your college degree plan. As if a University is going to let a STEM major out of calculus because they took the AP in HS…

At my highschol, "Honors" classes were the ones that didn't get college credit and "AP" classes allowed you to take a placement test at the end to get college credit.

Same here, but selective universities will often not let students out of requirements with AP scores. They may let you get credit toward graduation, but if you have to start with all the base level prerequisites then you've not made much progress.

Basically, universities are aware that APs have gotten easier and are not a substitute for college-level classes that selective universities offer.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#394

Post by stockresearcher »

fn-mote wrote: post #314
stockresearcher wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has a civil engineering degree. There were a number of courses where partial credit was not permitted and the final exam was 2 questions. It was common for students to take those courses 3 or 4 times before passing. Giving a failing grade to only 1/3 of the class might get a professor investigated for making the class too easy.

What decade and country? In the US, this would be a huge outlier. Unless, somehow this is part of an advanced certification process? I really can’t imagine professionals not knowing how to study for an exam like this. Medical school shows what motivated people can do.

In America, dude. Pick your favorite engineering school and read syllabi for core classes such as statics. Read department policies on number of tries you get on core classes before you’re kicked out of the civil engineering program. They take certain things very seriously.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#395

Post by boring_twenties »

WalterBright wrote: post #254
boring_twenties wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here seems to be that the person was unwilling or unable to ask for help when they needed it, not that they don't know math per se. I don't know how to do that either, but "winging it" is not something that would occur to me. First I'd Google it and try to figure it out. If it turns out to be nontrivial, I would just ask for help. And I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about it. After all, those same highl…

The problem was the "engineer" did not know how to design an RC circuit, one of the simplest electronic circuits, in Electronics 101. Would you rather pay an engineer days to fail to solve a basic problem, or pay a real engineer 15 minutes to solve it?

No, that's not the problem, as you yourself admit in the false dichotomy you constructed in the second line of your post.

The problem is that, in your own words, they took days to fail to solve the problem. If they Googled the solution, and so it took them 30 or even 60 minutes to solve it, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If they asked their colleagues for help right away, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Unless this particular role is going to be predominantly circuit design -- in which case I do have to wonder how this person got hired in the first place -- this is simply a stupid criterion to select on.

I would rather pay the engineer who knows how to solve problems even when they don't already know the answer, first and foremost. Beyond that, I would much rather pay the engineer who has practical, hands-on knowledge, that they don't teach in school. How to use git effectively, as already mentioned. How to debug production issues. What actions are and aren't safe to perform on a production server. What facilities the OS offers to get information about one's own process and the system itself. How different valid-on-paper approaches might actually play out in real life. When it's worth pursuing an exciting new technology, and when it probably won't be. Oh and of course, what new and updated technologies exist since your guy graduated Electronics 101 a decade or two ago in the first place.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#396

Post by Morromist »

apparent wrote: post #384
Morromist wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fee waivers are great. A lot of poor parents are too busy / don't have their shit together enough to learn about them & use them. A lot of poor parents won't even have their kids take the tests at all even if they are free, especially if it means taking an entire day to drive them to the test facility. They might not even know what an SAT test is.

Hm that's true, but the alternative would also be flawed, and possibly worse. If you could only take the SAT once and you were stuck with that score, then people would complain that rich kids could take all sorts of prep courses to get ready and to figure out what they needed to work on before taking the test, whereas poor kids would be figuring this all out on test day. There is no ideal way to do this, and the curr…

That's true. It seems like those states where its mandatory and free are going the right way. No doubt stuff like this will be more and more important with AI making it so easy to fake other stuff.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#397

Post by Yossarrian22 »

JackFr wrote: post #139
georgeecollins wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a positive for an employer to ask for an SAT because it tells me right away I don't want to work for them. Once (a long time ago) I tried to upload my resume to apply for a job. The web page started asking me very basic questions, like a basic aptitude test. I was out. Tell me you do not know how to find and evaluate talent!

It was required at my first job in 1989, for entry level actuaries. In fairness, part of job performance was passing the actuarial exams, the first two of which were calculus and statistics. I imagine testing well on the SATs for a math or EE degree (what they hired) was a good indicator of passing tests.

I didn't take the SATs in the 80s but in 00s I don't remember any of the concepts translating well to understanding calculus or statistics and I scored well enough it gave me a free ride to college (well that was the PSAT but it was in line with my SAT score). If they wanted to test that they should have tailored an exam similar to my college when assessing my math capability.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#398

Post by Yossarrian22 »

jedberg wrote: post #82
OptionOfT wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please note that we will also rely significantly on both solicited references (where you introduce us) as well as unsolicited or "back-end" references (where we do our own). For the latter, please rest assured that we will never contact a current employer without first getting your permission. References already give me goosebumps. Having them reach out to people who haven't given you permission to be a reference s…

Every job does that, whether they tell you or not.

I've hired dozens of people and have never done that.

Re: Job application asked for my SAT scores

#399

Post by lern_too_spel »

consensus1 wrote: post #90
lern_too_spel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAT score is known to be predictive of college grades. Is it also predictive for whether a mid-to-late career candidate will pass a phone screen? It is used for early career candidate filtering in finance, but I have not heard of anybody caring beyond that because of the availability of signal on the actual tasks they will be performing.

It is correlated tightly with IQ, so yes it will likely be a strong predictive signal for passing a phone screen.

That doesn't answer the full question. Is SAT (or even IQ) positively correlated with phone screen passage after controlling for past work/education experience?
Post reply on HN