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 successful people I know had mediocre college grades if they went at all. One friend who’s net worth is over $100m dropped out of high school to became a carpenter and is now a major real estate developer.Too many people spend way to much of thier youth focused on grades. What’s important is finding what you love, learning a bit and just doing enough to get your diploma. If you want to get a masters then focus on just getting in. It’s like passing the levels in a video game. No reading to get a perfect score if you don’t need to.
When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will.
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 correlation is not negligible.
Doesn't mean say, a 2.5 GPA isn't a good hire -- but in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA. Otherwise you'd be hiring a 2.5 GPA who is truly mediocre, and my experience is that the majority of 2.5 GPAs are that. Not everyone with a low GPA is pursuing other interests or passions. Also, doesn't mean that everyone with a high GPA isn't (at competitive schools, the best students tend to be active in many extra curricular activities unrelated to their majors)
In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot, and the amount of time spent on remedial training may not always pay off. We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.
Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, and definitely not everyone can be a successful one. Real estate is also a whole other ball game, and you are projecting from a group that has survivorship bias.
If you want to be highly compensated labor, the best grades at the best schools are the best entry point into the social network + early career opportunities to lead to long run success.
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.
> 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.
But these things are not exclusive - you can't look at someone's impressive academic achievements and assume they don't have a social life or hobbies.
Actually, if financial success is your quality metric, then what matters is the ability to work with other people. In particular, the ability to motivate other people to work with and for you is probably the single most important skill a person can acquire (if the goal is to make money). Of course, academia not only fails to cultivate this skill, it actively tries to squash it. Convincing someone else to do your work for you is considered "cheating". In the real world, it's called "delegating."
I suspect that lower GPA students have higher variance but lower expectation outcomes than higher GPA students. Higher GPA students, at least when the coursework is serious, tend to be at least one of extremely bright and extremely conscientious (I would guess most are a little of the former and more of the latter).
The conscientious and prudent possibly have less tolerance for or interest in risk, so they're less likely to hit a home run, but their floor is pretty high.
At a more general level, I'm not fond of the common idea that people who are proficient in area x are probably deficient in area y (where area y is usually implied to be more important). It often seems to me like a face-saving technique for aficionados of area y.
I think your grandfather was a wise man. I have frequently noticed the best employees I’ve hired are not the top students. They’re self starters, independent, and “street smart.” I actually never ask about education, simply because true intelligence doesn’t come from a classroom.
The valedictorian will frequently bother me for the next task or to sign off on something, the 3.0 gpa figures it out on her own. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it’s what I’ve observed in my mere 28 years on this earth, and happens to match my beliefs.
Even Fortune 500 companies with major R&D budgets will tell you point blank they would rather a handful of decent engineers from Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, etc. Than the top student from MIT or Harvard.
They are simply easier to manage in day to day operations. And perhaps more adept at handling the stress of juggling a dozen plus projects simultaneously.
The corollary is that for real innovation. Your probability of a breakthrough increases by having a few geniuses at the chalkboard. But most companies aren't seeking Manhattan Project or Xerox PARC levels of radical technological advancement.
The getting good grades system is very much a structured system as far as education goes. That's not necessarily wrong, but when you get out of school some folks when they get outside that system seem to struggle with knowing what to do. That's not to say they fail, but sometimes seem a bit off, waiting for the associated praise and looking for a similar system to fit into. Folks who weren't invested in such a system and maybe were more comfortable with the more nebulous world of life sometimes adapt a bit quicker.
One company I worked for loved to bring in recent MBA grads. These kids had little work experience (IMO MBAs should not be given without something like 10 years actual work experience) outside their internships or whatever. They showed up and loved to try to introduce rigid systems for success, random rules, and / or just had no initiative outside being told what exactly to do and what would get them a good "grade" (some seemed uncomfortable with anything but academic like measurements).
My advisor said if you were getting a 4.0, you were wasting your valuable research and development time on homework. Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead.
Of course, GPA didn't improve his tenure chance as much as our R&D so, take that into consideration.
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 have good grades. Why? Google etc. will ask for your transcripts coming out of college - anything short of a full degree and a 3.0 will likely disqualify you.
My dad was an accountant and eventually ended up having hiring responsibilities. Same deal: if you bought on someone who spent 3 years at university getting an A+ on everything, they probably didn’t spend a ton of time out meeting people and exploring the world, and thus typically less good in front of clients. Obviously lol everything, there will always be exceptions.
When in HS and college you have only one primary focus in life and that is to get good grades. Good grades show the world that you know how to study, how to work well with others, and how to put off the pleasures of today and work toward future goals. They may matter less when you're 40, but when you're 22 they count for everything and determine the opportunities tou have from the outset. And the experience you got knuckling down hard in school translates into valuable work skills right out of the starting gate.
When I was an employer what I looked for was the willingness and capacity to learn. Someone who is (book) smart isn't as important as someone who can think, see patterns, be willing to offer ideas, etc.
Sadly, many of the things that are of value aren't even mentioned in school, let alone taught. As a result I'm troubled by all the talk about free / cheaper higher edu for all. That's not the answer. It might just create more (expectation) troubles than it solves.
I don't think grades are important at all. But the effort and discipline that leads to good grades, especially if they're in a setting that requires self-motivation (such as college - you have mom and dad breathing down your neck in school).
> "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 most students in recent years. More graphically though, the number of students who get a 36 on the ACT goes back a while and is a good representation of the upper score band:
So instead of the positive, hopeful story "our best students are becoming even more capable, year after year," we get a story like this shaming colleges and universities for "grade inflation" instead. Disappointing.
It could also just as easily be that people are studying more for those tests ahead of time. I personally did maybe two hours of prep work before taking the ACT and SAT. I would guess that was on the high end of people I knew, many of whome I don't think even bothered to take the practice tests.
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).
Those tests have gotten easier. In fact, the SAT folks specifically made it easier because they were losing market share. Too many people were taking the ACT instead, so the SAT went back to their old format and then made it easer.
I'm unsure whether this is exactly grade inflation, but both of those graphs can be explained by increased access to information.
Obviously people studied before, but our collective information about these standardized tests has become readily accessible.
Now, general test taking tips, test-specific guides, and even full courses on tests are available to everyone rather than those who could afford a book or a private tutor.
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?
There is much weight to the argument that the requirements to be a successful student have gone down, I'm inclined to believe that the requirements have skyrocketed. Students today are faced with an ever ballooning bulk of knowledge with which they are supposed to find the boundaries and gain control of enough interconnected parts to become a useful contributor to society. There's a lot of noise in the system, but the system is growing larger and larger. There's more footwork that could be done.
Is it so hard to believe that more students are performing at a close enough level to their forbears to deserve the honor?
I spent several years out of the school system after finishing high school, and while I had a lot of great offers from schools, I wanted to go into a trade.
Several years later I began work as a developer because I had always programmed, and had come to the conclusion that it was something I really loved and wanted to spend my life doing.
Fast-forward, I'm a mid-20's senior in Computer Science, and you're absolutely correct about the VAST amount of information that is required to learn to be successful.
So here is my take:
1) There is a lot of sink or swim, at least in the program I'm in. And if you learn to swim, then your GPA balloons because you learn how to handle this vast amount of information thrown on you -- useful or not, it is the professors discretion -- which I think is one of the points of school to begin with.
2) Those who sink, end up going to departments with maybe less expectations, where they end up succeeding after having to deal with the previously higher expectations.
It's interesting.
With that said -- I grew up with a lot of GPA chasers, who I wouldn't trust with anything I personally needed done. But what they've done throughout their lives is signal that they can get whatever task you give them done, not necessarily come up with what task should be done, or how to interconnect subjects outside of an exam, or what was previously derived for them.
Learning how to bridge the gap between subjects is also another point of school. It's interesting because those lines everyday seem to be blurred more and more, especially with advancement of computing, so it's kind of hard I think for a lot of students to make that jump, to bridge. And also the stigma of Liberal Arts -- that many STEM kids subscribe to -- has lessened the ability of many students to be life-long students.
I have a few friends in grad school, who really, really struggle with that particular advancement. For example, one is in a neuro-lab and while they did have experience in FMRIs, they had never really invested in either math or computing. Now they're completely lost doing FICA and the like with MATLAB, and absolutely hate the work. They've called me to ask me about everything from what is an eigenvalue, to how to split a 3D Matrix into 4 based upon a fix set of indices. It's a shame because they are really smart, and passionate about the subject.
>There is much weight to the argument that the requirements to be a successful student have gone down, I'm inclined to believe that the requirements have skyrocketed.
As someone who has been in academia for several decades I can tell you, without a doubt, the opposite is true. Academic standards are vastly lower than they were just a couple of decades ago. Many incoming freshman lack even basic literacy skills. Much of the "core" curriculum is now comprised of remedial work that should have been mastered in high school (or middle school!). Basic reading comprehension, the ability to write papers and express complex thoughts coherently and the capability to think critically and engage in substantive debate are all severely lacking - virtually across the board. Society may be growing more complex, but the educational system in this country, on every level, is decaying rapidly.
While my statement will be rejected by many young people who view it as an attack on their intelligence, it is beyond dispute. I welcome anyone interested in disputing my assertions to look at the reading list and curriculum of any college class offered before 1990, and compare that to the reading list and curriculum of the same class today. I challenge you to read papers written by students from 30 years ago (before they had easy access to information from the internet, no less), and compare them to the papers written by students of the same year today. There is no comparison - none.
Yeah, it is. Grade inflation is a well known, documented phenomena. Unfortunately I have no time to link the papers on this subject, but if you search, they are there.
I spent so much time and energy stressing over my very mediocre GPA. I had undiagnosed adhd at the time and struggled immensely with turning things in on time. I usually did above average on tests, but when there are only a few homework assignments in a semester and no-late work policy, one zero really hurts. I was able to work it back up from a 2.2 in sophomore year to a 3.0 by graduation, but that was only because they very generously allowed me to sign a matriculation contract to stay in my major despite the lousy GPA. Also my 300 and 400 level CS courses were far more interesting and engaging, with fewer tiny assignments to miss.
I was kinda depressed because I knew the likes of Google would have no interest in me with that GPA, but my part time intern experience turned out to be worth so much more. I got a great entry level job from it, and from there got my foot in the door at Amazon where I thrived (who didn't ask about grades once) and ever since then, Google and everyone else has been reaching out to me. So while I have nothing against people with good GPAs, I'm
never going to hire based on them.
This is encouraging to read. Right now I'm at what feels like the nadir of a similar situation, and am trying to figure out the right steps forward.
I attended Caltech for CS, struggled with chronic late submissions, cratering self worth and other issues over about three years, took several short leaves ending with a medical leave and was diagnosed with ADHD. Got on medication, got a development job for about a year at UT Southwestern and enjoyed it immensely. Decided to come back and try again, but coming back to junior and senior level classes after a break was very hard, and even being back in the environment that I associated with such failure was hugely draining. I decided to withdraw indefinitely.
I'd already finished all but one or two of my CS requirements, most of the rest were going to be maybe 4-5 non-CS math/engineering/science classes, several humanities and a biology. About a year and a trimester's worth. As far as GPA, I left with about a 2.7.
I'm still not sure if that was the right decision. Part of me says I'm living in LA and I have a year of work on my resume, a bunch of knowledge from the tech CS program, a couple of mildly interesting personal projects on my GitHub, and I should be ok; I just need to put myself out there.
Another part of me says I'm a piece of shit that can't complete the only thing worth completing related to my career, I'm going to have to explain why I don't have a degree to everyone I ever interview with, and why would anyone ever pick me over a graduate.
All this made more painful by the fact that if I had graduated, the Caltech degree would have been an amazing asset - and if I had gone anywhere else (well, anywhere a bit less high powered) I believe I would have at least graduated, if not done very well. Source: the two sophomore CS classes I took at UT Arlington in half a summer and got A+s in both.
This thread is hard to read. Thanks for your story; I need to remember people like you exist while I'm job hunting.
I mean, in fairness have you gotten into Google yet? Everyone and their grandparents can get into Amazon these days. They need warm bodies, not smart people.
There's a reason why I get treated like some sort of moron whenever my company comes up in social situations (I hang out with a lot of people who work in HFT and Google/FB).
Not all universities! Simon Fraser University uses a 4.33 point scale (A = 4.00, A+ = 4.33) and its average GPA in 2017 (2.83) is only slightly above the average GPA in 1992 (2.80). Over that 25 year period, the university-wide average grade awarded has varied between a low of 2.77 and a high of 2.85.
Students complain. They complain a lot. We know that we're losing pre-med students to UBC -- which awards much higher grades on average -- because when we ask them why they decided to not accept SFU's admission offer, they reply "I'm planning on becoming a doctor and UBC will give me the higher grades I need". This also happens to a lesser extent with pre-law students. Over the past few years we've started displaying course average grades on transcripts and sending letters to graduate schools saying "so, there's something you should know about SFU's grades...".
I don't know how long SFU will be able to hold the line against grade inflation, but we're trying. It's not fair to students who worked hard to get a GPA of 3.7 (currently around 2% of students manage this) if next year's students can get that just by showing up.
In the mean time, if you see a student with a 4.00 GPA from Simon Fraser University... believe it.
EDIT: Out of curiosity, I pulled some statistics from the class graduating from SFU at the end of the 2017/18 year:
First Class Honours with Distinction (Honours program, 4.00+ GPA) 6
Honours with Distinction (Honours program, 3.50+ GPA) 61
Honours 61
First Class with Distinction (Major program, 4.00+ GPA) 24
With Distinction (Major program, 3.50+ GPA) 265
Bachelors 1769
Across the university, 1.37% of students graduate with a 4.00+ GPA and 16.29% graduate with a 3.50+ GPA.
It's time to do away with grades entirely. Do what many Indian schools do -- report your score as a class percentile. At end of term, you don't get a grade, only a percentile. No curve. No score inflation. No bias.
What's more, each school should report your score only relative to those of your peers. You should be compared only to other engineers, to other history majors, to other biology majors, etc. Because performance in physics is incomparable to english, education, or art, it's absurd to contrive a relative metric of comparison (AKA grades) to conflate them when none can possibly be meaningful or fair. Grades do an injustice to everyone.
As for comparing students from one school to the next, entrenched standardized tests like GREs have become a nightmare. Especially in terms of STEM curricula, schools often differ radically in how much they challenge the students and how far their skills develop by graduation. There simply is no way a three hour multiple choice test like a GRE can accurately reveal the difference between someone who attended Columbia vs Lehigh, for example. But a big difference there is. (I know since I attended both.) To pretend that some quick A/B/C/D/E test, which explores none of the practical skills learned in labs or projects, can accurately AND reliably reveal a meaningful difference among 'peers' -- this does a disservice to everyone.
Finally, there's no better illustration of disparity in the academic ranks than the rise of for-profit degree mills during the past couple of decades. The pretense that millions are not being cheated by these 'schools' is simply an abomination. I blame unchecked grade inflation and academic elitism for the tolerance for slap dash scholarship assessment that the sorry state of these 'schools' has revealed. As long as we avoid a precise and accurate accounting of the scholarly performance of the individual and the academic product of the university, we will continue to confuse student merit and invite charlatan schools to victimize their customers.
Somehow all these forms of false credentialism must end, and soon, or 'college' really will become the stinking albatross that Mark Cuban and others claim they are.
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'? Are 'Schools and Grades' really the best indicator for worker performance?
Unless you're applying to a gov't job, you're connections, friends, professors that like you, github accounts, art or MBA portfolio are the tools that move you "up" in the world. And in that order.
Online education dilutes GPA too. As well as more tech skill degrees (devops certs), aka those were called trade/vocational schools in my day.
I've never seen a GPA on an intern application/resume in the last 3yrs. Unless and (unfortunately) its from a visa student. Hmmm.
I don't like these comparisons of statistics to justify that academic honors have lost their luster.
The students who go to these schools tend to be overachievers. Achieve honors at all costs kind of mentality. So just because too many students are actually achieving, do you try to bring them down? Or make coursework unreasonably hard?
I once talked to a professor from my university long after graduation, and I told him that I as I saw the students become better at the coursework (I was helping them so) the exams became harder and harder, to the point where the only way you could truly get the questions right and on time is by having a year of so experience doing those problems. He responded with the bell curve. That a few students should get A's, some should get B's, and majority should get C's.
Lots of people trying to justify their college experience in here. Reality is, none of it matters. What matters is how you were raised 20 years earlier and how you choose to live your life every day. Is every day a new puzzle to solve? Are you motivated to learn and solve challenges placed in front of you regardless of banality or difficulty? Guess what, you're the elusive employee everyone wants. Rarely are jobs too difficult for grades/degrees to matter in hiring process -- the job itself is the screener. Yeah,sure, some jobs are incredibly difficult and require elite skill and knowledge but we aren't talking about those jobs, we are generalizing. And guess what, attitude and outlook on life are all that matter.
“A 4.0 does signal something significant, that that student is good,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor who has studied grade inflation for years. “ A 3.7, however, doesn’t. That’s just a run-of-the-mill student at any of these schools.”
I disagree with this statement, at Carnegie Melllon I noticed that a lot of 4.0's were engineered. Students avoid taking hard classes, avoid difficult requirement classes by taking at an easier university, avoid challenging themselves outside of their major.
I've got to say, I think this is parallel to the issue that faaaaaaar too many people are getting bachelor's degrees. Generic sales jobs require them at this point, which is nuts. One should absolutely be able to get a sales job with a 6-digit income potential with mere experience in lower-powered positions, but for some reason we're forcing these people to study humanities for four years before we let them sell a CRM tool.
Shit, there's no reason most low-level programming positions need a CS bachelors. We really, really need good associates degrees that teach functional coding (logic structures, two common languages, git, agile). There is no reason to expect someone to be in school for four years to be able to code.
Grades must be inflated to accommodate the horde passing through universities. The masters degree is the new bachelors degree.
It seems there is a moral hazard involved here- administrators pressuring professors to pass more students, which leads to grade inflation. All this to retain students and keep the tuition money flowing.
I'd love to hear from front-line profs about this issue- does grade inflation need to be addressed?
I occasionally interview people and review resumes. There are two things I don't even bother looking at: where you went to school and what your GPA was.
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.
[+] [-] FlyingSideKick|7 years ago|reply
Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially successful people I know had mediocre college grades if they went at all. One friend who’s net worth is over $100m dropped out of high school to became a carpenter and is now a major real estate developer.Too many people spend way to much of thier youth focused on grades. What’s important is finding what you love, learning a bit and just doing enough to get your diploma. If you want to get a masters then focus on just getting in. It’s like passing the levels in a video game. No reading to get a perfect score if you don’t need to.
When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will.
[+] [-] wenc|7 years ago|reply
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 correlation is not negligible.
Doesn't mean say, a 2.5 GPA isn't a good hire -- but in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA. Otherwise you'd be hiring a 2.5 GPA who is truly mediocre, and my experience is that the majority of 2.5 GPAs are that. Not everyone with a low GPA is pursuing other interests or passions. Also, doesn't mean that everyone with a high GPA isn't (at competitive schools, the best students tend to be active in many extra curricular activities unrelated to their majors)
In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot, and the amount of time spent on remedial training may not always pay off. We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.
[+] [-] fullshark|7 years ago|reply
If you want to be highly compensated labor, the best grades at the best schools are the best entry point into the social network + early career opportunities to lead to long run success.
[+] [-] athenot|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|7 years ago|reply
But these things are not exclusive - you can't look at someone's impressive academic achievements and assume they don't have a social life or hobbies.
[+] [-] lisper|7 years ago|reply
Actually, if financial success is your quality metric, then what matters is the ability to work with other people. In particular, the ability to motivate other people to work with and for you is probably the single most important skill a person can acquire (if the goal is to make money). Of course, academia not only fails to cultivate this skill, it actively tries to squash it. Convincing someone else to do your work for you is considered "cheating". In the real world, it's called "delegating."
[+] [-] majos|7 years ago|reply
The conscientious and prudent possibly have less tolerance for or interest in risk, so they're less likely to hit a home run, but their floor is pretty high.
At a more general level, I'm not fond of the common idea that people who are proficient in area x are probably deficient in area y (where area y is usually implied to be more important). It often seems to me like a face-saving technique for aficionados of area y.
[+] [-] ggg9990|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] traviswingo|7 years ago|reply
The valedictorian will frequently bother me for the next task or to sign off on something, the 3.0 gpa figures it out on her own. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it’s what I’ve observed in my mere 28 years on this earth, and happens to match my beliefs.
[+] [-] ArtWomb|7 years ago|reply
They are simply easier to manage in day to day operations. And perhaps more adept at handling the stress of juggling a dozen plus projects simultaneously.
The corollary is that for real innovation. Your probability of a breakthrough increases by having a few geniuses at the chalkboard. But most companies aren't seeking Manhattan Project or Xerox PARC levels of radical technological advancement.
[+] [-] duxup|7 years ago|reply
One company I worked for loved to bring in recent MBA grads. These kids had little work experience (IMO MBAs should not be given without something like 10 years actual work experience) outside their internships or whatever. They showed up and loved to try to introduce rigid systems for success, random rules, and / or just had no initiative outside being told what exactly to do and what would get them a good "grade" (some seemed uncomfortable with anything but academic like measurements).
Granted some did just fine but it was very much the old FedEx commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA
Give me some people who have had to make some decisions, fail and start over please.
[+] [-] godelmachine|7 years ago|reply
True that.
[+] [-] jvanderbot|7 years ago|reply
Of course, GPA didn't improve his tenure chance as much as our R&D so, take that into consideration.
[+] [-] tmpz22|7 years ago|reply
To get this job you really have to have good grades. Why? Google etc. will ask for your transcripts coming out of college - anything short of a full degree and a 3.0 will likely disqualify you.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wepple|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|7 years ago|reply
When in HS and college you have only one primary focus in life and that is to get good grades. Good grades show the world that you know how to study, how to work well with others, and how to put off the pleasures of today and work toward future goals. They may matter less when you're 40, but when you're 22 they count for everything and determine the opportunities tou have from the outset. And the experience you got knuckling down hard in school translates into valuable work skills right out of the starting gate.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|7 years ago|reply
When I was an employer what I looked for was the willingness and capacity to learn. Someone who is (book) smart isn't as important as someone who can think, see patterns, be willing to offer ideas, etc.
Sadly, many of the things that are of value aren't even mentioned in school, let alone taught. As a result I'm troubled by all the talk about free / cheaper higher edu for all. That's not the answer. It might just create more (expectation) troubles than it solves.
[+] [-] throwawayqdhd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zach|7 years ago|reply
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 most students in recent years. More graphically though, the number of students who get a 36 on the ACT goes back a while and is a good representation of the upper score band:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_(test)#Highest_score
And indeed at the graduate level, GMAT scores at the top business schools are rising steadily:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-b...
So instead of the positive, hopeful story "our best students are becoming even more capable, year after year," we get a story like this shaming colleges and universities for "grade inflation" instead. Disappointing.
[+] [-] war1025|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexbeloi|7 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] jedberg|7 years ago|reply
https://www.fairtest.org/sat-losing-marketshare-act-testopti...
[+] [-] Smoofer|7 years ago|reply
Obviously people studied before, but our collective information about these standardized tests has become readily accessible.
Now, general test taking tips, test-specific guides, and even full courses on tests are available to everyone rather than those who could afford a book or a private tutor.
[+] [-] icedchai|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wutangson1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobiemcfoob|7 years ago|reply
Is it so hard to believe that more students are performing at a close enough level to their forbears to deserve the honor?
[+] [-] full_pint|7 years ago|reply
Several years later I began work as a developer because I had always programmed, and had come to the conclusion that it was something I really loved and wanted to spend my life doing.
Fast-forward, I'm a mid-20's senior in Computer Science, and you're absolutely correct about the VAST amount of information that is required to learn to be successful.
So here is my take:
1) There is a lot of sink or swim, at least in the program I'm in. And if you learn to swim, then your GPA balloons because you learn how to handle this vast amount of information thrown on you -- useful or not, it is the professors discretion -- which I think is one of the points of school to begin with.
2) Those who sink, end up going to departments with maybe less expectations, where they end up succeeding after having to deal with the previously higher expectations.
It's interesting.
With that said -- I grew up with a lot of GPA chasers, who I wouldn't trust with anything I personally needed done. But what they've done throughout their lives is signal that they can get whatever task you give them done, not necessarily come up with what task should be done, or how to interconnect subjects outside of an exam, or what was previously derived for them.
Learning how to bridge the gap between subjects is also another point of school. It's interesting because those lines everyday seem to be blurred more and more, especially with advancement of computing, so it's kind of hard I think for a lot of students to make that jump, to bridge. And also the stigma of Liberal Arts -- that many STEM kids subscribe to -- has lessened the ability of many students to be life-long students.
I have a few friends in grad school, who really, really struggle with that particular advancement. For example, one is in a neuro-lab and while they did have experience in FMRIs, they had never really invested in either math or computing. Now they're completely lost doing FICA and the like with MATLAB, and absolutely hate the work. They've called me to ask me about everything from what is an eigenvalue, to how to split a 3D Matrix into 4 based upon a fix set of indices. It's a shame because they are really smart, and passionate about the subject.
Sorry that was a bit of a ramble.
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|7 years ago|reply
As someone who has been in academia for several decades I can tell you, without a doubt, the opposite is true. Academic standards are vastly lower than they were just a couple of decades ago. Many incoming freshman lack even basic literacy skills. Much of the "core" curriculum is now comprised of remedial work that should have been mastered in high school (or middle school!). Basic reading comprehension, the ability to write papers and express complex thoughts coherently and the capability to think critically and engage in substantive debate are all severely lacking - virtually across the board. Society may be growing more complex, but the educational system in this country, on every level, is decaying rapidly.
While my statement will be rejected by many young people who view it as an attack on their intelligence, it is beyond dispute. I welcome anyone interested in disputing my assertions to look at the reading list and curriculum of any college class offered before 1990, and compare that to the reading list and curriculum of the same class today. I challenge you to read papers written by students from 30 years ago (before they had easy access to information from the internet, no less), and compare them to the papers written by students of the same year today. There is no comparison - none.
[+] [-] krapht|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudosteph|7 years ago|reply
I was kinda depressed because I knew the likes of Google would have no interest in me with that GPA, but my part time intern experience turned out to be worth so much more. I got a great entry level job from it, and from there got my foot in the door at Amazon where I thrived (who didn't ask about grades once) and ever since then, Google and everyone else has been reaching out to me. So while I have nothing against people with good GPAs, I'm never going to hire based on them.
[+] [-] mos_basik|7 years ago|reply
I attended Caltech for CS, struggled with chronic late submissions, cratering self worth and other issues over about three years, took several short leaves ending with a medical leave and was diagnosed with ADHD. Got on medication, got a development job for about a year at UT Southwestern and enjoyed it immensely. Decided to come back and try again, but coming back to junior and senior level classes after a break was very hard, and even being back in the environment that I associated with such failure was hugely draining. I decided to withdraw indefinitely.
I'd already finished all but one or two of my CS requirements, most of the rest were going to be maybe 4-5 non-CS math/engineering/science classes, several humanities and a biology. About a year and a trimester's worth. As far as GPA, I left with about a 2.7.
I'm still not sure if that was the right decision. Part of me says I'm living in LA and I have a year of work on my resume, a bunch of knowledge from the tech CS program, a couple of mildly interesting personal projects on my GitHub, and I should be ok; I just need to put myself out there.
Another part of me says I'm a piece of shit that can't complete the only thing worth completing related to my career, I'm going to have to explain why I don't have a degree to everyone I ever interview with, and why would anyone ever pick me over a graduate.
All this made more painful by the fact that if I had graduated, the Caltech degree would have been an amazing asset - and if I had gone anywhere else (well, anywhere a bit less high powered) I believe I would have at least graduated, if not done very well. Source: the two sophomore CS classes I took at UT Arlington in half a summer and got A+s in both.
This thread is hard to read. Thanks for your story; I need to remember people like you exist while I'm job hunting.
[+] [-] extralego|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sadamznintern|7 years ago|reply
There's a reason why I get treated like some sort of moron whenever my company comes up in social situations (I hang out with a lot of people who work in HFT and Google/FB).
[+] [-] hitekker|7 years ago|reply
Your alma mater will resonate throughout your career. Your GPA will disappear after your first or second job.
Better to get a C at MIT than an A at RPI.
[+] [-] taneq|7 years ago|reply
[laughs maniacally]
...no one will be." - Syndrome, The Incredibles
[+] [-] bhouston|7 years ago|reply
There is no way that I get a student who has a A average in computer science and then I ask them to do some simple coding and they outright fail.
The some people cheap right in the interview, I step out of the office and then quick come back and I see they have their cell phone out to copy from.
I am sure cheating is partially responsible for grade inflation.
[+] [-] cperciva|7 years ago|reply
Students complain. They complain a lot. We know that we're losing pre-med students to UBC -- which awards much higher grades on average -- because when we ask them why they decided to not accept SFU's admission offer, they reply "I'm planning on becoming a doctor and UBC will give me the higher grades I need". This also happens to a lesser extent with pre-law students. Over the past few years we've started displaying course average grades on transcripts and sending letters to graduate schools saying "so, there's something you should know about SFU's grades...".
I don't know how long SFU will be able to hold the line against grade inflation, but we're trying. It's not fair to students who worked hard to get a GPA of 3.7 (currently around 2% of students manage this) if next year's students can get that just by showing up.
In the mean time, if you see a student with a 4.00 GPA from Simon Fraser University... believe it.
EDIT: Out of curiosity, I pulled some statistics from the class graduating from SFU at the end of the 2017/18 year:
Across the university, 1.37% of students graduate with a 4.00+ GPA and 16.29% graduate with a 3.50+ GPA.[+] [-] skuhl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randcraw|7 years ago|reply
What's more, each school should report your score only relative to those of your peers. You should be compared only to other engineers, to other history majors, to other biology majors, etc. Because performance in physics is incomparable to english, education, or art, it's absurd to contrive a relative metric of comparison (AKA grades) to conflate them when none can possibly be meaningful or fair. Grades do an injustice to everyone.
As for comparing students from one school to the next, entrenched standardized tests like GREs have become a nightmare. Especially in terms of STEM curricula, schools often differ radically in how much they challenge the students and how far their skills develop by graduation. There simply is no way a three hour multiple choice test like a GRE can accurately reveal the difference between someone who attended Columbia vs Lehigh, for example. But a big difference there is. (I know since I attended both.) To pretend that some quick A/B/C/D/E test, which explores none of the practical skills learned in labs or projects, can accurately AND reliably reveal a meaningful difference among 'peers' -- this does a disservice to everyone.
Finally, there's no better illustration of disparity in the academic ranks than the rise of for-profit degree mills during the past couple of decades. The pretense that millions are not being cheated by these 'schools' is simply an abomination. I blame unchecked grade inflation and academic elitism for the tolerance for slap dash scholarship assessment that the sorry state of these 'schools' has revealed. As long as we avoid a precise and accurate accounting of the scholarly performance of the individual and the academic product of the university, we will continue to confuse student merit and invite charlatan schools to victimize their customers.
Somehow all these forms of false credentialism must end, and soon, or 'college' really will become the stinking albatross that Mark Cuban and others claim they are.
[+] [-] ryeguy_24|7 years ago|reply
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'? Are 'Schools and Grades' really the best indicator for worker performance?
[+] [-] recharged93|7 years ago|reply
Unless you're applying to a gov't job, you're connections, friends, professors that like you, github accounts, art or MBA portfolio are the tools that move you "up" in the world. And in that order.
Online education dilutes GPA too. As well as more tech skill degrees (devops certs), aka those were called trade/vocational schools in my day.
I've never seen a GPA on an intern application/resume in the last 3yrs. Unless and (unfortunately) its from a visa student. Hmmm.
[+] [-] ChrisRR|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nashashmi|7 years ago|reply
The students who go to these schools tend to be overachievers. Achieve honors at all costs kind of mentality. So just because too many students are actually achieving, do you try to bring them down? Or make coursework unreasonably hard?
I once talked to a professor from my university long after graduation, and I told him that I as I saw the students become better at the coursework (I was helping them so) the exams became harder and harder, to the point where the only way you could truly get the questions right and on time is by having a year of so experience doing those problems. He responded with the bell curve. That a few students should get A's, some should get B's, and majority should get C's.
Seriously? There are careers at stake here!
[+] [-] kevinthew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diiaann|7 years ago|reply
I disagree with this statement, at Carnegie Melllon I noticed that a lot of 4.0's were engineered. Students avoid taking hard classes, avoid difficult requirement classes by taking at an easier university, avoid challenging themselves outside of their major.
[+] [-] sololipsist|7 years ago|reply
Shit, there's no reason most low-level programming positions need a CS bachelors. We really, really need good associates degrees that teach functional coding (logic structures, two common languages, git, agile). There is no reason to expect someone to be in school for four years to be able to code.
Grades must be inflated to accommodate the horde passing through universities. The masters degree is the new bachelors degree.
[+] [-] JTbane|7 years ago|reply
I'd love to hear from front-line profs about this issue- does grade inflation need to be addressed?
[+] [-] paulie_a|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlthoughts2018|7 years ago|reply
[0]: < https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect >