3 ms·

While standardized tests are criticized for rewarding general intelligence at the expense of other strengths, it seems that college admissions has been steadily

While standardized tests are criticized for rewarding general intelligence at the expense of other strengths, it seems that college admissions has been steadily devaluing general intelligence over the years. Correspondingly, the alphabet tests increasingly reward rote memorization, diligence, and repeated practice at the expense of general intelligence. When I was in college the most disturbing trend was students who expected all tests to be things that they could study for using the technique of rote memorization and diligence. To a large extent, pre-law and pre-med curricula offer this, and so many of the students who excel using that technique end up in positions of social authority.

stcredzero 9y ago
When I was in college the most disturbing trend was students who expected all tests to be things that they could study for using the technique of rote memorization and diligence. I remember being accosted by a squad of students, who were there to make sure I was going to be a good little TA and run my course according to those "rules."
- ghaff 9y ago
  I did some tutoring in a graduate program. There were definitely some students who were, for reasons of academic background or otherwise, barely able to hang on. And they were very focused on exactly what was going to be on tests and what they really needed to know to squeak through.
kyleschiller 9y ago
Yeah, people with law degrees are probably overrepresented in politics, but pre-med?
- adjkant 9y ago
  Ben Carson is heading HUD after all, welcome to 2017.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Healthcare is one of the biggest areas of government, and administrators in the field often have medical and/or public health degrees on top of pre-med or substantially similar undergraduate coursework. For that matter, I think that medical doctors are substantially overrepresented in elected general government office (state and federal legislatures, etc.) even though not nearly so much as lawyers. (e.g, Congress is 2.8% physicians, while the US adult population is around 0.4% physicians.)
dragonwriter 9y ago
> When I was in college the most disturbing trend was students who expected all tests to be things that they could study for using the technique of rote memorization and diligence. To a large extent, pre-law and pre-med curricula offer this I can't speak to pre-med, but IME pre-law curriculum tends (unsurprisingly like law school itself) to include courses for which rote memorization and diligence is necessary but not sufficient to exam success; specifically, where there is a mass of detailed material (rules and their context, mostly) which must be memorized fairly exactly, but which must be applied to novel circumstances in free response essays in exams.

stcredzero 9y ago

When I was in college the most disturbing trend was students who expected all tests to be things that they could study for using the technique of rote memorization and diligence. I remember being accosted by a squad of students, who were there to make sure I was going to be a good little TA and run my course according to those "rules."

ghaff 9y ago
I did some tutoring in a graduate program. There were definitely some students who were, for reasons of academic background or otherwise, barely able to hang on. And they were very focused on exactly what was going to be on tests and what they really needed to know to squeak through.

kyleschiller 9y ago

Yeah, people with law degrees are probably overrepresented in politics, but pre-med?

adjkant 9y ago
Ben Carson is heading HUD after all, welcome to 2017.
dragonwriter 9y ago
Healthcare is one of the biggest areas of government, and administrators in the field often have medical and/or public health degrees on top of pre-med or substantially similar undergraduate coursework. For that matter, I think that medical doctors are substantially overrepresented in elected general government office (state and federal legislatures, etc.) even though not nearly so much as lawyers. (e.g, Congress is 2.8% physicians, while the US adult population is around 0.4% physicians.)

dragonwriter 9y ago

> When I was in college the most disturbing trend was students who expected all tests to be things that they could study for using the technique of rote memorization and diligence. To a large extent, pre-law and pre-med curricula offer this I can't speak to pre-med, but IME pre-law curriculum tends (unsurprisingly like law school itself) to include courses for which rote memorization and diligence is necessary but not sufficient to exam success; specifically, where there is a mass of detailed material (rules and their context, mostly) which must be memorized fairly exactly, but which must be applied to novel circumstances in free response essays in exams.