23 ms·

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

208 points by ss2003 8y ago

tfigment 8y ago
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.)
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  How can good grades ever be a minus?
  - protonimitate 8y ago
    I think he's saying that if you are applying to a job and have more than 0 experience, you shouldn't be relying on your GPA as a selling point. And I agree - GPA is pretty irrelevant to anything in the business world. All it proves is that you can play by the rules in the school system - not a real indication of your experience, skills, or relevant knowledge.
    - vkou 8y ago
      Success in much of the business world requires you to play by the rules of the business system, which may be as capricious, arbitrary, pointless, stupid, and orthogonal to relevant knowledge [1], as success in the school system. For every hiring manager who takes the approach that anyone putting their GPA on their resume is an asshole or an idiot, there's three others who think that there's something wrong with a junior applicant who doesn't put their GPA on their resume. Unless you tell the applicant what you want to see, they have no idea which of these two hiring managers you might be. Instead of downmarking people for having the audacity to present this information to you, perhaps you could just ignore it? [1] Which the hiring manager in this thread has unironically demonstrated.
      - pythonaut_16 8y ago
        Without any evidence to back up your claim I could just as easily claim that for every hiring manager who cares about seeing a GPA on a resume there are three others who think there's something wrong with an applicant with any experience who does put their GPA on their resume.
  - cirgue 8y ago
    If you have to use it as a selling point, it means you don't have more compelling things to show.
    - vkou 8y ago
      Including 7 ASCII characters on your resume does not imply that you don't have more compelling things to show.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Yes, I have seen a 4.0 taken as a negative sign for people that are overly focused on following the rules. Less common is some people have a GPA limit and will not higher people over it. That limit can be as low as 3.2 in one case. This more for undergrad as most people are expected to pull a ~3.8-4.0 in grad school making the number meaningless. PS: On average I suspect it's a net gain for your first job, but adding a GPA after that is likely a larger risk than you might think.
  - pc86 8y ago
    They're not a minus in and of themselves. But more than a few hiring managers will prefer someone who obviously worked hard and has a transcript that moves from a B/B+ average to A's the last several years than someone who has an A in every class they're ever taken. If you're not going into academia or research it's much less important that you be a genius and much more important that you're willing and able to put in work over months or years to achieve an objective.
  - randomdata 8y ago
    Getting 100% on a math quiz in elementary school is also not a minus, but approaching employers with that information as a means to sell yourself leaves them thinking that you have nothing to offer the workplace.
  - bjourne 8y ago
    Dumb people prefer the company of other dumb people.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  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.
  - sodafountan 8y ago
    Because it's an arbitrary number that's increasingly becoming meaningless.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      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.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  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.
JTbane 8y ago
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?
- phlyingpenguin 8y ago
  I teach. I can say that I have never had direct pressure to pass students or raise grades, but there are two issues that I run into related to grades. First is the ever-growing methods of academic dishonesty. I do not have enough hours in my life to create and design new homework that prevents cheating. It's possible for some assignments, but not all. I don't give up on cheating detection, but this leaves tests and participation (be it simply turning in work or in-person) as the primary grade-changing events for many students. Second is the issue of student "litigation". It is not unusual to find a student that will fight to get their 4.0 by attrition, and that requires very good record keeping on the professor's part, taking away from time for other tasks. My situation is at an extension of a very large university. We focus on teaching and student connection, not research. I know that these experiences change drastically when professors have graders and a research program taking their time away from teaching duties.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Can you explain more about this “litigation”? Your students actually sue over their grades?? That’s nuts!
    - phlyingpenguin 8y ago
      No, that's why I put it in quotes. They will often keep in incessant contact and try to escalate matters within the department or school. This is still somewhat rare, but happens often enough to complain about.
- d-- 8y ago
  I'm at a large research school teaching computer science. Anecdotally, I have not received pressure from administrators. I have gotten pointers about the expected number of As and Bs from senior faculty though. And, the curves do go both ways.
taneq 8y ago
"Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super... [laughs maniacally] ...no one will be." - Syndrome, The Incredibles
- ectospheno 8y ago
  When I was in high school in the late 80's, our school would give an award at the end of each school year to the student with the highest grade in each subject. My geometry class ended up with 8 people who had a 100 average. Rather than break tradition and give out multiple awards they opted to give each of us a harder test to determine the winner. At my daughter's high school award ceremony they just gave the awards to everyone. Times change I guess.
- noonespecial 8y ago
  Except that Syndrome's plan was to use technology to actually make everyone better, which in a way is admirable. What we have here is that we leave everyone mediocre but tell them all that they are super. Now we are left with no way to measure the people who really have put in the work to become better.
  - taneq 8y ago
    Yeah, this is more like "when nobody's super, everyone is."
globuous 8y ago
Oooooh, these distinctions are given by absolute GPA and not by class ranking ? That's a shame...
- pc86 8y ago
  Giving out academic distinction based on class ranking is no different than giving out professional distinctions based on stack ranking.
scarface74 8y ago
Especially since in some graduate schools, you can’t graduate with less than a 3.0.....
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
noobiemcfoob 8y ago
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?
- ss2003 8y ago
  I don't think the point is how their performance compares to their forebears so much as how do they compare to their peers. If you compare today's students to those of 50 or 100 years ago of course they have more information and advanced skills to master. It's apples and oranges. These honors really only have meaning when comparing within the same cohort.
- krapht 8y ago
  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.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    Have school grades ever deflated? Or undergone some sort of correction? No citation needed, anecdotes are fine.
    - oconnor663 8y ago
      My grades underwent a correction or two back in the day :)
    - hashkb 8y ago
      Yes. At my school we had a real curve. If we all got perfect scores, that's a C for everyone. (More often we all got 15s and they became C's). Teachers who gave too many A's would be benched. We laughed at Ivy League 4.0s which just require a phone call from a parent.
ChrisRR 8y ago
Relevant Mitchell and Webb sketch, Everyone gets an A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGA11A340Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGA11A340Ck
hashkb 8y ago
Grade Inflation has been an issue for decades. I think we all know to look up how rigorous a school or program actually is and adjust. Also, um, students cheat a lot.
criddell 8y ago
I haven't read the whole article (paywalled), but I wonder if the honors losing their luster is more about a low correlation between high GPA and professional success (at least in STEM careers). I've been involved in hiring and for recent grads we will look at transcripts, but GPA as a factor isn't weighted very highly. I'm much more interested in hearing a candidate talk about their senior project or personal projects and other areas of interest. Does anybody even look at transcripts or care about GPA beyond your first job?
- icedchai 8y ago
  You're lucky if they even look at GPA or transcripts for your first job. College is the new high school.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I've taught in college. Freshmen and sophomores aren't that distinguishable from high schoolers by knowledge, ability, and maturity.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect >
- joeax 8y ago
  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.
syntaxing 8y ago
(Paywalled so I can't read the whole article) This is mainly due to society's (I'm in the US) mentality that if a kid get's low grade, s/he are lazy and a failure. We really need a reform to gauge aptitude better and accept the fact that some people are better at blue collar jobs than white collar jobs (and vice versa). Our current standardized test system does not reflect this.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
recharged93 8y ago
Do grades even matter anymore? 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.
- cirgue 8y ago
  GPA, in my experience, seems to map exactly onto your ability to wrangle a good GPA. That set of skills is largely orthogonal to solving hard problems or making useful contributions to a team.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    To me, that just sounds like your teachers and professors were piss poor at their job and had no idea how to grade properly.
    - cirgue 8y ago
      I was referring to my experiences with hiring engineers. Throwing shade about people's education isn't cool.
- shusson 8y ago
  yeah in software this might make some sense, but say you want to become a doctor... I don't imagine a github profile is going to move you "up" in the world :p
- vkou 8y ago
  > 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. Letting high-grade overachieves who don't have connections, or well-placed friends, advance into the ranks of the elite is how the elite keep themselves relevant.
matachuan 8y ago
Welcome to Purdue then
hitekker 8y ago
For college students, I absolutely recommend transferring up if your GPA is above 3.8 and you're attending a lower-tier school. 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.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  As someone who went to both top tier and mid tier schools, I have not found that neither have ever really come up in job interviews or my career The vast majority of people around me don't particularly know which schools are actually top tier, nor do they care what I did there or my GPA. What matters is your output, especially in science, where the question is much more about what you published/what grant funding you got than which institution you're at.
- latencyloser 8y ago
  As someone who went to a "lower-tier" school. I hate how true this feels sometimes. My colleagues who went to big name schools all seem to be in some sort of "club" together. At least, they have shared experiences that I have no such ability to relate to. They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force. That being said, the only time I feel this is in social settings and it's usually minor. People ask where I went to school and then I usually get an "oh?" back, as they've never heard of it. But it's never really impacted my professional life to my knowledge. Maybe I didn't get the same opportunities as these people as quickly, but I've worked at and enjoyed success at a few of the big names and am enjoying my time at a well known "start up" now. Kids, go to school where you can afford. Bust your ass, make connections, move on and move up. School doesn't matter once you're out of it.
  - andrewmcwatters 8y ago
    > They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force. By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them. I don't work in the Bay Area, I work in Phoenix. I imagine it's a different world out there: instead of saving 90% of my income and living in a van, I own a home and save 75%. Instead of talking to people who work at Apple and went to MIT, I talk to people who were self-taught, or attended some other institution I'm not familiar with. Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies. I've seen people who had 25+ years of experience lose a job position to someone who didn't know what `setInterval` was. To me, an "elite" tech person would be someone who wrote software that people actually cared about and had a strong amount of domain knowledge in a particular area, or prototyped hardware and sold a product that people bought. Even then, these people are flawed just like everyone else. Not too long ago, the author of Redis posted an article about shortcomings of Lua here on HN, and a deep inspection of his post simply yielded the finding that he wrote a Lua binding with a glaring exploit in it, and his entire article revolved around trying to justify his own flaws. To me having parents that have money doesn't make you elite; it's just something to think is rather nice and want to work toward as well. It seems to me that there exists a demographic of people in tech that seem impressive to others, but haven't actually contributed anything significant or tangible to the industry. They probably exist in senior positions of companies that I've never heard of that serve a niche that I'm not a part of. I don't know, but they aren't "elite" to me. Kids, do and make things people care about. School doesn't matter at all. Learning matters. Spending a small fortune to maybe associate with people who will get you a job is trying to play the lottery, but with a far more expensive ticket. When you're denied a job at a startup after receiving multiple degrees ask yourself if it was worth it. It takes 30 minutes to invalidate 4-8 years of your hard work. People want people who can do the job.
nashashmi 8y ago
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. Seriously? There are careers at stake here!
sololipsist 8y ago
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.
zach 8y ago
> "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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_(test)#Highest_score 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-business-schools/articles/2017-10-03/test-scores-gpas-are-rising-at-top-mba-programs 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.
- icedchai 8y ago
  Sounds believable, until you consider that the standardize tests are all getting easier, too.
  - zach 8y ago
    Right, score inflation alongside grade inflation. The administrators of the GMAT have an answer to that: https://www.gmac.com/why-gmac/gmac-news/gmnews/2017/july-2017/gmat-score-inflation.aspx https://www.gmac.com/why-gmac/gmac-news/gmnews/2017/july-201... It says that it doesn't explain the "conundrum" of increased higher-end scores. But it definitely addresses that it's very unlikely the test has gotten easier, since average scores have remained stable, as they have for the PSAT and ACT.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      If the top 20% of the population took the ACT in the 1980's and now its the top 60%, one could easily see how the test got easier and the average scores remained stable.
sudosteph 8y ago
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.
- extralego 8y ago
  All the more reason to not hire based on schooling background as well.
- sadamznintern 8y ago
  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).
- mos_basik 8y ago
  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.
bhouston 8y ago
I do a lot of interviews and I am pretty sure that quite a few students are cheating to get high grades. 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.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  I had a 3.98 GPA for my MSc computer science but honestly it took me a long time to be able to learn how to demonstrate that ability face to face. Some people just crumple under other people, brain shorts out, whatever you want to call it. That doesn't make us bad developers or computer scientists, just makes us humans who prefer figuring stuff out at a computer, and gradually growing trust with how to solve problems with others in a face to face setting. When you run through so many interviews it can feel like, a double bind dilemma. Give away information that might be the perfect solution to a company's code problem, rinse and repeat, all for free, and what you are supposed to take away is gaining experience dealing with bosses, managers, hierarchies of organizations. But some people just suck at having social skills, like myself. I wouldn't want to be in the position of an interviewer. Prefer open source, developers talking to other developers. When you hire someone you want to do all your thinking up front about your expectations of who you are hiring. But developers and computer scientists know, real world code and real world problem solving doesn't always get done that way. I've seen some companies have job listings that state "you don't need to know all these technologies, but having an eagerness to learn and an interest is ideal" and that takes a lot of the pressure off, because it shows a company is willing to work with you instead of just drain you until you burn out with your most precious resource, your mind, completely depleted. That statement also comes across to me as "we expect you to work 80 hours / week and have no life besides your job" but honestly, that's fine to me as long as everyone around me is aware that we're all in this together. I'm gonna forget some stuff, so will you. That's just what happens when you have to program so much stuff. Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. This happens over and over to coders. Does it happen to hiring managers?
skuhl 8y ago
Reporting the GPA of Medians (GPAM) alongside GPA would make GPAs more meaningful. The Washington Post recently reported on this idea: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/06/15/gpas-dont-really-show-what-students-learned-heres-why/?utm_term=.6fc6533c8b08 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/06/1...
FlyingSideKick 8y ago
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.
- lisper 8y ago
  > What’s important is finding what you love 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."
- fullshark 8y ago
  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.
- traviswingo 8y ago
  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.
mabey 8y ago
article without paywall: https://outline.com/HeY8AN https://outline.com/HeY8AN
paulie_a 8y ago
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.
- make3 8y ago
  then you're one of the only ones
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    I honestly don't even care if they went to college. "Top tier" is meaningless outside of snobbery. I honestly don't care where you graduated from 2 years ago or ten years ago. It simply doesn't impress me.
    - make3 8y ago
      I think that's ready to say, but getting into MIT, CMU or Stanford requires pretty heavy academic achievement. I myself went to a Canadian University (so fairly unknown to people in the US), so I'm not trying to defend my honor it something by saying that
  - recursive 8y ago
    I am also one of the only ones.
    - commandlinefan 8y ago
      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.
  - sodafountan 8y ago
    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.
ryeguy_24 8y ago
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?
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  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 difference in perceived wealth.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryeguy_24 8y ago
    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.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      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.
foobaw 8y ago
A major benefit of attending elite schools is the increased opportunity to network. Google used to filter candidates by GPA but "quickly" learned this was a mistake. Some companies do still look at GPAs. Others specifically indicate they're looking for people from "top-tier" schools. Out of context, this means you'll have more opportunities if you have a higher GPA and if you attended a top-tier school.
wernercd 8y ago
When showing up and saying "I'm here" results in a 4.0? When everyone is special. No one is special.
poster123 8y ago
For each course on a transcript, the average grade earned should be shown, so that the reader can adjust grades earned for easy or harsh grading. It would be nice to see the average SAT or ACT score in the class too, to see if the "harsh" or "easy" grading is just a reflection of the quality of the students. Put this data in a csv file that employers could download, and I think smart employers would use it.
randcraw 8y ago
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.
- chillacy 8y ago
  One of the smartest guys I knew from high school went to a top college for CS and went from being an valedictorian A student to getting Bs and Cs for the first time in his life. It greatly affected his perception of himself and he dropped out of the industry after getting his degree in CS. But he's actually a more capable programmer than lots of top graduates, so I agree that there should be some way of comparing students from one school to the next.
diiaann 8y ago
“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.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I can attest to this. I deliberately chose the easiest classes and even studied abroad twice because I knew specific professors leading the program abroad were giving out free As. Fortunately for me, I got my degree without too much torture that many others go through. Unfortunately for me, nobody looks at my nice 3.7 GPA!!!
cperciva 8y ago
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.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Yikes, that is really depressing that admissions committees aren't able to distinguish between what is effectively the "DOGEcoin is more valuable than x because everyone gets billions of coins!" Ultimately I think everyone should be judged on merit, like an audition, or based on a portfolio. But many businesses with deep pockets still award these types of positions based on nepotism and personal connections
  - cperciva 8y ago
    I think part of the problem that SFU undergraduate students have with graduate admissions is that most of the students in question will be applying to medical or law programs at UBC. It's one thing for admissions committees to recognize that some universities have inflated grades; it's quite another for them to recognize that an "A" from their own institution is worth less than an "A" from another.
chatmasta 8y ago
The question seems to be, in which cases could a high GPA be a negative signal? The answer depends on the qualities the employer is optimizing for in its employees. It’s easy to imagine how a high GPA could be a positive signal or a low GPA could be a negative signal. However, it’s also possible to imagine some circumstances where a high GPA may be a negative signal and a low GPA a high signal. For example, perhaps a high GPA at a hard school implies a tendency for isolation, a preference for conformity over risk, and quality of work that depends solely on the specificity of instructions given. Depending on the stage of the company hiring, and/or the role it’s hiring for, these traits may be undesirable and therefore useful as a negative hiring signal. That said, the question of GPA as a signal is too focused in scope. Any such consideration of a signal metric like GPA should be balanced with its inverse: the likelihood of a low metric (e.g., GPA) being a negative signal. A holistic approach would include creating a matrix of (x) traits the company wants to select or filter, and (y) input signals like GPA. That is, a mapping of signals to traits. For each signal and trait the company should strive to estimate the probability function of the following cases: - High metric (GPA) is a negative signal for trait - High metric (GPA) is a positive signal for trait - Low metric (GPA) is a positive signal for trait - Low metric (GPA) is a negative signal for trait The company should consider the importance of the trait(s) it is selecting for, and the relative risks (downsides) of misinterpreting any signal used as an input for selecting those traits. Only then does it have the information necessary to create a useful hiring strategy and rubric for candidates.
dqpb 8y ago
A single grade serves at least three purposes: - To give students feedback about their progress - To competitively rank students knowledge - To competitively rank students organizational/bureaucratic hoop jumping skills To conflate these three things is incompetence to the highest degree. Whoever invented this system, and everyone who has ever gone along with it should be deeply ashamed. Of course, this is an oversimplification - there are many more confounding variables packed into a single stupid grade than just these three. I really can't overstate how stupid this system is. It's not even a system.
jadedhacker 8y ago
Capitalism has resulted in such fierce competition that now even its feeder system for employees is being compromised. There are few marks of distinction that matter anymore, resulting in ever greater precarity for even the middle classes that thought they were immune.
mike00632 8y ago
To any young person worrying about the importance of their grades for eventually getting a good job, don't. Most everyone starts out with an entry level job and then other factors are immediately more important. Hiring considerations are more like: relevant job experience > total experience > references > whether they went to school > whether they finished school > what they went to school for > where they went to school > ... > GPA.
dom96 8y ago
I just graduated with a "First Class Honours" degree (70%+) from a UK university. I'm really curious how companies in the UK view these grades (and how US companies convert these grades to a GPA, assuming that they do perform such a conversion), can anyone share their experiences?
kevinthew 8y ago
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.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
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/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
abvdasker 8y ago
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.
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bytematic 8y ago
Since it is much harder to get into the top universities and most classes scale their grades based on the history of the class, perhaps that relationship is the issue
bmarkovic 8y ago
GPA is a totally useless metric, if for no other reason, then because it's a well documented fact that while some schools give out high grades for just showing up and applying some minute effort, others require an ass-busting amount of work just to register around average grades.

208 points by ss2003 8y ago

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.)

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
How can good grades ever be a minus?
- protonimitate 8y ago
  I think he's saying that if you are applying to a job and have more than 0 experience, you shouldn't be relying on your GPA as a selling point. And I agree - GPA is pretty irrelevant to anything in the business world. All it proves is that you can play by the rules in the school system - not a real indication of your experience, skills, or relevant knowledge.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Success in much of the business world requires you to play by the rules of the business system, which may be as capricious, arbitrary, pointless, stupid, and orthogonal to relevant knowledge [1], as success in the school system. For every hiring manager who takes the approach that anyone putting their GPA on their resume is an asshole or an idiot, there's three others who think that there's something wrong with a junior applicant who doesn't put their GPA on their resume. Unless you tell the applicant what you want to see, they have no idea which of these two hiring managers you might be. Instead of downmarking people for having the audacity to present this information to you, perhaps you could just ignore it? [1] Which the hiring manager in this thread has unironically demonstrated.
    - pythonaut_16 8y ago
      Without any evidence to back up your claim I could just as easily claim that for every hiring manager who cares about seeing a GPA on a resume there are three others who think there's something wrong with an applicant with any experience who does put their GPA on their resume.
- cirgue 8y ago
  If you have to use it as a selling point, it means you don't have more compelling things to show.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Including 7 ASCII characters on your resume does not imply that you don't have more compelling things to show.
- Retric 8y ago
  Yes, I have seen a 4.0 taken as a negative sign for people that are overly focused on following the rules. Less common is some people have a GPA limit and will not higher people over it. That limit can be as low as 3.2 in one case. This more for undergrad as most people are expected to pull a ~3.8-4.0 in grad school making the number meaningless. PS: On average I suspect it's a net gain for your first job, but adding a GPA after that is likely a larger risk than you might think.
- pc86 8y ago
  They're not a minus in and of themselves. But more than a few hiring managers will prefer someone who obviously worked hard and has a transcript that moves from a B/B+ average to A's the last several years than someone who has an A in every class they're ever taken. If you're not going into academia or research it's much less important that you be a genius and much more important that you're willing and able to put in work over months or years to achieve an objective.
- randomdata 8y ago
  Getting 100% on a math quiz in elementary school is also not a minus, but approaching employers with that information as a means to sell yourself leaves them thinking that you have nothing to offer the workplace.
- bjourne 8y ago
  Dumb people prefer the company of other dumb people.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
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.
- sodafountan 8y ago
  Because it's an arbitrary number that's increasingly becoming meaningless.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    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.
commandlinefan 8y ago
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.

JTbane 8y ago

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?

phlyingpenguin 8y ago
I teach. I can say that I have never had direct pressure to pass students or raise grades, but there are two issues that I run into related to grades. First is the ever-growing methods of academic dishonesty. I do not have enough hours in my life to create and design new homework that prevents cheating. It's possible for some assignments, but not all. I don't give up on cheating detection, but this leaves tests and participation (be it simply turning in work or in-person) as the primary grade-changing events for many students. Second is the issue of student "litigation". It is not unusual to find a student that will fight to get their 4.0 by attrition, and that requires very good record keeping on the professor's part, taking away from time for other tasks. My situation is at an extension of a very large university. We focus on teaching and student connection, not research. I know that these experiences change drastically when professors have graders and a research program taking their time away from teaching duties.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Can you explain more about this “litigation”? Your students actually sue over their grades?? That’s nuts!
  - phlyingpenguin 8y ago
    No, that's why I put it in quotes. They will often keep in incessant contact and try to escalate matters within the department or school. This is still somewhat rare, but happens often enough to complain about.
d-- 8y ago
I'm at a large research school teaching computer science. Anecdotally, I have not received pressure from administrators. I have gotten pointers about the expected number of As and Bs from senior faculty though. And, the curves do go both ways.

taneq 8y ago

"Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super... [laughs maniacally] ...no one will be." - Syndrome, The Incredibles

ectospheno 8y ago
When I was in high school in the late 80's, our school would give an award at the end of each school year to the student with the highest grade in each subject. My geometry class ended up with 8 people who had a 100 average. Rather than break tradition and give out multiple awards they opted to give each of us a harder test to determine the winner. At my daughter's high school award ceremony they just gave the awards to everyone. Times change I guess.
noonespecial 8y ago
Except that Syndrome's plan was to use technology to actually make everyone better, which in a way is admirable. What we have here is that we leave everyone mediocre but tell them all that they are super. Now we are left with no way to measure the people who really have put in the work to become better.
- taneq 8y ago
  Yeah, this is more like "when nobody's super, everyone is."

globuous 8y ago

Oooooh, these distinctions are given by absolute GPA and not by class ranking ? That's a shame...

pc86 8y ago
Giving out academic distinction based on class ranking is no different than giving out professional distinctions based on stack ranking.

scarface74 8y ago

Especially since in some graduate schools, you can’t graduate with less than a 3.0.....

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

noobiemcfoob 8y ago

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?

ss2003 8y ago
I don't think the point is how their performance compares to their forebears so much as how do they compare to their peers. If you compare today's students to those of 50 or 100 years ago of course they have more information and advanced skills to master. It's apples and oranges. These honors really only have meaning when comparing within the same cohort.
krapht 8y ago
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.
- matte_black 8y ago
  Have school grades ever deflated? Or undergone some sort of correction? No citation needed, anecdotes are fine.
  - oconnor663 8y ago
    My grades underwent a correction or two back in the day :)
  - hashkb 8y ago
    Yes. At my school we had a real curve. If we all got perfect scores, that's a C for everyone. (More often we all got 15s and they became C's). Teachers who gave too many A's would be benched. We laughed at Ivy League 4.0s which just require a phone call from a parent.

ChrisRR 8y ago

Relevant Mitchell and Webb sketch, Everyone gets an A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGA11A340Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGA11A340Ck

hashkb 8y ago

Grade Inflation has been an issue for decades. I think we all know to look up how rigorous a school or program actually is and adjust. Also, um, students cheat a lot.

criddell 8y ago

I haven't read the whole article (paywalled), but I wonder if the honors losing their luster is more about a low correlation between high GPA and professional success (at least in STEM careers). I've been involved in hiring and for recent grads we will look at transcripts, but GPA as a factor isn't weighted very highly. I'm much more interested in hearing a candidate talk about their senior project or personal projects and other areas of interest. Does anybody even look at transcripts or care about GPA beyond your first job?

icedchai 8y ago
You're lucky if they even look at GPA or transcripts for your first job. College is the new high school.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I've taught in college. Freshmen and sophomores aren't that distinguishable from high schoolers by knowledge, ability, and maturity.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect >

joeax 8y ago
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.

syntaxing 8y ago

(Paywalled so I can't read the whole article) This is mainly due to society's (I'm in the US) mentality that if a kid get's low grade, s/he are lazy and a failure. We really need a reform to gauge aptitude better and accept the fact that some people are better at blue collar jobs than white collar jobs (and vice versa). Our current standardized test system does not reflect this.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

recharged93 8y ago

Do grades even matter anymore? 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.

cirgue 8y ago
GPA, in my experience, seems to map exactly onto your ability to wrangle a good GPA. That set of skills is largely orthogonal to solving hard problems or making useful contributions to a team.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  To me, that just sounds like your teachers and professors were piss poor at their job and had no idea how to grade properly.
  - cirgue 8y ago
    I was referring to my experiences with hiring engineers. Throwing shade about people's education isn't cool.
shusson 8y ago
yeah in software this might make some sense, but say you want to become a doctor... I don't imagine a github profile is going to move you "up" in the world :p
vkou 8y ago
> 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. Letting high-grade overachieves who don't have connections, or well-placed friends, advance into the ranks of the elite is how the elite keep themselves relevant.

matachuan 8y ago

Welcome to Purdue then

hitekker 8y ago

For college students, I absolutely recommend transferring up if your GPA is above 3.8 and you're attending a lower-tier school. 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.

WhompingWindows 8y ago
As someone who went to both top tier and mid tier schools, I have not found that neither have ever really come up in job interviews or my career The vast majority of people around me don't particularly know which schools are actually top tier, nor do they care what I did there or my GPA. What matters is your output, especially in science, where the question is much more about what you published/what grant funding you got than which institution you're at.
latencyloser 8y ago
As someone who went to a "lower-tier" school. I hate how true this feels sometimes. My colleagues who went to big name schools all seem to be in some sort of "club" together. At least, they have shared experiences that I have no such ability to relate to. They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force. That being said, the only time I feel this is in social settings and it's usually minor. People ask where I went to school and then I usually get an "oh?" back, as they've never heard of it. But it's never really impacted my professional life to my knowledge. Maybe I didn't get the same opportunities as these people as quickly, but I've worked at and enjoyed success at a few of the big names and am enjoying my time at a well known "start up" now. Kids, go to school where you can afford. Bust your ass, make connections, move on and move up. School doesn't matter once you're out of it.
- andrewmcwatters 8y ago
  > They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force. By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them. I don't work in the Bay Area, I work in Phoenix. I imagine it's a different world out there: instead of saving 90% of my income and living in a van, I own a home and save 75%. Instead of talking to people who work at Apple and went to MIT, I talk to people who were self-taught, or attended some other institution I'm not familiar with. Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies. I've seen people who had 25+ years of experience lose a job position to someone who didn't know what `setInterval` was. To me, an "elite" tech person would be someone who wrote software that people actually cared about and had a strong amount of domain knowledge in a particular area, or prototyped hardware and sold a product that people bought. Even then, these people are flawed just like everyone else. Not too long ago, the author of Redis posted an article about shortcomings of Lua here on HN, and a deep inspection of his post simply yielded the finding that he wrote a Lua binding with a glaring exploit in it, and his entire article revolved around trying to justify his own flaws. To me having parents that have money doesn't make you elite; it's just something to think is rather nice and want to work toward as well. It seems to me that there exists a demographic of people in tech that seem impressive to others, but haven't actually contributed anything significant or tangible to the industry. They probably exist in senior positions of companies that I've never heard of that serve a niche that I'm not a part of. I don't know, but they aren't "elite" to me. Kids, do and make things people care about. School doesn't matter at all. Learning matters. Spending a small fortune to maybe associate with people who will get you a job is trying to play the lottery, but with a far more expensive ticket. When you're denied a job at a startup after receiving multiple degrees ask yourself if it was worth it. It takes 30 minutes to invalidate 4-8 years of your hard work. People want people who can do the job.

nashashmi 8y ago

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. Seriously? There are careers at stake here!

sololipsist 8y ago

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.

zach 8y ago

> "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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_(test)#Highest_score 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-business-schools/articles/2017-10-03/test-scores-gpas-are-rising-at-top-mba-programs 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.

icedchai 8y ago
Sounds believable, until you consider that the standardize tests are all getting easier, too.
- zach 8y ago
  Right, score inflation alongside grade inflation. The administrators of the GMAT have an answer to that: https://www.gmac.com/why-gmac/gmac-news/gmnews/2017/july-2017/gmat-score-inflation.aspx https://www.gmac.com/why-gmac/gmac-news/gmnews/2017/july-201... It says that it doesn't explain the "conundrum" of increased higher-end scores. But it definitely addresses that it's very unlikely the test has gotten easier, since average scores have remained stable, as they have for the PSAT and ACT.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    If the top 20% of the population took the ACT in the 1980's and now its the top 60%, one could easily see how the test got easier and the average scores remained stable.

sudosteph 8y ago

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.

extralego 8y ago
All the more reason to not hire based on schooling background as well.
sadamznintern 8y ago
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).
mos_basik 8y ago
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.

bhouston 8y ago

I do a lot of interviews and I am pretty sure that quite a few students are cheating to get high grades. 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.

s-shellfish 8y ago
I had a 3.98 GPA for my MSc computer science but honestly it took me a long time to be able to learn how to demonstrate that ability face to face. Some people just crumple under other people, brain shorts out, whatever you want to call it. That doesn't make us bad developers or computer scientists, just makes us humans who prefer figuring stuff out at a computer, and gradually growing trust with how to solve problems with others in a face to face setting. When you run through so many interviews it can feel like, a double bind dilemma. Give away information that might be the perfect solution to a company's code problem, rinse and repeat, all for free, and what you are supposed to take away is gaining experience dealing with bosses, managers, hierarchies of organizations. But some people just suck at having social skills, like myself. I wouldn't want to be in the position of an interviewer. Prefer open source, developers talking to other developers. When you hire someone you want to do all your thinking up front about your expectations of who you are hiring. But developers and computer scientists know, real world code and real world problem solving doesn't always get done that way. I've seen some companies have job listings that state "you don't need to know all these technologies, but having an eagerness to learn and an interest is ideal" and that takes a lot of the pressure off, because it shows a company is willing to work with you instead of just drain you until you burn out with your most precious resource, your mind, completely depleted. That statement also comes across to me as "we expect you to work 80 hours / week and have no life besides your job" but honestly, that's fine to me as long as everyone around me is aware that we're all in this together. I'm gonna forget some stuff, so will you. That's just what happens when you have to program so much stuff. Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. This happens over and over to coders. Does it happen to hiring managers?

skuhl 8y ago

Reporting the GPA of Medians (GPAM) alongside GPA would make GPAs more meaningful. The Washington Post recently reported on this idea: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/06/15/gpas-dont-really-show-what-students-learned-heres-why/?utm_term=.6fc6533c8b08 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/06/1...

FlyingSideKick 8y ago

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.

lisper 8y ago
> What’s important is finding what you love 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."
fullshark 8y ago
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.
traviswingo 8y ago
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.

mabey 8y ago

article without paywall: https://outline.com/HeY8AN https://outline.com/HeY8AN

paulie_a 8y ago

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.

make3 8y ago
then you're one of the only ones
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I honestly don't even care if they went to college. "Top tier" is meaningless outside of snobbery. I honestly don't care where you graduated from 2 years ago or ten years ago. It simply doesn't impress me.
  - make3 8y ago
    I think that's ready to say, but getting into MIT, CMU or Stanford requires pretty heavy academic achievement. I myself went to a Canadian University (so fairly unknown to people in the US), so I'm not trying to defend my honor it something by saying that
- recursive 8y ago
  I am also one of the only ones.
  - commandlinefan 8y ago
    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.
- sodafountan 8y ago
  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.

ryeguy_24 8y ago

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?

anoncoward111 8y ago
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 difference in perceived wealth.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ryeguy_24 8y ago
  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.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    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.

foobaw 8y ago

A major benefit of attending elite schools is the increased opportunity to network. Google used to filter candidates by GPA but "quickly" learned this was a mistake. Some companies do still look at GPAs. Others specifically indicate they're looking for people from "top-tier" schools. Out of context, this means you'll have more opportunities if you have a higher GPA and if you attended a top-tier school.

wernercd 8y ago

When showing up and saying "I'm here" results in a 4.0? When everyone is special. No one is special.

poster123 8y ago

For each course on a transcript, the average grade earned should be shown, so that the reader can adjust grades earned for easy or harsh grading. It would be nice to see the average SAT or ACT score in the class too, to see if the "harsh" or "easy" grading is just a reflection of the quality of the students. Put this data in a csv file that employers could download, and I think smart employers would use it.

randcraw 8y ago

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.

chillacy 8y ago
One of the smartest guys I knew from high school went to a top college for CS and went from being an valedictorian A student to getting Bs and Cs for the first time in his life. It greatly affected his perception of himself and he dropped out of the industry after getting his degree in CS. But he's actually a more capable programmer than lots of top graduates, so I agree that there should be some way of comparing students from one school to the next.

diiaann 8y ago

“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.

anoncoward111 8y ago
I can attest to this. I deliberately chose the easiest classes and even studied abroad twice because I knew specific professors leading the program abroad were giving out free As. Fortunately for me, I got my degree without too much torture that many others go through. Unfortunately for me, nobody looks at my nice 3.7 GPA!!!

cperciva 8y ago

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.

anoncoward111 8y ago
Yikes, that is really depressing that admissions committees aren't able to distinguish between what is effectively the "DOGEcoin is more valuable than x because everyone gets billions of coins!" Ultimately I think everyone should be judged on merit, like an audition, or based on a portfolio. But many businesses with deep pockets still award these types of positions based on nepotism and personal connections
- cperciva 8y ago
  I think part of the problem that SFU undergraduate students have with graduate admissions is that most of the students in question will be applying to medical or law programs at UBC. It's one thing for admissions committees to recognize that some universities have inflated grades; it's quite another for them to recognize that an "A" from their own institution is worth less than an "A" from another.

chatmasta 8y ago

The question seems to be, in which cases could a high GPA be a negative signal? The answer depends on the qualities the employer is optimizing for in its employees. It’s easy to imagine how a high GPA could be a positive signal or a low GPA could be a negative signal. However, it’s also possible to imagine some circumstances where a high GPA may be a negative signal and a low GPA a high signal. For example, perhaps a high GPA at a hard school implies a tendency for isolation, a preference for conformity over risk, and quality of work that depends solely on the specificity of instructions given. Depending on the stage of the company hiring, and/or the role it’s hiring for, these traits may be undesirable and therefore useful as a negative hiring signal. That said, the question of GPA as a signal is too focused in scope. Any such consideration of a signal metric like GPA should be balanced with its inverse: the likelihood of a low metric (e.g., GPA) being a negative signal. A holistic approach would include creating a matrix of (x) traits the company wants to select or filter, and (y) input signals like GPA. That is, a mapping of signals to traits. For each signal and trait the company should strive to estimate the probability function of the following cases: - High metric (GPA) is a negative signal for trait - High metric (GPA) is a positive signal for trait - Low metric (GPA) is a positive signal for trait - Low metric (GPA) is a negative signal for trait The company should consider the importance of the trait(s) it is selecting for, and the relative risks (downsides) of misinterpreting any signal used as an input for selecting those traits. Only then does it have the information necessary to create a useful hiring strategy and rubric for candidates.

dqpb 8y ago

A single grade serves at least three purposes: - To give students feedback about their progress - To competitively rank students knowledge - To competitively rank students organizational/bureaucratic hoop jumping skills To conflate these three things is incompetence to the highest degree. Whoever invented this system, and everyone who has ever gone along with it should be deeply ashamed. Of course, this is an oversimplification - there are many more confounding variables packed into a single stupid grade than just these three. I really can't overstate how stupid this system is. It's not even a system.

jadedhacker 8y ago

Capitalism has resulted in such fierce competition that now even its feeder system for employees is being compromised. There are few marks of distinction that matter anymore, resulting in ever greater precarity for even the middle classes that thought they were immune.

mike00632 8y ago

To any young person worrying about the importance of their grades for eventually getting a good job, don't. Most everyone starts out with an entry level job and then other factors are immediately more important. Hiring considerations are more like: relevant job experience > total experience > references > whether they went to school > whether they finished school > what they went to school for > where they went to school > ... > GPA.

dom96 8y ago

I just graduated with a "First Class Honours" degree (70%+) from a UK university. I'm really curious how companies in the UK view these grades (and how US companies convert these grades to a GPA, assuming that they do perform such a conversion), can anyone share their experiences?

kevinthew 8y ago

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.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

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/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

abvdasker 8y ago

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.

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bytematic 8y ago

Since it is much harder to get into the top universities and most classes scale their grades based on the history of the class, perhaps that relationship is the issue

bmarkovic 8y ago

GPA is a totally useless metric, if for no other reason, then because it's a well documented fact that while some schools give out high grades for just showing up and applying some minute effort, others require an ass-busting amount of work just to register around average grades.