4 ms·

FWIW: this was true even 15-20 years ago. I can't really speak comparatively, but I certainly was put in multiple years of SAT/ACT practice+drilling at home, a

FWIW: this was true even 15-20 years ago. I can't really speak comparatively, but I certainly was put in multiple years of SAT/ACT practice+drilling at home, and occasionally full summer courses. And despite coming out of that with nearly perfect scores my having a 3.3 GPA was considered so low as to preclude me from most of the top schools I applied to. (My admission rate was 3 schools out of 13, if I'm remembering right) This not to mention APs, extracurriculars, resume padding (although not on the same order of magnitude as OP) I'd be curious to when this trend started, but it was certainly well in motion when I squeezed through the system.

com2kid 8y ago
16 years ago, I went to community college, transfered to a 4 year, worked internships, graduated without debt, landed a job at Big Tech Co due to my internship experience. I never took the SAT. Now days? Possibly more important, depends on the major. I'd say for a lot of software roles, practical experience counts more than school. I've managed teams where I hired based on experience and personal drive, another manager hired based on university credentials. I had much better luck, my team easily out performed other teams that were better credentialed. Not to say the better universities don't do a better job at teaching. The fresh out of CMU grad who wrote a huge chunk of our OS, and who right after went to Google to work on their OS team, is a great example of the top students from the top universities being better. But I'll pit an average student from a top university against a "driven to succeed" student from any other schooling program. That said the one bootcamp grad (on another team) was super motivated, wrote code fast, got us shipping, but wow that code had to be replaced ASAP. :D Best dev I had was fresh out of school, maintained multiple community software projects outside of work, and learned something new about his profession every day.

com2kid 8y ago

16 years ago, I went to community college, transfered to a 4 year, worked internships, graduated without debt, landed a job at Big Tech Co due to my internship experience. I never took the SAT. Now days? Possibly more important, depends on the major. I'd say for a lot of software roles, practical experience counts more than school. I've managed teams where I hired based on experience and personal drive, another manager hired based on university credentials. I had much better luck, my team easily out performed other teams that were better credentialed. Not to say the better universities don't do a better job at teaching. The fresh out of CMU grad who wrote a huge chunk of our OS, and who right after went to Google to work on their OS team, is a great example of the top students from the top universities being better. But I'll pit an average student from a top university against a "driven to succeed" student from any other schooling program. That said the one bootcamp grad (on another team) was super motivated, wrote code fast, got us shipping, but wow that code had to be replaced ASAP. :D Best dev I had was fresh out of school, maintained multiple community software projects outside of work, and learned something new about his profession every day.