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Teachers: grades don’t matter! Every admissions gate keepers everywhere: show us your grades. When I was an undergrad asking professors to get involved with un

Teachers: grades don’t matter! Every admissions gate keepers everywhere: show us your grades. When I was an undergrad asking professors to get involved with undergraduate research the first question they asked was always what my gpa was. Needless to say many doors are firmly closed to autodidacts in academia and other certifications focused careers. Say what you will about tech, it can be much more egalitarian in that regard though not always.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
The entire "expectation culture" we've created around finding what you're suppose to do with your entire life in 4 years of college (or even less if you don't go) is insane. I felt betrayed after I left college after all the bullshit peddled during high school that somehow you'll "find" yourself and ultimately, your professional purpose in 4 years.
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  Says the teacher who counts the days to their summer vacation.
- TrackerFF 5y ago
  Truth is, if you want/plan to join any elite/prestigious part of the workforce, there's almost zero room for soul seeking in college. One of the few caveats being that you went to some extremely prestigious school to begin with (Ivies, OxBridge, and similar), and didn't completely fuck up your grades. Companies are a bit more lenient toward those, and don't really care whether you studied art history, or mathematics. If you're alumni from those types of schools, you (or your parents) probably planned your future from pretty early on anyway. But for the rest - those that study at run of the mill schools - you really need to work hard, and having done research on what will yield the highest ROI. Every year you see senior students that suddenly discover elite companies and sectors like tech, finance, consulting, etc. and scramble to get a foot inside, only to find out that it's too late. Yeah, it's too bad that for most, those 4 or 5 years of college will more or less decide your professional future. At least, it will close a lot of doors.
jltsiren 5y ago
Desirable places usually get far too many good applications, and nobody wants to spend time and effort reading poor applications. If you want your application to be taken seriously, you must first pass some minimal quality filters. A degree with good grades is one option, and if you don't have it, you have to find another way of making a good first impression. There are plenty of people with unusual backgrounds in the academia. The one thing most of them have in common is an insider who recognized their potential. If you have someone fighting for you from the inside, there are ways around most bureaucratic obstacles.
eplanit 5y ago
I hear you, but there has to be some objective measurement that can be applied, or else how does one fairly do things like qualify students for admission into a school. There are aptitude tests for this purpose, but they too are imperfect. Overall, when considering the scale of people to be considered, some formula that considers both grades and scores on aptitude tests makes (imperfect) sense. But, do universities ever reveal any of their algorithms for deciding qualification? I'm guessing no -- and besides, they've added a lot of racial and other sociological factors in, so it's very hard to tell why one person gets admitted over another. I feel for new students, as it really does seem like a horrible system to confront.
- ItsMonkk 5y ago
  “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” When the population you are trying to sort becomes larger than the ability to discover value, you rely on values that are given to you. Your argument is valid. Once the population grows to that level you can only do that. You need objective criteria. But we all know that objective criteria is bad. We know that the teachers are teaching to the test. We know the students are cramming and forgetting. We know that tutors bring up the results of students by one standard deviation. Perhaps we should rethink this. Maybe instead of greedily taking the largest population we can go through, we should stick to what we can evaluate and simply take the best from that pile? Nah forget it, we just found a new metric that the students aren't gaming yet! We're just going to use that, that will work forever.
paulpauper 5y ago
Objective criteria like grades or sat is better than subjective holistic factors which can be easily gamed by rich parents.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

The entire "expectation culture" we've created around finding what you're suppose to do with your entire life in 4 years of college (or even less if you don't go) is insane. I felt betrayed after I left college after all the bullshit peddled during high school that somehow you'll "find" yourself and ultimately, your professional purpose in 4 years.

throwaway98797 5y ago
Says the teacher who counts the days to their summer vacation.
TrackerFF 5y ago
Truth is, if you want/plan to join any elite/prestigious part of the workforce, there's almost zero room for soul seeking in college. One of the few caveats being that you went to some extremely prestigious school to begin with (Ivies, OxBridge, and similar), and didn't completely fuck up your grades. Companies are a bit more lenient toward those, and don't really care whether you studied art history, or mathematics. If you're alumni from those types of schools, you (or your parents) probably planned your future from pretty early on anyway. But for the rest - those that study at run of the mill schools - you really need to work hard, and having done research on what will yield the highest ROI. Every year you see senior students that suddenly discover elite companies and sectors like tech, finance, consulting, etc. and scramble to get a foot inside, only to find out that it's too late. Yeah, it's too bad that for most, those 4 or 5 years of college will more or less decide your professional future. At least, it will close a lot of doors.

jltsiren 5y ago

Desirable places usually get far too many good applications, and nobody wants to spend time and effort reading poor applications. If you want your application to be taken seriously, you must first pass some minimal quality filters. A degree with good grades is one option, and if you don't have it, you have to find another way of making a good first impression. There are plenty of people with unusual backgrounds in the academia. The one thing most of them have in common is an insider who recognized their potential. If you have someone fighting for you from the inside, there are ways around most bureaucratic obstacles.

eplanit 5y ago

I hear you, but there has to be some objective measurement that can be applied, or else how does one fairly do things like qualify students for admission into a school. There are aptitude tests for this purpose, but they too are imperfect. Overall, when considering the scale of people to be considered, some formula that considers both grades and scores on aptitude tests makes (imperfect) sense. But, do universities ever reveal any of their algorithms for deciding qualification? I'm guessing no -- and besides, they've added a lot of racial and other sociological factors in, so it's very hard to tell why one person gets admitted over another. I feel for new students, as it really does seem like a horrible system to confront.

ItsMonkk 5y ago
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” When the population you are trying to sort becomes larger than the ability to discover value, you rely on values that are given to you. Your argument is valid. Once the population grows to that level you can only do that. You need objective criteria. But we all know that objective criteria is bad. We know that the teachers are teaching to the test. We know the students are cramming and forgetting. We know that tutors bring up the results of students by one standard deviation. Perhaps we should rethink this. Maybe instead of greedily taking the largest population we can go through, we should stick to what we can evaluate and simply take the best from that pile? Nah forget it, we just found a new metric that the students aren't gaming yet! We're just going to use that, that will work forever.

paulpauper 5y ago

Objective criteria like grades or sat is better than subjective holistic factors which can be easily gamed by rich parents.