Yes, feedback is hugely essential. It's more of a question whether feedback should come as an impersonal mark on a paper that provides minimal direction, or if

Yes, feedback is hugely essential. It's more of a question whether feedback should come as an impersonal mark on a paper that provides minimal direction, or if it should come from a person who knows your unique strengths/weaknesses and can direct you in a way that will help you thrive. As for SAT/GPA, they are terrible indicators of an individual's effectiveness. Hackers know this intuitively. (because so many of them drop out!) It's this use of artificial measurements that makes "MBA types" so despised. If those 4 years has been spent developing real projects and interacting with real people (more like an apprenticeship than modern corporate-education) then you wouldn't need artificial measurements because people would graduate with a body of meaningful work.