15 ms·

Title could almost be from The Onion. But it's true. It is hard, but that's okay. The whole point of the grading system was to acknowledge subtlety; that it's

by Osmium 13y ago

Title could almost be from The Onion. But it's true. It is hard, but that's okay. The whole point of the grading system was to acknowledge subtlety; that it's okay if you don't have an A, because it doesn't mean you haven't learnt anything, it just means you haven't learnt everything [in that course]. But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all. This is my own bias talking, but I think that tests were people routinely get above ~80% are badly designed tests, because set up the wrong expectations in students. If students expect 90-100% scores are possible, and then they start a subject where all of a sudden that's not true, then they're not going to deal with that well. Whereas if everyone's getting results in the 60-80% range, it sets up an attitude that "this is hard, but that's okay -- it's meant to be, and there's no shame in realising that there's a lot left to learn." Which I think is altogether more helpful...

WalterSear 13y ago
>But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all. They are, quite rightly, taking cues from the rest of the world. There is a difference in how we treat straight a students and everyone else.
npsimons 13y ago
This kind of discussion fascinates me; along with regularly participating in online "tests" that flat out claim you've mastered something after demonstrating minimal proficiency, I've also been contemplating depth of understanding, provoked by reading such things as "How to Read a Book". Should test scores be curved? Or does that defeat the whole point of tests (ie, to verify proficiency)? What even denotes proficiency? Getting the answer right once? Ten times in a row? 100 times separated by other different questions? I guess it ultimately comes down to measuring what you care about, but I think that tests and teaching in general could use a lot more discussion and analysis, and at least to me it's fascinating, from many angles (eg, as you mention, student attitudes and the best way to motivate people to truly learn).
- antitrust 13y ago
  > I think that tests and teaching in general could use a lot more discussion and analysis You're right, but so many times when this is brought up, the result is one of those "express your feelings on this topic" type assignments. A few of those bad apples ruin it for everyone.
- tracker1 13y ago
  I think it is entirely possible to use a curve, or even a scale to adjust a percentage score to a numerical grade. You can establish a minimum acceptable proficiency... say 55%, less than that, you fail. over that, you can have a curve that adjusts against each student and other students in that class (or even prior classes) on the same level/exam for a final grade... accepting 10% will get a D, and 10% will get an A, with the rest spread evenly with a B and C.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  Curriculum design and assessment design is not a new field, it is just an oft ignored field. The first step is to make very explicit goals. The downside of explicit goals is failure of the institution itself is potentially measurable. "Coverage" is a conveniently wishy-washy standard that makes it easy to pass the buck to the individual students -- "we covered that" has the convenient ring of authority. Curving the grades is an awful idea, but how it is usually applied it is rarely harmful. Professors mostly use it defensively in favor of the student, to fudge the grades up when the test turns out to be harder on the students than the professor anticipated. I am sure an occasional professor does the opposite, but one can never be truly safe from terrible instructors (other than avoid them).
alexholehouse 13y ago
The idea of getting 80%+ in college would be absurd in the UK. While we don't have a precise GPA (and there are many issues with the British secondary, tertiary and quaternary education systems, so this is definitely not a UK>US post), typically in undergrad people get in the 50-80% range, which, in my opinion, allows for 1) Much more challenging exams 2) The realization that "getting everything right" is not really how any part of the real world works.
- adw 13y ago
  For what it's worth, the curve at Cambridge, for Natural Sciences, was set such that 67% or thereabouts is a First.
  - Timmmmbob 13y ago
    70% in Engineering. People did get more than 80% though so it's clearly not absurd. I got 100% in a couple of exams.
  - Osmium 13y ago
    I think it may be a percent or so higher now, depending on subject. That said, I find it interesting that even though Cambridge still has damn hard exams, they still haven't escaped some grade inflation: I remember seeing a graph showing how the percentage of Firsts, 2:1s etc. has increased steadily over the last few decades. What's unclear to me is whether that's because they're awarding them more liberally now, or if students are just under a lot more pressure to succeed on paper than they used to be.
    - adw 13y ago
      Definitely have, and it's deliberate; instead of Cambridge acting only with reference to itself (and generally grade harsher than other universities), they now apparently aim to make a Cambridge 1st or 2:1 equivalent to the same grades at the other Russell Group universities. So there we go.
- Osmium 13y ago
wlesieutre 13y ago
One other issue with math and science courses is that they constantly build on previous material. You get these long chains of courses in calculus and differential equations and who knows what else where if you didn't master the first one, you're going to have trouble with everything after it. Getting a D in "British Civil Wars and Revolutions, 1639-1651" won't haunt you for the rest of college. A mastery of lower level European history courses might help you do well in that class, but you aren't in a position where forgetting old material means you don't even know how to start a single exam question.
- antitrust 13y ago
  I question the value of memory-based education. Application of historical theory is a lot like coding, and requires some memory retention, but classes that test on historical detail seem to me to have missed the point.
  - Afforess 13y ago
    I agree. If a student with an eidetic memory could ace the class without trying, the class is set up wrong. Unfortunately, many of my university classes were set up exactly to favor memory instruction.
  - wlesieutre 13y ago
    I wouldn't go so far as writing off all of history as rote memorization. Being able to write an intelligent analysis of the political climate leading up to WWI is a very different thing from knowing what year Ferdinand was assassinated. And yet having that level of understanding won't do you much good in a class about the American civil rights movement. But if you can't remember the product rule or how to do integration by parts, it'll keep coming back to screw you for years.
fournm 13y ago
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are frequently science and engineering tests where the expected average is around 30-50%! I'd argue those tests are more poorly designed, as they're either the wrong format or the professor isn't communicating information effectively at all. Just because something is hard doesn't make it any easier on you, as a student, to have to remember and reconcile that a failing grade on an exam is expected and is more likely to cause serious panic about a curve. EDIT: To be clear, the fact that below a 70% generally means "forced to retake" due to how GPA is handled in the US really isn't helping matters.
zhemao 13y ago
Well, in most science and engineering classes the final grades are curved, so it's still possible to get an A in the class even if you do worse than 80% on the exams.
gems 13y ago
"But it's true. It is hard, but that's okay. The whole point of the grading system was to acknowledge subtlety; that it's okay if you don't have an A, because it doesn't mean you haven't learnt anything, it just means you haven't learnt everything [in that course]. But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all." That's what I believed at first. Then I realized how concerned authorities are with grades. If you're looking to do work with some research group, people want to know your grades. If you want to get into certain graduate schools, you'll most likely end up competing with people with high grades. Grades aren't a super important determining factor but, of course, they are considered and they can be treated as a negative indicator if poor. Nobody really cares that you decided to challenge yourself. If you don't at least try to optimize for grades, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. If you don't optimize for grades, you'll be competing with people who do.
- jey 13y ago
  That's only true in the absence of other signals. If you look at it as instead a problem of "how do I convince X that I am the person they're looking for?", you can consider all possible strategies, and additional signals that you could provide to demonstrate your worth. Grades are a very imperfect signal, but often times it's the only signal provided by the applicant.
  - gems 13y ago
    Of course. But do you realize that some groups/schools filter by GPA? You don't even get considered unless you're above a certain threshold. How do send other signals then? Are you going to try to talk with the professors personally? How and when are you going to do that? edit: furthermore, how do you know the professor can single-handedly have any impact on who gets admitted into the program?
    - jey 13y ago
      > Are you going to try to talk with the professors personally? Sure, that's a pretty good idea. > How and when are you going to do that? Figure it out. If you want a cookbook solution, the answer is probably to just play the GPA game.
Dewie 13y ago
Where I'm from, practically only students that aspire to be doctors get "straight A's" in high school. If you get "straight A's" in elementary school, well you'd better not be too shy because you might end up on regional or national television. Grade inflation has gone too far when kids that get straight C's are hardly trying, and getting "straight A's" is only a minor achievement in moderately ambitious circles. You could have the most brilliant person - given she also had no problem utilizing that brilliance in a typical school setting - go through the entire system and on paper she would be indistinguishable from an average kid with solid work ethic. Personally I went to university and studied computer science courses as well as more soft courses, and I have better grades than I did in high school. Of course a part of that is because I enjoy at least parts of all the courses I've had to take.
enraged_camel 13y ago
>>But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all. It IS the end of the world because it directly affects your job prospects after graduation. That's what it really comes down to. Most HR departments put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on GPA. When looking at two candidates from two equally popular schools, the candidate whose exams were easier will be preferred because, with the same amount/level of knowledge, he/she got higher grades. It doesn't end there. The success of graduates in the job market ties directly back to the popularity of the school, which in turn determines how much funding the school can ask for in the state budget.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Does anybody care about GPA after the first job? AFAIC, the way to do it is to go to a school that lets you get at least one internship/co-op under your belt, then use that to never tell anybody your GPA (if it is shit anyway, no harm telling people your GPA if it is good). Works best if you can get the people you interned with to make an offer to hire you straight out of school. After that first job I don't see GPA mattering much one way or the other, your last employer should carry far more weight. My entire school career I never broke a 3.0 (for general courses) for more than a year, but everything has turned out pretty swell for me. I mean, I did get lucky getting accepted to the college that I did with my high-school GPA, but after that it was fairly merit-based I like to think. Looking back, I don't have regrets. I didn't give myself a heart attack or turn myself into a nervous wreck but I still learned what I wanted from school and enjoyed the process.
  - jobu 13y ago
    Google is one well-known example that used to require a minimum GPA, even for people with years of experience: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/03/27/i-interviewed-at-google/ http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/03/27/i-interviewed-at-goo... http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how-to-get-a-job-at-google-interview-questions-hiring-process.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how-t... That's why the recent announcement that they've found zero correlation between GPA and job success was such a big deal: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=2 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...
porter 13y ago
The truth is in most college courses that grades reflect how well you did relative to the rest of the class. Not how well you know the material.
Glyptodon 13y ago
I don't really think that's the issue. I have a science degree, but getting it was to a certain extent an exercise in masochism. Highlights of my college experience (probably 1/3 of the science courses I took might have had some kind of issue like these): 1. Exams filled with complex and abstract trick problems that differed substantially from assigned homework. 2. Professor who, when asked a minor question about something spent 30 minutes lecturing the class on 'RTFT,' as derived from 'RTFM.' Ironically, the confused student was likely the only one who had actually RTFT'd. 3. Lots of confusing, poorly described assignments. Sometimes assignments were so bad even the TAs had no idea what was going on. 4. Horrible textbooks, often written by departments to raise money rather than for quality or readability. There's really a lot of room for improved instructional quality in my opinion. Of course this was often compounded by the relatively poor quality of pre-college math and science education in K-12 public schools. Students being overconfident and unprepared for anything but 'success' and mental transitions from 70-80-90/A-B-C traditional grading to schemes that are based on std deviations or content mastery can be uncomfortable, but I don't think that they're the root of most student's problems, though I do think some professors use such schemes to try and cover for their poor teaching.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Most academics don't want to be teachers. They became academics so that they could do research. Many see teaching as a nuisance that "pays the rent", so to speak, and do the absolute minimum in order to scrape by. Some professors love to teach and everyone remembers them fondly. I had one professor who'd taught about 2/3rds of the courses at my university over the years. You could always tell he'd taught a course in the past because subsequent professors always retained the assignments he'd created -- they were just too good to replace. I was lucky to have him as my honours supervisor.
  - specialist 13y ago
    Most academics don't want to be teachers. Many of my coworkers (in higher ed) would rather be teaching. But it just doesn't pay. YMMV
  - 13y ago
DevX101 13y ago
I'm reminded of my physics professor, who after giving a test where the class average was 82%, stated that 'either this class is incredibly smart, or my test was incredibly easy'. The next exam, we were humbled with a class average of ~40%. Apparently we weren't incredibly smart.
- jussij 13y ago
  This reminds me of one of my first year university maths classes. With two weeks to go, the class was getting a bit restless and a few people where mucking up throwing paper air planes. Unfortunately one stray plane smashed into the blackboard nearly hit the prof in the back of the head. The lecture theatre went deadly silent. The prof turned around, collected his notes, wished us all good luck in the upcoming end of year exam and walk out of the lecture. He also went M.I.A. for the remaining four lectures in the two weeks that followed. But he got his revenge, by setting one of the hardest first year maths exams, which ended up having an average mark well below 50%. So many people failed the faculty had to lower the pass mark.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    Never understood why lecturers/professors take so much offense. Well if people are throwing paper air planes in the air you should be convinced that either everyone in the class is totally disinterested in math(which is impossible) or something is wrong in the way you teach.
    - jussij 13y ago
      Thinking back on those lectures, they were a bit on the dry side and as there was a lot of restlessness during the lectures. Also the paper planes had started to appear in earlier lectures and the prof did pretty much ignore them. I think it in this instance it was the plane crashing into the blackboard (and making a pretty loud thud) only inches from his left ear that finally made him snap.
    - deathcakes 13y ago
      I think its a politeness thing really - 9 times out of 10 the lecturer does not want to be there, rehashing the same boring old material again and again, and would much rather be working on their latest project. But they have to be there - you as the young student don't. If you are uninterested, leave. If you find the presentation boring, empathise.
kaitai 13y ago
These wrong expectations have been carefully cultivated for over a decade in students who get to good colleges. For over a decade, they've been getting good scores and they've been made to feel that a good score is the inevitable and deserved outcome of "trying". (The kids for whom this is not true mostly don't end up at good colleges.) "If students expect 90-100% scores are possible, and then they start a subject where all of a sudden that's not true, then they're not going to deal with that well." And they're evaluating you, the professor. As the professor, you've either got tenure and you don't need to care toooo much about those evaluations, or you are pre-tenure at a research U and you've got to keep 'em reasonable while you crank out papers, or you're pre-tenure at a teaching college and you've got to keep them GOOD. Those evaluations have got to stay above a certain level, though, especially in this job climate. Why go to the trouble of resetting students' expectations by broaching those subjects students will struggle with? So keep things easy. But then you're to a point in math or physics at which you can't continue avoiding the topics that are taxing intellectually. So you go into it and your students are sophomores with 13 years of straight As behind them and your star student starts to have a slightly tough time with multivariable Taylor series and she gets a 78% on the second midterm. She's totally mortified and gets her grade back up to an A- or B+, but at the end of the semester visits you in your office to apologize and tell you she's changing her major to sociology. She realizes that a B+ tells her that she just can't succeed in mathematics even though she likes it. And maybe your end-of-semester evaluations for that class are overall pretty good, recovering from the mid-term evaluations that were so stressed out, and you've dealt with the seven requests to take the final late to accommodate vacation or extra study time. Pretty good means you can breathe a sigh of relief in that respect... but you keep thinking about that student who left math because she got one 78% on a midterm. You tell her you got a year of straight Cs in real analysis and still got into graduate school and maybe she wavers for a moment. Only a moment. "But you're different. You're good at math." Students conclude they "don't have a talent" for math/science. They don't understand that "talent" is bullshit. Stubbornness, on the other hand, means something.
geebee 13y ago
Believe it or not, the title actually is from the Onion. http://www.theonion.com/articles/national-science-foundation-science-hard,1405/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/national-science-foundation...

by Osmium 13y ago

WalterSear 13y ago

>But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all. They are, quite rightly, taking cues from the rest of the world. There is a difference in how we treat straight a students and everyone else.

npsimons 13y ago

This kind of discussion fascinates me; along with regularly participating in online "tests" that flat out claim you've mastered something after demonstrating minimal proficiency, I've also been contemplating depth of understanding, provoked by reading such things as "How to Read a Book". Should test scores be curved? Or does that defeat the whole point of tests (ie, to verify proficiency)? What even denotes proficiency? Getting the answer right once? Ten times in a row? 100 times separated by other different questions? I guess it ultimately comes down to measuring what you care about, but I think that tests and teaching in general could use a lot more discussion and analysis, and at least to me it's fascinating, from many angles (eg, as you mention, student attitudes and the best way to motivate people to truly learn).

antitrust 13y ago
> I think that tests and teaching in general could use a lot more discussion and analysis You're right, but so many times when this is brought up, the result is one of those "express your feelings on this topic" type assignments. A few of those bad apples ruin it for everyone.
tracker1 13y ago
I think it is entirely possible to use a curve, or even a scale to adjust a percentage score to a numerical grade. You can establish a minimum acceptable proficiency... say 55%, less than that, you fail. over that, you can have a curve that adjusts against each student and other students in that class (or even prior classes) on the same level/exam for a final grade... accepting 10% will get a D, and 10% will get an A, with the rest spread evenly with a B and C.
comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
Curriculum design and assessment design is not a new field, it is just an oft ignored field. The first step is to make very explicit goals. The downside of explicit goals is failure of the institution itself is potentially measurable. "Coverage" is a conveniently wishy-washy standard that makes it easy to pass the buck to the individual students -- "we covered that" has the convenient ring of authority. Curving the grades is an awful idea, but how it is usually applied it is rarely harmful. Professors mostly use it defensively in favor of the student, to fudge the grades up when the test turns out to be harder on the students than the professor anticipated. I am sure an occasional professor does the opposite, but one can never be truly safe from terrible instructors (other than avoid them).

alexholehouse 13y ago

The idea of getting 80%+ in college would be absurd in the UK. While we don't have a precise GPA (and there are many issues with the British secondary, tertiary and quaternary education systems, so this is definitely not a UK>US post), typically in undergrad people get in the 50-80% range, which, in my opinion, allows for 1) Much more challenging exams 2) The realization that "getting everything right" is not really how any part of the real world works.

adw 13y ago
For what it's worth, the curve at Cambridge, for Natural Sciences, was set such that 67% or thereabouts is a First.
- Timmmmbob 13y ago
  70% in Engineering. People did get more than 80% though so it's clearly not absurd. I got 100% in a couple of exams.
- Osmium 13y ago
  I think it may be a percent or so higher now, depending on subject. That said, I find it interesting that even though Cambridge still has damn hard exams, they still haven't escaped some grade inflation: I remember seeing a graph showing how the percentage of Firsts, 2:1s etc. has increased steadily over the last few decades. What's unclear to me is whether that's because they're awarding them more liberally now, or if students are just under a lot more pressure to succeed on paper than they used to be.
  - adw 13y ago
    Definitely have, and it's deliberate; instead of Cambridge acting only with reference to itself (and generally grade harsher than other universities), they now apparently aim to make a Cambridge 1st or 2:1 equivalent to the same grades at the other Russell Group universities. So there we go.
Osmium 13y ago

wlesieutre 13y ago

One other issue with math and science courses is that they constantly build on previous material. You get these long chains of courses in calculus and differential equations and who knows what else where if you didn't master the first one, you're going to have trouble with everything after it. Getting a D in "British Civil Wars and Revolutions, 1639-1651" won't haunt you for the rest of college. A mastery of lower level European history courses might help you do well in that class, but you aren't in a position where forgetting old material means you don't even know how to start a single exam question.

antitrust 13y ago
I question the value of memory-based education. Application of historical theory is a lot like coding, and requires some memory retention, but classes that test on historical detail seem to me to have missed the point.
- Afforess 13y ago
  I agree. If a student with an eidetic memory could ace the class without trying, the class is set up wrong. Unfortunately, many of my university classes were set up exactly to favor memory instruction.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  I wouldn't go so far as writing off all of history as rote memorization. Being able to write an intelligent analysis of the political climate leading up to WWI is a very different thing from knowing what year Ferdinand was assassinated. And yet having that level of understanding won't do you much good in a class about the American civil rights movement. But if you can't remember the product rule or how to do integration by parts, it'll keep coming back to screw you for years.

fournm 13y ago

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are frequently science and engineering tests where the expected average is around 30-50%! I'd argue those tests are more poorly designed, as they're either the wrong format or the professor isn't communicating information effectively at all. Just because something is hard doesn't make it any easier on you, as a student, to have to remember and reconcile that a failing grade on an exam is expected and is more likely to cause serious panic about a curve. EDIT: To be clear, the fact that below a 70% generally means "forced to retake" due to how GPA is handled in the US really isn't helping matters.

zhemao 13y ago

Well, in most science and engineering classes the final grades are curved, so it's still possible to get an A in the class even if you do worse than 80% on the exams.

gems 13y ago

"But it's true. It is hard, but that's okay. The whole point of the grading system was to acknowledge subtlety; that it's okay if you don't have an A, because it doesn't mean you haven't learnt anything, it just means you haven't learnt everything [in that course]. But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all." That's what I believed at first. Then I realized how concerned authorities are with grades. If you're looking to do work with some research group, people want to know your grades. If you want to get into certain graduate schools, you'll most likely end up competing with people with high grades. Grades aren't a super important determining factor but, of course, they are considered and they can be treated as a negative indicator if poor. Nobody really cares that you decided to challenge yourself. If you don't at least try to optimize for grades, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. If you don't optimize for grades, you'll be competing with people who do.

jey 13y ago
That's only true in the absence of other signals. If you look at it as instead a problem of "how do I convince X that I am the person they're looking for?", you can consider all possible strategies, and additional signals that you could provide to demonstrate your worth. Grades are a very imperfect signal, but often times it's the only signal provided by the applicant.
- gems 13y ago
  Of course. But do you realize that some groups/schools filter by GPA? You don't even get considered unless you're above a certain threshold. How do send other signals then? Are you going to try to talk with the professors personally? How and when are you going to do that? edit: furthermore, how do you know the professor can single-handedly have any impact on who gets admitted into the program?
  - jey 13y ago
    > Are you going to try to talk with the professors personally? Sure, that's a pretty good idea. > How and when are you going to do that? Figure it out. If you want a cookbook solution, the answer is probably to just play the GPA game.

Dewie 13y ago

Where I'm from, practically only students that aspire to be doctors get "straight A's" in high school. If you get "straight A's" in elementary school, well you'd better not be too shy because you might end up on regional or national television. Grade inflation has gone too far when kids that get straight C's are hardly trying, and getting "straight A's" is only a minor achievement in moderately ambitious circles. You could have the most brilliant person - given she also had no problem utilizing that brilliance in a typical school setting - go through the entire system and on paper she would be indistinguishable from an average kid with solid work ethic. Personally I went to university and studied computer science courses as well as more soft courses, and I have better grades than I did in high school. Of course a part of that is because I enjoy at least parts of all the courses I've had to take.

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all. It IS the end of the world because it directly affects your job prospects after graduation. That's what it really comes down to. Most HR departments put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on GPA. When looking at two candidates from two equally popular schools, the candidate whose exams were easier will be preferred because, with the same amount/level of knowledge, he/she got higher grades. It doesn't end there. The success of graduates in the job market ties directly back to the popularity of the school, which in turn determines how much funding the school can ask for in the state budget.

jlgreco 13y ago
Does anybody care about GPA after the first job? AFAIC, the way to do it is to go to a school that lets you get at least one internship/co-op under your belt, then use that to never tell anybody your GPA (if it is shit anyway, no harm telling people your GPA if it is good). Works best if you can get the people you interned with to make an offer to hire you straight out of school. After that first job I don't see GPA mattering much one way or the other, your last employer should carry far more weight. My entire school career I never broke a 3.0 (for general courses) for more than a year, but everything has turned out pretty swell for me. I mean, I did get lucky getting accepted to the college that I did with my high-school GPA, but after that it was fairly merit-based I like to think. Looking back, I don't have regrets. I didn't give myself a heart attack or turn myself into a nervous wreck but I still learned what I wanted from school and enjoyed the process.
- jobu 13y ago
  Google is one well-known example that used to require a minimum GPA, even for people with years of experience: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/03/27/i-interviewed-at-google/ http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/03/27/i-interviewed-at-goo... http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how-to-get-a-job-at-google-interview-questions-hiring-process.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how-t... That's why the recent announcement that they've found zero correlation between GPA and job success was such a big deal: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=2 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...

porter 13y ago

The truth is in most college courses that grades reflect how well you did relative to the rest of the class. Not how well you know the material.

Glyptodon 13y ago

I don't really think that's the issue. I have a science degree, but getting it was to a certain extent an exercise in masochism. Highlights of my college experience (probably 1/3 of the science courses I took might have had some kind of issue like these): 1. Exams filled with complex and abstract trick problems that differed substantially from assigned homework. 2. Professor who, when asked a minor question about something spent 30 minutes lecturing the class on 'RTFT,' as derived from 'RTFM.' Ironically, the confused student was likely the only one who had actually RTFT'd. 3. Lots of confusing, poorly described assignments. Sometimes assignments were so bad even the TAs had no idea what was going on. 4. Horrible textbooks, often written by departments to raise money rather than for quality or readability. There's really a lot of room for improved instructional quality in my opinion. Of course this was often compounded by the relatively poor quality of pre-college math and science education in K-12 public schools. Students being overconfident and unprepared for anything but 'success' and mental transitions from 70-80-90/A-B-C traditional grading to schemes that are based on std deviations or content mastery can be uncomfortable, but I don't think that they're the root of most student's problems, though I do think some professors use such schemes to try and cover for their poor teaching.

jacques_chester 13y ago
Most academics don't want to be teachers. They became academics so that they could do research. Many see teaching as a nuisance that "pays the rent", so to speak, and do the absolute minimum in order to scrape by. Some professors love to teach and everyone remembers them fondly. I had one professor who'd taught about 2/3rds of the courses at my university over the years. You could always tell he'd taught a course in the past because subsequent professors always retained the assignments he'd created -- they were just too good to replace. I was lucky to have him as my honours supervisor.
- specialist 13y ago
  Most academics don't want to be teachers. Many of my coworkers (in higher ed) would rather be teaching. But it just doesn't pay. YMMV
- 13y ago

DevX101 13y ago

I'm reminded of my physics professor, who after giving a test where the class average was 82%, stated that 'either this class is incredibly smart, or my test was incredibly easy'. The next exam, we were humbled with a class average of ~40%. Apparently we weren't incredibly smart.

jussij 13y ago
This reminds me of one of my first year university maths classes. With two weeks to go, the class was getting a bit restless and a few people where mucking up throwing paper air planes. Unfortunately one stray plane smashed into the blackboard nearly hit the prof in the back of the head. The lecture theatre went deadly silent. The prof turned around, collected his notes, wished us all good luck in the upcoming end of year exam and walk out of the lecture. He also went M.I.A. for the remaining four lectures in the two weeks that followed. But he got his revenge, by setting one of the hardest first year maths exams, which ended up having an average mark well below 50%. So many people failed the faculty had to lower the pass mark.
- kamaal 13y ago
  Never understood why lecturers/professors take so much offense. Well if people are throwing paper air planes in the air you should be convinced that either everyone in the class is totally disinterested in math(which is impossible) or something is wrong in the way you teach.
  - jussij 13y ago
    Thinking back on those lectures, they were a bit on the dry side and as there was a lot of restlessness during the lectures. Also the paper planes had started to appear in earlier lectures and the prof did pretty much ignore them. I think it in this instance it was the plane crashing into the blackboard (and making a pretty loud thud) only inches from his left ear that finally made him snap.
  - deathcakes 13y ago
    I think its a politeness thing really - 9 times out of 10 the lecturer does not want to be there, rehashing the same boring old material again and again, and would much rather be working on their latest project. But they have to be there - you as the young student don't. If you are uninterested, leave. If you find the presentation boring, empathise.

kaitai 13y ago

These wrong expectations have been carefully cultivated for over a decade in students who get to good colleges. For over a decade, they've been getting good scores and they've been made to feel that a good score is the inevitable and deserved outcome of "trying". (The kids for whom this is not true mostly don't end up at good colleges.) "If students expect 90-100% scores are possible, and then they start a subject where all of a sudden that's not true, then they're not going to deal with that well." And they're evaluating you, the professor. As the professor, you've either got tenure and you don't need to care toooo much about those evaluations, or you are pre-tenure at a research U and you've got to keep 'em reasonable while you crank out papers, or you're pre-tenure at a teaching college and you've got to keep them GOOD. Those evaluations have got to stay above a certain level, though, especially in this job climate. Why go to the trouble of resetting students' expectations by broaching those subjects students will struggle with? So keep things easy. But then you're to a point in math or physics at which you can't continue avoiding the topics that are taxing intellectually. So you go into it and your students are sophomores with 13 years of straight As behind them and your star student starts to have a slightly tough time with multivariable Taylor series and she gets a 78% on the second midterm. She's totally mortified and gets her grade back up to an A- or B+, but at the end of the semester visits you in your office to apologize and tell you she's changing her major to sociology. She realizes that a B+ tells her that she just can't succeed in mathematics even though she likes it. And maybe your end-of-semester evaluations for that class are overall pretty good, recovering from the mid-term evaluations that were so stressed out, and you've dealt with the seven requests to take the final late to accommodate vacation or extra study time. Pretty good means you can breathe a sigh of relief in that respect... but you keep thinking about that student who left math because she got one 78% on a midterm. You tell her you got a year of straight Cs in real analysis and still got into graduate school and maybe she wavers for a moment. Only a moment. "But you're different. You're good at math." Students conclude they "don't have a talent" for math/science. They don't understand that "talent" is bullshit. Stubbornness, on the other hand, means something.

geebee 13y ago

Believe it or not, the title actually is from the Onion. http://www.theonion.com/articles/national-science-foundation-science-hard,1405/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/national-science-foundation...