Can’t we all just agree already that it’s the individual, their intellect and their hard work that really makes the difference in the real world, not their college major, or even their school in most cases?
“There is no doubt that some disciplines are more cognitively demanding than others, and that we are most likely to end up with a degree in a field we can do, rather than in a major that we want.”
Or, you rationalize your inability to perform in certain fields by claiming that they aren’t “cognitively demanding.” Tell me about how easy it is to stare at a blank paper and create a symphony, or a blank stage and coax performances out of actors that make people cry. You can’t, so you dismiss them as “less cognitively demanding” as opposed to recognizing that there are lots of different kinds of intelligence in the world, not just mathy-type intelligence.
@#51
"She is wrong in thinking that standardized testing give a huge edge to the rich; it does not. "
Standardized testing does give an advantage to the rich because, on average, the rich students know more. Any knowledge test is going to, on average, stratify by income in the US.
Higher income students know more because they have better schools, and on average, they are more likely to have parents who have a better understanding of the importance of education and make it a priority for their kids. That does not mean it is unfair. What it is telling you is that the US is not doing a good job of making sure that low income students get a good education.
Getting rid of the test is just shooting the messenger. That is just ignoring the problem, not solving the problem. The way to have fewer people who have cancer is not to discontinue testing for it. That would be foolish. To solve the problem we need to do a better job of educating low income students and parents.
-I haven’t read the whole thread yet but this is an interesting post.This is an interesting riddle. Does standardized testing give the wealthy a huge edge in getting into the best schools which will give them a huge edge in getting the best jobs and effectively disenfranchise the middle and lower class students with rare exceptions?
-I know that debate isn’t new.
-I think most low income students and parents dounderstand how important standardized test scores are. I’m not sure most lower income folks have a stable enough environment at home to compete effectively and that is the real root of the problem. And I don’t know whose responsibility it is to provide home/job/life stability to the less advantaged folks.
-The middle class will just have to fend for themselves. Any programs will be for the lower class and the middle class is usually stuck watching some lower class students get breaks and advantages they are shut out of.
Wealthier students can also afford to take the test multiple times. For low-income families, that extra 50 bucks (not sure of exact cost of each test) is a deal-breaker. Even the study guides are expensive if you are on a limited income (although I guess you could check them out at the library.)
There are testing fee waivers. However, lower income students are less likely to be aware (from counselors and other students in high schools where few go to college, or parents and other relatives who did not go to college) about the need to take the tests, optimal test strategy, and test preparation.
Very true, but I was thinking about new grads. I was comparing this:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/brown-and-cornell-are-second-tier/27565?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
With this:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi?target=author&tid=1868
The latter is a much better selection process- more egalitarian and meritocratic, in my opinion. I find the former rather repulsive if not downright incestuous.
I was one of those pesky humanities/social science types that did not start working full time until I was 25.
There is no such thing as different types of intelligences. There is simply the “g” factor. (Where one chooses to apply that intelligence, if at all, is a personal matter). This information is not popular with the well-off. It interferes with the transmission of privilege from one generation to the next, so we don’t hear it propagated in our popular media much.
Additionally, I believe the fee waiver program ‘only’ gives out two waivers per person, which is pretty good but doesn’t compare to the kids I see in the College Admissions forum who are taking the SAT or ACT 4 to 6 times. I think two attempts is enough to do well with studying and a reasonable baseline aptitude but there’s something to be said for the attrition approach.
Students are encouraged to take the test multiple times when there is a low ceiling and a couple of questions guessed incorrectly or a calculation or two that is off can make the difference between passing a threshold of 700 or 750, or not. If employers, years later, are demanding that candidates pass such a threshold rather than administering their own exams, this further increases the incentive for students to prepare extensively for these exams if there is any indication that they have the potential to score at these levels. Kind of like buying insurance.
I am not sure that low income students are fully aware of the benefits that can come from scoring well on these tests, and many might lack the confidence to come back for a second try. Frazzled kids and their peers in AP/honors classes were aware of the cut-offs for tens of thousands in merit aid at various schools that they were using as financial safeties. (Another incentive aside from admissions to prep for and re-take the tests.) Their teachers might also not be aware of what is involved, in addition to ability, in getting a high score.
Getting back to OP, my main takeaway was not that majoring in liberal arts is necessarily a bad idea (many engineers seem worried about the long-term sustainability of an engineering career once the initial rush of high-paid employment out of the gate wears off) but that getting into extreme debt is a bad idea, for far too many who enter the lottery. I also think that low-income students without a safety net have become particularly vulnerable to the effects of getting into debt no matter the major.
" So, for me, standardized test>major>college attended."
My kid was accepted into a Fortune 200 company’s exec training program (30 out of 3000 applicants were offered positions.) They didn’t even ask for his SAT/ACT score. I asked him if they did because of the many threads on CC about companies asking now. He is a poly sci major with history minor and his job has nothing to do at all with the subjects he studied.
The interview process, imo, is what separated the wheat from the chaff - with the final one being a whole day affair being interviewed separately by 3 different people and then a group exercise given to 5 interviewees(sp) with each person responsible for presenting to a panel their part of the exercise.
Emilybee’s experience is my own too.
“There is no such thing as different types of intelligences. There is simply the “g” factor. (Where one chooses to apply that intelligence, if at all, is a personal matter). This information is not popular with the well-off. It interferes with the transmission of privilege from one generation to the next, so we don’t hear it propagated in our popular media much.”
Hey canuckguy, I’m a 1%er, i kick butt on any standardized test you can devise, I plan on “transferring privilege” to my kids in the form of paying for their education and ensuring they are without want, and whether I believe in the primacy of the g factor (which I don’t, as I have common sense and interact in the real world) won’t “interfere” with that transmission at all. You just can’t handle when people disagree with you so you turn it into class structure arguments. I don’t disagree with you because I’m rich, I disagree with you because I’m smart.
@emilybee - congrats to your S for getting through that grueling process and snagging that job. We are finding that many students and parents are not prepared for how competitive the job market has become, especially for students who want to start with the most desired employers, or work for large companies.
Just getting through that selection process to get to the final round of interviews can be difficult. Surely they did not interview all 3,000 applicants? Do you have any idea of what made your S’s application stand out?
Frazzled D was actually surprised at the number of campus recruiters who did ask for SAT scores as well as major and GPA, even though most students at her school would have had SAT scores close to if not above a 750 in both math and critical reading regardless of major.
The company she currently works for did not ask for SAT scores, btw. Does not mean that this does not happen or that it will not happen more often in coming years.
I have hired people for large corporations for 30 years, and it’s ludicrous the claim that there aren’t multiple intelligences. I worked for a man who had crippling dyslexia- his entire life had been spent as dumb kid-- but he had the ability to connect with people like nobody I’ve ever met.
Was earning in the 7 figures by a relatively young age selling complicated (and large cycle time) B2B services. On paper, he was dumb (graduate of a college nobody has ever heard of majoring in underwater basket weaving). I have no idea what his IQ was but it was likely at the low end of corporate leaders.
But he related to people. Not in a shmoozy/salesman way, but remembered your kids names and whether Timmy’s team had won the soccer championship last year and how were they doing this year; whose parent had just had gall bladder surgery; which one of the admin’s in the secretarial pool loved cats and which one was a NASCAR fan.
A lot of people who should be really successful professionally in the corporate world based on their smarts and their education and their resumes top out early on. Either they can’t quite transition to the type of work required past the analyst/associate/new hire level, or they aren’t good getting and absorbing feedback, or they decide they want a life with less stress and fewer hours and more time with their kids.
All fine and good. But when you see people at the top of their careers and realize that some of them have been successful because they are just really, really smart at connecting with people and being empathetic and kind, and excel at putting themselves in someone else’s shoes (which is what you need in sales - whether B2C, selling insurance or aluminum siding, or B2B selling aircraft engines or turbines or large transportation systems or electric power plant equipment) it is hard not to conclude that there are, indeed, multiple forms of intelligence.
I was a lot smarter than my boss via the SAT/standardized test/GPA metrics, but couldn’t come near him in relating to or reading people.
I have two kids. One whose IQ puts the kiddo in the upper percentiles of the “profoundly gifted” range. Think, Einstein-level IQ. The other kiddo has rather average IQ. Guess which one was always more successful? As a high school student, as a college student, as a fully functioning member of society.
IQ, intelligence, etc – that’s just one part of the equation. Increasingly, I think it’s the least important part of the equation.
“I have hired people for large corporations for 30 years, and it’s ludicrous the claim that there aren’t multiple intelligences.”
Of course. I think there are people who aren’t very skilled in interacting with others, who think that “the business world” just consists on working on problems that lend themselves to higher-order mathematical or analytical skills, and who wonder why they don’t go higher in the business world because they don’t get the importance of soft skills, such as relating and empathy. These are the ones who trot out “but what about the math scores.”
Pizza- I know you’ve seen 360 reviews of middle and upper level management professionals. The “boxes to check” around analytical skills, quantitative prowess, etc. take up 20% of it. (By the time someone is middle management, they’ve proven their thinking and math skills). But 80% of it is around influencing skills, ability to disagree with people without being abusive, ability to take a solid employee and make him or her outstanding via coaching, mentoring and teaching, etc. And sometimes the smartest folks are just unable (or unwilling) to see that they need to pivot from being the smartest person in the room to developing people skills if they are going to keep moving upwards.
You do realize that the jobs whose recruiting and hiring practices are described in those links are only a tiny percentage of the overall job market, right?
The emphasis on SAT scores for hiring for jobs after college graduation makes little sense in general (though perhaps the most elitist jobs just use it as another screen to trim down the large volume of well qualified applicants). Why be concerned about a job applicant’s high school record when s/he can present a more recent college record?
Probably the bigger standardized testing issue for students in schools and environments with low college admission awareness (among counselors, other students, parents) is stuff like:
a. Not realizing that the junior year PSAT can help bring NM scholarship money.
b. Not realizing that taking the SAT and ACT in junior year can help the summer/fall college search, as well as give time for a retry in the fall if desired.
c. Not realizing that some schools require SAT subject tests.
d. Not knowing techniques of time and cost efficient test preparation.
I believe a student can have 6 total fee waivers. 2 for ACT, 2 for SAT and 2 for SAT Subjects. I don’t remember if the PSAT cost anything (may depend on HS) but I’d guess that fee, if there is one, can also be waived. But this is a pretty late intervention for a lot of low income students.
My D prepped a little with SAT/ACT books borrowed from the library, and one official SAT book. Our library is well stocked, though, and we can access books form anywhere in the state if they aren’t available locally. Prep books were also available in her HS guidance office. IDK if less affluent communities have that option.
@frazzled2thecore - There were several stages where the company weeded out applicants. He was required to submit at first a basic application online. He was then invited to take an online timed test (no idea what kind of questions were asked.) I guess he did well enough that he was offered a phone interview. After the phone interview he was invited to do the in person all day interviews at the corporate headquarters. The whole process took several months.
I don’t really know what made him an excellent candidate. I assume it was a number of things. His previous job experiences - one part time starting in high school and continuing through college over summers and breaks - while also doing internships over the summers and having a job on campus during the school year. Imo, this shows he is a hard worker and a good employee and he got excellent references from those. He also used his colleges alum network - contacting alums who work at the company and even a mother of a student who works for this company. They all gave him very valuable advice. Also, he was already very comfortable with interviewing and public speaking - he had to do many presentations in classes and had a leadership position in student government which necessitated a lot of interaction with top administrators.