<p>coureur – I agree with you, a scholar is a scholar and will often have an interest in a great many different topics. I agree with the people who pointed out that everyone should have a plan B. Pursuit of dreams should be accompanied with a certain degree of realism. People also need to be able to adapt. Jobs are lost, industries dry up, a person needs to be able to adapt to an ever changing world with new opportunities.</p>
<p>By simply ranking students by total score in the GRE, bovertine, we get an entirely different looking rank order:</p>
<p>[CARPE</a> DIEM: Chart of the Day: GRE Scores By Academic Field](<a href=“http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/chart-of-day-gre-scores-by-academic.html]CARPE”>CARPE DIEM: Chart of the Day: GRE Scores By Academic Field)</p>
<p>Simpson’s paradox, anyone?</p>
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<p>Are they all looking in MI?</p>
<p>Canuckguy, that is pretty cool. And it confirms what I always suspected: Public administrators and teachers are dumb! :D</p>
<p>(Prediction of future post: “I find it highly offensive that you would make the blanket statement that teachers are dumb just because some article blah blah blah I know five hundred teachers and they are all above average blah blah blah…”)</p>
<p>Jesus, I missed out on this thread until now. It is very relevant to my family’s situation. My son has applied for a PhD in Media Studies (not Film Studies) as well as some MS programs (although he prefers the PhD but he’s not sure he will get in; selectivity is sometimes like 5% or even more). I have been reading all this stuff including the original article that the OP posted. </p>
<p>Makes me very worried but my son is determined to go to grad school. I know this is his passion, but at the end of 9 years, whether this will set him up for a huge disappointment, I am not sure.</p>
<p>When I showed my son the OP’s article (I had seen it before many times on other fora), he said “Geez, thanks mom!” (sarcastically). Then he said that no one’s job is guaranteed these days. Especially he said “my generation (meaning the torch has been passed to his generation and old geezers like me are dead or retired) will have to re-invent themselves every few years. Even if we have invested 10 years on academics, we will have to rethink what we want to do with our lives as long as we’re working. Nothing will be permanent. So there!”</p>
<p>I think he is onto something. I have had to re-invent myself many many times although I have had a math/programming career for almost 30 years. This will be on a larger scale when he is middle-aged like me. He will have to reinvent himself every couple of years.</p>
<p>Canuckguy–the problem with that chart is that it’s going to tilt toward mathy folks, because it goes by score regardless of percentile, and the percentiles of the Q score are far lower than those of V. So, for instance, I, a lowly former English major, just got a Q score a bit higher than the average physics major as listed on that blog, yet my percentile was only 83rd. Yet my V score, where I blew your physics majors away (:)), was fifty points lower than my Q, yet was 97% percentile. So rawly adding the two up does not take into the account the much tougher grading of the V score.</p>
<p>My family has never been good at making the “prudent” decision, yet we always seem to figure it out, eventually. I was an English major back in the dark ages, and an English Ph.d student in the early 80’s (yeah, it looked grim then–Michigan had something like 20% unemployment. The year in between undergrad and grad I shelved books in a Uni library–with an unbelievably overeducated and fascinating cohort of coworkers.) Though I didn’t finish the degree for personal reasons, my MA and I are happily employed doing worthwhile work. I am also, though, in the midst of exploring a different grad option, which will cut down our family income (not so high to begin with.) Oh well!</p>
<p>My H, a bio and philosophy major, did make the “prudent” decision to go to med school (connected to same above personal reasons.) Was a fabulous doctor by all accounts–though not a wealthy one (pediatric inner city clinic, not a lot of money there), but chucked it to be a HS teacher several years ago. We’re surviving. He’s much easier to live with :).</p>
<p>My kids are wondering perilously along the path of “just getting by”, but they do, and they seem more content with their lots than some of their upwardly striving compadres. If poorer…</p>
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<p>I think these types of charts are for entertainment purposes only. There is no statistical rigor here - we don’t know anything about the sampling used for this test, the relative sizes of the various examinee pools, the types of student in each discipline who take the GRE, etc.</p>
<p>As much as I’d like to believe this (I have degrees in Physics and Eng 
) they are really just for fun IMO.</p>
<p>This goes along the lines of “useful vs. useless” degrees.</p>
<p>I’m currently a first year undergraduate student who is double-majoring in TWO humanities majors (Journalism and Chinese) with a minor is Spanish. Why? Because I love writing and I love foreign languages. If I don’t succeed in the world of journalism, I’ll always have Chinese/Spanish to fall back on (I plan on studying abroad, btw). Foreign languages, ESPECIALLY Mandarin and Spanish, are incredibly useful to learn, and no one can tell me any different.</p>
<p>And if all else fails, I might go on to law school or do a nursing program. I agree that going into grad school in the humanities department is really pointless, but for undergrad, who cares? Humanities majors are great for going into other fields and/or law school.</p>
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<p>No, no, Donna: mustn’t do that. He will be categorized as “dumb” by various ignoramuses & ■■■■■■ on CC and in other universes.</p>
<p>But then, I know lots of dumb teachers, lots of dumb politicians, dumb economists, dumb tecchies, and yes, even dumb mathematicians and “scientists.” Stupidity inhabits a large universe indeed. :)</p>
<p>I will be very interested to follow your son’s progress after Chicago. I actually really like following the “subsequents” of CC ‘progeny.’</p>
<p>What about grad school and PhD programs in the social sciences? Specifically, psychology. </p>
<p>I was wondering because that’s my passion and my plan.</p>
<p>Re: GRE total score vs. percentile:
I just wanted to mention that husband, who is involved in grad admissions at a top dept. in a science field, says they only look at actual Q & V scores – there is no consideration at all given to the percentile. Of course, the policy could be different at various schools and programs.</p>
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<p>No, the one that got a job is surprisingly still in Michigan (she works in the HR department of some company in western Michigan). The business major and the engineering major moved down to South Carolina. The psych/education major is somewhere out west… Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada-- I can’t remember which.</p>
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<p>Canuckguy, that chart appears to be based only on 2002 data; someone posted a link earlier in this thread to GRE data from the 2001-2006 period, divided into the three component scores and showing a very different order. (For example, Art History is 19th on the chart you linked to, whereas it’s 5th, 28th, and 8th on this chart. Philosophy is 9th on your chart; on this one it’s 1st, 15th, and 1st. Education majors are towards the bottom of both charts. Obviously, that says nothing about the qualifications of teachers who weren’t education majors!)</p>
<p>Anneroku–that might well be true. In a given field that wouldn’t matter. But it remains also true that adding Q and V gives misguiding information (as GRE itself says in its literature) especially when comparing cross-fields where the breakdown tends to vary more.</p>
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<p>Mythmom, although I’ve often encountered the same attitude, I didn’t comment earlier because it annoys me so much. Even here on CC, there seem to be a lot of people (particularly younger people, for some reason) who truly believe that in order to be seen as “smart” or “brilliant,” you have to excel at hard science/math, which, supposedly, are inherently so much more difficult than humanities or the social sciences. Of course there are people who are truly brilliant in all subjects, and of course there are plenty of math/science types who are wonderful writers, as others have pointed out. (Some of the most well-written books I’ve read have been by physicians, as it happens.) </p>
<p>But the idea that humanities are “easy” compared to math/science, as commonly-held as it is, does bother me. Just because being truly good at humanities requires different skills, doesn’t mean those skills, or that kind of intelligence, are more common or less difficult than brilliance in math/science skills. If that were so, why are there so many more 800’s every year on the math SAT (almost twice as many among boys) than on the Critical Reading SAT? </p>
<p>There’s no way to say this without bragging about my son, but so what. Yes, he got “only” a 690 on his math SAT, and he would never claim that math or science are his strong points, and there were quite a few kids who got 800’s in math at his high school. But he was the only one who got not only an 800 in CR, but a “perfect” 800 (every answer correct – since you can still get an 800 with one or two answers wrong). And did it twice. In fact, he’s only run into one other kid at Chicago who did that. I’m not suggesting that SAT scores mean all that much about how smart someone is. This is just an example. Still, what he’s good at, there aren’t too many people who are better, and I couldn’t care less (neither can he) that he doesn’t excel in every area. It doesn’t mean he isn’t as smart in his own way as all the math/science “geniuses” he knows – just different.</p>
<p>After all, there are lots of 12 year old prodigies in math, but there’s never been a great novel or poem written by a 12-year old! (Because, of course, it isn’t possible to do that without experiencing and understanding more of life than any 12 year old has or can.) Nonetheless, some time I’ll post the first poem my son ever wrote, when he was 6. I still can’t believe he wrote it, but I saw him do it myself and still have the piece of paper. (For years, he wanted to be a poet when he grew up, and was published in his high school literary magazine from 7th grade on, which was pretty unusual. Unfortunately, he got a lot more self-conscious about it as he got older – as many children do about art or poetry, unfortunately – and ended up abandoning the idea as too impractical. If anyone thinks getting a job with a Ph.D in a humanities subject is hard, try making a living as a poet!)</p>
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At this time I believe we need more poets (and perhaps fewer lawyers and MBAs). I find that people of letters are under appreciated, but as a culture we need them. I recently read an extraordinary book Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor, by Ted Cohen, a philosophy professor. I shudder to think what would have happened if Ted had gone into something else. The world is a better place for that book, including my business.</p>
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<li><p>Do we really need to be comparing the quality of 800 SAT scores? Both admissions committees and I do not care much about the difference between 800 and 760. I refuse to be interested in “perfect” vs. imperfect 800s. I have seen that score several times, and I have no idea whether it reflected some wrong answers or not.</p></li>
<li><p>Have there really been 12-year-old math prodigies who have contributed something substantial and new to the study of mathematics? I don’t know about that. I know about Mozart, but I suspect I wouldn’t if he had stopped writing music at 13. Meanwhile, I can think of at least one substantial work of literature that was written, at least in part, by a 13-year-old – Anne Frank’s Diary, which is affecting in no small part due to the increasing sophistication of its writing over the 27-month period it covers. By her 15th birthday, she was a real writer – notwithstanding that her experience of life after her 12th year was extremely limited.</p></li>
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<p>I’ve heard (and I don’t know how far this is true), that countries like China, Korea and even India are looking for good Humanities scholars to make up for the fact that their countries overwhelmingly produce math/science students and techies and the Humanities students are few and far between. Management at large and well known companies in India (such as Wipro, Mahindra and Mahindra, TCS) etc. are looking for Humanities students to head up their company’s divisions. Again, word of mouth and stuff I’ve read in blogs, maybe they aren’t true. One of the Mahindras (of Mahindra and Mahindra fame) was featured in the Charlie Rose show. He said he’d prefer his children to major in the Humanities so they could manage the family businesses better. This Mahindra has a BA from Harvard in Film Studies! Yes, Film Studies!!</p>