<p>^But given that the SAT’s of Ivy or elite school students generally fall into the range of very good to excellent/perfect, it seems redundant to ask for them then. It would make more sense to ask for that metric from students of say, state flagships, in which there could be a much wider range of scores. </p>
<p>Well…it’s been a while, but my kid was asked for them for a summer asnalyst job. About half the summer analysts were Wharton students and I think GPA was probably more important for them. However, a lot of financial firms are willing to take a gamble on kids who majored in humanites, social studies, or foreign languages IF they have sufficient math aptitude and they think a high SAT M score proves that. My kid also listed SAT II score and AP BC Calc score. This was just designed to indicate that kid was good enough at math to succeed as an analyst. </p>
<p>As discussed in other threads, there are kids at top colleges who got in despite lower SAT scores–especially lower scores on one half of the SAT. And I also suspect–though nobody’s ever told me–that firms think there may be some kids who got into top colleges because they are URMs, recruited athletes, legacies, developmental admits or celebrity kids. Being the best high school quarterback in the US could probably get you into Stanford even if you weren’t all that great at math. </p>
<p>I’ve wondered about this myself. I did not get the impression that employers traditionally recruiting from a short list of elite schools and a variety of majors were looking for a way to include students with high SAT scores from other types of schools, or to include candidates with lower GPA’s who had taken more academic risks than advisable.</p>
<p>In years past, judging from gossip in our town, elite universities took quite a few hooked students with SAT scores hundreds of points below those of unhooked peers, as well as students with both the hooks and scores within range for other applicants. The Naviance from our school does indeed show those isolated green dots. </p>
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In addition to hooked students, you also have students who had lower scores due to having little/no test preparation, having an off day during the exam (sick, nervous, trouble sleeping the night before, etc.) and only the test once, not being good at this type of multi-hour test; and the university was able to look past the score and see that they deserved to be at the college. One problem with this type of considering test scores for jobs is you don’t account for reasons for lower scores. When you have one candidate who does well on every aspect of the job hiring criteria except for SAT scores, I’d expect a good portion of them would be this type of student who had a valid reason for the lower scores. In contrast, the hooked developmental kid or star quarterback likely won’t do as well on some of the other hiring criteria, so the SAT score likely won’t make a difference in the hiring decision.</p>
<p>SAT scores are a datapoint. One datapoint for a small group of companies in particular industries.</p>
<p>Nobody is going to get hired based on the name of their college or their major. Nobody is getting hired based on their GPA. Nobody gets hired because of a leadership role in an EC. Nobody gets hired because they were a Rhodes finalist. Nobody is getting hired solely due to their personality (except for maybe a reality show contestant). And nobody is getting hired based on their writing skills (solely) or their skill at Matlab or doing DCF analysis or because they wrote a senior thesis which won the university prize that year.</p>
<p>But all of these things are factors. Some weigh more heavily for certain types of companies and positions within those companies and some less. In recruiting we often talk about “runway”. When we hire a 50 year old there is plenty of runway- 28 years worth of adulthood with professional accomplishments and people managed and mentored and businesses that he or she improved and new initiatives that he or she launched.</p>
<p>There is no runway for a new grad. So you are stuck evaluating what there is, and for many companies, that means assessing academics, leadership, work experience, etc. So you take the datapoints that you have and try to evaluate them as best you can.</p>
<p>If I’m hiring for a sales leadership program at a big company, I’ll look for evidence of strong peer influencing skills since that what the job entails. Frat president is nice. Captain of a sports team is nice. But there are lots of successful people in sales who are introverts- and so there are other activities and accomplishments which speak to a person’s potential in sales. And someone who is naturally reserved and introverted who has pushed themselves into leadership roles or into group activities despite their own inclinations and been successful doing that- wow. That’s a nice story to tell for a sales leadership program.</p>
<p>If I’m hiring someone for an entry level position in media relations, I need someone with strong writing skills. But I’ve hired PhD’s in English who were abysmal. So you need lots more than just strong writing to be successful in that function- you need tenacity and you need speed and the ability to do 40 things well without getting bogged down in the weeds and a whole host of things.</p>
<p>SAT scores are evidence of one particular type of skill. They tell me that compared to a national norm, this was a kid at age 17 who was tippy top, above average, average, below average on a particular test compared to everyone else who took the test. I can’t compare a 3.3 GPA from Cornell to a 4.0 at U Conn, especially if the kid from Cornell majored in civil engineering and the kid at U Conn majored in leisure studies. But I’ll bet you dinner that if that kid from U Conn got a 750 math SAT, despite the lack of rigor in some of his or her courses, I will not have to teach that kid how to calculate percentages or read a bar chart on day one of his training program. And if that kid is interested in one of my training programs which do require a reasonable mathematical background, I will notice that he took the Calc sequence that econ majors take, and placed out of the math sequence that leisure studies majors take. I will not do a deep dive on every single leisure studies major (we get thousands of resumes a week) but this one will get read in most cases.</p>
<p>That’s all it is folks. A datapoint, not a nefarious and elitist scheme to screw over hard working, honest Americans,</p>
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<p>However, for “elite” or otherwise highly competitive jobs (like with highly selective colleges), most of the various criteria are ways to screen out applicants, rather than ways to bring in hires.</p>
<p>Um, yes, UCB, thanks for stating the obvious. I get paid based on how well I meet our recruiting targets-- numbers, geographic coverage, diversity, special skills/strategic languages, cost containment, how well I train my team, etc. I am not a social worker and it is not my job to figure out how to interview the maximum number of candidates every single year and spend millions of dollars more than I have to in order to meet my targets. For companies which get thousands of resumes a week, the point is not to make the task as difficult as possible by having loose and highly subjective hiring criteria so that you need to interview millions of college grads. The point is to get to the answer is the most cost effective way possible, while covering off several important goals, not violating the law in any of the countries we do business in, etc.</p>
<p>An argument could be made that by asking GPA we are screening out the kids who for lots of legitimate reasons, excelled in college at things other than academics. And I’m fine with that. And by asking for a cover letter, we are screening out people who are terrible spellers (don’t ask). And by asking for a transcript, we are screening out kids who graduate from one institution, but spent time at several others and can’t or don’t want to produce all of those transcripts when applying.</p>
<p>Blossom, thanks for your very clear posts. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t the SAT be a weak measure of one’s capabilities considering it was a snapshot of one’s capabilities taken during one’s high school years at around the average age range of 15-18?</p>
<p>Wouldn’t one’s college GPA and/or grad school standardized exam taking during/after one’s college graduation be a more valid measure of such capabilities for an applicant who is about to graduate/is a recent graduate from college? </p>
<p>Cobrat, by picking and choosing any college kid can figure out how to get a 3.8 GPA from a wide range of institutions (I’ll concede that MIT, CalTech, RPI and their ilk are notable exceptions). GPA is great when comparing apples to apples- Candidate A from U Michigan with a degree in Applied Math vs. Candidate B from UVA with a degree in Applied Math. I have reasonable confidence in the comparison.</p>
<p>Not everyone takes grad school admissions tests while in college- and the tests measure very different things. The GRE’s do not measure the high end of mathematical ability very well (i.e. it doesn’t take much to score at the upper end.) The LSAT’s don’t have a quant component at all- although they do measure logical reasoning and verbal skills, reading comprehension, etc. quite well. And you would be surprised (sarcasm here) how correlated SAT and GMAT’s are. I am not a statistician so don’t flame me… but even though the SAT is taken at age 17 and the GMAT 4 or more years later… I have rarely seen a kid who had average SAT scores end up at the high end of the GMAT. The kids who were 99 percentile scorers on the SAT’s are the kids with the same scores on the GMAT. </p>
<p>So sure, test away. And as I said- one datapoint only.</p>
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<p>That seems to be the case, but doing well on tough quantitative and analytical courses are also acceptable:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi#”>http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi#</a>!</p>
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<p>Because of holistic admission, school is not always a good proxy for ability anymore; I find student’s major to be much better:</p>
<p><a href=“CARPE DIEM”>http://mjperry.blogspot.com/search?q=GRE+scores</a></p>
<p>If what Steve Hsu said is true, there is a difference between “soft” and “hard” elite firms. The soft firms ( IB, big law, consulting etc.) focus on prestige while the hard firms (hedge funds, tech, start-ups etc.) look at processing power. That is my take-away after looking at the Rivera study and then Manzi’s response.</p>
<p>Canuck- school is not a good proxy for ability (nor was it ever- read Karabel and all the other descriptors of how these schools needed quotas to keep the smart kids OUT). However, like any other commercial enterprise, companies need to hire X number of employees at a cost of Y. So I can go to every single Cal State campus and meticulously weed through undergrads to find a few dozen stars per campus and then assemble an interview day. Or I can go to Stanford or Berkeley or Swarthmore or Williams and find the kind of density that makes hiring cost effective. Berkeley is huge and Williams is tiny- but the density is there. I can send a recruiting team to every single directional in Texas and pick off the top of the class, or I can recruit at U T Austin.</p>
<p>You are assuming that companies are making a value judgement that somehow the graduates of one school are not as good (less prestigious) than another, or that top candidates can ONLY be found at the prestige type schools. Correlation, not causation. There are more strong applied math majors (or econ majors with strong quant backgrounds) at Princeton than at Rowan. That’s a fact. So it’s cheaper for a company looking for strong math skills to recruit at Princeton- the yield is higher, fewer man hours are required to screen resumes and meet the students. That doesn’t devalue the ability of a top math student at Rowan- it’s just not efficient for a team to spend a day on campus to end up with two candidates who can pass the company’s own math/critical reasoning test.</p>
<p>You mis-state the case when you say the soft firms focus on prestige. They don’t. They focus on hiring people in a cost effective way who over time, prove economically valuable to their firms. The fact that the “prestigious” colleges have made the job much easier by assembling a pre-screened group of 22 year old who create a dense population from which to hire-- that doesn’t mean the companies are fixated on prestige.</p>
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<p>There are huge differences in grading standards within and across departments. At my institution, we did a simple exercise to show this. For each department, we calculated the difference between what their majors got inside the major and outside the major. So, if Psychology majors average 3.45 in their Psychology classes, and 3.38 in their other classes, they would get 3.38 - 3.45 = -0.07. (This is just the simplest way to present differences across departments. One could go further and estimate course and student fixed effects.) There were figures ranging from +0.20 to -0.80. So, there are monstrous differences across departments in grading standards. But even within departments there are differences. </p>
<p>Another point is that we throw away so much information by using the current letter grade system that lumps together so many people. The brilliant student who is head and shoulders above the rest of the class gets the same A as the plodder who is 5th in the class of 30. (Letters of recommendation may distinguish them, but they might not.) Returning to a numerical scale (e.g., 0-100), as Yale has proposed doing, would help. </p>
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<p>I have no problem with using GRE or GMAT scores instead of the SAT, but the question is not whether college GPA is a more valid measure than the SAT; rather, the question is whether the SAT provides additional context for interpreting the GPA. Clearly, many employers feel that both have value. </p>
<p>High math SAT scores helps kids who studied the humanities and social sciences. High verbal SAT scores help engineers and computer scientists who are interested in corporate roles (i.e. job in finance or technical marketing or sales.) Again- just a data point. You are guys are looking at this like Kremlinologists trying to figure out what happened to Gorbachev’s wife. It is not mysterious. Yes, as Coase says, the SAT provides additional context for interpreting the GPA. Not better, not worse, additional. PLUS- it is free (unlike our own tests which we pay to develop, validate, administer and interpret- so not a zero cost enterprise by any means, even though for some roles we need our own data). PLUS- it is legal (until someone successfully sues and is able to prove that there was some gender or racial bias by using the SAT in making employment decisions. PLUS- it is quick (reading through a transcript is time consuming, and making sense of some of the bizarre course titles at some colleges is VERY time consuming.) PLUS- post re-centering, SAT data is largely unchanged year to year and is consistent across a very big country. I’ve worked in companies that loved kids who were members of academic Honor Societies- which at some schools might be top 10%. At other colleges it’s top 30%. At still others, only courses in your major “count”. So using a nationally normed test (the meaning of an 800 doesn’t fluctuate wildly from year to year) is a helpful datapoint.</p>
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<p>Despite that, law schools still use GPA as an important factor in admissions, despite the GPA gamesmanship and grade grubbing among pre-law students that this creates incentives for.</p>
<p>Still, a 3.8 probably isn’t that easy; if it were, more pre-law students would have GPAs that high or higher.</p>
<p>I think blossom has the right idea: employers aren’t trying to be exercise perfect justice so much as find a cost-effective way to hire good employees. </p>
<p>My general thought is that the SAT might be used in a much more rational way than it is used for college admissions, ie, in broad brushstrokes. Except in rare circumstances, I don’t think a company would care about a 700 math versus a 740 math, but really would raise an eyebrow at the kid who graduated from an outstanding school but pulled down a 460 on the math. That says “athletic recruit” or “über legacy admit,” or might raise a flag.</p>
<p>ucb: except that law schools have an incentive to go on straight GPA; employers aren’t rated by the same US News standards. (As for GPAs: In my years of teaching the LSAT, I saw some students with very high GPAs and abysmal LSAT scores - like in the 130s or low 140s.)</p>
<p>UCB- I don’t work in law school admissions (although I have friends and former colleagues who do) so fortunately , this is not my problem. But your point is well taken. However, the factors that go into making a successful law student are somewhat different from the factors that go into making someone successful selling aircraft engines or becoming a Metals and Mining analyst at an investment bank or being a successful brand manager at J&J. So fortunately- there is no monolithic assessment rubric that holds for every single profession and job in America.</p>
<p>Even the US Government has different models for CIA Analyst vs. Navy Seal vs. US Attorney to pick three roles which tend to be “elitist” in their hiring preferences. The Bolshoi ballet values different qualities than the NFL, even though both organizations have the luxury of picking from the very best of the best in highly competitive fields!!!</p>
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<p>Were such students those who did poorly in the LSAT section that tests skills not as well practiced by their majors? E.g. English majors who did poorly on the logic puzzles.</p>
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<p>That is yet another straw man. GPA contains useful information. SAT scores provide useful information. Neither is perfect. If you want me to say that I would use GPA over SAT scores if I had the choice of just one, then I will say it. But it is not an either-or question. </p>
<p>Blossom- Your response to me at 9:46 AM is one of the best I have read in a while. It tells the story from the recruiters’ perspective with no apology or fudging.</p>
<p>What would your advice be to a strong student from a less than stellar university? Surely he is not banished to the wilderness forever far from the Promised Land, is he? Manzi’s advice is to “work hard to get good grades in a difficult major, and score very well on standardized tests.” Anything else you would add?</p>