<p>Longhorn-
My kid also announced at some ceremony that he wanted to be an engineer like dear old dad. Unfortuately he barely passed Algebra 2 in high school- primarily due to doing zero homework. I just could not get him to do it. Of course he kicks my rear end in chess because, after all, that’s a game and therefore important.
But I steered him into Eng Tech at the local CC and he’s learning welding and metal work and got himself a job as a helper at a small machine shop. And he’s now retaking Alg 2 and actually doing homework. So we’ll see I suppose.</p>
<p>Apple’s achievement as cobrat wisely pointed out was the (incremental) refinement of a great concept (PARC) into a product. Just like they did not invent the first cellphone, mp3 player, tablet, and so on.</p>
<p>Knowing what I know about the process above, it takes a company led by some serious egomaniac visionary perfectionist to get it right. Most companies are led by someone with none, maybe one of the traits above… </p>
<p>I have worked with Microsoft in the past (trips to Redmond, the whole 9 yards) and it’s a totally different story. While Bill Gates is two of the three above (which ones?) their problems are in execution, not in concepts. Like comparing (pun intended) apples and oranges :). </p>
<p>Apple can afford to take risks (switching to X86…) while Microsoft’s ‘risks’ (Win8 ARM) are a lot more measured.</p>
<p>Long story, as I said. Microsoft feeds us better when we visit :).</p>
<p>I knew students at Homestead High School (border of Cupertino and Sunnyvale, CA) back in very late 70’s - I guess just after when Steve Jobs attended there. It was a nice school (rather large student population) filled with nice middle/upper middle class Silicon Valley people. From what I have heard recently, it still is. It is NOT one of the well-known cutthroat public or private high schools, which are ultra-stress-inducing, and which we certainly also do have here.</p>
<p>I WAS surprised at the very low GPA - even considering possible grade inflation over the years or any other possible idea people are coming up with.</p>
<p>Incidentally, here in Silicon Valley, quite near Homestead, we have several VERY top quality junior colleges; it would have been fine for Steve Jobs to attend these.</p>
<p>I would have thought Reed WOULD have suited Steve Jobs fine!</p>
<p>True enough that GPA is not the be-all, end-all of one’s qualifications. </p>
<p>But the problem is that, whether we like it or not, numerous career tracks - including many of the highest-paying ones - do indeed rely heavily upon GPA. Let’s face it - if you have that Jobs-esque 2.65 GPA, but in college (rather than in high school as per Jobs), you simply won’t receive a high-paying offer in Ibanking or consulting. Nor will you be admitted to a top law school as law school admission are are highly GPA-oriented; and if you’re not at a top law school, then you simply won’t receive a lucrative starting associate offer from a “biglaw” firm. You might well be more qualified than the students at the top law schools, but may not have the chance to demonstrate it because biglaw won’t even grant you an interview. </p>
<p>Even the hiring managers for the ‘regular’ jobs often times invoke GPA screens, the most common being a 3.0 cut-off. With a college 2.65 GPA, you can’t even apply for those jobs. Furthermore, the most common “screen” of all would be the 2.0 GPA “screen” that corresponds to the cutoff generally necessary to even graduate from college at all. Many companies won’t even grant an interview if you lack a college degree. </p>
<p>The upshot is that while it’s an appealing fantasy to believe that GPA doesn’t really matter and that people should be hired based upon their true talents, the harsh reality is that a low GPA is a stigma that will hinder your career prospects. Whether we like it or not, employers tend to prefer somebody with a high GPA over somebody with a low GPA. </p>
<p>The deep irony is that Jobs as a young adult today - a college dropout with a middling academic record, history of recreational drug use, and former borderline-criminal past (Jobs first device was a ‘phone-phreaking’ device that hacked into the long distance phone switches to make free calls) - would probably not be hired by Apple today. Apple, frankly, is now a highly elitist employer that tends to recruit only the top graduates from the best colleges. And certainly Apple today is unlikely to hire anybody with a recent history of illegal drugs.</p>
<p>Actually, I think you just conceded bovertine’s point. {Either that, or I misunderstood his point.} Those ‘brilliant misfits’ that you cited were not initially provided opportunities at elite/Ivy universities. Rather, they had to first attend lower-ranked universities first and prove themselves there and only then would those elite/Ivy schools give them a chance. </p>
<p>The upshot is that you basically need a record of excellence in order to be admitted to an elite/Ivy school. That record does not necessarily have to be derived from high school, but it has to come from somewhere. With the exception of admission based purely on powerful family connections (i.e. your family donates a multi-million dollar sum, or you’re the prince of a foreign kingdom), students with only mediocre academic records will not be admitted to an Ivy.</p>
<p>Actually, my basic point there was that one’s underperformance in high school could also be due to factors other than one’s slacking/lack of intellectual/academic aptitude such as:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Attending an academically cutthroat high school where the quantity and rigor of even the lowest track is much higher than even many mainstream middle/upper-middle class suburban school districts’ highest college prep tracks. Oftentimes…most kids from these schools…even the C/D students find college to be far more manageable and even a relief compared to high school…not one where they’re surprised/overwhelmed at the amount of work and experience receiving their first C, D, or F after a lifetime of mostly A-level grades.</p></li>
<li><p>The types of skills/personality traits which tend to thrive best academically in high school may not necessarily be those which enable one to thrive academically in college. Sometimes, high school students do poorly in high school precisely because they’re severely underchallenged intellectually/academically and/or are fed up with doing what they rightly feel is mindless busywork for its own sake. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>The most dramatic versions of these were several high school dropouts I knew who had 1300+ pre-1995 SATs who later managed to earn admission to some respectable LACs/universities after a few years of working retail/service jobs and being considered “losers” by high school classmates who continued on the “more conventional” high school –> college path. All ended up graduating college in 4 or less years with outstanding GPAs and impressive academic/non-academic accomplishments whereas several of the very same classmates who labeled them “losers” ended up on the 5+ year plan or flunked out of undergrad for various reasons.</p>
<p>Sure, but bovertine’s point still stands: the Ivies don’t really care about why you might have underperformed. All they will see is that you underperformed. Now, I agree with you that you can make up for such underperformance through future overperformance such as the transfer admissions scheme that you mentioned. But if your record includes only underperformance, those schools won’t give you a chance. </p>
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<p>Which only seems to reinforce bovertine’s point further still. If your other admissions factors are high, such as a high pre-inflation-era SAT score, those schools might give you a chance. But let’s face it, if those other factors are low as well, you’re not going to get in. </p>
<p>Which gets to my point: whether we like it or not, we live in a world that is highly judgmental and is seemingly becoming more so every year. Not only are more employers demanding college degrees from job candidates regardless of whether the job itself necessitates a degree, but they’re increasingly demanding degrees from top schools and with top grades. And they are not going to stop. It’s all well and good to pronounce that those with low high school GPA’s may have other Jobs-ian talents, but that doesn’t really help them if employers refuse to give them a chance. Heck, prior to the launch of Apple, Jobs got a job at Atari where he gained valuable technical experience and, more importantly, forged a bond with Woz. Like I said, I highly doubt that either Atari or Apple would hire somebody like Jobs today - what with his history of mediocre academics, drug use, and borderline criminal/rebellious activity.</p>
<p>Putting all the eulogizing of Jobs aside, I continue to wonder how much of the explanation of his success was merely a type of ‘sampling on the dependent variable?’ That is to say, after deleting all of the tautological constructs that have been surmised to be instrumental to Jobs success*, what would seem to have left is that Jobs was an visionary egomaniac perfectionist. But how many other visionary egomanic perfectionists failed miserably and hence died in obscurity, with no books or news articles ever being written about them? Hundreds? Thousands? More? Heck, it’s entirely plausible that being a visionary egomaniac perfectionist only vastly increases the variance of your outcome: some will achieve tremendous success while others will become abject failures (and nobody ever knows or cares about them). </p>
<p>*Many people have posited that Apple’s smashing business success stems from Jobs’s brilliant marketing savvy. The tautology is that marketing savvy seems to be a necessary prerequisite of business success. After all, can anybody think of a highly successful company where everybody would agree that the marketing is absolutely atrocious? Is such a concept even possible? Now, granted, obviously some firms have better marketing than others, but we need an example where the marketing is absolutely horrendous. I suspect that any such examples would immediately spur a counterargument that the firm’s supposedly poor marketing was actually ‘deceptively savvy’. </p>
<p>Otherwise, the notion that Apple’s success was due to Jobs’s brilliant marketing is merely restating that x=x and hence doesn’t really add anything that we didn’t already know.</p>
<p>This is interesting. I thought colleges could focus on “visionary egomanic perfectionists” with 2.65 GPA and forget about those with high GPAs and high test scores who merely are workers. I guess colleges figured that one out long ago.</p>
<p>Recent Steve Jobs biography covers HS/College experience in detail, so I’m not surprised by the specific GPA. Having gone to college in 70s and Ivy grad in 80s, I certainly recall much wider spectrum in student GPA/scores gaining admission.</p>
<p>Now seems schools are defined by Navigance data of minimum score/GPA, etc. Late-bloomers seem shut-out of “race to success”. Reading Steve Jobs’ biography, it’s pretty clear that a kid w/Jobs profile now would be an odd duck in a competitive HS’ college counseling office, and discouraged from applying to an academically-rigorous college like Reed.</p>
<p>By wider spectrum what do you mean? Lot’s of kids with sub 3.0 GPAs getting in to top schools? Or a few? Or does it depend on the school?</p>
<p>As a side issue, I attended Homestead myself for freshman year. A year or two after Jobs (I didn’t know him). That bio is really fun for me because I remember a lot of the stuff he mentions. We also lived in an “Eichler” house, like Jobs.</p>
<p>Longhorn and Bovertine, I feel your pain. D1 is the 4.0, NMF perfectionist in an extremely rigorous STEM magnet program. D2 is the 2.85 “underachiever” in a liberal arts magnet program for academically gifted students. She does the absolute bare minimum to get by and lives in the moment with no thought for her future. I’m sure she has one of the lowest GPAs in her program and is barely in the top 50% of her class. D2, however, has more gumption and creativity than D1 has ever had and I’m sure she will be just fine - eventually. I just hope she pulls it together before the end of her sophomore year. She has incredible potential and a door of opportunity closes for her every time she gets a C.</p>
<p>Has anyone up thread commented on the high school advising a kid with dyslexia to go to an intense reading-oriented school like Reed? Or is his dyslexia under debate?</p>