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<p>I said it is lost, didn’t I?</p>
<p>^I think emerald was referencing the various synonyms you used to reminisce about brevity.</p>
<p>Oh, I know. Like I said, brevity is a long lost skill. Including for me.</p>
<p>I think all who are interested in how HS and college kids write these days will be interested in this article in today’s NYTimes
“Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade”
[Education</a> Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/education-needs-a-digital-age-upgrade/]Education”>Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade - The New York Times)</p>
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<p>ROFL! fwiw and btw, Jk.</p>
<p>Brevity is a good skill to have for texting. I’ll stick to my 20-page-a-thons, thank you :-)</p>
<p>My d2 was/is a “middle case”. Not a STEM major, but business/accounting. But social/interactive skills way, way beyond the norm. Certainly nothing I ever taught! (she was mostly homeschooled.) She was hired by a major international accounting firm over 200 applicants, many of them Ivies/Whartons/Gtown’s, with a full one-year less of academic experience as well.</p>
<p>It worried her that she might not have the chops/academic experience needed to do the job. Turned out to be a total non-issue. Whatever she didn’t know, she knew how to ask (one of her greatest skills: she makes people feel great when they impart information to her.)</p>
<p>My limited experience of the world is that the social/interactive skills tend to be far more important in the business realm than the technical ones. I ran a publishing house with no experience whatsoever. I learned to make my competitors my friends, my vendors my partners, my salespeople family. And whenever I needed expertise I didn’t have, I was always able to buy it. </p>
<p>But I don’t know how you bottle it, and I am not sure there is academic training (LAC or otherwise) that does a lot to enhance it. (But since I am really unfamiliar with STEM training, I just don’t know.)</p>
<p>I think you’ve mentioned in other posts that your daughter is an Asian Indian. That seems relevant to the conversation. </p>
<p>Can’t think of a more boring and mind numbing job than accounting, btw. Kind of how you posted you feel about being a lawyer.</p>
<p>I can’t think of anything more mind-numbing either! So far, she likes meeting people (she’ll do great in advisory), and also likes things with black-n-white answers. As I’ve mentioned, she sees this qs a stepping-stone to something else - whether it happens, we’ll just have to wait and see. (But she has positioned herself well - a minority female with a (future) masters degree in accounting, speaks Arabic and Spanish, has international experience, as well as Big 4, and friends at the World Bank.)</p>
<p>The only relevance her ethnicity would have to this discussion is that she sucks at standardized tests, and there’s no way she’d come close to getting into any of Indian prestige schools (or the American ones either).</p>
<p>I wonder why India sucks at the International Mathematical Olympiad?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2011&column=total&order=desc[/url]”>http://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2011&column=total&order=desc</a></p>
<p>^ The USA team did amazingly well given the lack of intensity of training in general. If training were as rigorous there would be no competitors possibly.</p>
<p>“The only relevance her ethnicity would have to this discussion is that she sucks at standardized tests, and there’s no way she’d come close to getting into any of Indian prestige schools (or the American ones either).” mini #229</p>
<p>There seems to be an undercurrent running through the IP threads that I haven’t followed terribly closely (and posts are being deleted) that India and globalization is stealing American jobs. All kinds of implications can be applied to your daughter whether you are aware of them, or choose not to acknowledge them.</p>
<p>I think the lesson of globalization is that there are no such things as “American” jobs (other than Wal-Mart clerks, who have to be local). There are just jobs, and people who want them, and have the skills to do them.</p>
<p>The knowledge industry in India is vast. I can’t tell you how many schools, college, institutes, universities, and research institutions, software companies, biotech companies, agro-research firms, etc. I pass in my 75 minute trip to school (another institute) every day. It’s a pent-up giant. (And yes, lots of the institutions are junk - we have for-profit colleges in the U.S. as well.)</p>
<p>I did have a discussion with one of my teachers about the test-craziness here. Her daughter just got into a very highly ranked engineering school. But she freely admits that if she had done poorly on the test, they would have to pay (read: bribe) her way into a lesser institution. The Indians know what’s what, and are learning to be as smart at education shopping (given their array of choices) as we are. There would be room for College Confidential-India.</p>
<p>I wasn’t aware that the Corporations had become so agreeable! Good for them!</p>
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<p>I think the biggest reason for this is that people spend a lot more time studying for classes or exams than in the US and western countries, but there is not that much government support given to Olympiads like in many other Asian countries. Probably similar to why India does so poorly in the actual Olympics.</p>