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<p>They do. They use both. They use all of it. That’s exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about using standardized scores - meaning ALL available standardized scores. </p>
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<p>First off, it’s not a matter of whether they CAN afford to do so. Rather, it has to do with whether they WANT to afford it. Obviously all large firms could engage in an intensive recruiting search of every single student in the school if they really wanted to. But they don’t want to. </p>
<p>Secondly, be careful about what I said. I never said that J&J was one of those firms that used standardized scores to determine their hiring. I am simply saying that J&J is a firm of which I am extremely familiar with their stealth recruiting methods as far as LFM students go. Out of a class of 48 LFM students in a class, J&J hired 4 of them (and I’m sure made offers to others who declined). It’s become something of a running joke at LFM that J&J is considered to be a ‘pseudo-partner’, in that while they aren’t formally part of the official LFM hiring process, for all practical purposes, they basically are. They’re always hanging around the LFM office (even if they don’t actually use the office to do formal recruiting), they conveniently schedule their “unofficial” LFM hiring to be at the same time that official LFM hiring for official partners is being done, and they make it such that every LFM student basically knows where to find them. For example, I strongly remember some LFM students scheduling their official LFM interview calendar to fit in their “unofficial” J&J interview. </p>
<p>But the point is this. If J&J is acting as a ‘stealth’ recruiter as far as LFM is concerned (and frankly, not exactly being very stealthy about it), I am quite sure that plenty of other stealth recruiters exist at plenty of other programs. And I’m quite sure that among them, some of them do indeed use SAT scores and other standardized test scores to determine who to hire. </p>
<p>I am almost certain that this issue is most prevalent in the most ‘elite’ employers of all (of which I never included J&J) and that are extremely popular with the students. Right now, that would probably be private equity. For example, I can tell you that at both HBS and Sloan, far far more students want to get into private equity than will actually get offers. For example, consider the following quote:</p>
<p>“Almost 75% of HBS students want to do private equity or venture capital. Only about 10% get to do it,” "</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nysun.com/article/29141[/url]”>http://www.nysun.com/article/29141</a></p>
<p>Yet the fact is, private equity firms don’t really use much OCR. Whatever campus recruiting they do seems to be largely of the ‘stealth’ variety. Of course, by nature, that’s hard to pin down - after all, there’s a reason why it’s called ‘stealth’ recruiting, and there’s a reason why its’ called * private * equity - in that these firms are very secretive about what they do. But anecdotally speaking, what I have found and what many others have found is that if you want to get a job in PE, you can’t rely on OCR, because that’s not where most of the PE hiring is done. Furthermore, given the competitiveness of the jobs, and the fact that many B-schools practice grade nondisclosure (including HBS until this year), you may feel obligated to include your SAT score in order to remain competitive. When the competition is this intense, you want to get any leg up that you can. </p>
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<p>Hey, I never said that it was a highly important metric. What I am saying is that the metric probably does get used, at least by some firms. It may well be that it’s at the bottom of the list. But that’s different saying that it’s not on the list at all.</p>