Lemmings

Parents Forum
241

Studies (especially behavioral) should open our minds, Cguy. Not be taken as absolutes and forever fixed. Scientific inquiry teaches us that, firmly. There are always conditions, circumstances, limits to studies- and often, assumptions, going in. We can be wary. That’s an aspect of ‘discipline,’ too.

I could say that “lemmings” follow the first path that makes sense. “I heard that…” Or, “I read it somewhere.”

Not everything is measurable. Sure, salaries at Google may top teaching in a high school, but how will you measure impact? And qualitatives? Not everything in life is about bowing down to hierarchical thinking. Think about it.

242

@Canuckguy , of course you are “more in the camp with Charles Murray.” That comes through in everything you write. And you are consistently exhibiting the same fundamental weakness Murray does: using aggregate data to pass individual judgment.

243

“…the kid who majored in engineering who now has a job as an engineer does not have a “better” job than the kid who majored in art history and now works at the art museum, or the kid who majored in history and is now working for an NGO helping people overseas gain access to clean water. If they are all doing what they love, the that is success.”

Outcomes - with a look beyond the fingers-across-the-chalkboard question some smattering of parents always insists on asking the college rep in open meetings, “I hear you say your college offers x,y, and z that is in the mode of the traditional university model, but what’s the ROI on sending a kid to your school?”

Note to self: Clip and save.

244

"If something is beyond the measurable, how do we know it is there? "

I know that I love my husband and children more than words can say, even though I have no unit of measurement with which to assess its strength.

245

“I was actually looking at “best practice” on the part of elite employers-how do they recruit and what they are looking for”

But those employers you have deemed as “elite” are only elite within the context of those specific fields. The kid who wants to do public relations or shape public policy or curate at the art museum doesn’t give a darn what Goldman Sachs (et al) looks for. Nor should they.

What GS does is done purely to meet GS’ particular recruiting needs. That’s all. There’s nothing all that “interesting” about it. Clearly they feel their way meets their needs. If they felt some other way would meet their needs better, they’d switch to that. Either way, it’s their problem.

There is no mass societal problem that GS didn’t recruit enough quants this year because they turned down a Princeton math major for a Princeton classics major because for them, the Princeton signaling was most important. I won’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.

246

And to add to Pizza’s comments- (points well taken by the way)- I get flack both from folks in real life as well as on CC that my company asks for SAT scores AND GPA. I’ve had social scientists lecture me on why SAT’s cannot be used in the way that we are using them; I’ve had folks here explain why we are elitists, etc. (I do not work for Goldman btw), etc.

I’ll repeat- we use them in the way that we use them. I don’t pretend that somehow one big company represents the entire universe of jobs so while I’m thrilled to hear that your nephew who graduated from Seton Hall with a 2.8 has a great job and makes a lot of money- it’s not really relevant to the subject at hand.

It would be hard to argue that someone who scored an 800 on math SAT (even if taken several years ago; even if SAT’s are more a proxy for family income than innate intelligence, yadda yadda yadda) would be a worse performer in a role which required reasonable facility with quantitative analysis than someone who scored 550.

Not impossible- but hard to argue. While I’m sure there are- out in the real world- folks who are very capable using math and analytics in their jobs who at the tender age of 17 scored a 550. Many posters here have such kids- they work in engineering and robotics and IT and have fine lives and do very well professionally.

But for the purposes of evaluating- in a cost effective way- a stack of 80,000 resumes or so… screening out the “may have the math chops but not sure” candidates via SAT scores is a quick way to do that.

Will we miss a few gems? Absolutely. But we miss a few gems all the time and for other reasons. I have a “three strikes and you’re out” policy on typo’s on a cover letter. One is a mistake (and we all make mistakes). Two is spellcheck gone wild (and who hasn’t had spellcheck fail them on occasion?) Three is just careless or “I can’t be bothered” and I don’t want to waste interviewer time on a new grad who can’t be bothered to proof read.

Am I missing the next ee cummings? For sure. I can live with that. People- proof read your cover letters. Not so hard.

247

“Am I missing the next ee cummings?”

:slight_smile:

248

“am certain a %tage of students falls behind and never catches up, in the same way that a %tage of elite students do not know MIT has excellent humanities and social science programs.”

In the list of “things that preclude American HS students from getting a good college education,” the existence of “elite students who don’t know the full range of MIT and therefore just go pursue education at other elite schools” is about #99 on the priority list.

It may shock you, but a bigger problem is that MIT is a “world unknown” to a lot of diamonds in the rough (not MIT-specific - the notion of an elite school in general). There are plenty of diamonds in the rough who haven’t heard of these fancy schools, who think that they are for others / not them, and who haven’t a clue that they could be affordable because they don’t know the extent of financial aid. Their GCs aren’t helping them any and they wind up sub-optimizing quite a few layers down. This is obviously more problematic than the MIT kid who has to slum it at Carnegie-Mellon instead.

249

IMHO - using who makes the most $$ as the only measure of “success” leaves out many of the most important things in life.

250

In the very post above yours, I mentioned that a hypothesis is iterative, constantly adjusting and refining as our understanding of the world changes. That is my operating principle. It is anything but religious dogma.

It is not a fundamental weakness; it is all we have. Human judgement is much worse. Nate Silver’s idol is a man named Philip Tedlock and his research in this area is legendary.

Here is an article on what I am talking about:

http://hbr.org/2014/05/in-hiring-algorithms-beat-instinct

“The problem is that people are easily distracted by things that might be only marginally relevant, and they use information inconsistently. They can be thrown off course by such inconsequential bits of data as applicants’ compliments or remarks on arbitrary topics—thus inadvertently undoing a lot of the work that went into establishing parameters for the job and collecting applicants’ data. So they’d be better off leaving selection to the machines”.

251

Not really. Here are what Bain/BCG is looking for:

"If you don’t have at least 750 on the math SAT, you’re out. The most common score is 800. Math plus verbal scores should be well over 1500, and typically over 1550. GRE, GMAT, and other scores should be scaled similarly.

Then, your degree should be in something hard: math, physics, electrical engineering, analytical philosophy, computer science, and so on. It’s okay to major in history or literature, but you better have some really tough quantitative or analytical classes on your transcript, and have done very well in them. If your GPA is below about 3.5, you’re out unless there is some really compelling rationale for why. The average successful candidate has a GPA above 3.7. Everyone understands how bad grade inflation is, and that it’s worst in the most elite schools. Any reasonably smart person with good instincts about course selection can figure out how to get a decent GPA at one of these schools. A GPA-plus-major screen is not about IQ, as much as it is a quick screen to see who is capable of figuring out how to succeed in a new environment, and of doing at least some sustained work. Screeners and interviewers will typically look at the transcript to make judgments about raw candlepower; for example, checking which calculus sequence the candidate completed, and if it was the most difficult track, what grades were achieved".

Bock at Google:

“For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not
IQ. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together
disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we
validate to make sure they’re predictive.”

“I took statistics at business school, and it was transformative for my career. Analytical training gives you a skill set that differentiates you from most people in the labor market.”

“Humans are by nature creative beings, but not by nature logical, structured-thinking beings. Those are skills you have to learn. One of the things that makes people more effective is if you can do both. … If you’re great on both attributes, you’ll have a lot more options. If you have just one, that’s fine, too.” But a lot fewer people have this kind of structured thought process and creativity.

Seriously, are they all that different?

252

Well, I daresay Lin-Manuel Miranda is smarter than 99% of the folks at Google, Bain, or whoever you want to hold up as the meaning of life, and the only math he has to concern himself with is a) counting beats and b) counting his Hamiltons.

Why you fetishize these handful of companies is beyond me. It’s almost as if you aren’t aware that they are many great, fulfilling and well-paying jobs outside those handful. They just aren’t anything special. It speaks to a true lack of sophistication about the business world.

253

"But those employers you have deemed as “elite” are only elite within the context of those specific fields.

Not really. Here are what Bain/BCG is looking for:"

You missed the point. The only people who need care about what Bain et al value are people who specifically desire employment at Bain et al. I think you completely don’t get that the art history majors wants to work at the art museum, not at Bain; the communications person wants to work at Edelman, not Bain; the public policy person wants to work for his senator, not for Bain. Why should they push themselves to “high heights” of math-y stuff because that’s what Bain values? Why should they care?

Granted, facility with math and good math skills are important and useful things in general. But there’s just simply no need for such people to torture themselves in areas they don’t care about because Bain.

254

Looks like Bain and BCG define applicant desirability based on long ago high school SAT scores and possibly long ago college GPAs, while Google’s search for learning ability is not defined by such.

Indeed, there are probably significant numbers of Google employees who do not have SAT scores at all, and a few of those in technical areas do not have bachelor’s degrees. Also, Google is reputed to recruit new graduates at a much larger range of schools than Bain and BCG.

255

Agree on the larger points. However, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s status as the creator/star of the successful play Hamilton doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t have the quant chops for jobs at Google, Bain, BGC*, etc.

Using the 99% smarter than phrase is also appropriate considering to even be eligible to take the exam for the quasi-public magnet HS he attended(Hunter College High School) in 6th grade for 7th grade entry, one must have scored a minimum of 95%ile on standardized elementary exams given out sometime in 5th grade**.

In short, further proof he’s no academic/intellectual slouch.

  • I have an in-law who is a BGC alum. From her accounts, they didn't restrict hiring to high SAT math scorers judging by what she's seen of the hiring process during her time there so the quotes above must have been within the last decade.

** I was technically eligible to take that exam when I was in 6th grade. Unfortunately, due to some screwups by educrats in charge of notification of 5th grade exam results, the HCHS exam board, and my elementary school, my family and I didn’t get word of my eligibility until the registration deadline to take that exam had passed. As HCHS only accepts students as incoming 7th graders, if one missed the exam/failed it in 6th grade, that’s it for HCHS.

256

Two close friends of my son’s were hired by Bain directly out of college. One had a joint major in history and studio art (not exactly an art history major, but pretty darn close). His senior thesis won a significant prize at his college. The other was a sociology major and editor-in-chief of his college newspaper. I don’t know for a fact, but would be willing to bet that both had “some really tough quantitative or analytical classes on your transcript, and have done very well in them.” They both did extremely well in math (through AP Calculus and beyond) before going to college. Both were people their peers thought were off-the-charts smart at a private school known for having smart, intellectual students.

The points are that some art history majors (and other “soft” majors) do want to work at Bain, etc., and Bain at least is willing to hire them if they are super-smart, including good math skills. That doesn’t mean high-end management consulting is the be-all and end-all. But the companies at the top of that pyramid do pretty much pay more than everyone else, and for some people that makes those companies important benchmarks. The companies may want STEM skills, but they don’t require STEM majors.

(Neither graduate lasted more than 2-1/2 years at Bain. One went to law school, the other works at a private equity firm.)

One of my sometime college roommates was an actual art history major. His entire career has been spent in commercial real estate development and management. He’s done really, really well at it. He has a fabulous art collection.

257

Yup, my young friend at Bain was a sociology major, too. A serious record of community involvement. She wasn’t hired to crunch numbers but for her superb analytical and critical thinking skills.

And as with tippy top cillege applications, it doesn’t help to go back deep in time for observations or anecdotes, except when the topic is the past. Things change.

258

That may be true for students at schools like UChicago and other top 20 schools, but how true is that further down the food chain? Could a DePaul, Loyola or UIC grad find that kind of success with an art history or studio art degree? As illustrated by the video, the opportunities to study non-remunerative fields for your average student typically do not lead to great financial rewards, thus the student loan debt crisis.

As an aside, I know a BFA major from DePaul. 20 years after graduating, she is working as an administrative assistant at a manufacturing firm. So much for following one’s passion.

259

Working as an administrative assistant/secretary isn’t necessarily limited to students outside the most elite colleges/universities or humanities/social science majors.

An uncle who worked as a professional engineer/engineering manager for several decades and is himself an elite college alum(Columbia SEAS) had to put up with the most incompetent secretary/employee he’s encountered in his entire career for a decade. That incompetent secretary was the idiot nephew of a highly influential senior engineering executive in the firm. Idiot nephew who ended up as my uncle’s secretary…and an incompetent one at that for a decade was a Harvard engineering graduate.

Older relatives knew several STEM graduates…notably ChemE majors during the '70s and early '80s who were waiting tables and driving taxis to make ends alongside those who majored in non-STEM areas/never attended college.

Also, I have a friend who graduated with a BS and MS in CS from a well-respected university known for its CS department who ended up working some years as a floor clerk/cashier at a bigbox store after the dotcom crash left a large swath of CS/engineering graduates underemployed/unemployed. Most of the fellow floor clerks who weren’t also dotcom crash victims were college/HS students earning some spending money or folks who never went further than HS.

260

Re: #258

Obviously, graduating into an economic downturn is bad for your career. Especially if the downturn most heavily affects the career paths you are targeting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-older-millennials-are-paying-the-price-for-bad-timing/2015/02/02/4ef644c8-ab1c-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html