Re: perception of desirability and eliteness
However, with respect to colleges, it is common to see posters who have difficulty finding safeties that they like. This is even true for high stat students who should have the easiest time finding safeties. But it seems that many of them think that attending any school that could be a safety is “selling themselves short”.
I had to google Edleman.
With the exception of the most elite undergrad b-schools like Wharton, NYU-Stern, Berkeley HAAS, UVA-McIntire, UMich-Ross, etc, that’s not what a former employer in the financial services industry found.
If anything they found they were burned so much by undergrad b-school majors outside that very elite tier whose deficiencies in basic math and written communication skills were such they proved to be an embarrassment when dealing with clients and senior executives within the firm. The level of burn was so bad this factored into their unofficial policy to never hire undergrad b-school majors outside of the most elite tier.
On the other hand, they had no issues hiring students with other majors(social sciences/humanities/STEM) from the very same colleges from which they’d automatically reject their undergrad b-school majors.
Also, within the pre-professional side of my extended family which included many who have made hiring decisions in the corporate/business world, they tend to regard the undergrad business major as a route for less academically/intellectually inclined on the same/slightly higher level as getting a job/enlisting in the armed forces straight out of HS or if they feel the less academically/intellectually inclined younger relative is serious about and has some “good business sense” start him/her off on running a small business and see how he/she does.
Their perspective is the only business degree worth having if one desires it is an MBA…preferably from an elite/respectable program unless it’s fully paid for by one’s employer.
I find this a bit amusing considering the students attending Phys Ed departments/colleges in Taiwan during my father’s undergrad days in the '50s were likely better prepared academically than the state u Phys Ed majors described above.
Even so, they were still viewed by the educational establishment and most university student peers as more akin to vocational school students whose academic evaluations in middle school weren’t good enough to get them placed on the academic track.
And there was some good reason for it as they had a separate evaluation system for admission which focused much more on physical prowess/athletics than academic acumen. This attitude could be summed up in a popular snotty phrase used by university student peers regarding their Phys Ed college/major counterparts which could be translated as “Strong healthy body, simple mind.”
Re: physical education and similar majors
The situation may be similar to undergraduate business programs, where physical education programs at some colleges may be low-rigor programs for marginal students (recruited athletes?), but physical education programs (or physical education specialties within biological science majors) at other colleges may be as rigorous as other biological science programs at those colleges.
Those would be named anatomy / physiology / kinesiology classes, though, no?
Examples would be courses numbered 123-129 here: http://guide.berkeley.edu/courses/integbi/
Note that there was formerly a physical education academic major and department until the late 1990s when numerous specialized biology departments and majors were merged into two large majors and departments.
I don’t think the typical phys ed major takes courses like that, ucb. Those seem more oriented to someone who might, for example, one day work on prosthetic limb technology and need to understand body movement at that level.
I think one of canuckguy’s recent points was that the quality of the school matters, for non stem majors. There can be a big difference between a Wharton grad and some kid from a far less rigorous program. Or, where the bar is so low that the exchange of ideas is limited. Or the pace is plodding.
The study factored in SAT scores. What it is saying is that phys ed majors, among others, showed the greatest improvement over the four years, not that they will outperform philosophy majors after four years. One of the comments in the article is from a physics prof who argued that it is hard to show similar improvements when you are already at the top; the bell curve operates differently at the tails. I tend to agree.
Not true. Research is very clear on this. We are still dealing with the same G factor. It is simply a case of different occupations require different levels of cognitive ability. It takes a lot more candle power to understand theoretical physics than it is to operate a company, although running a company requires a more diverse skill set. Maybe the story of Jeff Bezos (another physics refugee!) will clarify this.Here is an interesting quote:
Bruce Jones, a former Amazon supply chain vice president, describes leading a five-engineer team figuring out ways to make the movement of workers in fulfillment centers more efficient. The group spent nine months on the task, then presented their work to Bezos. “We had beautiful documents, and everyone was really prepared,” Jones says. Bezos read the paper, said, “You’re all wrong,” stood up, and started writing on the whiteboard.
“He had no background in control theory, no background in operating systems,” Jones says. “He only had minimum experience in the distribution centers and never spent weeks and months out on the line.” But Bezos laid out his argument on the whiteboard, and “every stinking thing he put down was correct and true,” Jones says. “It would be easier to stomach if we could prove he was wrong, but we couldn’t. That was a typical interaction with Jeff. He had this unbelievable ability to be incredibly intelligent about things he had nothing to do with, and he was totally ruthless about communicating it.”
Bezos, however, had this to say:
“Yeah. So, I went to Princeton primarily because I wanted to study physics, and it’s such a fantastic place to study physics. Things went fairly well until I got to quantum mechanics and there were about 30 people in the class by that point and it was so hard for me. I just remember there was a point in this where I realized I’m never going to be a great physicist. There were three or four people in the class whose brains were so clearly wired differently to process these highly abstract concepts, so much more. I was doing well in terms of the grades I was getting, but for me it was laborious, hard work. And, for some of these truly gifted folks – it was awe-inspiring for me to watch them because in a very easy, almost casual way, they could absorb concepts and solve problems that I would work 12 hours on, and it was a wonderful thing to behold. At the same time, I had been studying computer science, and was really finding that that was something I was drawn toward. I was drawn to that more and more and that turned out to be a great thing. So I found – one of the great things Princeton taught me is that I’m not smart enough to be a physicist”.
“It takes a lot more candle power to understand theoretical physics than it is to operate a company, although running a company requires a more diverse skill set. Maybe the story of Jeff Bezos (another physics refugee!) will clarify this.Here is an interesting quote:”
I think you’ve missed the point of that anecdote entirely. He’s got more candlepower than all of them. He started Amazon and what are they all doing? Yeah.
Anyway, this “more candlepower” argument is the refuge of those who don’t or can’t admit that they can’t do other things and rather than admit that there are things they can’t do, puff up their chests and pretend that their kind of intelligence is the only kind out there. These physicists don’t have what it takes to be the next Lin Manuel Miranda. Or a psychiatrist who transforms lives by helping people realize things about themselves. Or the global head of Edelman. So rather than admit there are things they can’t do, they pretend their specific strengths are The Most Important in the World. They aren’t. The world needs a lot of different types of skills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/paik.html
There may be a good “more candlepower” argument within a theory of one general intelligence
(“But, given that there still is a substantial debate about the nature of intelligence, and no one theory is accepted by all, there is still room for improvement on any given theory.”)
At any rate, how many people have the level of “intrapersonal intelligence” Illustrated in the Jeff Bezos story? What alternate path will the next Jeff Bezos discover once he admits to himself that as smart as he is, he’s not quite cut out for a bright future in theoretical physics? It won’t necessarily be in CS or any other STEM field. One could make that transition at a place like MIT, but I’d expect it to be supported (for many students with diverse interests) a little better somewhere else.
Or it could be the selection effect rather than the treatment effect. I.e. some employers recruit at Penn Wharton over some other business school because Penn Wharton has more selective admissions.
“These physicists don’t have what it takes to be the next Lin Manuel Miranda.”
Mother of a theater-loving, youth conservatory trained, beat-boxing, thespian, physics major and I resemble that remark. 
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Both Sternberg’s Triarchic theory and Gardner’s theory on multiple intelligence have been soundly rejected for a lack of empirical evidence by experts in the field. Unless the theories can be empirically tested, they don’t belong in science. Lay people love them, I know.
In the long run it won’t matter. The science is pushing ahead in molecular genetics and we may get a tentative answer within our lifetime. I don’t think we will like it though.
Silverlining? It may put tiger parenting out of its misery once and for all.
PG, you still don’'t get it. Murray puts it better than I can, so I will let him do the talking:
If “intellectually gifted” is defined to mean people who can become theoretical physicists, then we’re talking about no more than a few people per thousand and perhaps many fewer. They are cognitive curiosities, too rare to have that much impact on the functioning of society from day to day. But if “intellectually gifted” is defined to mean people who can stand out in almost any profession short of theoretical physics, then research about IQ and job performance indicates that an IQ of at least 120 is usually needed. That number demarcates the top 10% of the IQ distribution, or about 15 million people in today’s labor force–a lot of people.
Who died and made theoretical physicists King?
Ok, I GIVE. I’m not as intelligent as a theoretical physicist. I should probably go throw myself off a cliff. I will never be as smart as Sheldon Cooper. I congratulate the many of you on this thread who are clearly well on the way to full Sheldon-hood. Mazel Tov.
Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has been rejected for lack of empirical, psychometric evidence by specific experts in specific fields. The consensus among experts in those fields may indeed be that it is very unlikely that a different neural mechanism supports each of several “intelligences”. That doesn’t necessarily mean MI theory isn’t a useful framework for describing multiple abilities/talents. Nor does it mean that anyone has yet designed a single IQ test (or a narrow battery of scholastic aptitude tests) that can reliably predict academic and career success. Holistic admission practices seem to be more in line with MI theory than with a single g factor theory (notwithstanding the continued reliance on standardized test scores).
But suppose the best ever test of general intelligence were designed and a national testing board used it to track students entirely by performance on that one test. The board would assign the best-performing 1000 students, and the best professors, to the top university. It would assign the next-best-performing 1000 students, and the next-best professors, to the #2 university. And so forth.
In this scenario, is it likely that the best musicians, the best debaters, the best chess players, etc,. would all tend to be found at the tip top universities (even if the admission process didn’t select directly for these talents at all, only for the general intelligence “g” factor)? If I understand Charles Murray correctly (granted, from one reading of The Bell Curve years ago), that is approximately what a theory of general intelligence predicts. Although I wouldn’t reject that theory out of hand, I think Americans are a very long way from applying it to college admissions. Meanwhile, most top students in the USA will not choose a college where 75% of students major in a few “high candle power” fields, even if the same college also offers excellent instruction in other departments.
Since we are talking about social sciences and not social studies, in order for a theory to be accepted, it must be supported by experimental evidence that is replicated elsewhere. It would be even better if confirmation comes from meta-analyses… there are simply too much advocacy research going on in the field.
Psychometric is without doubt the most robust area in the social sciences. When The Bell Curve first came out, many of the leading researchers in the field came together and put this up in the WSJ:
http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1994WSJmainstream.pdf
I was very surprised at how much they agree with each other. Very surprised.
How good is standardized testing? This expert is busting a lot of myths in this TED talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv_Cr1a6rj4
It is also important to remember that while cognitive ability may be the most important for job success, cconscientiousness — one of the big five personality traits, is also important. (I think it is r=.5 and .3 respectively. Since these two attributes are not well correlated, you can think of them as additive for all intents and purposes).
Holistic admission is a totally different ball of wax. It was implemented to facilitate the transmission of privilege from one generation to the next, not to select the most competitive of candidates.
When a thread gets too theoretical, when some seem to feel they must expound, to educate other intelligent posters, the original intent is lost. A bit of me wants to say, get a room.
And you’re wrong about holistic today. (Don’t go back and quote something from nearly a century ago, to prove what “is” today.)
Karabell did everyone a huge disservice by popularizing this idea (or some idea much like this), and permitting people to make – well, not really “to make,” more like “to refer to” – a silly argument like the one above.
Actually, considered properly, that statement isn’t even really an argument. Any system of elite college admissions is something that is being implemented to “facilitate the transmission of privilege from one generation to the next.” That’s what HYPS is all about, not to mention Berkeley or Michigan: Taking an extraordinary accumulation of human capital, intellectual capital, and not least good old capital capital, and making it available to a chosen group of young students. Students who, it is believed or hoped, will accomplish more with the benefit of all that capital than they would have had they attended a less fancy university. The issue doesn’t seem to be whether it’s appropriate to transfer privilege from one generation to the next, The issue is on what basis should the recipients of that privilege be chosen.
It may well be that 80-90 years ago holistic admissions replaced admissions by exam at elite colleges as part of an effort to ensure that the colleges would retain their WASPy character, and not admit quite so many Jews and Catholics whose exams made one think they might be able to do quantum physics. (Had anyone, at the time, known what quantum physics was.). And a whiff of that may have lingered into the 80s and 90s in the person of Fred Hargadon at Stanford and then Princeton. (I am certain he was horrified and offended to be labeled a bigot in that way.) But by and large holistic admissions has been used for the past 50 years primarily to promote recognition of athletic and other non-academic talents, leadership among them, as well as inclusion of people who would formerly have been excluded due to ethnicity or region. It has not been used to make certain the next generation of graduates looks like (or is related to) the past few, and if anyone (including Hargadon) tried, then they failed miserably, except on a very limited basis.
Many people talk/write as if the bad pedigree of holistic admissions instantly discredits the whole idea. The fact is that every admissions system is discredited or no based on what you think of the values it promotes. If holistic admissions is not being used as a tool of bigotry, then it’s not discredited by bigotry.
Of course, any time anyone starts quoting Charles Murray, what I hear is a complaint that too many minority applicants are being accepted by whatever college the writer cares about. Intelligence-based admissions would be used (if it were adopted) to screen out all but a handful of minority students in favor of more white and Asian ones.
Canuck, you are conflating several different factors and finding and drawing your own conclusions- not supported by empirical evidence. If ALL jobs required the same level of cognitive ability, our economy would come to a grinding halt. If “conscientiousness” were a significant factor in every single type of job, you’d never watch a movie, attend a play, or read a piece of poetry- i.e. experience something from a creative field.
Take a company like Boeing. The people who design advanced systems and build ergonomically sound safety systems for pilots who fly long routes and figure out how to reduce weight in order to improve fuel efficiency need a certain type of cognitive ability. No question. So the people who run Boeing’s talent organization (not just recruiting this type of “smart person” but also training, employee relations, comp and benefits- all the ways you nurture and keep strong employees) figure out how to capture those skills in the way they hire.
But Boeing also needs finance people, and investor relations people, and graphic designers, and labor relations professionals, and facilities management pros, and experts in training and adult learning, and people who design factories and people who develop supply chain algorithms and people who buy pencils and keep Snapple in the refrigerators and repair the copy machines, and people who negotiate cheap corporate rates on hotel rooms and flights for the thousands of employees who rack up millions of travel miles every year. The company would fall apart if it ONLY hired the “cognitive” types who design airplanes and ignored the other functions. The folks who run investor relations are likely not the “smartest” employees at the company. But those engineers wouldn’t have a job if their colleagues in investor relations didn’t understand how to communicate with Wall Street without violating the SEC’s rules on announcing quarterly earnings.
The history of industry is filled with the Polaroids and Kodaks which were filled with the high cognitive types but ignored the other functions. How is it that a company like Kodak (at one point a “Kodak Moment” was the very definition of what photography meant) missed the digital revolution and didn’t see that every teenager in the world wanted to take pictures of their friends on their phone? It wasn’t a failure of cognition- it was a failure of creativity and vision. NOT conscientiousness PLUS cognitive skills… something else entirely.
You are betting on a losing horse if you pound the table that "smarts’ as measured by things like physics is the be-all and end-all.
Tickets to Hamilton aren’t selling for five times face value because Lin-Manuel is “book smart” plus hard working.