My experience (hiring manager in tech) and that of my son (recent college grad, MSCS) is slightly different.
In companies I hired at there were distinct pay/benefit bands for interns and FT employees. And for FT employees starting out of college there was no single pay/benefit package. There was, in fact a fairly wide bands (base pay, equity, signing bonus, and yearly bonus targets) based on specifics of the new grad - and how much we really wanted to close the hire. Our son had 4 internships with two at very large tech companies both of which made FT offers considerably higher than their very generous intern pay.
The key is âOnce a candidate is selectedâ. You have to get past that filter, and here I do think that college programs matter.
Again, this is where pay and compensation bands come into play. You can hire from college #1 and college #2 with very different compensation packages - all within the acceptable new hire band. You can also hire a new grad in an âexperiencedâ band if you need to in order to close the deal.
In short, there is no single, new hire compensation package.
Highly selective colleges have their own wish list of applicants, some of which are at least hinted in public statements, and some of which they may be less willing to talk about (some kinds of âhooksâ).
Those looking from the outside cannot compare essays and recommendations between applicants. Even applicants often have little idea what quality of recommendations they are getting (in terms of how well the recommender writes them, even if the recommender is really positive about the applicant).
Even less selective colleges are often less transparent than they can be, such as not being clear that they admit by major with varying levels of competitiveness between majors.
I am intrigued by your disdain for the SAT and the concept of testing. Should all testing be abolished in education? Would you be comfortable being operated upon by a doctor who never had to take a test in school? Would you be comfortable flying in a plane designed by an engineer who never had to take a test? I struggle to see how the SAT isnât valuable for highly selective institutions. The people in this thread who claim to do this type of analysis for a living (and argue against the value of the SAT) sound a lot like me trying to explain crypto & blockchain to my elderly parents - it is an absolute disjointed mess.
I could name 2 posters off the top of my head who constantly beat this very drum.
One of my favorite profs in law school once remarked on a âcleverâ question posed by a student putting common sense on its head, âThis reminds me of a story of a Zen master. He said before he studied Zen, the mountains were the mountains and the rivers, rivers. When I studied Zen, the mountains were no longer mountains nor rivers, rivers. Now that I am a Zen master, the mountains are again mountains and rivers, rivers. So is the study of law.â
I must say I view a lot of the back and forth here the same way. The SAT and ACT basically test studentsâ: ability to handle pretty basic math, concepts that they will need as fundamental building blocks of any quantitatively driven subject in a nonremedial college course; reading comprehension; and technical writing skills. The higher the level of their skills in these areas, the more likely the student will be better prepared for college. Should test results be the end all in any decision or not taken in certain contexts, of course not, but to ignore it is being willfully blind to a relevant piece of information that compares students across a consistent standard, especially in this day of unequal education and grade inflation. That information may not be relevant/low relevance for certain schools or inconveniently detracts from a greater âmissionâ, but just as a matter of common sense, I just donât see how it is not relevant to any school which cares about the level(s) of academic preparedness of its incoming students.
A high SAT math score of 750 may not guarantee a student can complete a difficult STEM major at a rigorousschool, but a score of 450 can guarantee they wonât.
Iâm someone who personally doesnât think SAT/ACT testing has all that much value, not to be confused with having no value (I rate the voices of Jon Boeckenstedt, Akil Bello, Jake Vignor, all the schools that have gone test optional over the past 6-7 decades, etc over other voices) - though if some schools want to use it, Iâm all for them having that choice.
It is the same (imo) as requiring a certain number of supplemental essays to complete the application. Does requiring 5 essays indicate anything significant about first year GPA? Or graduation rates? Do they need to, if that is what the school wants to make that part of the application? Are the schools that require 3 supplemental essays not as good as the ones that require 5? Are the schools that require students to apply to a specific program better than those who admit everyone âundecidedâ?
Iâm not against testing as a concept. I think that college entrance placement testing is incredibly valuable - getting placed in the appropriate class level to start anything is key. And most schools I know of have some level of that - regardless of your SAT/ACT scores.
There are many paths to Rome. Very hard to say one route is the best one. One may be fastest, one may be the most âscenicâ, one might have the least number of tolls to pay, one might contain no left turns. It depends on what you want which road looks best to you.
Edited to Add: Jon Boeckenstedt has a great quote from when he was in Admissions in Chicago - âTest Optional doesnât mean Achievement Optionalâ.
He was specifically referring to the fact that the first year the school went TO, they did get more applications from students who werenât strong students. But that effect went away pretty quickly because they were easy to identify (even without test scores) and when those students were denied admission, high schools quickly realized that TO didnât mean success for weak apps.
I have never said that. I have consistently stated that i support schools that want to use tests because they view them as important to their decision making.
I donât think it reasonable to assume that disfavoring the use of the SAT equates to âdesperatelyâ wanting all tests to be irrelevant, but letâs set that aside.
Can you expand on what you believe these âvery personal reasonsâ might be? As someone who defends schoolsâ decisions to not to use the tests, Iâm at a loss as to what âvery personal reasonsâ you think might be driving those who feel similarly.
Presumably some do not like the test results, and thus disparage the test. It is unlikely that a different test ( such as those for certain European or Asian schools) would yield different results-I have not seen alternative standardized tests suggested instead by those who disparage the SAT
Still donât follow? Are you saying the reason some support a schoolâs decision not use the tests is because their children donât score high enough?
@Zrt42, is that what you mean by âvery personal reasons?â
If so, does the same argument go the other way? Do those who score well want the use of the test because they score well? Or perhaps they didnât achieve the admissions results they think they deserve, and therefor think the test wasnât given enough weight, or the result would have been different had tests been the standard? Or even if they did achieve the results they wanted, they are angry because they feel the schools shouldnât tarnish their accomplishment by letting âundeservingâ lower scorers in with them? In other words, do they feel that the purpose of the tests is to keep out certain students, and that isnât happening?
I was just notified that a post I made in this thread (that I feel was benign) was flagged as harmful and offensive. I will bow out of this discussion.
If youâve ever watched the movie Miracle about the USA hockey Gold Medal at Lake Placid 1980, at the end they state what those boys did after college. Most became successful and many in finance. Used to be that most Wall Street traders played sports in college - thatâs somewhat changed with algos and automation. However, look at it from the POV of an interview, or a sales pitch, when you say you went to the Olympics or you were ranked top 10 in fencing, itâs interesting! People want to be around interesting successful people. And athletes hire athletes.
And then thereâs military â a friend was interviewing a young man (eary 20s) for a high paying job on Wall Street, asked him if he could handle the stress and leadership required. As it was coming out of my friends mouth, he stumbled, b/c he saw the military experience on the resume. The young man replied in detail about leading teams while deployed overseas. He got the job.
I suppose it would be useful to correlate whether those who did poorly on the SAT later had problems with professional qualifications tests, such as the med licensing boards, the bar exam, or the securities industry exams. I assume they do but havenât seen the matter studied
Not only should colleges use SAT/ACT test, but they should have college exmissions test too. Then we can see which schools actually teach. To deny that SAT/ACT tests are college readiness tests is frankly absurd.
We give tests to hire people and test folk all over industry throughout their careers. Do you want your electrician to not have to pass a test? What about your surgeon? Should the person managing your pension fund not have to pass Series exams or have a CFA?
From personal experience, hiring tests and certifications from tests have resulting in actually hiring folks that do not have a college degree, but are skilled in their field.
Standardized tests are equalizers. My âpoorâ dad from an uneducated family got into Harvard because of his SAT.
People keep saying this but, honestly, no, I do not care at all if my surgeon (or whoever) has taken some standardized test. I care that my surgeon has a steady hand, knows how to use all the robotic whatnot they have now, knows how to suture, knows how to cut out whatever needs to be cut outâŠNone of that is reflected by the score on a standardized test. Their test scores is just about at the bottom of any any qualifications I would look for in a surgeon and would not care one bit if they had no such tests at all. I care about their residencies and such. I care about their experience and practical skills and surgical outcomes. Again, none of that will be demonstrated by a test.
Too bad. I suspect many others share your perceptions about the motivations for supporting schools who donât want to use the tests, and it would probably be worth exploring,
What does âdid poorly on the SATâ mean, exactly? The article in question is about Ivy+ colleges, with an emphasis on MIT. MITâs most recent 50% scores: 800 Math, 760 EBRW. Shall we use that as the standard?
And why do you suppose it would be useful? What purpose would be served by trying to link professional qualifications exams with SAT scores, taken 7-10 years before? Should we be using the SAT scores to directly cull the heard of prospective doctors and lawyers at the age of 17?
I did fine on the SAT - maybe 90% on the English and 60% on math? Wild guess as it was so many years ago but give or take 10 points probably in that range. I did very little studying for it, certainly didnât take a class, just wasnât a thing at least among those I knew (or if it was I paid no attention). Once I learned you could study for the âaptitudeâ tests my scores (on GRE and LSAT) were in the 98-99%. I passed the bar in a state known to be difficult on the first try without taking a bar review class (didnât care to spend the money) but by then I certainly knew to spend significant time studying in my own. So no, I donât think doing mediocre on the SAT (or what today is considered mediocre in this era of donât submit if youâre under 1500) is indicative of how you may do on future standardized tests. I know itâs shocking to many CC parents, but there are still a LOT of kids across the country who donât know or donât believe how helpful prepping is for the SAT and no one tells them differently (or tells them so they hear it). There are a lot of smart kids who way underscore for this reason. Iâm not against testing - it helped me and my kid get accepted places we otherwise would never have gotten into - but being able to focus in and ace a 2-hour test is REALLY different from being able to focus and organize over time and ace a semester-long class. I know a fair number of people who didnât have my aptitude for standardized tests but who did way better than me in school.