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<p>Sure - one needs only link at the hiring criteria posted by Microsoft (and other major software firms) at the career centers of the top tech universities such as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and the like. Most full-time job recruitment is targeted at graduating seniors, with the understanding that they will in fact graduate (not just take the offer and then immediately drop out). </p>
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<p>And I am similarly having a hard time reconciling my true life experience with your statements, and frankly, I’m beginning to doubt whether you work in the industry. Why do such firms target full-time on-campus employment recruitment specifically at graduating seniors? Why not target every student, regardless of class level? By doing so, you would quadruple your target population, would you not? </p>
<p>Look, you’re the one who is making an extraordinary claim. I know quite a few people who would like to work at Microsoft as developers but who don’t actually want to go to college (or if they do go, don’t actually want to finish college). I’m not saying that your claim is wrong, but extraordinary claims have to be backed by extraordinary proof. </p>
<p>To be clear, are there probably a handful of people who are able to obtain full-time jobs from Microsoft without degrees. Perhaps there are - Microsoft is after all a large company. But to assert that such a policy is ‘well known’ is a different matter altogether. Like I said, if it was truly ‘well known’, then one should be able to easily show proof of that policy. It should be clear that there are plenty of people dropping out of top schools such as MIT to work at Microsoft without graduating. In fact, I can’t think of a single person who has actually done so (although I can think of plenty who graduated from MIT and then worked for Microsoft). </p>
<p>Which all only reinforces the notion that such a pathway is unusual, which only bolsters my original point that Bill Gates would find it difficult to be employed at Microsoft as a full-time employee today. </p>
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<p>If that is the case, then you have nothing to fear, for the statistical model will note that the ‘Social Sciences’ predictor variable will have a large standard error - meaning a large variation - and is therefore not useful for prediction. </p>
<p>To my detractors, I have the simple question: what exactly are you afraid of? It seems that the only thing to fear is that the model would be too predictive, and that it is somehow ‘good’ that we continue to admit people who aren’t likely to graduate. But why is that good?</p>