Is college really about learning?

[Milhouse]

Originally Posted by Teacher

Uh...you sure about that?
Lots of jobs will set hard arbitrary GPA cut offs. Some even check test scores (e.g. they want your GMAT scores).

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by Milhouse

Lots of jobs will set hard arbitrary GPA cut offs.

Some even check test scores (e.g. they want your GMAT scores).

Dude it's worse than GMAT. Some companies check SAT scores! Mine included.

 

[Milhouse]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

Dude it's worse than GMAT. Some companies check SAT scores! Mine included.

Seriously? Where are the SAT cut offs?

 

[odoreater]

Easy - take courses in topics you really want to study. I really don't understand how someone can do too terribly studying a topic that they're really interested in studying.

My view is that the cream rises to the top in anything. Sooner or later, employers will figure out that the people they hired are just dumbshits who took the easy classes in college.

 

[thenanyu]

Originally Posted by Milhouse

Seriously? Where are the SAT cut offs?

Don't worry, you do not want those jobs.

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by Milhouse

Seriously? Where are the SAT cut offs?

Need to be decent with numbers so 700 math. Also low verbal scores (<600) is a warning sign. Again, this is just how I've seen other people look at it. It's not necessarily my view.

Originally Posted by odoreater

My view is that the cream rises to the top in anything. Sooner or later, employers will figure out that the people they hired are just dumbshits who took the easy classes in college.

Not necessarily. Promotions are often given to people who play the politics better than those who have the best ability (to a certain degree - you obviously need some ability as well). Regardless of what you view as fair or right, for any given individual it makes sense to maximize their earning potential / chance of getting the job they want. It isn't to make sure a corporation's recruiting class is optimized.

Also, you make the assumption that people who go the "easy class" route are dumbshits. Not really. I am pretty smart compared to the average Joe and I did it. I know other smart people who did it too. Why not get a 3.7 if you would otherwise get a 3.4? Why not get a 4.0 if you would otherwise get a 3.7? It is relative, not absolute. Both smart and dumb people utilize this strategy.

I get the feeling that you took hard classes in college and had to work for your grades, and so you feel that others should earn them too. I understand where you are coming from, but like someone said above, it is a business.

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by thenanyu

Don't worry, you do not want those jobs.

You sound insecure about your test scores.

 

[Teacher]

Originally Posted by APK

I was going to mention that, too. In many ways, college is as much about developing skills for the work world as it is about learning.

Of course it is. When a good employer (please again note the word good) reviews college courses, experiences, etc., he/she is looking at how involved, curious, hard-working, etc. a person is. Just taking a particular course says absolutely nothing about someone's employability.

Originally Posted by Milhouse

Lots of jobs will set hard arbitrary GPA cut offs.

Some even check test scores (e.g. they want your GMAT scores).

In my experience, those cutoffs are generally part of a formula, not absolutes. Also, this is often used by very large firms who don't wish to even think about anybody but those who appear to be the top X percent on paper simply because they don't have the time to cull through everybody.

 

[odoreater]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

Need to be decent with numbers so 700 math. Also low verbal scores (<600) is a warning sign. Again, this is just how I've seen other people look at it. It's not necessarily my view.



Not necessarily. Promotions are often given to people who play the politics better than those who have the best ability (to a certain degree - you obviously need some ability as well). Regardless of what you view as fair or right, for any given individual it makes sense to maximize their earning potential / chance of getting the job they want. It isn't to make sure a corporation's recruiting class is optimized.

Also, you make the assumption that people who go the "easy class" route are dumbshits. Not really. I am pretty smart compared to the average Joe and I did it. I know other smart people who did it too. Why not get a 3.7 if you would otherwise get a 3.4? Why not get a 4.0 if you would otherwise get a 3.7? It is relative, not absolute. Both smart and dumb people utilize this strategy.

I get the feeling that you took hard classes in college and had to work for your grades, and so you feel that others should earn them too. I understand where you are coming from, but like someone said above, it is a business.

Honestly, at the risk of sounding like some asshat, I don't really know what to tell people that ask these types of questions because I did not have these types of problems. I took the classes that interested me without any thought as to whether they were hard or not. There were semesters when I took 21 credits or whatever, and I just never really had a problem getting good grades.

College is one of those rare opportunities in life when you can really pursue things intellectually that interest you and I didn't skip that opportunity because I was worried about whether or not my GPA will suffer. But like I said, I wasn't really in the same position as the OP because even so-called hard classes were pretty easy.

In the long term, I don't think any of this really matters. People who are bright and have bright ideas will do well, and people who are not bright or not motivated or whatever will not do well regardless of what classes either group took in college.

 

[MetroStyles]

Fair enough, but then realize that you are smarter than the great majority of people and your advice may not be best for them. Even though I am pretty smart (but aware that I am far from the smartest at school or at my current employer), I struggled with hard classes in college. They didn't necessarily come that easily to me, and an A was far from guaranteed.

If someone who is not brilliant wants to get a good job that they'd enjoy, but the competition is fierce for even getting an interview, I think it would be misguiding them to say to not worry about the GPA and just taking what interests them. Sometimes, the most interesting classes have professors who tend to think that a B is an excellent grade and that a C truly means &quot;not bad&quot;.

 

[Milhouse]

Originally Posted by Teacher

In my experience, those cutoffs are generally part of a formula, not absolutes. Also, this is often used by very large firms who don't wish to even think about anybody but those who appear to be the top X percent on paper simply because they don't have the time to cull through everybody.

Well, it isn't really a formula, more of an algorithm. For example:

Step 1) if gpa <=3.49 DELETE RESUME
Step 2) if gmat <=649 DELETE RESUME
Step 3) if BS/BA school name != (lookup list of recruiting schools) DELETE RESUME
Step 4) . . . .

Instead of using weightings for the things and doing an average of some sort. Or using clustering for example.

 

[Milhouse]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

Sometimes, the most interesting classes have professors who tend to think that a B is an excellent grade and that a C truly means "not bad".

I had a math prof that literally told us that grades were worthless because they didn't leave him enough bandwidth to determine who the real geniuses were. Our exams usually had means in the 35 to 40% range. He also wanted the SD to be pretty tight (say 5 or 10% tops) so that he had plenty of room to catch the people that were 2 or 3 SDs above the mean.

This meant every exam had about 50% material that we had never seen or heard of before. That prof was a dick, and his grade policy didn't do him any favors.

 

[Teacher]

Originally Posted by Milhouse

I had a math prof that literally told us that grades were worthless because they didn't leave him enough bandwidth to determine who the real geniuses were. Our exams usually had means in the 35 to 40% range. He also wanted the SD to be pretty tight (say 5 or 10% tops) so that he had plenty of room to catch the people that were 2 or 3 SDs above the mean.

This meant every exam had about 50% material that we had never seen or heard of before. That prof was a dick, and his grade policy didn't do him any favors.

These people never cease to amaze me. Didn't anybody tell them they weren't gods?

 

[office drone]

Yes, it is for learning stuff from your courses, but it's also teaching you time management and how to multi-task. Can you juggle a full course load with decent grades, a part time job, and have somewhat of a social life? College/university will surely test you on that. That answer works well in job interviews too...when they ask you what the most important thing you learned in college was...

 

[eztantz]

College should definitely be about learning but unfortunately most proffesors are either too lazy or stupid to actually give a decent lesson. I had one proffesor who came to every class with a sheet of paper which she had paraphrased word for word of the assigned reading material and would just read the stuff straight off. Don't know why she even bothered to rewrite it, unless of course she though everyone to be as dumb as her and wouldn't realize what she was doing. Waste of time and money - I could have spent both more wisely on styleforum....