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Comment by hardware2win | Hacker News Reader

Pretty decent collection of reasonable advices

Especially this: Make sure you aren’t just doing a glorified version of trying to earn good grades.

So many people failed on this, mostly because of parents. Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless.

Just small nitpick to #1

Learning just in time =/= learning via practice

Learning just in case, the opposite of JIT makes sense too, but is "unpredictably effective" - the stuff you learned may be needed and put you ahead, but may not.

I'd add something about living your own life (career, relations, hobby) instead of being "locked" by your friends. Dont go to X school just because your friends go there.

Friendships decrease/end too. You may barely see them 5 years later due to... life

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>Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless.

They aren't worthless.

Grades make it easier and cheaper for you to go to college. Good grades in college make it far, far easier to get jobs and can get you in the door to significantly better and higher paying jobs or grad school.

So not worthless, just not the be all and end all.

In my country higher edu institutions look at final exam scores, not grades.

Grades are terrible due to bias, difficulty when it comes to comparing them and lack of transparency.

At best they show effort (or "caring" parents)

>Good grades in college make it far, far easier to get jobs and can get you in the door to significantly better and higher

Thats why there should be fair and transparent exam after college :)

This way everything is up to your score, not school name or cool prof who inflates grades

I don't really disagree with you; I was just pointing out the way it currently is, at least in the US.

Tests have their own sets of problems too. A single, high stakes, high pressure test to determine everything is just as absurd as grades, and tends to bias for those who have time and money to prep.

I prefer wholistic evaluations. You are more than both your test scores and your grades and your school and your demographics. But if you put them all together one can get a decent picture.

While tests arent perfect, then they are at least fair, transparent and almost bias free unlike other methods.

>tends to bias for those who have time and money to prep.

Hmm?

So you have time to do various stuff for grades, but dont have time to prepare for exam?

It feels like copy pasted argument from discussions about exams in general, not when comparing them with grades like we do.

>But if you put them all together one can get a decent picture.

Concrete things, please.

How would you evaluate person.

In general, exams measure peak performance. Grades measure sustained performance.

The literature is quite extensive that although standardized tests have substantial predictive power as to college performance, adding grades and other factors is substantially better. Eg https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-... and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/

You assert without evidence that testing is unbiased. This is widely disputed. You will find some literature taking the opposite view, of course, but given that the debate rages among professional researchers, a plain assertion doesnt carry all that much weight.

http://m.portlandobserver.com/news/2020/jan/14/college-admis... https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED537716.pdf

Cheating on college entrance exams is rampant in China and other countries. This is another downside of high stakes exams.

As far as a wholistic view, I think including attributes such as grit, leadership, and talent across many areas such as writing, the various arts and many other fields is useful.

How can you introduce bias in ABCD e.g math tests?

>think including attributes such as grit, leadership, and talent across many areas such as writing, the various arts and many other fields is useful.

How do you measure leadership?

And prevent bias/preference from the examiner?

I suggest doing some research. There are plenty of published papers on the topic.

The USA used to be a hybrid, but many schools are getting rid of looking at (ACT/SAT)test scores and that leaves them with just grades.

It is almost certainly not worth your time to try to be in the top 10 in your class.

Nearly everyone is much better off doing other things with their time than studying to try to get an elite college for a good deal.

There's little evidence that where you go to school matters.

If you take Albert Einstein and you put him in a community college, he's still going to be Albert Einstein, and you're still going to just be you at Harvard.

>There's little evidence that where you go to school matters.

That's not quite true. There is little evidence that if you go to Penn instead of Penn State you have different results, but there are caveats. First, you have to be able to get into both.

[edit]The studies control for selection, so the ones showing no increase in wages are studying the same cohort at Penn and Penn State, but there are more students at Penn State that are not members of that cohort than there are students at Penn.

Second, you need to go to a college with enough people and have access to a similar cohort of intelligent, hard-working and advantaged students.

>If you take Albert Einstein and you put him in a community college, he's still going to be Albert Einstein, and you're still going to just be you at Harvard.

Maybe so - most people aren't Albert Einstein, though, and that Harvard degree gets you a look at places where the community college degree does not.

Regarding Penn vs. Penn State, the valedictorian at my PA high school got into both. He ended up going to the Penn State honors school, and he's doing great today. Salutatorian (same GPA actually but one fewer AP class broke the tie) went to Penn and he's also doing great. So I guess that's to say.... shrug.

Honestly I'd live in State College over Philly any day of the week.

Penn's not really the level of school that will be that much better over a flagship state school. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, and maybe a few more are that level.

> Penn's not really the level of school that will be that much better over a flagship state school. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, and maybe a few more are that level.

Pretty sure Wharton fits in with the profiles you mentioned.

The College… yeah, sounds about right (maybe a flagship state school honors program).

Penn students apply to a specific school, so the student body profile of each school is quite different (sometimes to almost comically different degrees).

The median Penn grad ends up making a bit more money than the median Stanford grad and less than the median MIT grad. They all make considerably more than a Berkeley grad, who makes considerably more than someone from Iowa State University.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

Somewhat surprisingly, the impact on lifetime earnings of attending an elite college is nil for men but strong for women.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25315

Women use their credentials more than men because they say a subset of men don't respect them without their credentials being aired. If that's true then it makes sense that the benefit to men is nil because they're viewed competent by default whereas women have to prove competency. Somewhat anecdotally people regularly confuse me for a mathematician although I lack any degree. I just like math and using it to prove my point; plus I'm kind of a late bloomer to math so it's more relevant to me than rote.

Curious that you say that, because I remember recently reading that women on average are unwilling to "date down" in terms of higher education levels, while it's not really a factor for men.

That's the most charitable interpretation I can think of. Wouldn't you agree that stereotypes are most impactful with first impressions and then diminish over time for those who know you?

It's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. If you have the requisite skill and persistence to be in the top 10 in the class, you probably don't need to be in the top 10. But if you have that skill and you don't use it to be in the top 10, what are you doing instead? It better be something good, because competing against other highly motivated and skilled peers for a top 10 spot builds a lot of character and fortitude. Top 10 in my class are the best of the best. No one is sneaking in there.

> It is almost certainly not worth your time to try to be in the top 10 in your class.

In Louisiana, it literally gets you a free public college education.

Which for a depressing number of kids in Louisiana, is one of their only hopes of breaking a cycle of poverty.

I think you've missed the point about TFA's discussion on grades. Here's a link so you can go back: https://skunkledger.substack.com/i/125171481/b-dealing-with-...

Basically, high grades aren't the end-all, be-all of school. They aren't a way of defining ones' worth. The analogy of treating school like a job really applies here. TFA also points out the risk of bad grades.

I should point out that TFA's advice works for conventional high school, but less for prep school. I had so much homework in prep school that it was nearly impossible for me to pursue the kinds of things TFA advocates for. Had I known better, I would have insisted on going to public school. (But all my friends were going to prep school; another mistake from TFA that I fell into.)

Yes - this is why I said:

>So not worthless, just not the be all and end all.

It was a reply to someone who missed the point about the discussion on grades.

> Grades make it easier and cheaper for you to go to college.

How do they make it cheaper to go to college?

Merit scholarships that are based mostly or entirely on grades are relatively rare and extremely competitive.

And the cheapest colleges are often the least selective ones (like community college or state schools).

In my experience state schools that weren't very selective were also the ones offering scholarships for students with high grades/test scores etc. Many of my friends went to the school they did instead of a more prestigious one due to being offered more tuition assistance/scholarships for their high school achievements.

Personally I was able to skip a full semester and change of classes thanks to taking every AP course I could during high school as well

As an example, Georgia offers scholarships for all students above certain GPA cutoffs. The Hope and Zell Miller programs, specifically, pay for many students to attend schools like UGA and Georgia Tech.

Many programs and scholarships have grade cutoffs or maintenance requirements and while scholarships aren't entirely based on grades the grades are often a prerequisite.

> Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless.

I have this archetype which I constructed over the years, that I named "34-year-old Patrice".

By just looking at him, you wouldn't be able to tell that 34yo Patrice dropped out of high school, took some odd jobs in his youth which eventually got him into trouble, so he did time. At age 26 he got out and started turning his life around and despite all this hardship is currently a functional member of society and in some regards even more successful than his peers.

Point being, life is more complex than just taking and passing tests. I feel like more teenagers should be told this as early as possible.

"Never let schooling interfere with your education"? That's how I always approached it.

One of my middle school teachers observed with chagrin that I would rush my classwork, accepting a high B or low A when they were sure I could have gotten a 100% if I had "tried", so that I could go back to reading my book. Unfortunately, there was no reward for a 90 vs a 100 (beyond buffer to your overall grade being an A), so I just did as little as possible to get the maximum reward out of the system, and then went back to doing what I liked to do - learning.

It's also a bit funny to me that the program that was ostensibly supposed to support kids like me - "Future Problem Solvers" if I recall the name right - rejected me because they test they administered to determine if I should be invited was extremely weird to me - I mostly remember it asking me to, given a set of random lines, draw a picture using them. I think I mostly turned them into smiley faces because I was bored and confused by what they wanted. I'm sure, in retrospect, that they wanted me to show creativity in making interesting art out of the "constraints" of the lines. But alas, I just wanted to get back to reading what (given my age) was probably a book about space or a CS Lewis book or something. My best friend got in, and he ended up dropping out of college after 2 semesters of drinking, so I guess maybe it wasn't a very good program anyway.

> Learning just in case, the opposite of JIT makes sense too, but is "unpredictably effective" - the stuff you learned may be needed and put you ahead, but may not.

This is also a place to tailor things. If you are particularly good at learning ahead of time, then you can learn a lot of things "just in case" at a low cost, increasing the chances that something you learned is useful.

If you aren't especially good at it, then you're going to have much lower chances and JIT learning makes sense for all the reasons in TFA

> Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless.

I'd like everyone who makes this claim to try submitting resumes of a fresh college graduate with a low C average to a dozen companies and see if even a single one of them calls back.

Grades are a means to an end, which is different than being worthless.

>I'd like everyone who makes this claim to try submitting resumes of a fresh college graduate with a lo

Even better - Ive found my first software job during 1st year and nobody asked me about grades, but this is not US.

Learn your stuff, have interesting stuff in CV and it should be doable, right?

I am in the USA and have not shared nor been asked my GPA in any job interview.

I throw my university GOA on my CV because it looks good without taking up much space, but is ultimately meaningless at this point. No one asked for it, no one probably cared about it, but it is still something I’m proud of given the struggle in earning it.

I actually had a low C average, and I only got my first job because I didn't put my GPA on my resume and one company forgot to ask me my GPA; the interviewer later confirmed that they would not have moved on to a second round (much less hired me) had they known my GPA.

At e.g. a college job fair, not having the GPA on the resume jumps out immediately and the recruiter would ask me for my GPA and write it on the resume if it wasn't there. With the GPA on my resume, I had several recruiters say "You might want to save this for another company because we aren't calling you back with that GPA" and hand me my resume back. This included, with zero exceptions, every SV company at the CS job fair at my college.

After the first job, you are much less likely to be asked for GPA, but it does still occasionally happen.

Weirdest (right out of college) interview was where I had gone through all the stages, including a multi-hour on-site, they were talking salary range, specific roles, and when I could start, but then they had to fill out a form for HR. The dialogue was roughly:

Interviewer: You're coming right out of school, right?

Me: Yes

I: Okay, I need your GPA

M: 2.2

I: Oh. (long pause, looked very uncomfortable) alright then.

They suddenly switched from being obviously ready to hire me to perfunctorily filling out the form.

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