25% Drop in free playtime for 6-to-8-year-olds from 1981 to ’97, while homework more than doubled. Time 30Nov, p.57. My youngest son is a junior in high school, but won’t study for the SAT because he is too busy with classes; he won’t believe me that the SAT counts for as much as his GPA. He does his own software projects, which is great, but mainly because he loves them. My older son, newly at UVA, was too busy with classes, basketball and band to do his own projects or study for the SAT.
Feynman only got A's in his science classes. He was notorious for failing all liberal arts courses, and was accepted to Princeton with a surprisingly low GPA.
Whenever people are graded on a curve, the curve matters a lot. When I was in France, I was graded on a gaussian curve, when I was in the US, I noticed the grad distribution was roughly exponential (mostly A's, then B's etc). It might have just been my program of course.
In the first case, the curve inverse is convex for good students, encouraging specialization, wherease in the second case it is concave, favoring consistency, hence dandellions.
Eh. If you know you're going to actually go through the entire class, by all means take it rather than audit it (assuming no horrendous course fees). It can in many cases reduce the other college requirements, giving you more time to study exactly what you want to study.
But absolutely don't stop working through outside material if you can't get credit for it.
Unfortunately college doesn't much make it possible to ignore GPA and focus on interesting projects.
If the question was whether to let an A slide into a B, then sure, focus on projects and get the B.
But too often the question is whether to stop absolutely swimming in homework and let an A slide into a C or D.
Many classes have dozens of pages of for-credit homework every class period. In calculus, I would have loved to have skipped the first dozen easy problems, and really sunk my teeth into the few hard ones at the end. That would have absolutely sunk my grade, so I did the first dozen easy ones, got credit for them, and sometimes muddled through one or two of the hard ones. After that, I did the same thing for three other classes, ate a bag of doritoes, and fell into bed at 2:00 am, unable to even consider a project, much less do one.
In other words, I agree, and it's the school's fault. At least it was at my school.
I was responding to jorge's contention that a 3.3 from UVA disqualifies one for med school. In reality, 71% of such applicants were accepted if their MCAT's were high.
But a good start might be “What percentage of people who scored a 39 or higher had a GPA of 3.3 or lower?” That should be good for a laugh.
1682 med-school applicants 2005-2007 scored 39 or higher on the MCAT. 152 had GPA's of 3.3 or less, or 9%. Strangely enough, there were 84 applicants with GPA's of 3.8-4.0 who scored 14 or less on the MCAT's; only 3 were accepted (3.6%).
Overall, 74.1% of the highest GPA level were accepted, but 88.2% of the highest MCAT's were accepted, including one with a 2.3 GPA. It's more important to have high MCAT's.
RU what's you're point? If one has crappy grades, they have to score much, much higher on the MCAT for a shot at medical school admission? Hardly an argument against grade-grubbing in the years before one takes the MCAT.
Also, you're statistic seems misleading to me. I suspect the people who didn't manage a high GPA who scored a 39 or higher on the MCAT is vanishingly small (but to be fair, I don't know how things may have changed, I'm a few years removed from college). But a good start might be "What percentage of people who scored a 39 or higher had a GPA of 3.3 or lower?" That should be good for a laugh.
I say again: 88.2% of applicants with MCAT scores of 39-45 were accepted, regardless of GPA, including your anecdotal Caltech acquaintance. These are hardly slim odds.
retired urologist. That's the wrong statistic. What matters is conditional prob of acceptance given equivalent MCATs from programs with very different grade scales. Say an easier major at Stanford vs. EE at Berkeley or MIT. A good study would look at students records in high school to try to normalize ex ante student ability. The word from both students and faculty at Caltech and MIT suggests that entering med school is objectively harder from both places and their acceptance stats confirm that. I personally know someone who attended Caltech, got spectacular MCATs, mediocre grades and was rejected by dozens of med schools getting into only one out of 30 or so. Kid then aced med school and has had a good career, but those odds seem mighty slim.
Robin knows I'm right. He just doesn't value conventional career success very much.
If your son does well at UVA but only has a 3.3, that will hurt him if applying to law or MBA school and will be effectively disqualifying for med school.
Popular misconception. The Association of American Medical Colleges gives all such statistics here. 88.2% of applicants with MCAT scores of 39-45 were accepted, regardless of GPA. In the GPA level of 3.3, approximately half were accepted if the MCAT score was 30 or higher (out of 45 possible). The most likely MCAT score of the applicants was 30-32, and 65.4% of these were accepted, including 20% of those in the 2.4 GPA range.
Most important of all is that top schools are clearly choosing to emphasize diligence over brilliance. The SAT used to be harder and fewer could do very well (percentage of 800M/V was much lower than post 1994). Grades are also easier to get than before. So both are weaker signals. As a result students need to max out on these as a minimal signal of ability and THEN do well on indep projects. But the minimal signals are necessary. Same for entrance to grad school.
Now, Robin is correct, that conditional upon being admitted to a grad program (and conditional upon passing prelims) doing a good dissertation beats any grades. But that is very late in the game. If your son does well at UVA but only has a 3.3, that will hurt him if applying to law or MBA school and will be effectively disqualifying for med school. Consider that Med students at Caltech and MIT are more often rejected than from the Ivies because of lower grades. Caltech even has official posts about the problem of applying to med school.
Only in the fields that reward brilliance and innovation highly (primarily entrepreneurship and academia once past the initial filters) does GPA matter relatively less. [And I'm sure most readers of this blog will be surprised to find that academia rewards GPA less than does professional school. But that explains where Robin is coming from.]
When I say smartest I'm folding in all those things experimental psychologists are trying to tease out these days (grit, executive function, conscientiousness, etc.)
If you lacked the grit and conscientiousness to maintain a high gpa, even with acing the SAT's, I wouldn't call you one of "the smartest".
Feynman only got A's in his science classes. He was notorious for failing all liberal arts courses, and was accepted to Princeton with a surprisingly low GPA.
Are you hiring?
Actually, you're giving your the son the wrong advice. His GPA is worth a lot more than SATs.
Proof: http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/...
Feynman was a straight-A student...
Yes, a good point.
Whenever people are graded on a curve, the curve matters a lot. When I was in France, I was graded on a gaussian curve, when I was in the US, I noticed the grad distribution was roughly exponential (mostly A's, then B's etc). It might have just been my program of course.
In the first case, the curve inverse is convex for good students, encouraging specialization, wherease in the second case it is concave, favoring consistency, hence dandellions.
Eh. If you know you're going to actually go through the entire class, by all means take it rather than audit it (assuming no horrendous course fees). It can in many cases reduce the other college requirements, giving you more time to study exactly what you want to study.
But absolutely don't stop working through outside material if you can't get credit for it.
Unfortunately college doesn't much make it possible to ignore GPA and focus on interesting projects.
If the question was whether to let an A slide into a B, then sure, focus on projects and get the B.
But too often the question is whether to stop absolutely swimming in homework and let an A slide into a C or D.
Many classes have dozens of pages of for-credit homework every class period. In calculus, I would have loved to have skipped the first dozen easy problems, and really sunk my teeth into the few hard ones at the end. That would have absolutely sunk my grade, so I did the first dozen easy ones, got credit for them, and sometimes muddled through one or two of the hard ones. After that, I did the same thing for three other classes, ate a bag of doritoes, and fell into bed at 2:00 am, unable to even consider a project, much less do one.
In other words, I agree, and it's the school's fault. At least it was at my school.
Thirded.
RU what’s you’re point?
I was responding to jorge's contention that a 3.3 from UVA disqualifies one for med school. In reality, 71% of such applicants were accepted if their MCAT's were high.
But a good start might be “What percentage of people who scored a 39 or higher had a GPA of 3.3 or lower?” That should be good for a laugh.
1682 med-school applicants 2005-2007 scored 39 or higher on the MCAT. 152 had GPA's of 3.3 or less, or 9%. Strangely enough, there were 84 applicants with GPA's of 3.8-4.0 who scored 14 or less on the MCAT's; only 3 were accepted (3.6%).
Overall, 74.1% of the highest GPA level were accepted, but 88.2% of the highest MCAT's were accepted, including one with a 2.3 GPA. It's more important to have high MCAT's.
If your MCAT's are high enough, your are likely
RU what's you're point? If one has crappy grades, they have to score much, much higher on the MCAT for a shot at medical school admission? Hardly an argument against grade-grubbing in the years before one takes the MCAT.
Also, you're statistic seems misleading to me. I suspect the people who didn't manage a high GPA who scored a 39 or higher on the MCAT is vanishingly small (but to be fair, I don't know how things may have changed, I'm a few years removed from college). But a good start might be "What percentage of people who scored a 39 or higher had a GPA of 3.3 or lower?" That should be good for a laugh.
I say again: 88.2% of applicants with MCAT scores of 39-45 were accepted, regardless of GPA, including your anecdotal Caltech acquaintance. These are hardly slim odds.
retired urologist. That's the wrong statistic. What matters is conditional prob of acceptance given equivalent MCATs from programs with very different grade scales. Say an easier major at Stanford vs. EE at Berkeley or MIT. A good study would look at students records in high school to try to normalize ex ante student ability. The word from both students and faculty at Caltech and MIT suggests that entering med school is objectively harder from both places and their acceptance stats confirm that. I personally know someone who attended Caltech, got spectacular MCATs, mediocre grades and was rejected by dozens of med schools getting into only one out of 30 or so. Kid then aced med school and has had a good career, but those odds seem mighty slim.
Robin knows I'm right. He just doesn't value conventional career success very much.
If your son does well at UVA but only has a 3.3, that will hurt him if applying to law or MBA school and will be effectively disqualifying for med school.
Popular misconception. The Association of American Medical Colleges gives all such statistics here. 88.2% of applicants with MCAT scores of 39-45 were accepted, regardless of GPA. In the GPA level of 3.3, approximately half were accepted if the MCAT score was 30 or higher (out of 45 possible). The most likely MCAT score of the applicants was 30-32, and 65.4% of these were accepted, including 20% of those in the 2.4 GPA range.
Most important of all is that top schools are clearly choosing to emphasize diligence over brilliance. The SAT used to be harder and fewer could do very well (percentage of 800M/V was much lower than post 1994). Grades are also easier to get than before. So both are weaker signals. As a result students need to max out on these as a minimal signal of ability and THEN do well on indep projects. But the minimal signals are necessary. Same for entrance to grad school.
Now, Robin is correct, that conditional upon being admitted to a grad program (and conditional upon passing prelims) doing a good dissertation beats any grades. But that is very late in the game. If your son does well at UVA but only has a 3.3, that will hurt him if applying to law or MBA school and will be effectively disqualifying for med school. Consider that Med students at Caltech and MIT are more often rejected than from the Ivies because of lower grades. Caltech even has official posts about the problem of applying to med school.
Only in the fields that reward brilliance and innovation highly (primarily entrepreneurship and academia once past the initial filters) does GPA matter relatively less. [And I'm sure most readers of this blog will be surprised to find that academia rewards GPA less than does professional school. But that explains where Robin is coming from.]
When I say smartest I'm folding in all those things experimental psychologists are trying to tease out these days (grit, executive function, conscientiousness, etc.)
If you lacked the grit and conscientiousness to maintain a high gpa, even with acing the SAT's, I wouldn't call you one of "the smartest".