I assume he meant an 800 on one section, which would be a perfect score on the section. He’s still wrong, though. It’s absolutely good to have intelligent people in charge of the country. What’s more important, though, is having GOOD smart people in charge. There are plenty of smart evil people, too.

Epstein’s an intellectual mess but he raises some interesting questions about grades and the hoops people are encouraged and willing to jump through to get good ones. Of course the obvious answer is to do away with grades altogether, which would not only separate the genuinely interested from the posers but would take away bad professors ability to punish dissent with B -‘s. Epstein’s wistful longing to give good students less than a B shows he is one of those bad professors.

Epstein goes on to demonstrate the intellectual rigor (mortis) so common among conservatives with his “logic” that bad people went to Harvard so therefore Harvard is bad and that good people went to Eureka college or didn’t go to college at all, so therefore, presumably, good colleges actually suck.  Leaving aside his characterization as Elliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton as “bad” (always comes back to sex for these creeps, doesn’t it?), one can find that bad people have no doubt gone to every college, high school, and kindergarten. A lot of bad people have certainly gone to Bible Colleges.

Or in the case of Oberlin a lot of bad people run Bible colleges.

So was Bush “good” to this guy? He went to one of the “bastions of snobbery” but since he did poorly, does he not count?

In his article, Epstein does a fairly common, but only moderately subtle shell game. He equates all students who get good grades.

Then, pointing out that there are some (or even a lot) of kids who play the system and get top level scores and grades without actually doing top level work or achievement, and then conflates a potentially valid indictment of the system with an indictment of every individual who passed through the system.

Amazing how selective this logic is. Somehow it only ever applies to the People We Don’t Like.

We need to raise the bar to get the best qualified people into these positions, and true, grades are not the only indicator, and there should definitely be a way of on a case basis overlooking grades for other credentials or experience.  But we’re coming off a system where you can run the country’s emergency response system because you’re a buddy of the President and know something about horses, so the bar is pretty damn low at the moment.

One would think that Epstein would have more important/insightful things to discuss rather than fretting over what a bunch of middle aged professionals got on their SATs 20-30 years ago. Yes, the top lawyers now overwhelmingly went to the top law schools. Those in top law schools went there because they had good grades and LSATs. Outside of a few late-bloomers, many of them got into college on the backs of their good grades and SAT scores. This shouldn’t be surprising. In fact, we should consider it more outrageous if a new president came to Washington with a coterie of his personal friends and entourage who didn’t have this sort of background of being top people in their field and were selected for their social qualities.

So was Bush “good” to this guy? He went to one of the “bastions of snobbery” but since he did poorly, does he not count?

I’m not sure. This is a new anti-intellectual meme I see growing among those, like Buchanan, who would appeal to Know-Nothings,

It’s a twisted version of Viktor Adler’s wonderful description of the old Hapsburg government as “despotism tempered by sloppiness,” and it goes something like this: “oh, Bush was evil and tyrannical, I’ll concede—but at least those neocons were too stupid and incompetent to make anything stick. Obama is evil and tyrannical, but he and his people know what they’re doing and will enslave us all.”

In other words, the intent of every major party and most minor party politician is bad, and smart people are scary. It’s tailor-made for a certain type of Know-Nothing RWA (probably the kind that seriously believes there’s a “War on Christmas”).

Is this Epstein’s sour grapes column?  A lecturer for 28 years? Never tenured? Revenge for his choices to be a writer instead of a prof?  Creative jealousy that his productivity didn’t count?  Betcha!

And what an ass - perhaps he’s the one who gave dissenting students bad grades? It would seem likely, since this is the lesson his son spouted.  Most faculty at university look for three things in a paper - knowledge of subject, persuasiveness of argument (whatever position is being taken), and quality of writing.  I have given “A”‘s to papers I disagree with philosophically, and have even been enlightened by a few.  I have given “D’s” and “F’s” to badly written papers and those that parroted back my lectures verbatim.  So have many of my colleagues. 

As for teaching from a certian viewpoint - depending on the course, it is entirely appropriate - why would a student go to university to learn what he’s already been taught?  These various viewpoints are ways to see different facets of the stone - it is only when you can see all the facets that one can say I know the stone - and it’s heart.

I took a class from Epstein at Northwestern, many moons ago when I was an undergraduate there.  He is just the worst sort of snobbery.  He fancied himself above the students.  He had a very famous essay in which he talked about how he felt better than the person driving a car which had a bumper sticker that said “Illinois State” because, oh dear, how ordinary and dreary going to ISU is.  He’s very much jealous that he never made it to Harvard-Yale-Princeton and “only” hung out at Northwestern (which is only ranked #12 in the nation, again, heavy sigh).  Given that, it’s surprising to see him make fun of even more prestigious schools.  What a wank.

Of course the obvious answer is to do away with grades altogether, which would not only separate the genuinely interested from the posers but would take away bad professors ability to punish dissent with B -’s. Epstein’s wistful longing to give good students less than a B shows he is one of those bad professors.

What evaluation mechanism would you propose to replace grades, especially when grad school admissions offices and many corporate hiring managers insist on a way to evaluate college graduates to find the best students from that year’s graduating class’ ranks?

For schools like Wesleyan and Hampshire College where they don’t use grades, they have detailed written evaluations which may be harder for the student to fudge…but believe me…..plenty of students have found ways to game that system for their own benefit as well…...many of whom were high school classmates who went on to attend those institutions. 

Or in the case of Oberlin a lot of bad people run Bible colleges.

Oberlin and bible college don’t really go together….especially since the 1960’s.  If my experience as an undergrad there is any indication….it is much closer to the anti-Bible/Atheist college….....

perhaps he’s the one who gave dissenting students bad grades? It would seem likely, since this is the lesson his son spouted.  Most faculty at university look for three things in a paper - knowledge of subject, persuasiveness of argument (whatever position is being taken), and quality of writing.  I have given “A“‘s to papers I disagree with philosophically, and have even been enlightened by a few.

Though this practice is far less common than the various anti-intellectual pundits would have you believe, such crappy Profs who grade on the basis of their own personal animus do exist…..and this behavior is not restricted to the Profs in the humanities and the social sciences as the common stereotype I’ve heard would have you believe.

One working class biracial high school classmate who was an engineering major at an Ivy received an F in a caculus course despite having documented proof his problem sets and test scores which should have placed him closer to the -A range.  Upon challenging this with the Prof, the math department, and eventually causing the deans of both the Engineering and Arts & Sciences schools to get involved once they saw how ridiculous and blatant this unfair grading was, it was found that prof had a profound animus against engineering majors* and that failing grade was completely unjustified.  Despite the support of classmates, some TAs, and the deans, it took two full years before his case was resolved and he received the grade he actually deserved. 

As for the asshole Prof, they couldn’t do much to punish him because he was a tenured senior Prof who has taught there for several decades and was nearing retirement. 

*There may also have been some racism & classism involved…though neither he nor anyone else brought that up at the time. 

I took a class from Epstein at Northwestern, many moons ago when I was an undergraduate there.  He is just the worst sort of snobbery.  He fancied himself above the students.

Had a high school teacher like that who took great pleasure in ripping students apart….some to the point of tears and loved to keep telling us students….especially yours truly that we’ll never make it to/through college because we’re intellectually inadequate and that was the “big time”. 

Since he had it in for me anyway, I and another classmate who also received an extra special dose of his berating decided to do whatever we could to drive him into retirement*.  We were given some credit when he retired a year after we graduated. 

When I came back to visit during my junior year in college, he happened to be there and upon seeing me, ran in absolute terror as fast as his feet could carry him to the laughter of fellow classmates who had to suffer his abuse years before.  We all concluded part of the reason was he could never accept the fact that my mere presence during that moment was a complete refutation of his frequent rants about how as a failure I would never get into any college, much less make it to the third year at a well-respected school. 

As for general snobbery over college names….that was rampant at my urban public magnet high school.  It wasn’t unheard of to find people in my school’s graduating classes who were crying or otherwise extremely upset because they “only” got into excellent schools like Cornell, Columbia, and not MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, or HYP. 

* Hey….I was 13 at the time. 

“Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity. ” -Frank Zappa

Caren: Ah, Stanford. They were starting to go really corporate back ca. 1990. I remember meeting with administration (we were trying to save certain residences destroyed or damaged by the ‘89 quake) and having an administrator point out the window and say, “See that green patch out there. We’re going to build on that and every other open space in the next 20 years.” Looking at a campus map today, it looks like they’ve done it. And they took away the giant tree swing—by cutting the huge branch (insurance liability, kids, don’t you understand?) that held it up—that swung you out over the foothills, so it felt like you were flying over them out toward the bay. Sigh.

Beware old men with tenure, undergraduates. Take classes with the recently tenured (that’s Associate Profs); they tend not to be too jaded, they’re not fearful or nervous any more, their material isn’t out of date, they still have energy…. and their letters of recommendation really count.

As for SAT scores…they aren’t your ticket into Stanford.  Stanford gets more perfect SAT and ACT scores than they can accept.  Grades and SAT/ACT are just considered a baseline qualification—this person will be able to handle the classes.

What gets you in there, besides any rich legacy effect, is your essays and your teacher recommendations.  They want to see you as an individual and are looking for you to stand out with creativity and experience in your essays.  They want to see your teachers say you are the best student they have ever had in their entire teaching profession.

That’s what makes you stand out over your fellow straight A in honors classes/class president/yearbook editor/newspaper editor/French club president/National Honor Society compatriots…

Oh…unless you’re a jock.  In which case, you can score a few hundred less on your SAT/ACTs.  Stanford’s all about taking that Sears’ Trophy home.  Harvard may be three times older and have more of everything thanks to its age, but our football team, as sad as it was this year, could still wipe the floor with theirs.

And many of these subjective factors, especially the admission “discounts” for legacies and athletes are reason why most of the Chinese grad students I’ve met and befriended look upon American undergraduate admissions with much skepticism. 

I’ve even met some Profs from China teaching at such Ivy institutions remarking how the idea of allowing admission mostly/solely on the basis of athletic prowess or legacy connections was absurd and was a reason they’ve encountered quite a few mediocre/marginal students during their 2+ decades of teaching there. 

It is also a reason why many, especially those who attended undergrad institutions in their home countries* have some contempt for their fellow nationals who choose to come to US schools…even ones like Stanford or Columbia for undergrad as they view it as a gold-plated backdoor for kids from wealthy families whose National College exam scores were too low to even gain admission to second or lower tiered universities back in their home country. 

* Disclosure: Nearly all of those grad students attended Tsinghua or Peking U, the top two colleges in Mainland China…..and where admission, with extremely few exceptions compared to US admissions, is solely determined by a score on the extremely cutthroat National College exam where over 50% of last year’s examinees failed to score high enough to gain admission to any college, much less one in the top tier.

Smart kids used to get around 1400 to 1500.  Rich kids would get 1200 because they had hired help.  Smart AND rich kids got 1600, because they could afford to take the test more than twice and could also afford private tutoring.

As for SAT scores…they aren’t your ticket into Stanford.  Stanford gets more perfect SAT and ACT scores than they can accept.  Grades and SAT/ACT are just considered a baseline qualification—this person will be able to handle the classes.

I was a three sport, ten varsity letter athlete with perfect grades, a perfect chemistry achievement score, very high SAT scores, and multiple high-powered extracurricular activities including placing highly in state lincoln douglas debate three years running.

Stanford wouldn’t even send me an application.  Why?  I had a trailer space in my address.  That’s why.  My guidance councilor, himself a Stanford alum, tested this by putting his address on my papers and THEN they sent an application.  By then, I’d already had to choose between CalTech, MIT on early action, and an appointment to the Air Force Academy.

In other words, even in 1984 a jock debater with perfect grades that was highly recruited by top level schools beginning with high PSAT scores at age 13 was of no interest to Stanford.  Not because they had a lot of them apply, but because they wouldn’t send applications to an apartment or trailer park.

I overhead someone repeating this point at work, making snide comments about the number of Harvard and Yale graduates in the next administration. I usually don’t talk politics too much with these people ( I do have to work with them) but I couldn’t take it. I just said “We tried running the country with the really stupid people who went to Jesus U Law School for the last 8 years and that didn’t work out so well did it? Maybe it’s ok to let the smart people try it for a while”.

The Ivies’ reputation for turning out high-quality product is both overstated and relatively recent. When Dubya went there the “gentleman’s C” was still a serious part of the landscape…

The enormous rise in required qualifications for admission to “top” colleges really worries me, though. The kids who get in now seem to be as far above the average in paper qualifications (already published a scientific paper/started a business/saved a third-world village) as the rich parents are above the average income. They will probably take their attitudes into the world over the next 20 years…

ms kate:

as an undergrad there who experienced the duplicity of the Stanford administration firsthand during a moment of crisis—what you describe doesn’t surprise me at all.

(Some 200 undergraduates including yours truly were made homeless for weeks by the Loma Prieta quake. Administration told us they were in chaos, and could hardly help us. They told everyone else everything was just fine and under control, go back to class and make us proud. So I had professors pissed off at me for sleeping in class, arriving late, and missing assignments. They were told everything was fine—when for many of us, who didn’t know where we were sleeping from one night to the next, it surely wasn’t. They also tried to use the quake to shut down cooperative houses on campus that they disliked because they couldn’t micromanage them like they did conventional luxury dorm buildings. Fortunately it was the dawn of the 90s—every “alt” was coming back into fashion—and they misjudged our capacity to mount an organized response.)

Smart kids used to get around 1400 to 1500.  Rich kids would get 1200 because they had hired help.  Smart AND rich kids got 1600, because they could afford to take the test more than twice and could also afford private tutoring.

Don’t know if I’d buy that as I’ve known extremely intelligent people with scores below 1000 combined on the pre-1995 SATs and complete idiots with scores approaching 1600. 

One person who fits the former category is one friend I respect quite highly for his intelligence in dealing with people and problems.  The latter populated my high school and college….including one notable fool who openly bragged about how he successfully cheated on a math test so loudly the Prof overheard while still in the hallway.  Not surprisingly, he was brought before the Judicial board expelled him for academic misconduct after finding he had egregiously violated the honor code. 

Moreover, I have an older cousin whose family was far from rich who received a 1580 on the SATs and working class kids scoring over 1500 and even hitting 1600 were so commonplace at my public urban magnet high school that high scores on the SATs weren’t worth bragging about among peers.* 

They were used, however, by many assholes there as a means to demean those who scored below 1350 as “morons” or “retards”.  Why yes, I experienced this firsthand….why do you ask?

* Said high school was populated far more by kids whose family’s income qualified them for free school meals than kids whose families were wealthy like the Upper East Side set.

I notice he misses the fact the Vice President-Elect went to lowly University of Delaware and got straight C’s. Doesn’t fit the narrative? Discard it!

There are also people (like yours truly) who did great on SATs and AP Tests in high school, but got C’s with the occasional B (and D) all the way through. I literally got calls from top schools, they would ask for me GPA, I’d tell them, and hear the dial tone.

Exholt, there have been studies of “what predicts success on the SAT”? 

Guess what the only significant predictive variable is, and has been, for years?

The Ivies’ reputation for turning out high-quality product is both overstated and relatively recent. When Dubya went there the “gentleman’s C” was still a serious part of the landscape…

But that’s the thing, and that’s almost what Epstein out-and-out resents.Back in Dubya’s day, my very elite private high school used to send the vast majority of its graduating class to Ivy League schools. A diploma from there was sufficient to gain acceptance—it meant you had the right social class and academic background, if not the right smarts—and that was when it was expected that the top positions in the federal government would be made up of people from these famous institutions—because they were “the right kind of people.” Epstein considers it declassé that now we’re selecting people for top positions who had the classless gall to have a history of being hard workers, highly intelligent, and extremely talented and whose academic background reflects that…. to people like Epstein, climbing your way up the system is considered a bit vulgar.

Ah, yes, I remember the trolls bringing this meme up during the election—Obama wasn’t actually smart, he’d just benefited from affirmative action and grade inflation by guilty white professors who pushed him along.

I’m also trying to figure out why Eliot Spitzer’s wife is one of the “worst” people in the country.  Really, having your spouse betray you and drag your personal life into public means that you’re worse than he is?  Huh?

The first people to be famous for scoring high on standardized tests were radio’s Quiz Kids. Here’s an update from Time at the end of the series’ run. Further information is here: http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/Quiz_Kids_Noesis.htm

Bottom line: those who score highest on standardized tests are generally not the same as the ones who set the world on fire. The most accomplished of the Quiz Kids was Watson of DNA fame.

The Kids
Time Magazine Monday, Jul. 07, 1952

In Chicago last week, Northwestern University’s Dr. Paul Witty credited Quiz Kids with having “erased any idea that the gifted child is usually a peculiar, eccentric misfit.” He was speaking to a peculiarly receptive audience: some 235 past and present Quiz Kids who were gathered to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the program’s first appearance on the air. Some of the earliest Quiz Kids are now parents (one has three children). So far, the grown-up prodigies have met none of the dire fates that are often predicted for precocious sprouts: not one has cracked up mentally or got into any serious trouble. Not one has even turned out to be just plain shiftless.

The careers of the first five to appear on the show back in 1940 are fairly typical of the group as a whole. Charles Schwartz, now 25, graduate cum laude from Harvard Law School, worked for a firm of Manhattan attorneys, returns to Harvard this fall on a teaching fellowship. Van Dyke Tiers, also 25, earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Chicago, is currently in the research department of the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. Mary Ann Anderson, 26, won a scholarship at Mundelein College, writes advertising copy for a Chicago drug company and teaches English and composition in the evenings at Loyola University. Joan Bishop, 25, has sung in Carnegie Hall, with the Chicago and San Carlo opera companies, and in the better Manhattan night clubs. Gerard Darrow, 19, who hates publicity and therefore never attends any Quiz Kids get-togethers, majors in music at James Millikin University and is described as a “very normal teen-ager.”

Of the other notable Quiz Kids. Jack Lucal, 25, is studying to be a Jesuit priest; Harve Fischman, 21, has just graduated from UCLA where he wrote, directed and acted in the senior class play; Claude Brenner, 23, does aeronautical engineering research at M.I.T.; Ruthie Duskin, 18, already has one book to her credit (Chemi, the Magician), and took top honors at Northwestern’s School of Journalism. Smylla Brind, 24. changed her name to Vanessa Brown and has appeared as a bright-looking ingenue in such movies as The Late George Apley and The Heiress.

There are also people (like yours truly) who did great on SATs and AP Tests in high school, but got C’s with the occasional B (and D) all the way through. I literally got calls from top schools, they would ask for me GPA, I’d tell them, and hear the dial tone.

Sounds like several friends in high school I had who were part of my high school’s “counterculture” where they opted out of buying into the commonplace “HYP/Ivy/Ivy-level school or bust” mentality. 

Also sounded similar to my own situation in high school….minus the APs, great SAT scores*, and probably far more admonitions from high school teachers that I would never survive college-level work if my high school level grades and SATs were any indication. 

Ironically, I ended up graduating from a well-respected college with grades excessively far above what one would have expected from my high school grades and SATs.  Heck, after going through 4 years of being considered a marginal student, it was weird to suddenly find myself suddenly being considered one of the smarter people in my undergrad classes.

* One must score above a 1500 on the pre-1995 SATs to be considered “doing great” as so many kids there were routinely scoring 1400+ on the SATs…...including some of those in that “countercultural group”.

Sounds like several friends in high school I had who were part of my high school’s “counterculture” where they opted out of buying into the commonplace “HYP/Ivy/Ivy-level school or bust” mentality.

It was never intentional with me, I was just bored in high school and thought the work was stupid so I’d rather do other things and get C’s. I also did better in college (MUCH better), probably because the work was actually interesting instead of mickey mouse stuff like photocopied worksheets and two page “papers” and whatnot.

One must score above a 1500 on the pre-1995 SATs to be considered “doing great” as so many kids there were routinely scoring 1400+ on the SATs

Yeah, at my County High School I was one of two people to get 1300+. It wasn’t exactly an elite school. I’d say 25% of my class went into some kind of vocational work, 25% went to community college, 25% went into the military, 24%% to a standard state public mega-university, and about 1% to a place like UVA or William and Mary. Probably about half of that 24% will drop out of their college at least once and go back.

I also had two friends that went to the same college I did from my high school who were consistently on honor roll in H.S., but got 1000s on their SATs and were on academic probation by second semester freshman year. So maybe test scores are a better predictor of success in college.

What evaluation mechanism would you propose to replace grades?

You answered your own question. Detailed written evaluations. For pre-college, someone else makes the point that top schools often look beyond grades anyway. The top high school in the Wall Street Journal’s rankings a few years ago doesn’t give grades and has no trouble placing its graduates in the top colleges. Brown, which is one of the best universities, de-emphasizes grades.  If intelligent evaluations were more widespread, corporate hiring managers and grad schools would certainly adjust. They actually prefer people who are truly excellent as opposed to strivers who learn to game the system. Recruiters and gatekeepers everywhere would benefit by being better able to identify them.

But my concern is not for corporate hiring managers. The kids whose lives are twisted by such insane striving for a ridiculous grade are the ones whose potential for a happy and productive life is most likely to be damaged. More people would be more successful without that crap. Then so much more damage flows outward from there. Familie, schools, the business world, society, and so on.

Bottom line: those who score highest on standardized tests are generally not the same as the ones who set the world on fire.

First of all, based on that article, all of the Quiz Kids seem to have put themselves on a path of living very interesting professional lives doing significant work. Very, very few people will ever, ever set the world on fire, and if they’re capable of doing so, I’m sure I won’t much care what their SAT scores were. However, scoring high on standardized tests will allow you to avail yourself of a lot of academic opportunities which will lead to some very good, very interesting, and, if you want them, very high paying professions.

In my experience, “high scorers” at best also contain people who will end up setting the world on fire (after all, Watson was one of them). At worst, some contained in that group merely end up satisfied to make money in some high-paying but unintellectual profession. In between, you generally find a bunch of highly accomplished, very intelligent, well-read, hard workers who enjoy thinking and solving problems… which sounds a lot like the sort of people you would expect the president to pick from when making his appointments.

Exholt, there have been studies of “what predicts success on the SAT”?

Guess what the only significant predictive variable is, and has been, for years?

Ms. Kate,

I’m sorry for not being clear in my haste.  I’m only disagreeing with the part where you said being “smart” had anything to do with the SATs.  There are plenty of people who are good at taking such “psychometric” tests without necessarily being highly intelligent or “smart”. 

Knew several such kids in college and among friends who scored 1500+ on the SATs and yet later flunked out of their first semester/year in college because they couldn’t keep up with the rigor of college-level coursework*, did mind bogglingly stupid things like that braggart I mentioned above, or who kept getting fired from jobs because s(he) kept screwing up. 

From what I heard of such studies, there was a far stronger correlation between one’s socio-economic status and success on the SATs…..though there are several notable exceptions such as the vast majority of my high school classmates who or that older cousin of mine with the 1580 who incidentally did attend the Air Force Academy for one year before opting to transfer and graduate from Caltech. 

* This surprised me at first, because I didn’t really feel the college-level coursework was THAT hard.  Then again, the experience has led me to red flag anyone who brags about their high SAT scores….especially after high school.  Frankly speaking, few people really care after high school graduation.

experience has led me to red flag anyone who brags about their high SAT scores….especially after high school.

Bragging about SAT scores after high schools is the nerd equivalent of the H.S. football QB who constantly brags about how great he was in football, even though he never amounted to much afterwards.

Anyway being an average student doesn’t necessarily stop one from being a success, even without legacy/old money connections. Again, I give you the next Vice President, a C-student who got himself elected to the Senate at age 29 without the benefit of a family name like W.

As I was homeschooled, I was one of the superior students in my state (one of the “toll-frees”) with an 80.0 score on my SAT’s.  You Dimwitcracks seem to think that there are no smart Conservatives, but I’m a livin example of what a lye that is.

Yeah, at my County High School I was one of two people to get 1300+. It wasn’t exactly an elite school. I’d say 25% of my class went into some kind of vocational work, 25% went to community college, 25% went into the military, 24%% to a standard state public mega-university, and about 1% to a place like UVA or William and Mary. Probably about half of that 24% will drop out of their college at least once and go back.

I attended a NYC area public magnet high school that has some notoriety as I found several years ago during a visit to the Bay Area and overheard some Berkeley students grumbling something about how my high school’s graduates were assholes for always drives up the grading curve in all their classes. 

From my graduating class, 99% went on to a 4 year college of some kind with a sizable chunk being admitted to Ivy/Ivy-level colleges.  Two stats I clearly remember was that about 1/6 (118) of my graduating class was admitted to Cornell Arts & Sciences/Engineering, 1/3 (230+) were admitted to NYU, and about 1/7 were admitted to Columbia College/Engineering.  From my class only two people ended up going to the military as far as I know….one was appointed to the Air Force Academy and the other flunked two colleges, joined the army, and just graduated college last year according to his own blog. 

Also, one kid from a subsequent class was admitted straight into a math Phd program.

Bragging about SAT scores after high schools is the nerd equivalent of the H.S. football QB who constantly brags about how great he was in football, even though he never amounted to much afterwards.

The equivalent of that among similarly situated high school classmates is to brag about which Ivy/Ivy-level schools they were admitted to from high school and attempting to hold that over those of us who weren’t as “successful” at that point in our lives. 

Many of the ones who did this either flunked out of such schools or were out of work because of the economic downturn of 2001. 

A reason they were pissed at me during a reunion a few years back when they found I was still gainfully employed despite graduating near the bottom of my high school class and “only” graduating from a “lower-level” respectable college.  And my friends wonder why I am so reluctant to attend my high school reunions…..

Exholt, there have been studies of “what predicts success on the SAT”?
Guess what the only significant predictive variable is, and has been, for years?

IQ, with a very strong correlation of 0.81.

Ah, yes, I remember the trolls bringing this meme up during the election—Obama wasn’t actually smart, he’d just benefited from affirmative action and grade inflation by guilty white professors who pushed him along.

Ha! Grade inflation?!!  Hasn’t been much of an issue with Columbia College if the LSDAS GPA normalization chart for various colleges/universities and the chronic complaints of their students/graduates with 2.7 and below GPAs are any indication. 

If anything, Obama’s academic journey and success is the epitome of the hardworking successful on merit scholarship student…..and far better in my book than someone who got in because they were wealth/fame/connection addled and/or second, third, or more generation Yalies, Harvards, Stanfords, etc. 

Moreover, if there were actually guilty White Profs at Columbia College, none of my non-White friends who attended/graduated from Columbia ever had them as Profs.  Moreover, considering how strongly Columbia College holds onto their “Core Curriculum”...especially when it is still dominated by Western Classical Influences…...they don’t really seem to know Columbia all that well.

IQ, with a very strong correlation of 0.81.

Assuming I take that study at face value, which I won’t without reading the actual study rather than a news reporter’s potted summary of it. 

Moreover, the following quote from that article:

The new study implies that people with low SAT scores didn’t just flub a test or go to a lousy school: They are burdened with low intelligence.

doesn’t ring true in my experiences in college and professional/grad school life.

They actually prefer people who are truly excellent as opposed to strivers who learn to game the system.

Though it would be harder to do so, students will find ways to game the detailed written evaluation system as well.  Several high school classmates who attended Wesleyan U and Hampshire College where they do this already have recounted how they used various socialization/social engineering techniques to gain the Prof’s favor so they end up with excellent written evaluations despite doing the bare minimum work required and their being only interested in the BA/BS diploma and evaluations which would set themselves up for prestigious IB banking jobs, science research positions or admission to topflight grad schools like Harvard Law. 

Also, isn’t the definition of what’s defined as “truly excellent” extremely subjective? Isn’t the above quote’s disapproval of “strivers” a variant of old money’s scornful disdain of the “social climber” who in my observations are people who achieved their station in life more through their own efforts than from what they were born with?

In my experience: Pretty strong correlation between high test scores and high achievement, if achievement is measured in salary or professional honors.

But also strong correlation between high test scores and people who do not set the world alight in terms of how interesting, creative, or compelling their occupations have been. That is, there’s a lot of bright people doing dull stuff: they work for corporations, they’re doctors, they’re professors, they’re lawyers, and they serve established authorities and powers and work for conventional ends.

But some very bright people have not tested well (or tested at all), because they were uninterested, disadvantaged, or both.

There is no correlation between test scores of any sort and happiness or social worth. We can do without some of very smart but total-dick physicians I’ve had to deal with. The same for most economists except Paul Krugman. And pretty much every insurance company executive.

Well, actually, there’s no evidence that high IQ scores are significantly correlated with intelligence.  WE really don’t know yet what exactly “intelligence” is.

But some people are very very good at taking tests.

But some very bright people have not tested well (or tested at all), because they were uninterested, disadvantaged, or both.

Mmm. People might find this research interesting in this context.

IQ, with a very strong correlation of 0.81.

Except that IQ tests are well known to have a very strong cultural bias.

In other words, like much of the SAT, IQ tests partially test your knowledge and understanding of middle-class American culture and what it thinks is important, not your “innate” intelligence.

Your sample sizes are not only small but also biased.  Use the larger population that includes such intellectual luminaries as Monica Goodling, Hans VonSpassovsky, Michael Chertoff….

When you look at the gen pop.. the numbers actually work much better.  We all have the tale of elderly gent who smokes, frolics with puta, and drinks from the bottle…at 96.  Artifact.

The intelligence and work ethic that gives you top grades and SATs tends to translate rather well to the Real World.  I can always teach an employee manners or social graces, I really can’t give them drive (it ain’t the mil).

Ah, Stanford. They were starting to go really corporate back ca. 1990. I remember meeting with administration (we were trying to save certain residences destroyed or damaged by the ‘89 quake) and having an administrator point out the window and say, “See that green patch out there. We’re going to build on that and every other open space in the next 20 years.”

Hmph. Much older fart here (from when Okada used to be known as Junipero). Always had a measure of disrespect for the “prestige” that the school gave you and what it actually meant (though it probably inculcated enough elitism that I still have to fight off).

Well, actually, there’s no evidence that high IQ scores are significantly correlated with intelligence.  WE really don’t know yet what exactly “intelligence” is.

But some people are very very good at taking tests.

Exactly!!!

Many of those high scorers who were mainly good at taking such tests were probably the ones who ended up being overwhelmed with my college’s coursework and ended up flunking within the first year…...and some of them were overwhelmed even with the remedial math and writing classes…..when the regular coursework was quite manageable…sometimes even on the easy side.  And some of them had patronized those of us who attended “inferior” public schools during orientation. 

i know i am really really really smart.

i also know i am lazy. really really lazy.

they sorta cancel each other out. i am smart enough to find easy ways to do things. i am smart enough that it’s okay for me to put off writing that 12 page paper until 3 days before it’s due (actually, for some reason i write BETTER when i procrastinate like this. at least, they are graded better. in my case the longer i put off some sort of work, the higher the grade i will get)
this was also true before i went back to college, when i worked at Bank One and when i worked at Quest - i could and did put off reports ‘til the last minute. *I* am the type of person who is being decried (and probably should be). Obama? he puts me to shame on every freaking level. he has DRIVE.

i attend OSU. my GPA is right at a 3.0 (but i have had 4 surgeries in the last year. my GPA was MUCH higher before i turned 30 and my hip went AWOL). i’m in that middle group - not so good as to recieve extra aid for being kick ass, and not so bad that everyone knows i’m here because my parents have stock options. i will eventually get my Master’s and end up working for State, i hope in an embassy. i’m good enough, but not flashy.
i’m good here. i don’t need to set the world on fire

but i do have a plan to take it over 8-)

Though it would be harder to do so, students will find ways to game the detailed written evaluation system as well.

You seem to be implying that because a system is not foolproof, it is futile to implement it, which is a logical fallacy. If an evaluation system is, as I suspect from both personal experience and anecdotal evidence from education professionals, significantly better than a grading system, then it would be wise to implement it.

Isn’t the above quote’s disapproval of “strivers” a variant of old money’s scornful disdain of the “social climber” who in my observations are people who achieved their station in life more through their own efforts than from what they were born with?

No, not at all. That’s crazy talk.

Also, isn’t the definition of what’s defined as “truly excellent” extremely subjective?

Yes, but I know it when I see it and I suspect that any correlation with grades is evidence that a lot of genuinely excellent people can still manage to thrive in a crappy system. My fear is that a lot of genuinely excellent people can’t and that hurts them and us all. And leaving the gifted out of it altogether, I think we’d all be better off without being subjected to the grading policies we are all so familiar with. I’ve seen the alternative close up and it works much, much better.

The enormous rise in required qualifications for admission to “top” colleges really worries me, though. The kids who get in now seem to be as far above the average in paper qualifications (already published a scientific paper/started a business/saved a third-world village) as the rich parents are above the average income. They will probably take their attitudes into the world over the next 20 years…

Paul,

Hate to break it to you, but this has been the current state of affairs for some time….especially if you happen to have attended a public magnet high school/rigorously academic private school, work in the middle-upper tiers of the financial industry, law firms, academia, etc. 

In attending/working in such areas I overheard countless remarks which underscored the lack of awareness/concern for those who may not be as “gifted”/capable as they were…..especially when the ones who exhibit such tendencies IME tend to be the ones who have some sort of inferiority complex to cover up….or the underlying fear that someone they disdainfully considered “riffraff” may actually prove them wrong and expose their inferiority with all its humiliations.

IQ, with a very strong correlation of 0.81.

BZZZZT! INCORRECT! But thank you for playing anyway.

The .97 correlation is extremely high and illustrates that parental income can account for 80 percent of the variance in those college entry exams. As a child’s parental income goes up, so do the ACT and SAT scores, and vice-versa,” said Orlich.

source:http://researchnews.wsu.edu/society/169.html

Parental income is the strongest predictor of performance on the SAT.
http://iume.tc.columbia.edu/downloads/everson/everson04.pdf
http://www.nomoretests.com/satflyer.pdf

Brown, which is one of the best universities, de-emphasizes grades.

That’s not what I heard from numerous high school classmates and colleagues who graduated from Brown during the 90’s.  The only thing I heard about their grading policies was that it was strict and they don’t use pluses and minuses.  Though those classmates will acknowledge there are students there who don’t care too much about their grades, they either aren’t concerned because their privileged socio-economic backgrounds/connections meant their future gainful employment was set….or they just didn’t have to care period. 

None of my high school classmates who graduated from Brown were socio-economically privileged enough to toss such concerns aside when doing poorly in school meant losing that financial aid/scholarship and flunking out would mean it is unlikely they’ll ever graduate from college due to their family’s constrained economic circumstances and their possibly being cut off from family support due to those circumstances and for losing the financial aid/scholarship/flunking out of college. 

“Isn’t the above quote’s disapproval of “strivers” a variant of old money’s scornful disdain of the “social climber” who in my observations are people who achieved their station in life more through their own efforts than from what they were born with?”

No, not at all. That’s crazy talk.

Your privileging “truly excellent” people versus “strivers” sounded eerily similar to a few socio-economically privileged grad students I’ve met who constantly complain about “social climbers” trying to gain what they felt should be had without much exerted effort. 

Translation: If you need to work hard for your grades/scores/wealth/awards, then you should be scorned as a “social climber” who doesn’t realize that being “truly excellent” means attaining such indicators of excellence without exhibiting any visible effort in the process.  Sounds much more like the W’s school of life philosophy rather than the one President-elect Obama….or I am betting the vast majority of people on this board would agree with. 

You seem to be implying that because a system is not foolproof, it is futile to implement it, which is a logical fallacy. If an evaluation system is, as I suspect from both personal experience and anecdotal evidence from education professionals, significantly better than a grading system, then it would be wise to implement it.

I am not saying it is necessarily futile.  Just that it has its own shortcomings as experienced by high school classmates who attended schools with such systems and is not necessarily the panacea to problems with education as you seem to be arguing. 

Moreover, as such detailed evaluations rely more heavily on the Prof’s/instructor’s degree of intimate personal knowledge of the student in practice, wouldn’t this disadvantage students who may be intelligent, but aren’t able to develop a close working relationship with the Prof due to socialization issues, philosophical/personality conflicts, or the Prof’s own animus against a student/groups of students for whatever reason?

Wouldn’t this provide an undue advantage to students who are socially outgoing over those who may be intelligent/do excellent work, but who aren’t? These were all serious problems classmates who experienced this system firsthand brought up when we discussed this very topic and their successful experiences with it and its advantages and shortcomings.

Mmm…I always hate SAT / grade conversations because they tend to get so personal with so many people, even after so many years. I scored fairly well on my SATs (mid-1400 back when it was 1600 only - or is it still 1600 only? I don’t keep up these days) but that was partly because I was really well home-schooled and I studied my butt off. I was good at studying, good at test-taking, and always made really good grades through both my colleges (BA and BS).

I’ve also done enough “stupid” things to last a life time, despite being supposedly very smart by societal standards. I’ve never felt smart and I don’t really think I am smart - I think I’m really good at studying and test-taking. Also, I definitely had socio-economic advantages that helped enormously. So I don’t think the SATs are bad, but I don’t think they are the be-all, end-all either.

I disagree with the idea of ending the grading system, though. Grades are relatively objective - teachers are not. I’ve had plenty of teachers hate me for (1) keeping them from their precious engineering lab with fucking questions!, (2) being female in a male field with all-male teachers at that school, (3) being the “wrong” religion, (4) not flashing my panties like a good girl should, (5) all of the above. I would have gotten SCREWED on personal recommnedations - with grades, at least, I could threaten legal action if my A+ paper / proofs got a grade lower than a B-. The only people who benefit from a gradeless system are the people who won’t be discriminated against.

I think you’re mistaken, Ms. Kate, and/or that Orlich is talking about something different. A .97 correlation is almost unthinkably high. For it to be true, there need to be literally almost zero poor kids who do well on the SAT and almost zero rich kids who do poorly. Both of those propositions are evidently false from the experience of just about anyone who knows people who’ve taken the SAT; there are tons of poor kids who do well and tons of rich kids who do poorly. There is no way to reconcile those facts with a .97 correlation. He’s cherry-picked something, but his work isn’t available online so I can’t tell what.

It’s believable that IQ could have a correlation of .81 (I’ve also seen figures between .7 and .9 bandied about) because the SAT is, in essence, an IQ test - as your cited flyer acknowledges, that’s where the SAT originated, in fact. The SAT correlates to other IQ tests about as well as other IQ tests correlate to one another, a strong indication that the items are more or less the same in psychometric terms.

In looking at the sources you cited, the Everson slide show does not show anything close to what you’re claiming. For one thing, it comes right out and says that of the elements examined, GPA, parental education, and income, GPA is the most influential, followed by father’s education, followed by mother’s education, with income bringing up the rear. Further, the total variance in the studied group amounted to 20 to 25 points - with income accounting for 5 to 8 points, according to Everson, after correcting for other variables. That’s a small variance on a range of 1200 points.

The third source you link is a partisan/activist flyer with no citations for its claims.

I think it’s definitely true that parental income is a factor in SAT scores, for a wide variety of reasons, cultural/class bias included - but the largest contribution of parental income, I wager, is in retakes and test prep. However, that factor is relatively small in the overall picture, and very far from being the “only significant predictive value”. In fact, it has effectively zero predictive value for an individual student, and only a mild value for the test-taking population as a whole.

at least, I could threaten legal action if my A+ paper / proofs got a grade lower than a B-. The only people who benefit from a gradeless system are the people who won’t be discriminated against.

Unless more safeguards were put into place beyond what was in practice in the two schools where detailed written evaluations replaced grading, that friend who was actually jerked around by that calc prof who was a tenured full Prof on the edge of retirement would most likely been completely without any recourse if his Ivy school used such a system in place of grades…..especially when he was already intimidated by being a working-class biracial student in a university with a predominantly upper/upper-middle class student body…despite being in the top quartile of incoming students on the basis of GPA and SAT scores with financial aid/scholarships which provided him with a near-full ride.

Exholt, in my experience, prejudice in schools is the rule, not the exception. I had a teacher physically threaten me with violence in the hallways once merely because he didn’t like me. When I went to the dean, all I got was a lot of “oh, what a shame that no one was around to serve as witness to this outlandish story of yours…”. It’s a game, and I guess you just have to learn to play, but if you’re the wrong color / sex / religion / smoking-or-non-smoking / or anything else, you’re screwed. Sigh.

Thank you exholt, you argue your points well. I don’t see any possible system as a panacea. And I am not an education professional so will leave it to others to work out the details concerning the difficulties you note. Seems we are both coming to conclusions, at least to some extent based on, anecdotal evidence based on people we know.

So I will leave this discussion with a few general observations.

For one, note that outside of the schools system, it is very rare for anyone to receive a grade. Detailed evaluations are the norm for employees in both business and academia. Using letter grades, or G.P.A., is essentially lazy. I suspect that it is counterproductive as well, harmful to more individuals than it helps, but cannot offer any proof of that at the moment.  I’m just making an educated guess. Perhaps I’m wrong?

But most jobs require collaboration at least as much as individual initiative and I suspect that has something to do with why employees are evaluated rather than graded. Grades don’t tell us all that much about how an individual is doing in relation to his or her capabilities. They only tell us how we are doing in relation to others in the class. Most businesses do not care about that kind of measurement.

Jay Matthews, the education specialist at the Washington Post, writes over and over again that the content of one’s character is the most important factor in success in life—not where one goes to college, I.Q,  or whom one’s parents may be. I don’t know where that research comes from or how they define “content of one’s character” or “success,” but I suspect it is true. Regarding grades, I believe that there would be an overall improvement in the content of people’s characters if they were not subjected to being graded. Especially through high school, but I don’t know why that wouldn’t apply to college as well.

Exholt, in my experience, prejudice in schools is the rule, not the exception. I had a teacher physically threaten me with violence in the hallways once merely because he didn’t like me. When I went to the dean, all I got was a lot of “oh, what a shame that no one was around to serve as witness to this outlandish story of yours…”. It’s a game, and I guess you just have to learn to play, but if you’re the wrong color / sex / religion / smoking-or-non-smoking / or anything else, you’re screwed. Sigh. smile

Ellen,

Out of curiosity, did you do a 3-2 Liberal Arts/Engineering program? And if so, which schools so I can warn younger relatives to consider such risks when applying?

But most jobs require collaboration at least as much as individual initiative and I suspect that has something to do with why employees are evaluated rather than graded. Grades don’t tell us all that much about how an individual is doing in relation to his or her capabilities. They only tell us how we are doing in relation to others in the class. Most businesses do not care about that kind of measurement.

Depends on the corporation/business. 

There are corporations where they had a “grading scale” such as a financial corporation I worked for where it was on the basis of 100% along with written evaluations. 

In that corporation, 75% and above meant you exceeded expectations and you received a bonus if the company did well that year, 65%-75% meant you met expectations, 50%-65% meant you were barely meeting expectations and needed to be counseled, and anything below 50% meant unsatisfactory and resulted in an immediate firing*.  Moreover, I recalled reading one Harvard Business Case discussing how during Jack Welch’s tenure as CEO of GE, he graded and ranked his managers on the basis of managerial effectiveness.  Each year, he would fire managers who found themselves ranked within the bottom 10%.  So while there are companies which don’t use grading/ranking rubrics, there are also many companies which use them heavily. 

* You’d really had to screw up badly like blatantly lying on your resume, harassing co-workers, and/or be a total idiot to end up with an unsatisfactory evaluation.

Well, yes. Most does not mean all. And as a former G.E. employee, I can tell you that not all G.E. employees are graded like that. In my experience they’re more worried about punctuality and working well with others.

As for financial services, that’s what came to my mind when I thought of exceptions to my observation that most businesses evaluate rather than grade. So how’s it working out for those A+ financial services folk? The ones who don’t give a shit about anyone else? Guess it depends on one’s definition of success, eh?

Exholt, the BA and BS were at two different schools. One degree for my love and one for my livelihood.

I doubt my experiences were unique. Had trouble in both schools, for different reasons. I think the best advice I can give is to stay away from southern schools (I live in Texas) because attitudes are very different here regarding gender and race roles.

True story, my ex-husband’s sister came to visit one year to check out schools. Her school of choice (really, her mom’s school of choice FOR her) actually sold her a shirt at the school gift store that said: “<College Name>: Proudly Marrying Off Girls For <X> Years”. I had an apoplexy when I saw it (it was pink, BTW) and my ex-husband had to literally hold me back from marching into the living room and giving the MIL a piece of my mind (she had bought the shirt - this woman ran their lives).

Last I heard, post-divorce, was that the poor girl was disowned by the family for “wild” behavior. Which probably meant that she got her own driver’s license or something super-feminist like that.

As far as grades, my company sees school as an endurance test - if you can get through it, you will do well at the company. They don’t actually expect you to KNOW anything, though, because our schools are so dismal.

As for financial services, that’s what came to my mind when I thought of exceptions to my observation that most businesses evaluate rather than grade. So how’s it working out for those A+ financial services folk? The ones who don’t give a shit about anyone else? Guess it depends on one’s definition of success, eh?

The company I worked for was a mid-sized regional financial company in the New England area…and I worked in their IT/ecommerce department so I was hired for my tech skills.  Also, it wasn’t exactly the place where top-tier Ivy/Ivy-level students would flock to begin their careers in avarice.  As I have not been working there for several years, I don’t know what’s going on with them atm. 

As for Wall Street finance, know several overconfident recent Columbia College/Engineering graduates in passing who are now on the unemployment line.  Thankfully, most have enough self-integrity and awareness to not harp on how they were admitted to Columbia or how high they scored on the SATs…all that’s gonna get them with an average New Yorker these days is a loud snort, uncontrollable scornful belly laughs, and/or a request to STFU about their pitiful whining….especially from those they formerly looked down upon. 

think the best advice I can give is to stay away from southern schools (I live in Texas) because attitudes are very different here regarding gender and race roles.

Even UT-Austin…the supposed oasis of liberalism within Texas? Heard lots of great things about that institution.

Re: not grading:

Unfair teachers, as has been said, can be more unfair because there’s no real documentation against an objective standard.

Teachers work awfully hard as it is. Can they really get to know hundreds of students every year well enough to give a detailed, fair, and complete evaluation? How long are they supposed to spend on each one?

When you get back several papers, projects or tests marked below the grade level you want, you know that it’s time to get help. I believe it’s been mentioned before that knowledgeable, intelligent people are more aware of what they DON’T know than the people complacent in their ignorance. Both the smart person criticizing themselves and the mediocrity can benefit from regular reports on their progress vs. external expectations.

Mr. Epstein clearly hasn’t spent any time in college admissions.  Leaving aside the legacies (who are much, much less common at the top schools than they used to be), perfect SAT types do *not* make it into the good liberal arts schools (including Northwestern) without something more than top grades and test scores.  Admissions at places like Harvard (or Yale, or Smith, or Bowdoin, or Grinnell, or Stanford) generally look for something unusual in a prospective student, something they’ve done or said or written that makes them stand out. 

Two cases in point:

A friend of mine with good but not great high school grades (he was very bright and was bored stiff by his classes) was encouraged to apply to Bowdoin.  No one in his family had gone to college, and despite his intelligence expected that he’d go work in a factory like most of his friends.  What got him over the hump was him including a 500 page novel that he’d written when he was 15, along with several glowing recommendations from his teachers.  He got in, graduated, married a woman he’d met during his junior year abroad, and just published his fifth novel.

A classmate of mine at Smith was on the bubble for admission; she had excellent grades, recommendations, and so on, but there was nothing that made her stand out until she cut short her admissions interview because she had to go to Tanglewood for the day.  The admissions office asked her if she was going to a concert and she replied that she was *in* the concert.  She was a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (at age 17!) and had a near-professional quality voice.  Needless to say, she was accepted.

Dan, I work with statistics for a living ... yes, .97 is extreme, but there is far more real evidence than that one article.  Even the college board grudgingly admits to a 20-30 point increase in scores for each increase in income of 10,000.

IQ tests are not independent - the two exams are correlated.  IQ tests have been abandoned as other than diagnostic exams for other than very specific pathological deficits because they are also too correlated with social status to measure differences accurately beyond a certain level.

I think it’s definitely true that parental income is a factor in SAT scores, for a wide variety of reasons, cultural/class bias included - but the largest contribution of parental income, I wager, is in retakes and test prep.

But I thought that IQ tests were not coachable, no?

The SAT measures skills both basic and arcane. Income equals access to resources, to schools that teach algebra in middle school and calculus in high school, etc.  Test prep comes in on top of that, which is why magnet schools do so well for their students - they have access to things that only wealth provides elsewhere.

Leaving aside the legacies (who are much, much less common at the top schools than they used to be),

So the the fact I saw the former chancellor of Duke U admit on an ABC news program a few years back that up to half of some incoming frosh classes were made up of legacies or developmental admits is an aberration and/or exaggeration?

I don’t know where that research comes from or how they define “content of one’s character” or “success,” but I suspect it is true. Regarding grades, I believe that there would be an overall improvement in the content of people’s characters if they were not subjected to being graded.

I’m not really sure that the core competency of an academic program is forming the content of one’s character. Sure, lots of academic institutions say that this is what they’re about, and I’ve certainly had academic experiences that had positive effects on my character (so perhaps they succeeded), but at the end of the day, the thing schools are best at is teaching students stuff and evaluating, in a quantitative manner, how well students have learned stuff… One of the most valuable “character” lessons I gained from all of this was the lesson that being very intelligent and having many impressive academic accomplishments did not necessarily make you a good person.

Academics select for people who work hard, are capable of absorbing lots of knowledge, and have success making connections and solving problems and having insights with all of that knowledge. Those who can do those things get positive evaluations in the form of grades and other forms of success. This translates into access to good colleges, good academic opportunities in college, graduate schools and good jobs. The system isn’t perfect, but to bring it back to Epstein’s objections, it selects well for what you might want when staffing top-level administrative positions: very professionally accomplished people who are very knowledgeable and good at what they do. It is a fair assumption that this is the same crowd who did well in school.

On another note, there are many jobs that rely or relied on “brain teasers” to evaluate candidates. The sort of questions like “How many coin flips would you have to make before you’d expect to see two tails in a row?” or “how would you move mt. fuji?” and the like, rather than looking primarily at grades. Asking these sorts of questions figures out two things: first, are you smart enough to understand them in the first place? Next, do you care enough to have prepared yourself to think about these problems? These are the sort of questions that, if you don’t have at least a base level of somewhat above-average intelligence in the first place, you’d probably find hard to grasp. Next, if you care enough about getting the job, presumably you would have studied this class of questions and get a handle on them, know what to expect, and have some idea of how to approach these sorts of problems when faced with them for the first time.

One could claim that these questions are “culturally biased” or that the SATs are “culturally biased.” The thing is that these sorts of tests and evaluations are used to evaluate how well you would handle a certain job or academics in college, which themselves are culturally biased, as any cultural experience is. In the sense that there is a cultural bias with grades, SATs, etc., it is a bias that selects for a certain professional/academic life. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you don’t thrive in this environment and don’t plan on being particularly intellectually/academically-focused or career-focused, but that’s what it is.

Test prep comes in on top of that, which is why magnet schools do so well for their students - they have access to things that only wealth provides elsewhere.

Not only more plentiful resources, but also the fact the cutthroat and ruthless selection process was such that only the academically engaged and driven individuals, with a few exceptions, usually survived to join the incoming class. 

My incoming class was an aberration as it admitted an extra 100+ kids by mistake to make my incoming class quite large at around 950 kids out of the approximately 20,000+ NYC area 8th graders who applied.  Though my public magnet never expelled anyone for academic reasons, over 250+ kids voluntarily chose to transfer back to their local high schools because they felt overwhelmed with the heightened rigor and quantity of the workload and being surrounded by kids who had just as much as, if not more academic drive/acumen than they did.  Those who are left, were perceived most teachers as easy and pleasurable to teach*. 

It was one reason why being assigned to teach in the public magnet high schools was considered a plum assignment by most NYC public school teachers and as lots of teachers apply to be assigned to teach there, assignments there were with few exceptions doled out on the basis of seniority due to union and NYC Board of Ed rules at the time.  Though most teachers we had were good to excellent, this practice also allowed many flat-out bad teachers with high seniority to be assigned and practically ensconced until retirement as I experienced with one particular teacher during my first year. 

* Ha! If only those teachers knew how teaching kids with high academic drive/acumen comes with their own pains…..such as having to deal with adolescents who were not only inclined to incessantly challenge and argue with the teachers over a mathematical proof or a historical interpretation, quick to find and correct the teacher should any errors be made, and sometimes deliberately ask arcane and complex questions in a bid to befuddle the teacher for their own amusement…more often than not in an tactlessly obnoxious manner.  They were also just as, if not more likely to circumvent and/or challenge school/teachers’ authorities if they felt the administration/teacher’s policies/actions were total BS.

Even the college board grudgingly admits to a 20-30 point increase in scores for each increase in income of 10,000.

If you have a cite for that, I’d be glad to read it.

yes, .97 is extreme, but there is far more real evidence than that one article.

Love to read that as well.

But I thought that IQ tests were not coachable, no?

Psychometricians try, but there’s always a coachable component. Last time I looked at the figures, there was an education effect that would add something like 15 points to an IQ for people who had been to college and had learned more advanced cognitive skills. The SAT is more coachable, because it is more dependent on knowledge than on raw analysis.

IQ tests have been abandoned as other than diagnostic exams for other than very specific pathological deficits…

I don’t think this is true either, I think it’s what social-justice activists would like to be true. Formal IQ tests have been abandoned in large measure by the corporate world due to litigation and civil rights concerns, but they find proxies instead. Microsoft, famously, gives its applicants IQ-test-style questions as part of their marathon interview process; Google does something similar. They just don’t formally calculate and record scores, instead relying on a horseback “is this guy/gal smart” assessment based largely, though of course not entirely, on the questions asked.

IQ tests are still used very widely by the justice system, particularly by forensic psychologists, and there are other applications as well; schools remain the largest users, I think. It may be true that the tests are socially/culturally biased, but the people using the tests aren’t usually trying to find a deep truth about the person being tested or design an ideal social order, they’re trying to get a ballpark idea of where one person’s cognitive functioning capacity lies. It may also be true, as noted by other commenters, that IQ is not a very good measurement of intelligence. Great; come up with something better that can be standardized and used as a reliable tool. Saying that my hammer is inadequate for putting screws in wood is a valid critique, but find me a screwdriver, in that case. Don’t become an anti-screwing activist.

That’s Huckabee’s job.

Microsoft, famously, gives its applicants IQ-test-style questions as part of their marathon interview process;

If so, then I’d be surprised as one friend who works for Microsoft as a programmer recounted that all they did was ask him in two short conversational interviews about his previous programming experiences in college and his previous jobs before he was hired. 

A good thing as he hated the SATs and other standardized tests as he didn’t do very well on them when he was applying to colleges.

Heh, Microsoft. They came to my school and chatted everyone up in a disarming manner before suddenly switching to massively “aggro” and throwing out ‘gotcha’ questions. Alas, my supposedly massively huge intellect does not mean that I don’t get incredibly tongue-tied in social situations when people suddenly ‘switch’ on me and I made quite a fool of myself, stuttering badly. *shame*

I wouldn’t have liked working for them anyway. I hate Vista.

Translation of Epstein’s column: Those big meanies at the fancy schools refuse to acknowledge my intellectual and moral superiority so fuck them boo hoo blubber blubber whine.

Epstein would have a point if he were saying a lot of smart people aren’t able to succeed in the world he describes, in which - I must admit he is right here - there is much catering to professors’ points of view without independence and passion. A lot of smart people went to non-Ivy schools, often because it’s all they could afford. A lot of smart people went to Ivy schools and may have just gotten lost in what are overwhelming worlds. Having the credentials that are most valued in the USA may not correlate well with talent in political leadership.

Yet the piece flies off the rails to lambaste feminism and Marxism, based on what exactly? It is ironic that Epstein is hooting about independence and passion while invoking feminism and Marxism without refutation (so presumably as totems for a Pavlovian hate response for conservatives?).

The validity of the idea that a lot of smart people went to, e.g., Idaho State (like Palin) and ought to be given a chance, does not validate a partisan hack piece, however, and if there is a valedictocracy as Brooks says, surely it can be forgiven for indulging in a bit of revenge after years of being tarred as elitist and treasonous by people who were ignorant, provincial and proud of it.

In addition to Ms. Kate’s point on income having an undue influence on SAT scores, I would also like to add my experiences have led me to be skeptical of reflexive assumptions that high SAT scores alone necessarily equates to actual intelligence/smarts. 

I’ve encountered far too many self-aggradizing classmates/co-workers with 1400+ SATs (pre-1995) in high school, college, and the workplace who scored that high because they were great at taking psychometric tests…..yet were either too lazy and/or lacked actual academic/professional acumen when the rubber actually meets the road. 

By the logic of those who believe high SATs by themselves == high intelligence/smarts, those who scored 1400+ on the pre-1995 tests should have excelled at my undergrad college where the scores of the middle 50% of incoming frosh was somewhere between 1300-1400.  Yet, there were plenty of over-1400 scorers at my college who were flunking out even while taking remedial math and writing classes…much less regular college-level coursework or graduating with sub-par GPAs of 2.5 < .  Conversely, there were many of us who scored well below that middle 50% who ended up graduating with B+ or higher GPAs in the same majors. 

Noticed the same thing at work and life where I’ve worked/hung out with extremely intelligent and capable people who didn’t even break 1000 on the SATs….and worked with/had to babysit many self-aggrandizing co-workers who bragged about scoring over 1400+ yet were complete fuckups at work until management finally wised up and fired them after ignoring many longstanding complaints.

Translation of Epstein’s column: Those big meanies at the fancy schools refuse to acknowledge my intellectual and moral superiority so fuck them boo hoo blubber blubber whine.

Epstein has to pretty damned insecure (or pandering to such an audience) to paint the Ivies as the be-all and end-all in terms of prestige. What kind of students does he think gets into Northwestern? It’s Epstein’s same “good students” with high GPAs and SATs and activities lists, who didn’t get into Harvard or Yale because of a subjective judgement and internal admissions quotas to ensure a diverse student mix (and not just in terms of race). Or maybe, as Luke mentions, because they couldn’t afford the tuition.

The fact is this: if you graduate from (not just attend) any highly selective research university or liberal arts college that’s a household name in the US, you get a slight leg-up with people who care about academia—for the rest of your life. It’s not fair, but that’s America. There are about 30 or so schools in each category that have “national brand” status and (Epstein’s disingenuous implication aside) Northwestern has a firm place amongst the research universities.

worked with/had to babysit many self-aggrandizing co-workers who bragged about scoring over 1400+ yet were complete fuckups at work

What adult cares about, let alone brags about, his final SAT scores after they’ve been submitted to the admissions department? It’s something the Andy Bernard character from The Office might do.

Well, Epstein is right on the Ivy schools - look at our current pResident W!

The world is a complicated place. Some evidence of intelligence, drive, training in critical thinking, ability to listen to a variety of views, curiosity about a number of topics, and an attitude of life-long learning are all important for a person holding the most complex, unpredictable, and powerful job in the world. The president should be willing to know a little bit about a wide range of topics, and to be able to ask his experts pertinent questions.

SATs measure the likelihood of good performance in the first year of college. The correlation isn’t all that high, either. I flunked out of college due to a deep depression, though I had Ivy-level test scores. Some high scorers haven’t been challenged in high school or haven’t learned to manage time, work independently or with minimal direction, and these people can do poorly. A lot of average scorers have high intelligence and are not particularly good at playing “guess what the examiner wants” in ambiguous questions.

State universities often have honors colleges that have small class sizes and thus more interchange with the prof. and other students.

BTW, not all physicians are unimaginative or total dicks, wapsie. Admittedly, there is a great deal of routine, but most academic M.D.s without young children have hobbies, and half the time, these hobbies or interests are intellectually oriented.

Well, Epstein is right on the Ivy schools - look at our current pResident W!

W clearly got into Yale College and Harvard Business School because of his family’s name, wealth, and connections as I certainly doubt any ordinary person with his academic credentials would have otherwise gained admission to such institutions.  At least UT-Austin’s Law school had enough institutional integrity to reject his application around the period he was applying to grad schools and before he was accepted to HBS despite graduating Yale with a C- average. 

He’s certainly not representative of most Ivy league students who got in on their own academic, testing, and extracurricular/special talent merits. 

As an aside, due to his prominent presence over the last 8 years, I have been able to use his case to effectively refute uncritical assertions from many upper/upper-middle class co-workers/parents that private schools are always better than public schools.  Considering how he performed in boarding school and at Yale and assuming he somehow scored high enough to gain admission, I doubt he would have survived the first semester at one of the NYC area public magnet high schools…much less survive to graduation.

This was a fun thread.  I mostly decided to stay out of this one even though I love this kind of topic, since I’m a pretty extreme Jean Piaget fanboy, and it’s hard to talk about intelligence as informed by constructivism if people don’t know much about epistimeology or constructivism.

I’d like to say Preach It! to Ms Kate (who definitly sounds like she knows what she’s talking about). 

And also, Ellen…I would have the same kind of trouble with teacher evaluations.  Eeeek!  People had pretty weird attitudes about my intelligence and capability.  Then again, I can be a pretty wierd guy.  That’s not great for getting understanding teachers.  I think a portfolio system with multiple judges would work better than evaluations.

However, there’s one thing I’d like to mention.  Without an IQ test, my black mother would have never had a chance to aspire to upper middle-classhood.  She got a job at IBM because she scored high on one, and the company was too hungry for brains to care that she was a woman or black.  Ultimately, the older guys like Epstein resents how much IQ tests can *level* the field, not because it changes how *outsiders* are viewed, but because it *does* change how *insiders* are viewed.  It’s a bit tougher to be “naturally special” when your university chases after the gifted.  It’s also much more of a hassle to get meaningful jobs when you’re competing against actually qualified people.

This is not to say that IQ tests are so great.  It’s the very act of *standard measurement* that Epstein is really opposing.

On another tangent,  IQ should never be administered as a single test.  There isn’t a single “g” that can be measured.  My *personal* estimation is that there are five components to a “soul” or “agency”.  These are Wit (short term memory/recall), Perception (integrating sensorial information to thought matrix), Judgement, Empathy, and Abstraction/Associative*.  How each of the five interacts with each other can create some fairly unique gifts and wacky individuals.  A standard IQ test tends to measure a hodgepodge of the different traits such that it’s hard to figure out what’s *really* going on.  I, myself, test reasonably high, but I am functionally learning disabled.  If I wanted to, I could get a higher score, I think—with drugs and a test crafted around my weaknesses.  However, my resulting score would be harder to measure against someone else’s, even though the original measure might not really capture how “smart” I am. 

We need better tests, however, it’s a matter of how labor intensive it is.  A good “intelligence” test would cover several days, with “getting to know each other” segments as well as actual testing.  Or with a job—just have a short week or two of apprentice/some IQ stuff with an experienced employee making an assessment.  No easy to administer test is ever going to be worth much beyond—dumb, dim, average, smart, bright, and genius.  For that matter, as I’ve explained before, a genius is really something different than peak intellect.  Lastly, I would emphasis that the further from the norm an IQ test is, the less accurate it is!  If you score above a 120-140, it’s really not a great idea to fixate on the score.  You’re just really smart and that’s that.

That being said, does anyone *else* have a problem with IQ examiners being dumber than the examinee?

*Do not confuse my 5 item system with Gardner’s 7 item system which is composed of linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal.  His work is pretty much all bullshit.

That being said, does anyone *else* have a problem with IQ examiners being dumber than the examinee?

Or with the supporters of such psychometric tests seeming failure to account for or deliberately ignoring the existence of people who only seem to excel at taking psychometric tests and little else?

Exholt,
They’re kinda the same people, I think. 

Wiki is always fun…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Langan

especially the latter person, you will enjoy, Exholt.

The reason why I say they are the same people is that neither can see past the test itself.  The examiner can’t make a good off-hand diagnosis and adjust the examination for a useable outcome.  The examanee can’t utilize the heuristics he/she uses to do well in a static event in order to prosper in a more dynamic real-world sense.

This is going to sound weird, but for learning (differenced?) disabled students like me, standardized testing can be a life-saver for college admissions. My very own 800 stops my application from sinking down to the bottom of the stack, being weighed down by a 2.75 GPA. For a girl who could set the curve for the finals but couldn’t turn in those blasted worksheets, my SAT scores communicate the potential for success that I feel I have, but an admissions officer might not be able to see. I feel that SAT scores can’t accurately reflect ability to learn, intelligence, or later success, but GPA is not perfect, either.

Anyway, the article reminded me of a teacher at my school who I had for three years. He never pretended to be unbiased when he would state his opinion on current events. Or, teaching the class however: We were require to read Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States for AP US History. I was perfectly fine with that, as was most of the class, but it did make some of my more right-leaning friends very uncomfortable.

I just imagine if it was the other way around. I wish I was secure enough in my knowledge to take a stand for my views, but I’m not sure if I could against a very experienced educator. I feel it is important to hear different perspectives, but the students that he encourages to argue with him can be 13, 14, or 15 years old and have enough difficulty deciding what to wear to school from day to day to securely express their opinions.

I very much enjoyed the classes taught by this teacher, and I still pick up Zinn’s book from time to time to better understand certain events in history, but I feel that if the political leaning of my and my teacher’s didn’t line up, I would have felt very differently about the class.

The reason why I say they are the same people is that neither can see past the test itself.  The examiner can’t make a good off-hand diagnosis and adjust the examination for a useable outcome.  The examanee can’t utilize the heuristics he/she uses to do well in a static event in order to prosper in a more dynamic real-world sense.

Most of the classmates I hung out with who scored high on such psychometric tests, especially those who were part of my high school’s “countercultural” group, felt such tests were pure 100% BS and had nothing but scornful contempt for anyone who’d use them to judge and measure the intelligence/competence of others.  Their undergrad/professional experiences confirmed that opinion as far as they were concerned. 

My very own 800 stops my application from sinking down to the bottom of the stack, being weighed down by a 2.75 GPA. For a girl who could set the curve for the finals but couldn’t turn in those blasted worksheets, my SAT scores communicate the potential for success that I feel I have, but an admissions officer might not be able to see. I feel that SAT scores can’t accurately reflect ability to learn, intelligence, or later success, but GPA is not perfect, either.

Agreed, especially when I hear of even supposedly “good public/private high schools” where a student can get away with barely cracking a book and then earning a 4.0 or better GPA…..only to find themselves receiving the first C, D, or even F in their first semester/year because most college profs don’t roll that way.  My high school classmates and I encountered many such college classmates whose GPA and Stats were far more impressive than ours on paper, but who crashed and burned during their undergrad careers. 

As for whether SATs can help the learning disabled, that seems to be a wash as I knew several high school classmates whose learning disabilities were such that they excelled in their advanced college-level math, science, and humanities/social science classes….with some taking actual college courses at local universities such as NYU and Columbia…..while doing quite poorly on that test. 

As for your high school GPA, that was actually far higher than mine….though certainly higher than a certain President’s GPA at Yale…..