MIT's SAT Math Error 280
theodp writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that for years now, MIT wasn't properly calculating the average freshmen SAT scores (reg.) used to determine U.S. News & World Report's influential annual rankings. In response to an inquiry made by The Tech regarding the school's recent drop in the rankings, MIT revealed that in past years it had excluded the test scores of foreign students as well as those who fared better on the ACT than the SAT, both violations of the U.S. News rules. MIT's reported first-quartile SAT verbal and math scores for the 2006 incoming class totaled 1380, a drop of 50 points from 2005."
If I could do it all over again... (Score:1, Insightful)
Relevance of US News & Reports (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oops! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If I could do it all over again... (Score:2, Insightful)
* your mileage may vary, some technical degrees are worth more than liberal arts degrees (particularly EE, ME and specialty engineering degrees like computer engineering), these degrees are probably not worth the extra effort if you are interested in money alone, but are good idea for someone with passion.
Re:Oops! (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words stop blaming everyone else and look hard at yourself and either stop bitching or change
The editor of Forbes would agree... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahh, parent poster is a Troll, eh? Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard [forbes.com] would probably agree with AC. Is he a troll too? I saw far too many kids there for the party myself... the 'life experience' they called it. We even have online encyclopedias citing which schools paaar-tay [msn.com] the hardest. I'm sure that image doesn't hurt enrollment numbers and the government money flowing into universities. I wouldn't be surprised if universities quietly encourage that 'rep' via PR firms. College is big business. So big in fact that university finances have begun drawing the scrutiny of congress. [bloomberg.com] We've even begun exporting American-style higher education. [bbc.co.uk] It may not be the best in the world, but it sure makes a shitload of money.
In the meantime, there's a lot of kids leaving college with a worthless degree [moneycrashers.com] and lots of debt. The university was enriched by the process, but you can't say that for all their graduates. I'll bet if the OP had mentioned something about outsourcing [cbsnews.com] the post would be +5 Insightful.
Worked for Esther Dyson (Score:5, Insightful)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_n6_v15/ai_20860361 [findarticles.com]
"Her dad once chastised her for wasting his tuition money by not going to her classes. With typical Esther aplomb, she countered, "Daddy, you don't understand. You don't come to Harvard to study. You come to Harvard to get to know the right people."
Re:The editor of Forbes would agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did the OP add anything to a conversation? Is a unilateral claim such as this insightful? Informative? Ask yourself this seriously. It is off topic, and just a way to get the predictable responses (I did well in school and have a sucky job... I didn't go to college and make millions...) A serious post would at least have some text, or make a well-reasoned claim to *something*. Some of the replies in the thread are actually insightful, and have been moderated accordingly.
The original post is pretty much the definition of a troll, and judging by the number and type of replies, a successful one.
Re:Oops! (Score:4, Insightful)
If the person has a high SAT score but a low IQ score then they are in the "work really hard" group, you want them.
If the person has a high SAT score and a high IQ score then they are in the "gifted" group, you want them.
If the person has a low SAT score and a low IQ score then they are in the "dumb" group, you don't want them.
If the person has a low SAT score and a high IQ score then they are in the "smart but lazy" group, you don't want them.
Since all you don't actually care about the groups, just the "want them"/"don't want them" decisions IQ provides nothing.
Re:If I could do it all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that anyone who wants an engineering degree for the money will be disappointed. I have a degree in chemical engineering, and I make $55,000 (that is with 10 months of experience). That sounds like a lot for being just out of school, but given the extra effort of obtaining the degree, and the amount of work that is expected from me at my job, I don't think it's a better deal than a liberal arts degree would've been. I think that the value of any degree is what you do with it. If you work to gain valuable experience, advocate yourself, and work well with others, you can make a 6 figure income with any degree.
I am in the field because I am passionate about making peoples lives better, and I feel like engineering accomplishes that. I don't want to work forever in academia, because I feel like all the mindless bureaucracy and politics of the university makes enriching the lives of others nearly impossible. Of course, if I did want to work forever in academics, I could still do that with an engineering degree.
Re:If I could do it all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oops! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you'll find that it isn't a vocabulary test, it's a test of whether you can on-the-fly generalize and intuit how to reapply pieces of language (after all, IQ tests are basically designed to test your ability to see patterns and apply them).
Sure, if you don't know anything about the English language, you'll be screwed, but if you don't know anything about geometry you'll be screwed just the same. You could TRY to memorize the whole dictionary, or you could be abstract enough to recognize (whether consciously or not) the functions of prefixes, suffixes, letter combinations that indicate the mother language of the root word, etc. You don't have to have studied language or vocabulary to recognize that words where "j" makes a "y" or "h" sound behave differently than words where "j" makes a "j" or "g" sound, and then draw rough conclusions about the meaning and behavior of similar words. Certainly well enough to do simple antonym, synonym and verbal relationship tests.
Nobody Should Care (Score:3, Insightful)
Scoring high may or may not help you get into the right school. The right school will make a difference for pretty much your first job. After that, if people are even mentioning your education other than in passing during an interview, you've already lost.
I know very few people who value educational qualifications over proven experience. Of course, the tech world is a bit different than the rest of the business world, but this is slashdot.
Re:The editor of Forbes would agree... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The editor of Forbes would agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, parent poster is a Troll, eh?
Yes, he is a troll. Education does not promise you money, it only promises to educate you if you are willing to be educated. In all of my classes my professors never claimed that after passing the class I would be blessed with high paying jobs. Instead, their claim was, "these are the topics we will cover." How well they covered those topics varied, and obviously some professors did poorly while others did well. But nobody ever said, "learn this and you will make money." As a student, you choose your degree, and you choose what classes you will take. There is no reason to come crying after you graduated to claim that your degree did nothing for you when it was practically your choice all along.
Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard would probably agree with AC. Is he a troll too?
The article you linked to makes no claims that school is worthless. In fact, the article is brining up a major point that you and the parent missed: if you only are thinking in terms of costs and how much the degree with return in terms of money, then you have to think in terms of return on investment on the degree and the following job because of it compared to whatever alternative plan you have in mind. The option that has the highest return is obviously the option you should take if your only goal is money.
I saw far too many kids there for the party myself... the 'life experience' they called it. We even have online encyclopedias citing which schools paaar-tay the hardest.
I saw a lot of kids partying. But I also saw a lot of those kids failing their classes, dropping out, staying for as long as 6 to 7 years, or ultimately getting a crappy job as a result. The question here is did they turn out better than they would have if they did not go to college? Maybe maybe not. But ultimately, who ever made the choices (parents and the child) are responsible. I'm not going to feel sorry or feel like it is a problem if a kid's parents are uninformed about their kid's choices or the kid does not have the motivation to utilize his resources. That's their business and as far as I can tell that's a hell of a lot better than some of the alternatives.
College is big business. So big in fact that university finances have begun drawing the scrutiny of congress.
Oh, another Harvard, Yale, and Stanford article. What about public schools?
We've even begun exporting American-style higher education.
I don't see anything wrong with it. There are already a lot of international students enrolled everywhere throughout the country. In the same way, there are a lot of American students participating in foreign schools.
In the meantime, there's a lot of kids leaving college with a worthless degree and lots of debt.
I had a friend in college that happened to be a computer science major. But the big thing about her was that she was a girl and she was cute. Her personality was nothing like a geek and she could have easily done something else or fit in with other social groups. Naturally, the question came up, "Why computer science?" Her answer was, "I initially thought about getting another degree but my parents disagreed and said I needed to get something more 'useful.'" In the context she was speaking of, "useful" was a degree that would guarantee a higher salary. Indeed, she did get a job that she didn't mind doing in the software industry and did hit a higher salary. Unlike most people, she actually made the choice based on money and it paid off.
Others do not think like that. Instead they either think college is one of those necessary things or something their parents forced them into. The end result is a kid that partied too much barely finished his degree, and most of all did not learn anything or put the degree to use. I do not think that issue will ever be fixed because some people are that stupid. Ultimately for those people it may not matter because their parents m
Re:If I could do it all over again... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1220 in 1989 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If I could do it all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what you pair it with... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you went to some school whose idea of philosophy is ancient philosophy and subjective continental philosophy, you can pitch it successfully to anyone, as long as you can also show skills in whatever you're actually applying for.
Re:Oops! (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason geometry is better is that you don't need to memorize several thousand or even several hundred rules. You probably need less than 50 to do well in high-school level geometry. After 50 it's just applying them in the right sequence. The reason that's acceptable in the US is that in most states (all?) geometry is taken (or available to take) by every single high school student. Here in North Carolina it's a high school graduation requirement in all the local school systems. But how many school systems require a class with a high enough reading level requirement where all of these words [sparknotes.com] would even be used, let alone understood by the average high schooler? Yes, you could approach it from the Greek and Latin root perspective, and that would make it much closer to geometry. However, again I haven't heard of a single class where that is the actual goal of the class, whereas the goal of a geometry class is exactly to solve a wide range of geometry problems.
I would applaud something like what you're talking about, but it would have to be done in an artificial, randomized language for it to be a puzzle and not a vocab test.