Luckymoose
The World is Mine
No, you tried to turn it against the American education system and back out of your insult to Symphony D. I refused to take your bait. You should apologize to him.
While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses
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No, you tried to turn it against the American education system and back out of your insult to Symphony D. I refused to take your bait. You should apologize to him.
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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I'd appreciate having my insult towards Symphony D. pointed out because it's completely, I don't know, not there.
It is a mystery to me.
Symphony D.
Deity
For whatever it's worth, I don't feel insulted. I know precisely why I got that number, and I don't think anybody here is actually disagreeing that GPA is mostly worthless.
Daftpanzer
canonically ambiguous
Grandkhan
Telvanni Master Wizard
Let me tell you about my territory's system of assigning tertiary entrance marks.
If you want to get into uni in Australia, you need to get what is called an ATAR, which is essentially what percentile of students in your state your grades beat. My territory's ATARs are based on a set on a certain number of your grades in your best subjects (i.e. I did two math classes a semester, so my math courses counted twice) as modulated for 'difficulty.'
So, how does this work? Well, at the end of each semester you get two grades, one being the letter grade and the other being a score out of 100. However, the idea is that they don't want a single group of people getting shafted based on the fact their teachers were awful (because teachers in Australia tend to be underpaid, overworked, and generally hate it so nobody wants to do it other than people who hate it but can't get another job) so the idea is that your scores are modulated based on the scores of the other people in the course on a set of standardised exams.
So not only is your grade dependant on your work, its also partially dependent on the results of your cohort in these standardised examinations.
Now, if you are smart, what you (and p. much everybody else who's smart) do is take class which smart people who care tend to take (eg. two lines of the hardest level maths class, economics, physics, human bio (for all the med student hopefuls) and there were a few extracurricular courses that you could take at the uni while at school which contributed to your ATAR which a fair few people took, myself included) and, even though you are getting like Cs, your grade is shooting up because of a) internal modulation from taking the highest math course, because they don't want a case where you are incentivised to do lower level courses and get As - I was getting Cs in higher level math and was getting a better actual score my friend who topped the level below it and more importantly b) everybody who does these courses cares enough and is smart and likely middle class enough to do well on the standardised testing.
All this contributes to people who are smart but lazy as hell doing the bare minimum for a "good student", getting ATARs in the top 6th percentile, going to universities for courses with really high ATAR requirements and then promptly flunking out of them because they have no clue how to actually do any work, which is what happened to me and a whole bunch of friends of mine.
Its a system that rewards gaming it rather than doing subjects that you actually want to do.
At least it means that arts electives are the cesspool of stoned hipsters that they ought to be.
If you want to get into uni in Australia, you need to get what is called an ATAR, which is essentially what percentile of students in your state your grades beat. My territory's ATARs are based on a set on a certain number of your grades in your best subjects (i.e. I did two math classes a semester, so my math courses counted twice) as modulated for 'difficulty.'
So, how does this work? Well, at the end of each semester you get two grades, one being the letter grade and the other being a score out of 100. However, the idea is that they don't want a single group of people getting shafted based on the fact their teachers were awful (because teachers in Australia tend to be underpaid, overworked, and generally hate it so nobody wants to do it other than people who hate it but can't get another job) so the idea is that your scores are modulated based on the scores of the other people in the course on a set of standardised exams.
So not only is your grade dependant on your work, its also partially dependent on the results of your cohort in these standardised examinations.
Now, if you are smart, what you (and p. much everybody else who's smart) do is take class which smart people who care tend to take (eg. two lines of the hardest level maths class, economics, physics, human bio (for all the med student hopefuls) and there were a few extracurricular courses that you could take at the uni while at school which contributed to your ATAR which a fair few people took, myself included) and, even though you are getting like Cs, your grade is shooting up because of a) internal modulation from taking the highest math course, because they don't want a case where you are incentivised to do lower level courses and get As - I was getting Cs in higher level math and was getting a better actual score my friend who topped the level below it and more importantly b) everybody who does these courses cares enough and is smart and likely middle class enough to do well on the standardised testing.
All this contributes to people who are smart but lazy as hell doing the bare minimum for a "good student", getting ATARs in the top 6th percentile, going to universities for courses with really high ATAR requirements and then promptly flunking out of them because they have no clue how to actually do any work, which is what happened to me and a whole bunch of friends of mine.
Its a system that rewards gaming it rather than doing subjects that you actually want to do.
At least it means that arts electives are the cesspool of stoned hipsters that they ought to be.
Shadowbound
Incorrugible
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Systems exist to be gamed.
Down with the system!
Down with the system!
Symphony D.
Deity
I'm unaware of a previous time when the response that has evolved over 6 hours has summed up to be "We haven't bombed you... yet. We will shortly."
the creation & maintenance of a free market requires more state intervention than most of us on this planet are comfortable with
Symphony D.
Deity
... but with BitCoin!
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Technically we don't have a counterexample to know what it *requires*. If you simulate n alternate worlds with 0 governments and give me a t score of the monopolization level mean which exceeds 2sigma, you can be right for f(g)>f(0), which is presumably inverse to the monopolization.
Symphony D.
Deity
In matter combinations which are to within five-sigma of the oblate spheroid known as "Earth" and its surrounding environs by mass and molecular distribution but with the key difference that Homo sapiens sapiens have been replaced by Reploids (these being located on average perhaps some 10^10^88 meters away from the baseline sample and one another) self-correcting and self-establishing free markets, for any given definition of "free," have a 100% success rate.
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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Yes and no. Yes and no.
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
In England, we don't have any numbered grade things really. Everything hangs on end-of-year exams. At the end of your third-last year at school, you do about ten GCSEs; if you get more than about 6 A*s or so you can consider applying to the best universities, and proportionately worse universities according to your GCSEs. Then you do three or more AS-levels in your second last year at school, which constitute half your marks for your final exams. At the start of your last year, you apply to university on a centralised system called UCAS, and each invididual university that you have good enough ASs and GCSEs for will reply with a conditional offer. If you're borderline or applying for medicine or applying somewhere which is very good, they will interview you. Then, for instance, Oxford and Cambridge will state that they require you to get A*AA at A-levels (finals exams) in whatever subject you want to study and two related ones. Somewhere like Birmingham might require ABB or something like that, etc., etc. You accept, via UCAS, a firm offer, and a (probably fairly cautious) back-up offer. If you get your grades, you get your first choice, and if not most people will be able to make their second.
So here it's all on the end-of-year exams, really, in terms of grades, apart from interviews and that kind of thing, which is brilliant if you like exams, and probably not so brilliant if you don't. It's possibly not as gameable as these GPA and ATAR systems, though?
So here it's all on the end-of-year exams, really, in terms of grades, apart from interviews and that kind of thing, which is brilliant if you like exams, and probably not so brilliant if you don't. It's possibly not as gameable as these GPA and ATAR systems, though?
Symphony D.
Deity
SAT I/ACT (usually taken once near the end of high school) are standardized tests that count for at least as much as GPA in the US in terms of university admission, and usually for quite a bit more. There is also a certain intangible factor in the traditional application process of highlighting extracurricular activities and the ever-dreaded application letter. Realistically speaking these form a three-to-four-legged chair for admissions; you can be deficient in one area and good in the others and still get into good schools.
The funniest thing about the entire process is people freaking out over SAT I and hyping studying or prepping for it, when the average increase in score is something like 10-20 points (the total used to be 1600, now it's 2400). How well you slept or whether you had breakfast and a myriad other things ensure your score will tend to shift by around 50 points from day to day.
So SAT I, you say, has a very limited effect on GPA, but nevertheless "count for at least as much as GPA in the US in terms of university admission"? I may be misunderstanding you, but in that case - since you raise it - why shouldn't people hyper-study/prepare for it if it's really important regardless of the GPA thing?
Here we also have the personal statement, which I imagine is the same as your application letter and is also dreaded, but isn't nearly as important as exams or interviews by and large. My impression is that they only care a very little about extracurricular activities, on the whole.
Here we also have the personal statement, which I imagine is the same as your application letter and is also dreaded, but isn't nearly as important as exams or interviews by and large. My impression is that they only care a very little about extracurricular activities, on the whole.
m.t.cicero
Good Kid
SAT I is completely independent of GPA, as the SAT is run by the private College Board and GPAs are, of course, determined by success in school. Also I do remember that teacher recommendation letters were supposedly no small part of the allocation process either.
Symphony D.
Deity
SAT I and GPA have nothing to do with one another. They're wholly independent. The former is a standardized (multiple-choice) test largely independent of subject knowledge and based mostly on measuring reasoning and problem-solving ability (it used to be divided up into Verbal [Language] and Math, they added some third category that was really just an expansion of a subset of Verbal, IIRC) and the latter is essentially a weighted grading of class performance. The reason SAT I is at least, if not more important than GPA, is as has been pointed out, GPA can be gamed and isn't necessarily reflective of anything. The SAT I does at least describe something in a standard fashion, although how valuable that something is is... debatable. As to why it's silly to study for it, I already addressed that: test prep has basically no impact on SAT I performance. It's a bit like studying for an IQ test. It's measuring ability far more than knowledge, and you mostly either have that or you don't. Doesn't stop people from trying. It's also been 10 years since I took it (twice), so it could've changed more than I anticipated since then. At any rate, its function is more to rank you than for you to get it right.
I do remember this one particular college application letter being read to us in AP English, I believe it was to an Ivy League; it was entirely lies. Obvious, deliberate, transparent, hyperbolic lies. "I've scaled Mt. Everest," "I've served in the French Foreign Legion," things like that. Guy got in on the basis of it more so than any other single thing. The review board appreciated its "creativity." It's always struck me as one of those "You're significantly more likely to be hired if the interviewer had a hot drink before your interview rather than a cold one," or "The person with the last parole hearing of the day will never get parole," type affairs.
I do remember this one particular college application letter being read to us in AP English, I believe it was to an Ivy League; it was entirely lies. Obvious, deliberate, transparent, hyperbolic lies. "I've scaled Mt. Everest," "I've served in the French Foreign Legion," things like that. Guy got in on the basis of it more so than any other single thing. The review board appreciated its "creativity." It's always struck me as one of those "You're significantly more likely to be hired if the interviewer had a hot drink before your interview rather than a cold one," or "The person with the last parole hearing of the day will never get parole," type affairs.
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