TJ Falls to 14th in the Nation Per US News

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

I have to disagree. Standardized tests are just another test. This carries no more weight than the hundreds of tests that students take in school. Nevertheles, I think using standardized tests along with grades to help determine the top 1.5% of students at given school is a fine idea.

I'm the one arguing against the importance of grades but I do agree with this take.

I'm relentlessly pro-reform but I also believe that the set asides should be reduced to 1% and that we need teacher recommendations back in the process - to my mind, they're actually even more valuable than grades for finding the students who can make use of the incredible gifts of TJ rather than just show up, get the grades, and use it as a ticket to college.

TJ is not a ticket to college. It is an opportunity to show that you can handle higher rigor than other students. But if you are not up to the task, you end up with shitty grades and worse outcomes.

We'll see. But good to know where your head's at. I'm betting you have no idea that there have always been TJ students with shitty grades and you think that somehow the new admissions process has introduced them into the bloodstream.

I'm clear eyed about the fact that the new process has absolutely admitted some kids who have no business being there - perhaps even a few (like, single digits) more than the old system. But the tradeoff is that there are now significantly more kids who had no access previously and should have had access all along. And the process of introducing the kids who have always been admitted to TJ to the kids who have never been admitted has had a monumental impact on the kids who have always been.

Tens of thousands of TJ graduates never had that opportunity - including me - until they got to college and in some cases until they got to the workforce. And that's a poverty that we can't correct.

If you think the number of unprepared kids has increased by single digits, then you are nowhere close to being clear eyed.
We used to have 4 or 5 kids return to their base school in the past. That number is more like 40-50 for the class of 2025.
These are not trivial numbers.
Having a 1% miss ratio is regrettable. Having a 10% miss ratio is real bad.

Who should have had access that did not previously have had access?
You're so full of shit you don't know where the real world ends and your imaginary world begins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Are you even hearing yourself?

Yes, and a rhetorical question isn't an argument. It's merely an admission that you don't have a good answer to the question because you haven't audited your preconceived notions of how the world *should* work.

You are asking about the importance of academic performance for admission to academic institutions.

Your question is ridiculous.

Not really. Here's what I'm doing:

People are asserting that standardized exams are a good thing because of studies that are showing that, for example, SAT performance is a good predictor of college GPA. I'm asserting that college GPA really doesn't matter for much of anything except as a gateway to grad school - which pretty much torpedoes the argument that SAT performance has much value.

A top tech or finance firm isn't going to turn down an applicant with the most impressive interview and the most impressive profile of during-college accomplishments and work products in their field just because their GPA is slightly lower. That might have happened in the '90s, but it's not the way the world works now. Kids with great grades and great exam scores are a dime a dozen, and becoming more common every year - and increasing rigor isn't going to change that significantly. Unless, of course, that increase in rigor is tailored around creativity, cleverness, and a comfort level thinking outside the box. This is why the first year of the Quant-Q created one of the strongest and most racially diverse classes in TJ history prior to the major admissions change - because it tested students' ability to quickly handle problems that they'd never seen before.

What the SAT and other standardized tests show nowadays is little more than a willingness to invest in preparing for the SAT. The same is true of almost any standardized exam. There are kids who can roll out of bed one day and get a 1600, but an entire multi-billion dollar industry has been built around making ordinary workaday kids look like those truly outstanding ones. And as a consequence, the SAT no longer has any value at all in identifying them - and has removed value from the process both by incentivizing families to waste valuable developmental time in overpreparing for them AND obscuring truly transformative talent by flooding the zone with lookalikes.

Any completely objective process is now going to be hacked in this manner by parents desperate to pass their mediocre children as exceptional. This is why subjectivity and narrative-building are so critical in selection processes in today's environment.

Can exams and GPA be a piece of that process? Sure, but the danger in including objective measures alongside subjective ones is that those predisposed to perform well on the objective measures will claim that the subjective ones are being used for discriminatory purposes when in fact, they're necessary measures to separate the truly worthy from those who have been manufactured to appear so, frequently losing their childhood in the process.

Once again, we have peer reviewed research saying different.
Poor kids with a 1500 SAT do about as well as wealty kids with a 1500 SAT.
If you could just buy your way to a high SAT score, you would expect the wealthy kids to underperform their SAT score and poor kids to outperform their SAT score but this does not happen.

A typical 1500 SAT kid might graduate cum laude, the typical 1600 kid might graduate magna cum laude.

I guarantee you that top tech and finance firms care about your college GPA.
And if you think college GPA is only useful for grad school then why are there GPA requirements for in campus interviewing?

I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about or have any idea of "how the world works now"

They do for some jobs, and usually the ones that only require execution and not problem-solving. Your response indicates that you largely occupy the space of the former - which is fine and necessary to sustain our economy, but if you're focusing on that area you're setting an artificial floor for your child.

You mean artificial ceiling?
I have kids in finance and tech.
Maybe they should be aiming higher.
Please tell me which tech and finance firms don't care about college GPA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
People are asserting that standardized exams are a good thing because of studies that are showing that, for example, SAT performance is a good predictor of college GPA. I'm asserting that college GPA really doesn't matter for much of anything except as a gateway to grad school - which pretty much torpedoes the argument that SAT performance has much value.

A top tech or finance firm isn't going to turn down an applicant with the most impressive interview and the most impressive profile of during-college accomplishments and work products in their field just because their GPA is slightly lower. That might have happened in the '90s, but it's not the way the world works now. Kids with great grades and great exam scores are a dime a dozen, and becoming more common every year - and increasing rigor isn't going to change that significantly. Unless, of course, that increase in rigor is tailored around creativity, cleverness, and a comfort level thinking outside the box. This is why the first year of the Quant-Q created one of the strongest and most racially diverse classes in TJ history prior to the major admissions change - because it tested students' ability to quickly handle problems that they'd never seen before.

After a point, gifted is as gifted does. Eventually, after you've had enough time in the field to have real accomplishments, no one cares about your college GPA. But, for kids applying to TJ, applying to college, and applying for an entry level job out of college alike, there aren't any or many real accomplishments. For the most part, there's no way to distinguish between kids who have that creative spark and kids who are merely smart and know the subject matter. So, schools and companies will turn toward standardized test scores and GPAs, since that's the only measurable they have that correlates with being a successful professional. I'd rather take my chances on a kid who has demonstrated that they have a high IQ and are a diligent student than one who has not done so.

*Even for TJ or college applications, if a kid appears to have done something phenomenal, it's likely due to being spoon fed by some adult rather than being the kid's own work.

Anonymous wrote:What the SAT and other standardized tests show nowadays is little more than a willingness to invest in preparing for the SAT. The same is true of almost any standardized exam. There are kids who can roll out of bed one day and get a 1600, but an entire multi-billion dollar industry has been built around making ordinary workaday kids look like those truly outstanding ones. And as a consequence, the SAT no longer has any value at all in identifying them - and has removed value from the process both by incentivizing families to waste valuable developmental time in overpreparing for them AND obscuring truly transformative talent by flooding the zone with lookalikes.

The bolded is flat out false. No boutique program under the sun will make an ordinary workaday kid look like an outstanding one. If that were the case, there would be a lot more kids out there scoring 1500+. Prep can only bring a kid so far, and at best will make an average kid look somewhat above average. People have been hardcore prepping for the SAT for at least 30 years, and they have yet to crack the test in such a way that any above average kid can earn a sky high score with just some prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
People are asserting that standardized exams are a good thing because of studies that are showing that, for example, SAT performance is a good predictor of college GPA. I'm asserting that college GPA really doesn't matter for much of anything except as a gateway to grad school - which pretty much torpedoes the argument that SAT performance has much value.

A top tech or finance firm isn't going to turn down an applicant with the most impressive interview and the most impressive profile of during-college accomplishments and work products in their field just because their GPA is slightly lower. That might have happened in the '90s, but it's not the way the world works now. Kids with great grades and great exam scores are a dime a dozen, and becoming more common every year - and increasing rigor isn't going to change that significantly. Unless, of course, that increase in rigor is tailored around creativity, cleverness, and a comfort level thinking outside the box. This is why the first year of the Quant-Q created one of the strongest and most racially diverse classes in TJ history prior to the major admissions change - because it tested students' ability to quickly handle problems that they'd never seen before.

After a point, gifted is as gifted does. Eventually, after you've had enough time in the field to have real accomplishments, no one cares about your college GPA. But, for kids applying to TJ, applying to college, and applying for an entry level job out of college alike, there aren't any or many real accomplishments. For the most part, there's no way to distinguish between kids who have that creative spark and kids who are merely smart and know the subject matter. So, schools and companies will turn toward standardized test scores and GPAs, since that's the only measurable they have that correlates with being a successful professional. I'd rather take my chances on a kid who has demonstrated that they have a high IQ and are a diligent student than one who has not done so.

*Even for TJ or college applications, if a kid appears to have done something phenomenal, it's likely due to being spoon fed by some adult rather than being the kid's own work.

Anonymous wrote:What the SAT and other standardized tests show nowadays is little more than a willingness to invest in preparing for the SAT. The same is true of almost any standardized exam. There are kids who can roll out of bed one day and get a 1600, but an entire multi-billion dollar industry has been built around making ordinary workaday kids look like those truly outstanding ones. And as a consequence, the SAT no longer has any value at all in identifying them - and has removed value from the process both by incentivizing families to waste valuable developmental time in overpreparing for them AND obscuring truly transformative talent by flooding the zone with lookalikes.

The bolded is flat out false. No boutique program under the sun will make an ordinary workaday kid look like an outstanding one. If that were the case, there would be a lot more kids out there scoring 1500+. Prep can only bring a kid so far, and at best will make an average kid look somewhat above average. People have been hardcore prepping for the SAT for at least 30 years, and they have yet to crack the test in such a way that any above average kid can earn a sky high score with just some prep.

Most people don't understand standardized tests or understand there is an entire branch of psychology dedicated to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
People are asserting that standardized exams are a good thing because of studies that are showing that, for example, SAT performance is a good predictor of college GPA. I'm asserting that college GPA really doesn't matter for much of anything except as a gateway to grad school - which pretty much torpedoes the argument that SAT performance has much value.

A top tech or finance firm isn't going to turn down an applicant with the most impressive interview and the most impressive profile of during-college accomplishments and work products in their field just because their GPA is slightly lower. That might have happened in the '90s, but it's not the way the world works now. Kids with great grades and great exam scores are a dime a dozen, and becoming more common every year - and increasing rigor isn't going to change that significantly. Unless, of course, that increase in rigor is tailored around creativity, cleverness, and a comfort level thinking outside the box. This is why the first year of the Quant-Q created one of the strongest and most racially diverse classes in TJ history prior to the major admissions change - because it tested students' ability to quickly handle problems that they'd never seen before.

After a point, gifted is as gifted does. Eventually, after you've had enough time in the field to have real accomplishments, no one cares about your college GPA. But, for kids applying to TJ, applying to college, and applying for an entry level job out of college alike, there aren't any or many real accomplishments. For the most part, there's no way to distinguish between kids who have that creative spark and kids who are merely smart and know the subject matter. So, schools and companies will turn toward standardized test scores and GPAs, since that's the only measurable they have that correlates with being a successful professional. I'd rather take my chances on a kid who has demonstrated that they have a high IQ and are a diligent student than one who has not done so.

*Even for TJ or college applications, if a kid appears to have done something phenomenal, it's likely due to being spoon fed by some adult rather than being the kid's own work.

Anonymous wrote:What the SAT and other standardized tests show nowadays is little more than a willingness to invest in preparing for the SAT. The same is true of almost any standardized exam. There are kids who can roll out of bed one day and get a 1600, but an entire multi-billion dollar industry has been built around making ordinary workaday kids look like those truly outstanding ones. And as a consequence, the SAT no longer has any value at all in identifying them - and has removed value from the process both by incentivizing families to waste valuable developmental time in overpreparing for them AND obscuring truly transformative talent by flooding the zone with lookalikes.

The bolded is flat out false. No boutique program under the sun will make an ordinary workaday kid look like an outstanding one. If that were the case, there would be a lot more kids out there scoring 1500+. Prep can only bring a kid so far, and at best will make an average kid look somewhat above average. People have been hardcore prepping for the SAT for at least 30 years, and they have yet to crack the test in such a way that any above average kid can earn a sky high score with just some prep.

It's wild that people are against test scores because they think that test scores are affected by resources, but they are not against the consideration of extracurricular achievements which are very frequently dictated by access to resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

I have to disagree. Standardized tests are just another test. This carries no more weight than the hundreds of tests that students take in school. Nevertheles, I think using standardized tests along with grades to help determine the top 1.5% of students at given school is a fine idea.

I'm the one arguing against the importance of grades but I do agree with this take.

I'm relentlessly pro-reform but I also believe that the set asides should be reduced to 1% and that we need teacher recommendations back in the process - to my mind, they're actually even more valuable than grades for finding the students who can make use of the incredible gifts of TJ rather than just show up, get the grades, and use it as a ticket to college.

TJ is not a ticket to college. It is an opportunity to show that you can handle higher rigor than other students. But if you are not up to the task, you end up with shitty grades and worse outcomes.

We'll see. But good to know where your head's at. I'm betting you have no idea that there have always been TJ students with shitty grades and you think that somehow the new admissions process has introduced them into the bloodstream.

I'm clear eyed about the fact that the new process has absolutely admitted some kids who have no business being there - perhaps even a few (like, single digits) more than the old system. But the tradeoff is that there are now significantly more kids who had no access previously and should have had access all along. And the process of introducing the kids who have always been admitted to TJ to the kids who have never been admitted has had a monumental impact on the kids who have always been.

Tens of thousands of TJ graduates never had that opportunity - including me - until they got to college and in some cases until they got to the workforce. And that's a poverty that we can't correct.

If you think the number of unprepared kids has increased by single digits, then you are nowhere close to being clear eyed.
We used to have 4 or 5 kids return to their base school in the past. That number is more like 40-50 for the class of 2025.
These are not trivial numbers.
Having a 1% miss ratio is regrettable. Having a 10% miss ratio is real bad.

Who should have had access that did not previously have had access?
You're so full of shit you don't know where the real world ends and your imaginary world begins.

That number is FAR below the actual real number from pre-Covid times. And as a consequence the rest of your argument falls apart.

There's also a big difference between the phrases "unprepared", "have no business being there", and "returned to base school".

Kids who are relatively less prepared at the start can get themselves to where they need to be and beyond - and frequently do.

Kids who have no business being there can sometimes mask that they belong, especially when they have access to boutique prep resources.

And kids who return to their base school from TJ in many cases do so not because they can't handle it, but because for whatever reason it's just not for them.

Failing to understand these things is the difference between someone who started caring about TJ during the admissions process changes and someone who knows what they're talking about through deep, multi-decade experience.

Seek first to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?

DP. First job out of college? Sure. Many do consider it. Second job? Third? Barely any.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

I have to disagree. Standardized tests are just another test. This carries no more weight than the hundreds of tests that students take in school. Nevertheles, I think using standardized tests along with grades to help determine the top 1.5% of students at given school is a fine idea.

I'm the one arguing against the importance of grades but I do agree with this take.

I'm relentlessly pro-reform but I also believe that the set asides should be reduced to 1% and that we need teacher recommendations back in the process - to my mind, they're actually even more valuable than grades for finding the students who can make use of the incredible gifts of TJ rather than just show up, get the grades, and use it as a ticket to college.

TJ is not a ticket to college. It is an opportunity to show that you can handle higher rigor than other students. But if you are not up to the task, you end up with shitty grades and worse outcomes.

We'll see. But good to know where your head's at. I'm betting you have no idea that there have always been TJ students with shitty grades and you think that somehow the new admissions process has introduced them into the bloodstream.

I'm clear eyed about the fact that the new process has absolutely admitted some kids who have no business being there - perhaps even a few (like, single digits) more than the old system. But the tradeoff is that there are now significantly more kids who had no access previously and should have had access all along. And the process of introducing the kids who have always been admitted to TJ to the kids who have never been admitted has had a monumental impact on the kids who have always been.

Tens of thousands of TJ graduates never had that opportunity - including me - until they got to college and in some cases until they got to the workforce. And that's a poverty that we can't correct.

If you think the number of unprepared kids has increased by single digits, then you are nowhere close to being clear eyed.
We used to have 4 or 5 kids return to their base school in the past. That number is more like 40-50 for the class of 2025.
These are not trivial numbers.
Having a 1% miss ratio is regrettable. Having a 10% miss ratio is real bad.

Who should have had access that did not previously have had access?
You're so full of shit you don't know where the real world ends and your imaginary world begins.

That number is FAR below the actual real number from pre-Covid times. And as a consequence the rest of your argument falls apart.

There's also a big difference between the phrases "unprepared", "have no business being there", and "returned to base school".

Kids who are relatively less prepared at the start can get themselves to where they need to be and beyond - and frequently do.

Kids who have no business being there can sometimes mask that they belong, especially when they have access to boutique prep resources.

And kids who return to their base school from TJ in many cases do so not because they can't handle it, but because for whatever reason it's just not for them.

Failing to understand these things is the difference between someone who started caring about TJ during the admissions process changes and someone who knows what they're talking about through deep, multi-decade experience.

Seek first to understand.

Can you provide some evidence of these "actual real numbers"

The kids that are unprepared in 8th grade do not catch up, they drown.
They return to their base schools because they are drowning.
They never belonged there in the first place and they are smart enough to realize this.

You can't make up for a lifetime of low rigor by winging it in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?

DP. First job out of college? Sure. Many do consider it. Second job? Third? Barely any.

We are literally talking about the first job out of college.

[Anonymous]

Uh, plenty of first jobs don’t care. They care even less about where you went to high school. And for all the pushy parents here, your friends and employers think it’s weird that you’ve shaped your identity based on your child’s high school.

And yes, I know plenty of TJ grads. The normal, successful ones don’t brag about where they went to HS. The weirdos, however, do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?

DP. First job out of college? Sure. Many do consider it. Second job? Third? Barely any.

We are literally talking about the first job out of college.

No, we are talking about: “no one cares about college performance” and
“all employers care about college GPA”. Not just the first job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?

DP. First job out of college? Sure. Many do consider it. Second job? Third? Barely any.

We are literally talking about the first job out of college.

Indeed. And before too long people don’t care about that either. They care how you approached your first job out of college far more than what that job was. And as long as it’s remotely connected with your intended industry, you’re probably going to be okay.

The parents on this thread have done a phenomenal job of making my point for me - their shortsighted behaviors raise their child’s floor on some level, but severely curtail their child’s ceiling.

The obsession with the first job out of college as the alpha and omega is just hilarious.

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Anonymous wrote:Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.

They can be useful, but only when considered in context. Test scores without context are obscurative, not illumnating.

It is also true that there are students who simply do not display their talent level in a testing situation and format, which is okay because test taking as a skill has no application beyond academia.

I am a phenomenal test taker and there is literally no area of my life where I can apply that skill to make the world a better place.

Tests may have been overrated in the past, but recently many people now undervalue the importance of tests. Tests are one of the best predictors we have of academic performance. It’s imperfect, but so is everything else.

Schools shouldn’t use a test as the only measure, but there should still be a test. There is a reason many elite universities reinstated the SAT shortly after dropping it.

But again, you are circling back to academic performance as the end-all-be-all.

Honestly - who cares about academic performance? Colleges don’t get donations based on the GPAs of their students, either incoming or outgoing. They get donations and prestige because of what the kids actually DO whether it’s during their tenure or after.

This is why athletes get preference.

Academic performance absolutely should matter. That is why the elite schools reinstated the SAT. It matters.

Should it be the end-all-be-all of everything? Maybe not. You’re putting words in my mouth. But it matters, and schools need to measure it. Tests are one of the best ways to do it.

You didn’t make an argument for *why* it should matter. I’m being serious when I ask - when it comes to what a student does in college and gets out of it, who on earth cares what their grades are?

We just assume that it matters somehow… and yes, I get using high school grades for college admissions on some level, but you’re using exam performance’s ability to correlate with college GPA as an excuse to keep them top of mind - and college GPAs are largely irrelevant beyond a certain age/experience threshold. Unless you’re staying on the academic treadmill in grad school.

GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence - they tell us who is good at doing school and cares enough to do their best at it. Exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known. Both of these things set children up to inhabit the world that currently exists, rather than to invent the world of the future. They set us up to be solid doctors who can apply existing knowledge to known and understood situations, but not to solve the next great unknown medical challenge.

But standardized test scores do.

No, they really don't. At best they give you a snapshot of what a student has been exposed to - as I said, exam scores tell us who can parrot back information that is known.

There is a distinct difference between knowledge and intelligence - very mediocre, workaday people can make themselves useful in life by gathering a large amount of knowledge.... for now.

We are rapidly approaching an event horizon where machines can synthesize knowledge reliably better than humans can, and where machines can perform mechanical tasks better and more consistently than humans can.

Generative AI remains behind in the creation of new, useful knowledge, and this will continue to be the case for some time until that which is "useful" is redefined.

We are approaching the end of the phase of human existence where the ability to spew back information is of societal value beyond quiz shows like "Jeopardy". (By the way, pretty sure that top-end AI would massacre humans in that game nowadays - anyone remember the Watson series?)

I believe that college still has tremendous value, but increasingly grades and even degrees do not - that is, for their own sake. As long as you have the requisite content area knowledge at some point, it matters less and less whether or not you can prove it in a vacuum.

Yes, they really do. We have known that we can measure intelligence with standardized tests this since before WWII.
Almost every standardized test has a G load and measures intelligence. Some have ore than others and tests specifically designed to test IQ are the best at doing so.

You seem to be trying to distinguish between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence without really understanding what they are.

The SAT is a better and less biased predictor of college performance than pretty much any other measure we have.

And again - no one cares about college performance. It's not 1968 anymore and we've moved past believing that IQ tests measure anything of consequence besides someone's ability to prepare for an IQ test. Thank the prep industry for making previously worthwhile tools completely valueless.

I understand perfectly what they are, and critically, that crystallized intelligence, while useful and necessary for menial and mid-level associative tasks, is rapidly becoming obsolete in the absence of fluid intelligence.

The exceptional schools of tomorrow will seek to identify, develop and cultivate that fluid intelligence and it is there that I hope to see TJ strive in its new era. Test scores might decline but impact would skyrocket, and that's a tradeoff we should all celebrate.

All employers care about college GPA.

Almost every scientific paper on the subject reinforces the notion that IQ tests a real thing that has real consequences in lifetime outcomes.

You STILL don't know what crystallized intelligence is.
Crystallized intelligence is what you get when you combine fluid intelligence with experience.
All the knowledge in the world does not equate to crystallized intelligence if there is no actual intelligence there.

If the exceptional schools of tomorrow are going to seek and cultivate fluid intelligence, then they will need testing to do it.

Categorically false except to say that they care about it for *some* jobs.

And while we're at it, it is not the job of STEM schools or STEM colleges to optimize lifetime outcomes. It is their job to optimize their impact on the world. It is then the job of STEM corporations to optimize their bottom lines in accordance with an incentive structure that hopefully correlates profit with impact - but the schools get donations when they graduate innovators, not code monkeys.

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?

DP. First job out of college? Sure. Many do consider it. Second job? Third? Barely any.

We are literally talking about the first job out of college.

No, we are talking about: “no one cares about college performance” and
“all employers care about college GPA”. Not just the first job.

And that is in context of jobs you get coming out of college.