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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Switch it to the PSAT or use SOLs. Acknowledge that tests are needed and useful.[/quote]

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. [/quote]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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]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.[/quote]

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.

[b]GPAs don’t tell us about intelligence[/b] - 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.[/quote]

But standardized test scores do.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.

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

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.[/quote]

[b]All employers care about college GPA.[/b]

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

OK, so which jobs don't care about GPA?[/quote]

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

We are literally talking about the first job out of college.[/quote]

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

And that is in context of jobs you get coming out of college. [/quote]

No, that is a moment in time. The conversation is broader, discussing life after college, contributions to the world, donations back to colleges, etc.

[i]You[/i] may be fixated on that very first job out of college but no one looks back and measures their success by their first job.

And I say this as someone who attended top undergrad/grad programs and had an elite job coming out of grad school. Thirty years later, the top players in my field have a wide variety of backgrounds. And I don’t know the first job for most of them.

Career “success” is driven by different factors than academic success. Obviously.

One of my college buddies was recruited by a firm that greatly valued athletes for their dedication and work ethic. GPA was a factor as well, but only to a point. They weren’t simply hiring the kids with the highest GPAs. And all of those kids with mediocre GPAs ended up with a job as well.

So, no, not all employees care about college GPA. 
[/quote]

Here is the comment that set off this conversation about GPA:

"I'm asserting that college GPA really doesn't matter for much of anything except as a gateway to grad school"

Here is the response:

"And if you think college GPA is only useful for grad school then why are there GPA requirements for in campus interviewing?"

This conversation is about the value of GPA and the common understanding was that we were talking about that first job coming out of college.
Where do you get the impression that this conversation about GPA extended beyond that first job out of college.
Did you think that I was arguing that people cared about Amy Coney Barett's GPA in college?[/quote]

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