relationship between SAT scores and intelligence?

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]
philo i have no experience here but if you look at it logically: why does a degree from harvard open more doors/mean more to just about everyone than a degree from some huge state school? it isn't because of how hard it is to get in to harvard, it is the quality of education the school bestows on the degree holder. the academic demand of a school is a function of the quality of education. put another way, you can't expect a school to administer excellent education without it being very demanding for the student. it's just not possible.

that, or everyone in the world is wrong about what a degree from a top school means. is that what you contend?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think there's any disagreement here about the quality of education an undergraduate receives at a school like Harvard. A student who goes to Harvard and works hard will undoubtedly receive a great education.

But grade inflation at Ivy League institutions in particular (and I think at many other top private colleges) is a well-established phenomenon, and I think that students coming from schools not considered top-tier are often at an unfair disadvantage when competing for, say, admission to top law schools, because their grades are not as high, when in fact it may have been just as difficult, and in some cases even more difficult, to get A-range grades at those non top-tier schools.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think there's any disagreement here about the quality of education an undergraduate receives at a school like Harvard. A student who goes to Harvard and works hard will undoubtedly receive a great education.

But grade inflation at Ivy League institutions in particular (and I think at many other top private colleges) is a well-established phenomenon, and I think that students coming from schools not considered top-tier are often at an unfair disadvantage when competing for, say, admission to top law schools, because their grades are not as high, when in fact it may have been just as difficult, and in some cases even more difficult, to get A-range grades at those non top-tier schools.

[/ QUOTE ]

Potential employees in front of me. Both A grade.
Is the one from Harvard more likely to be 'better educated' or not?
Or, take those just out of A grade?
Does the addition of 'from harvard' bring any potential to the choice when looking at the grades.
It's not grade inflation if the end result is A-harvard grad has a better education claim than A-non-harvard grad. is it?
If we were grading across universities, would harvard receive a higher percentage of A's?

luckyme

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]


i think the point david is making is that the grading practices are differnet at harder schools because they realize as a whole the education is more difficult, so it wouldn't be fair for someone going to a worse school to have a signficantly higher GPA just because they took easier classes. obviously this wont be true for every school or every class, but i think as a whole it is solid reasoning.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think David has said that it's fair for there to be grade inflation at top-tier schools because that insures that those students who have a 'harder education' are not penalized for having significantly lower grades. I could be wrong but I think David believes that an A-range grade at a top school clearly represents a higher level of achievement than an A-range grade from a non top school, and that is what I'm disputing.

I'm reading 'more difficult' as a function of grading practices, and I think it is quite possible for an A-range grade from a non top-tier school to represent a level of academic accomplishment comparable to an A-range from a top-tier school.

The problem is not that students from top schools might be punished for having significantly lower grades than students who went to easier schools, since Ivy-League level schools already have the highest average GPA's. The problem is for the student who doesn't come from a top school but whose A-range grade may represent a level of achievement comparable to an A-range grade from a top school.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think there's any disagreement here about the quality of education an undergraduate receives at a school like Harvard. A student who goes to Harvard and works hard will undoubtedly receive a great education.

But grade inflation at Ivy League institutions in particular (and I think at many other top private colleges) is a well-established phenomenon, and I think that students coming from schools not considered top-tier are often at an unfair disadvantage when competing for, say, admission to top law schools, because their grades are not as high, when in fact it may have been just as difficult, and in some cases even more difficult, to get A-range grades at those non top-tier schools.

[/ QUOTE ]

Potential employees in front of me. Both A grade.
Is the one from Harvard more likely to be 'better educated' or not?
Or, take those just out of A grade?
Does the addition of 'from harvard' bring any potential to the choice when looking at the grades.
It's not grade inflation if the end result is A-harvard grad has a better education claim than A-non-harvard grad. is it?
If we were grading across universities, would harvard receive a higher percentage of A's?

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]
one from Oxford Uni, one from London Uni both with the same class maths degrees.

The one from Oxford has proved themselves to a much higher standard. Anyone who says different hasn't got a clue.

chez

[joker122]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
philo i have no experience here but if you look at it logically: why does a degree from harvard open more doors/mean more to just about everyone than a degree from some huge state school? it isn't because of how hard it is to get in to harvard, it is the quality of education the school bestows on the degree holder. the academic demand of a school is a function of the quality of education. put another way, you can't expect a school to administer excellent education without it being very demanding for the student. it's just not possible.

that, or everyone in the world is wrong about what a degree from a top school means. is that what you contend?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think there's any disagreement here about the quality of education an undergraduate receives at a school like Harvard. A student who goes to Harvard and works hard will undoubtedly receive a great education.

But grade inflation at Ivy League institutions in particular (and I think at many other top private colleges) is a well-established phenomenon, and I think that students coming from schools not considered top-tier are often at an unfair disadvantage when competing for, say, admission to top law schools, because their grades are not as high, when in fact it may have been just as difficult, and in some cases even more difficult, to get A-range grades at those non top-tier schools.

[/ QUOTE ]

i know there is no disagreement about quality of education, but there seems to be a disagreement about whether higher quality of education entails a more demanding curriculum. to say that a more demanding curriculum is not a necessity of a better education strikes me as illogical. would you agree?

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]


Potential employees in front of me. Both A grade.
Is the one from Harvard more likely to be 'better educated' or not?
Or, take those just out of A grade?
Does the addition of 'from harvard' bring any potential to the choice when looking at the grades.
It's not grade inflation if the end result is A-harvard grad has a better education claim than A-non-harvard grad. is it?
If we were grading across universities, would harvard receive a higher percentage of A's?

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the student from Harvard is likely to be better educated. I've not said anything to the contrary. However, if I'm interviewing potential employees I will make sure to find out if that's not the case, which is certainly possible.

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]

one from Oxford Uni, one from London Uni both with the same class maths degrees.

The one from Oxford has proved themselves to a much higher standard. Anyone who says different hasn't got a clue.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

I know nothing about grading practices in the UK, nor have I claimed anything about them.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

one from Oxford Uni, one from London Uni both with the same class maths degrees.

The one from Oxford has proved themselves to a much higher standard. Anyone who says different hasn't got a clue.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know anything about grading practices in the UK, nor do I claim to.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wasn't a dig at you. Its not just grading, the syllabus at Oxford is so much more advanced that people from London are doing a toy degree by comparison.

I'm almost ceratin this is a general trend in the UK. Be suprised if its not the same in the USA unless they have a common exam.

chez

[gumpzilla]

Philo,

Here, I think, is the crux of the disagreement you and Sklansky are having.

Completely making up some numbers, it may be that 5% of students at Louisville get A's in their calculus class, whereas 20% of Harvard students get A's in their class. Sklansky, I think, is saying that because Harvard presumably has a smarter population to begin with, being in the top 20% at Harvard compares favorably to being in the top 5% at Louisville.

[willie24]

i understand the point philo is trying to make, and i agree with it on some level.

does a 3.8 from harvard indicate better potential than a 3.95 from Minnesota? of course. did it require more effort? no, not necessarily.

harvard degrees indicate value because of "quality of education," but also, because they prove that the guy was smart enough to get into harvard.

as an aside - i attended Wisconsin (madison), which is one of the highest rated public schools in the upper midwest, for 1 year. i attended perhaps 10-15% of my class sessions and achieved a 3.1 GPA. I attended UW-River Falls, which is a school anyone can get into, for a year, and put in probably, i dont know, 20 times more effort to get a 2.8.

the difference is not that uw-river falls gives tougher grades, it's that they grade based on different criteria. at madison, if you understand the information - you can show up for the test and pass the class (in a freshman-level intro course). at uwrf, you have to do a bunch of "effort work" to prove to the teacher that you are trying. you could NOT understand the information, and probably still pass the class - but knowing the info better than the teacher would not get you a passing grade by itself.

is this example analogous to harvard and louisville? no. but it goes to show that different schools grade differently, and that prestige and quality are not necessarily always correlated with effort required.