not strictly school testable content
Q: how strong is the correlation between a student’s middle school’s rating and her high school’s rating?
I see evidence that a student can rise or fall during teenage years so she could move to a higher/lower ranked high school. This correlation is low.
Why do we care so much about the test scores in middle-school?
Q: how strong is the correlation between a student’s high school rating (1-10) and her university’s reputation?
I see many students graduating from above-average or average high schools but enter reputable universities. The top universities are expensive so they generally cater to well-to-do families.
Q1: How strong is the correlation between a college student’s grades (an imperfect gauge of academic performance) and later professional success?
More importantly for this discussion …
Q2: How strong is the correlation between a college’s academic reputation and its graduates’ professional success?
Most Chinese/Indian parents believe in this correlation; many people dispute it; I don’t believe it.
Looking around at our coworkers, we see plenty of evidence to dismiss the correlation between an individual’s professional success vs her university’s reputation. That means top universities are overvalued in terms of their graduate’s success.
University reputation reflects professors’ academic performance. Top universities are research powerhouses.
Q3: based on a large enough unbiased sample, what’s the Q2 correlation as a number? I guess very few of us have such a sample.
Q4: which country and which profession is the sample from?
If you look at quants, then probably … stronger correlation, since they are mostly PhD’s. If you look at researchers like my father, then strong correlation. If you look at managers like my sister, then lower correlation.
I do believe in strong discipline by the school. 20-year olds can cope with pressure better than at high school age. Tough and high standard gets these young students to work hard and cultivate work ethics, confidence and discipline.
My friend Abhihav pointed out that at least for comp science, graduate level is significantly tougher than undergrad level. He said graduate students have picked the discipline for a long term commitment. He said many of his fellow graduate students love to do realistic projects where they learn practical software engineering. For that purpose, a serous, tough college is much better than a medicre college.
大多数华人家长都或多或少地拿孩子的学习成绩做为自己成功/失败的尺码。我觉得 16/ 17/18岁以后 (因人而异)，孩子自身的种种因素是影响学习成绩最大的因素，但也不是命中注定不可逆转的。
尽管父母都是知识分子，重视学习，我姐姐仍然考试成绩平平，也没有考上中国的大学本科。 我父亲没有觉得见不得人。 这是勇气，智慧。这是远见．我父亲相信我姐姐有实力和才干．他没有看错．
我父亲一直提醒我要对自己的儿女有信心。 尤其是学习成绩不佳的情况下。
另一方面是 孩子品行问题．与学习和成绩不同． 我觉得家教的影响超过孩子自身的因素。我相信大多数情况下， 家长只要跟孩子住在一起，都有能力控制孩子品行。孩子自身的种种因素是根源，但不是决定性的。比如，撒谎而屡教不改， 是家长的责任。
My serious target for my son is “above-average”. I even think this could be better than reaching the top 10% early and defending the position.
For a given “target evaluation date”, be it SAT, or PSLE or “O” levels, some kid will see her ranking rise and fall, while another kid would fall and rise. I’d rather my son peak later than earlier. For example, let’s take P5. I think my son could rise slowly through P3 and P4, provided he has good foundation skills including *superior* study habits.
In the interim, we would have to bear with those kiasu parents talking about top schools.
I was told that in parts of (Nordic?) Europe, there’s an well-accepted recognition that not every student is suitable or needs such a long academic education. Some vocational training schemes produce valuable and well-paid technicians. (This is unconfirmed –) Someone even said in those countries a top technician’s income can match a doctor’s. I would guess such a technician would be talented enough to earn a degree but not academically inclined and not really relevant. More importantly, his profession doesn’t need the university education. It’s almost an unnecessary waste of his time and educational resources. (Can you imagine half of China’s students born in the same year getting a postgrad education? What a gigantic waste would that be!)
My sister is a similar case. She has no degree. She didn’t finish her 3-year diploma course in a unbranded China university. She had some accountancy (AAT) qualification, probably her highest qualification. She is more successful than me. She used to manage more than 10 professional accountants (all uni graduates presumably) in the #1 property developer firm of Australia. She has since moved up to managing billion-dollar property projects. Apparently, her work doesn’t need a degree and she earns more than most degree holders, because she’s adding more value.
In my very own domain of software engineering, I have seen that many programmers without formal training in comp science or engineering (or without any degree) can do equally well. Remember this is a truly knowledge-intensive domain.
(In fact, I received no formal training in comp science, though I do have a degree.)
Looking beyond my own domain, I have some (Caucasians or Chinese …) acquaintances doing well professionally without a degree not counting the entrepreneurs.
Q: so is it a failure if my kids don’t go to a university?
Above are the facts and first-hand personal observations to support a NO answer. However, answer is Yes in our hearts.
I have seen and read enough to believe that if my kids have no degree, they would face an uphill getting into a professional job. At the entrance to job market, they will benefit from a degree.
However, a prestigious degree may not be so important. The Chinese tradition (up to today) puts an overwhelming (peer) pressure on the parents to provide the very best university education that we can afford. A colleague with college-level children shared with me his feeling that among the Chinese fellow parents, an ivy league university is the one and only badge of honor. He said other universities are considered inferior. Then he said most managers in our companies are not graduates from top universities. I added that I met many prestigious university graduates who didn’t outshine other graduates in the same group. I said in my small sample of 20 to 40 friends and colleagues, the best aren’t from prestigious universities.
So it’s similar to the emperor’s new dress — we all know that some widely held propaganda is false but we still propagate it.
The blunt truth is, a prestigious university degree has, in my view, a low correlation with professional success, but we still sacrifice so much for it. Even in the refined domain of research, where university prestige matters, I see evidence that graduates from unbranded universities have similar, often superior, performance.
— 叠词 such as the phrases below, are vivid, memorable, fun, powerful phrases.
On my resume, I put University of Chicago as the only name in the “Education” section. It doesn’t help me at all now I’m 43 applying as a software engineer. So for my kids, if they can enroll in such a prestigious uni, great. If not, I think they may not lose that much.
This name-brand is an underwhelming ROI , but still a G5 ROI.
UChicago is a world top 2 university in economics, and every few year gets a Nobel prize, often in economics, physics and chemistry, either due to a current faculty member or a previous employee or graduate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation is fairly rigorous and unbiased. It ranks UChicago as world #4 with count of 100.
https://www.bestmastersprograms.org/50-universities-with-the-most-nobel-prize-winners/ ranks UChicago as world #4
http://www.uchicago.edu/about/accolades/22/ (official) lists 90+ Nobel laureates, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_affiliated_with_the_University_of_Chicago names 100 individuals, including
In the national media (BBC, NBC …) every month I would see some UChicago professors interviewed.
The UChicago MBA program is typically ranked top 3 across the U.S., sometimes #1.
As an alumnus, I would say UChicago is more famous than many of the Ivy League universities. (All private universities.)
Arts at pre-U level – Chinese students work hard, but this subject isn’t like math, so massive practice may not be so effective. It’s not true that China students do better than non-China students.
sports at pre-U level – Chinese students aren’t stronger!
English at pre-U level — China (and East Asian) students at my time used the same method as in math, but were not stronger than Africans or other Asians. So the Chinese method seems to work only for Math.
Physics — is not same as math. Chinese students have less of an advantage. Theoretical physics is 30% math.
Programming at pre-U level – no such advantage. China kids have stronger math foundation, but US kids are not weaker in programming
comp science — is like pure math, but many non-Chinese students are interested in this field, so this is more attractive to non-Chinese students than math, so the advantage of Chinese students is reduced.
Other subjects at pre-U level — East Europeans have a similar standard in math. Some U.S. students also do well in math and science, often as good as China students. I assume these U.S. students work hard too.
Above university level – The advantage of China students in math or other subjects, if any, is not visible to me. I feel their strong foundation in math is a smaller factor at this level.
Sports – Chinese athletes train hard. In some sports they do well but in many sports the other countries probably train harder. Look at Joseph Schooling’s training regime.
Soldiers (similar to students!)– US soldiers train no less. They too need to carry weapons and run for hours.