Talking about the AP exams in particular _improves_ time spent. You're sitting in class anyway, might as well get college credit for it. Getting a good grade there means you _won't_ have to take an equivalent course in college, most of the time. And that time in college is _truly_ free, rather than stuck in study hall, or within a boring suburb
And, in my limited experience, a high school teacher getting 10-30 kids ready for an AP exam is way better than sitting in a lecture hall with 300 premed weedouts.
In my (also naturally limited) experience, the quality of the teacher may or may not be higher in high school AP classes, but the rigor of the classes is typically higher at a reputable university.
In particular (and relevant to your username!) I have to say that while my own high school AP calculus teacher was truly excellent, the AP calculus standards were markedly lower than the standards of the calculus sequence I TA'd at two universities.
I think he dismisses the fact that higher ranked schools will provide more opportunities. Those opportunities disproportionately affect your possible impact as well.
I went to a good, local engineering college that was respected in my metro area, but otherwise relatively unknown. It made it difficult to find a job on the early 2000s.
I did a masters at night after work at a well known state school (different metro area) and had FAANG recruiters all over the place.
I don’t know if a High School student can really prepare for selecting the “right” school, but a high quality college education is only one part of the equation. Connections and opportunities are equally, if not more important.
I agree that US K-12 education and college admissions have big problems, but I don't understand this argument:
> Compared to me at Mines, an undergraduate with the same major at MIT will enjoy a much-improved networking profile which will probably lead to a higher-paying job. They'll also have more research opportunities, [...] But if earning these benefits equates to spending class time and free time on increasing numbers rather than learning, it all becomes very difficult to justify.
OK, for the sake of argument[1], let's say that it's a choice between playing to the metrics vs. learning.
And, OK, for the sake of argument, that might mean the difference between going MIT vs. going to Colorado School of Mines.
With those givens, how is playing to the metrics difficult to justify?
[1] FWIW, my impression is that MIT incoming undergrads tend to have done both: hit the metrics, and learned.
I generally agree that SATs and APs lose meaning once the college enrollment is behind you, though I was asked for my SAT scores by my third employer (D. E. Shaw & Co.). I had to check twice with the recruiter to be sure I’d heard her correctly that she wanted my SAT score from a decade ago. (She did.)
Probably not unrelated: DESCO was also the single highest density of talent that I’ve ever experienced post-graduation.
How about skip all of it? I did, and I treasure my almost unique experience. I turn 59 today and I still draw strength from certain facts:
- when I was 12 I led a breakout from summer camp
- when I was 14 I left home
- when I was 16 I quit school
- I became an emancipated minor at 17
I never enrolled in university. My education comes from being interested in things. I supported myself by having a useful skill— making computers do things.
I’m sure if I had gone to school I’d be telling you about how that helped me. Everyone justifies their own origin story. My story is not really about alternative education— it’s about how the real precious thing is agency. The feeling of self-efficacy.
The sooner you begin to understand that your life is your OWN work of art, the less life you will waste on other people’s business.
I don't think that clear at all at 20. Yes the numbers are mostly meaningless, but there is a lot of value knowing what it means to study, work hard, and care about something.
Seems like exactly the wrong time to be sharing something like this with him. Assuming he put any effort at all into studying for the test, it’s easy to read this as saying that effort was wasted. You don’t want to be demotivating him just before one of the most important tests of his life.
Teenagers feel things intensely. I couldn’t stand the feeling of being in my prime and being condemned to those meaningless classes in the rooms with kids I didn’t care to know.
Maybe the stress inoculated me to worse stress later in my life, or something.
Talking about the AP exams in particular _improves_ time spent. You're sitting in class anyway, might as well get college credit for it. Getting a good grade there means you _won't_ have to take an equivalent course in college, most of the time. And that time in college is _truly_ free, rather than stuck in study hall, or within a boring suburb
And, in my limited experience, a high school teacher getting 10-30 kids ready for an AP exam is way better than sitting in a lecture hall with 300 premed weedouts.
In my (also naturally limited) experience, the quality of the teacher may or may not be higher in high school AP classes, but the rigor of the classes is typically higher at a reputable university.
In particular (and relevant to your username!) I have to say that while my own high school AP calculus teacher was truly excellent, the AP calculus standards were markedly lower than the standards of the calculus sequence I TA'd at two universities.
Fair point. Maybe I had a better than average Calc 2 teacher, and then went to a (good) state university with lackluster entry courses.
I think he dismisses the fact that higher ranked schools will provide more opportunities. Those opportunities disproportionately affect your possible impact as well.
I went to a good, local engineering college that was respected in my metro area, but otherwise relatively unknown. It made it difficult to find a job on the early 2000s.
I did a masters at night after work at a well known state school (different metro area) and had FAANG recruiters all over the place.
I don’t know if a High School student can really prepare for selecting the “right” school, but a high quality college education is only one part of the equation. Connections and opportunities are equally, if not more important.
I agree that US K-12 education and college admissions have big problems, but I don't understand this argument:
> Compared to me at Mines, an undergraduate with the same major at MIT will enjoy a much-improved networking profile which will probably lead to a higher-paying job. They'll also have more research opportunities, [...] But if earning these benefits equates to spending class time and free time on increasing numbers rather than learning, it all becomes very difficult to justify.
OK, for the sake of argument[1], let's say that it's a choice between playing to the metrics vs. learning.
And, OK, for the sake of argument, that might mean the difference between going MIT vs. going to Colorado School of Mines.
With those givens, how is playing to the metrics difficult to justify?
[1] FWIW, my impression is that MIT incoming undergrads tend to have done both: hit the metrics, and learned.
I generally agree that SATs and APs lose meaning once the college enrollment is behind you, though I was asked for my SAT scores by my third employer (D. E. Shaw & Co.). I had to check twice with the recruiter to be sure I’d heard her correctly that she wanted my SAT score from a decade ago. (She did.)
Probably not unrelated: DESCO was also the single highest density of talent that I’ve ever experienced post-graduation.
DESCO = D. E. Shaw ?
Yes, included in the first parenthetical, though I suppose it wasn't made perfectly explicit.
Sorry, I must have mentally skipped past the part in parentheses when I read the comment the first time.
How about skip all of it? I did, and I treasure my almost unique experience. I turn 59 today and I still draw strength from certain facts:
- when I was 12 I led a breakout from summer camp - when I was 14 I left home - when I was 16 I quit school - I became an emancipated minor at 17
I never enrolled in university. My education comes from being interested in things. I supported myself by having a useful skill— making computers do things.
I’m sure if I had gone to school I’d be telling you about how that helped me. Everyone justifies their own origin story. My story is not really about alternative education— it’s about how the real precious thing is agency. The feeling of self-efficacy.
The sooner you begin to understand that your life is your OWN work of art, the less life you will waste on other people’s business.
The author dispensing wisdom to high schoolers is himself 20 years old.
For this advice, that is the best place to share it from. They're saying even by age 20 it's already the case that the effort was wasted.
I don't think that clear at all at 20. Yes the numbers are mostly meaningless, but there is a lot of value knowing what it means to study, work hard, and care about something.
Shared this with my son, who is taking his SAT tomorrow.
Seems like exactly the wrong time to be sharing something like this with him. Assuming he put any effort at all into studying for the test, it’s easy to read this as saying that effort was wasted. You don’t want to be demotivating him just before one of the most important tests of his life.
Eh. High school sucks. Get it over with as fast as possible.
“High school sucks” is a theme I see 10X more frequently on the internet than in the real world, across all the places I’ve lived.
I’m sorry you had a bad time in high school, but that feeling isn’t universal at all.
Teenagers feel things intensely. I couldn’t stand the feeling of being in my prime and being condemned to those meaningless classes in the rooms with kids I didn’t care to know.
Maybe the stress inoculated me to worse stress later in my life, or something.
I think "the real world" is very (very) subjective. For a lot of us it was prison. If you're happy on the rails there's nothing wrong with that.