[ExI] gre

[William Flynn Wallace]

If you think about it, both the GRE and GPA are restricted range
variables.  Who makes below a B in grad school?  Don't know about
engineering school, though.

My own GRE scores were interesting:  an 89 on verbal was a shock. I
expected far higher.  I had been in honors 101, had a degree in English,
etc.  The math part was also a shock.  I had had only algebra in college
and made a 97.  I was bragging about it to my bridge partner when he
grinned and said he made a 99, which, as you know (?), is a lot better than
a 97.  He was a math major.

I had a student from Japan, where once you declare a major you can't change
it.  He was a police officer.  So how he came to a little college in
Alabama I dunno.  In his early 30s I think.  Best student any of us had
ever had.  Went on to get a Ph. D. in child psych.  Unfortunately, he said,
he would never be accepted to teach at Tokyo University or any other big
time school there because of where he got his degree.  U of Alabama.

But the story:  with Japanese as his first language, and as difficult as
English is to learn, he made a score in the 50s on the verbal GRE.  The
most impressive intellectual performance I have witnessed.

bill w

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 8:26 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *William Flynn Wallace
>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] gre
>
>
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> Always in the mood for a story.   bill w
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> Isn’t much of a story, but your comment on correlations reminded me of
> it.
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> The dean of my engineering school took all the GRE scores from our class
> and the two previous graduating classes, and plotted them with GRE scores
> on the vertical and GPA on the horizontal.  He had all the engineering
> graduates in there, looking for any signal, such as subspecialty
> (electrical, mechanical, civil vs GRE), wanted to know the correlation
> coefficient between GRE and GPA, that sorta thing.
>
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> My roommate was a super-disciplined straight A sort of guy.  His homework
> was always perfect, by the book, procedural, step by step algorithmic.  He
> earned a PhD from Purdue and is a professor of engineering where we went to
> college.  My college experience was way different from his.  My approach
> was a lot more open-ended, experimental, concepty rather than algorithmy,
> emphasizing inventiveness and alternate approaches and such, a lonely ENTP
> in a world more suited to ISFJs, the kind of approach you would expect from
> an oddball who dreams up toilet snake warning devices you can trigger
> remotely if you don’t mind having to scrape your brother-in-law off the
> damn bathroom ceiling, that sorta thing.
>
>
>
> One day the dean called me over, Jones see me in my office please.  He had
> plotted the GPA vs GRE and had the kinda football shaped scatter one might
> expect.  The first thing that surprised me was that there was a clear
> correlation, but a bit less than I expected.  There were two odd outliers
> from those 300-ish points that would immediately catch one’s eye.
>
>
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> We already had our scores back, so I knew I had scorched that test,
> whacked it outta the park.  But my GPA was tepid, middle of the pack-ish.
> He showed me that graph and pointed at one of the two outliers, and asked:
> Do you know who this is?  Me:  hmmmmmm… that would be… me?  Why that
> slacker…
>
>
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> He gently inquired as to why my score wasn’t way over to the right on that
> curve.  I had no good answer.  That was in the days when one couldn’t just
> claim to suck.  The term had a different meaning back then.
>
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> The other odd outlier was my roommate, whose GPA was 4.0.  But his GRE
> score wasn’t even in the top 30.  He had the only 4.0 in those three
> graduating classes, and did really well in the engineering section, but
> overall was just good, perhaps 80-ish percentile.  His point and mine were
> outliers on that graph.
>
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> In any case… he went on to a PhD and has been a college professor ever
> since.  I went on to a career in aerospace engineering, retired at age 49
> to be a fulltime parent and community volunteer.  I am still in regular
> contact with him.  He came to stay with me last year and show his son the
> Tesla factory.  He’s still smart as a whip, still methodical and
> structured, organized, efficient.  I’m still dreaming up goofy weird
> inventions and suggesting we go into business to make a ton of money.
> Neither of us have changed all that much, just grown older.  We have both
> had a great life.
>
>
>
> spike
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>
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