Yeah I think this is an issue in general with any kind of 1-10 scale! People tend to think 7+ is good. I don’t think people recognize 5 as average or they see “average” as less than what it actually means - I’m with you that most media is average and that doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out.
Anyone who creates a scale needs to be super clear about what each interval means lol because I think they get misconstrued all the time.
I do miss the old IMDb review/chat boards though. Before everything just moved to reddit, it was fun to go on there and just talk to people about certain movies. Was so good for when a movie had a confusing/open ending to share theories and stuff. Didn’t get trolls when forums were all separate!
I had a professor in college who believed an A should be reserved for the rare student who really nails a subject. He felt that if he gave a test, and several students got an A on it, it was a bad test. He said that was like having a speedometer on a car that only went to 50. So if you worked really hard in his class and did well, you’d likely get a B. Most students got a C, because that’s average.
I actually agreed with him, but the problem was that the rest of academia didn’t behave that way, so his classes lowered your GPA.
Do you have A+ where you live? For us, A was very good but A+ was the ultimate!
Interesting though because you’re right that C is meant to be average but if you were a C kid you were kinda deemed… either “not trying” or just a bit thick. People felt bad about getting a C which, especially in high school, like teenage years (is college after high school? We’d call it university) is kinda rough! C is average, that’s alright! You’re keeping up! You can’t be above average in everything but it feels like a lot of people were of the mindset that you had to get Bs and above in everything or you were “dumb”.
A lot of classes would do A+ on assignments/tests, meaning that you got some extra credit, but generally in college/university, the top score is 4.0, which equates to an A. In the US, colleges tend to be smaller than universities, and universities have more degree programs available.
Hm interesting. In university the grades are totally different but also not super important? In terms of after university, when you go for a job, you either have done the course/degree or you haven’t lol, people don’t really talk about what grades you got. Maybe if you were a genius getting HDs (high distinctions) in everything you do lol but yeah I’ve never heard people talk about their actual grades post-university.
Do you share your grades/score with your potential employers over there?
they may not be super important for some useless school that is basically just a diploma mill, but they are important if you are in good school with goal of getting good education, because they will affect your further progress through the system. like going from bachelor to masters level (which i think is not always the case in us) or getting your phd position.
You Aussie? Haha yeah even as I was typing it I knew it would be a sweeping generalisation because ofc it depends on the field someone is going into and the end goal.
I can’t say I know about how higher corporate positions work these days other than I know we put more emphasis on education now so I take what you’re saying on board. I know my dad started here in the 80s, no education past dropping out in the equivalent of year 10 (in England) and by the 90s was climbing the corporate ladder and ended up quite high (I believe he did a couple of short courses along the way but no diploma or degrees).
He retired a few years ago and yes, definitely spoke about it becoming more focused on what degrees newcomers had. He did also speak to there being the private school boys connections (in his generation too) so yes, all that stuff does exist. Perhaps I have wishful thinking that we’re less focused on that in America.
I’m more lower class than my dad lol, so in my line of work and the people around me - which in fairness tends to be in the caregiving, healthcare industries and much smaller corporations - I’ve not heard people talk about where they went to school or what they’re ENTER/ATAR, etc score was or anything. But yes, vastly different experience than climbing the corporate ladder!
Curious what your experience has been if you’ve seen/heard/experienced how it looks in different industries? Easy to get caught in your own little bubble so I’m always interested in others experiences!
i am czech. basically whole europe is part of bologna system, which makes it easy to standardize and compare schools between countries and do different stages of your study in different places.
so basically you do 3 years for bachelor’s degree, then you do another 2 years for master’s degree. these 2 don’t need to be at the same school or even same country. if you are continuing within the same school, you may be accepted to master’s based on your grades. otherwise you go through some application process where grades may play a role. it is the same when you apply for phd position.
so the grades may definitely affect you. it is true that once you are done with the school and have your diploma, your grades are not really the topic of the conversation, but before that happens, you may have a reason to care.
(medical and law schools are exceptions from this system).
People who did well usually put their grade point average (GPA) on their resume. I was a hiring manager for some decades, and I didn’t tend to hire people who had less than a 3.2 from a decent school. Generally when people didn’t put their GPA it meant they didn’t get 2.5 or better.
But I was hiring for a specialty, and for a lot of jobs they really just want you to have the degree.
Yeah I would assume it’s definitely role-dependent right? Like speciality roles, higher paying roles I understand there’s always going to be a bit of prestige around that stuff but I guess I am more of an average Joe (Jane? Is that a saying, average Jane lol) 😅
See, I reckon we’ve become more degree focused here over the years which I don’t actually think is a good thing. My dad came from England (to Australia) with not even finishing high school and managed to climb up the corporate ladder without ever having to go to university. He was very good at his job, headhunted regularly and retired 5 years ago and still gets offers on contracts because he’s obviously held in high regard.
I think it’s a mistake to automatically require a degree for jobs. Not a dig at you personally, I understand that’s how the system has probably worked there for a long time and as I said it’s come in here too. I just don’t agree with that everyone needs a degree to do certain jobs. Some people do seem to have a natural infinity towards certain things and can excel without the study so I think it’s a flawed model to push everyone to the same requirements.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I was hiring embedded software engineers for space-based, human rated applications. The company was hardcore engineering, with software being a tiny piece of the engineering staff. They wanted engineering degrees from good schools as a kind of risk reduction: it didn’t guarantee people were good, but it ensured that they had mastered the subject matter from an academic point of view.
But I was there 40 years, from the mid 1980s, and computer science had only more recently been a degree offered by universities for a little while at that time. Most of my peers when I started learned to code as part of other degrees or non-degreed interests. A number of math and physics majors, but a couple excellent employees who learned to code as part of music/recording. A degree wasn’t a requirement for software people before my time.
So I had mixed emotions about it. Certainly a person could be an excellent developer by having learned on the job, but we were only rarely short of applicants with good GPAs from good schools. Oh, and we mostly promoted engineering leadership from the engineering staff, so your dad’s situation wouldn’t apply.
As an aside, my dad also came here (US) from England with only a high school education, though at least at the time, English high schools were more like US junior colleges.
Yeah I think this is an issue in general with any kind of 1-10 scale! People tend to think 7+ is good. I don’t think people recognize 5 as average or they see “average” as less than what it actually means - I’m with you that most media is average and that doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out.
Anyone who creates a scale needs to be super clear about what each interval means lol because I think they get misconstrued all the time.
I do miss the old IMDb review/chat boards though. Before everything just moved to reddit, it was fun to go on there and just talk to people about certain movies. Was so good for when a movie had a confusing/open ending to share theories and stuff. Didn’t get trolls when forums were all separate!
I had a professor in college who believed an A should be reserved for the rare student who really nails a subject. He felt that if he gave a test, and several students got an A on it, it was a bad test. He said that was like having a speedometer on a car that only went to 50. So if you worked really hard in his class and did well, you’d likely get a B. Most students got a C, because that’s average.
I actually agreed with him, but the problem was that the rest of academia didn’t behave that way, so his classes lowered your GPA.
and that is exactly the problem with people suffering from chronic unique-titis like this. they are just assholes.
Do you have A+ where you live? For us, A was very good but A+ was the ultimate!
Interesting though because you’re right that C is meant to be average but if you were a C kid you were kinda deemed… either “not trying” or just a bit thick. People felt bad about getting a C which, especially in high school, like teenage years (is college after high school? We’d call it university) is kinda rough! C is average, that’s alright! You’re keeping up! You can’t be above average in everything but it feels like a lot of people were of the mindset that you had to get Bs and above in everything or you were “dumb”.
A lot of classes would do A+ on assignments/tests, meaning that you got some extra credit, but generally in college/university, the top score is 4.0, which equates to an A. In the US, colleges tend to be smaller than universities, and universities have more degree programs available.
Hm interesting. In university the grades are totally different but also not super important? In terms of after university, when you go for a job, you either have done the course/degree or you haven’t lol, people don’t really talk about what grades you got. Maybe if you were a genius getting HDs (high distinctions) in everything you do lol but yeah I’ve never heard people talk about their actual grades post-university.
Do you share your grades/score with your potential employers over there?
they may not be super important for some useless school that is basically just a diploma mill, but they are important if you are in good school with goal of getting good education, because they will affect your further progress through the system. like going from bachelor to masters level (which i think is not always the case in us) or getting your phd position.
You Aussie? Haha yeah even as I was typing it I knew it would be a sweeping generalisation because ofc it depends on the field someone is going into and the end goal.
I can’t say I know about how higher corporate positions work these days other than I know we put more emphasis on education now so I take what you’re saying on board. I know my dad started here in the 80s, no education past dropping out in the equivalent of year 10 (in England) and by the 90s was climbing the corporate ladder and ended up quite high (I believe he did a couple of short courses along the way but no diploma or degrees).
He retired a few years ago and yes, definitely spoke about it becoming more focused on what degrees newcomers had. He did also speak to there being the private school boys connections (in his generation too) so yes, all that stuff does exist. Perhaps I have wishful thinking that we’re less focused on that in America.
I’m more lower class than my dad lol, so in my line of work and the people around me - which in fairness tends to be in the caregiving, healthcare industries and much smaller corporations - I’ve not heard people talk about where they went to school or what they’re ENTER/ATAR, etc score was or anything. But yes, vastly different experience than climbing the corporate ladder!
Curious what your experience has been if you’ve seen/heard/experienced how it looks in different industries? Easy to get caught in your own little bubble so I’m always interested in others experiences!
i am czech. basically whole europe is part of bologna system, which makes it easy to standardize and compare schools between countries and do different stages of your study in different places.
so basically you do 3 years for bachelor’s degree, then you do another 2 years for master’s degree. these 2 don’t need to be at the same school or even same country. if you are continuing within the same school, you may be accepted to master’s based on your grades. otherwise you go through some application process where grades may play a role. it is the same when you apply for phd position. so the grades may definitely affect you. it is true that once you are done with the school and have your diploma, your grades are not really the topic of the conversation, but before that happens, you may have a reason to care.
(medical and law schools are exceptions from this system).
People who did well usually put their grade point average (GPA) on their resume. I was a hiring manager for some decades, and I didn’t tend to hire people who had less than a 3.2 from a decent school. Generally when people didn’t put their GPA it meant they didn’t get 2.5 or better.
But I was hiring for a specialty, and for a lot of jobs they really just want you to have the degree.
Yeah I would assume it’s definitely role-dependent right? Like speciality roles, higher paying roles I understand there’s always going to be a bit of prestige around that stuff but I guess I am more of an average Joe (Jane? Is that a saying, average Jane lol) 😅
See, I reckon we’ve become more degree focused here over the years which I don’t actually think is a good thing. My dad came from England (to Australia) with not even finishing high school and managed to climb up the corporate ladder without ever having to go to university. He was very good at his job, headhunted regularly and retired 5 years ago and still gets offers on contracts because he’s obviously held in high regard.
I think it’s a mistake to automatically require a degree for jobs. Not a dig at you personally, I understand that’s how the system has probably worked there for a long time and as I said it’s come in here too. I just don’t agree with that everyone needs a degree to do certain jobs. Some people do seem to have a natural infinity towards certain things and can excel without the study so I think it’s a flawed model to push everyone to the same requirements.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I was hiring embedded software engineers for space-based, human rated applications. The company was hardcore engineering, with software being a tiny piece of the engineering staff. They wanted engineering degrees from good schools as a kind of risk reduction: it didn’t guarantee people were good, but it ensured that they had mastered the subject matter from an academic point of view.
But I was there 40 years, from the mid 1980s, and computer science had only more recently been a degree offered by universities for a little while at that time. Most of my peers when I started learned to code as part of other degrees or non-degreed interests. A number of math and physics majors, but a couple excellent employees who learned to code as part of music/recording. A degree wasn’t a requirement for software people before my time.
So I had mixed emotions about it. Certainly a person could be an excellent developer by having learned on the job, but we were only rarely short of applicants with good GPAs from good schools. Oh, and we mostly promoted engineering leadership from the engineering staff, so your dad’s situation wouldn’t apply.
As an aside, my dad also came here (US) from England with only a high school education, though at least at the time, English high schools were more like US junior colleges.