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From: rcd@nbires.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Degrees, grades...
Message-ID: <636@nbires.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 05:00:25 EST
Article-I.D.: nbires.636
Posted: Fri Feb 28 05:00:25 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 00:28:42 EST
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> > In my book, your degree has no intrinsic quality or value; it is a statment
> > that you attended university X and performed well enough not to be expelled.
> 
> What about a 4.0 gpa from Princeton or somewhere?

Yes, indeed--what about it?  So *** what?

> ...
> It's very hard to get a 4.0 from a good school without being
> interested and motivated. 

No, it is not.  In fact, the people who can get a 4.0 from any reputable
school are, in my experience, much less likely to be interested and
motivated than the people in roughly the 3.3-3.8 range.

You can get a 4.0 by being pretty bright and obsessive/compulsive with the
right(???) focus.  You don't have to be the least bit interested.

Why?  What am I getting at?  Look, I've taken AND taught lots of university
courses.  You can't spend too much time in the university environment
before you realize that it has its share of BS just like the rest of the
world.  Some of the faculty lecture from notes which are yellowing with
age.  Some of the faculty are absolute ignorant assholes who maintain their
positions through sheer perverse tenacity.  In a good school, most of the
faculty DON'T fit these profiles--but a few do.  The chances of going
through an entire degree program (undergraduate in particular) without
encountering at least one turkey are so small as to be negligible.  I am
suspicious of people who have never lost interest in a course, never said
"it's not worth the grief", never focused their interests on one area to
the extent of neglecting another.  The difference between a 4.0 and a 3.8
(particularly in undergraduate) may be at best luck-of-the-draw in courses
and professors.  At worst, the 4.0 student is a grade-oriented automaton
who is useless in the "real world" because he has trained for 16-20 years
in the "academic arts" to the exclusion of any useful skills or knowledge.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Worst-case analysis must never begin with "No one will ever want..."