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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 7717104" data-attributes="member: 6688858">I do think the pendulum has swung a little too far in the direction of ignoring traditional applicants and encouraging non-traditional applicants.Despite getting excellent grades in math in high school and winning math competitions in junior high (high school math competitions were phased out before I got there), I was never encouraged by anyone to study it at university, so I didn't, because I didn't find grade school mathematics very interesting. In fact all I heard about quant degrees at the time was that they're too hard, too competitive, too dry, etc.At uni all I heard about grad school was that it's too competitive nowadays, too expensive, you'll be overqualified for an entry level position, etc. so I thought I was doing the smart thing by not pursuing it. I finally broke into a thankfully decent-paying career (where most of my co-workers have comp sci degrees) via self-study while working in a warehouse. It was a tough road to doing the kind of work I was clearly suited for in the first place but didn't know anything about.Meanwhile my college girlfriend, who used to say she was intimidated by my intelligence and would ask me for help with her schoolwork, went on to get two master's degrees and now works for the World Health Organization in Dubai.Yeah it seems like another thing that is changing is the degree to which people think shyness/diffidence is an inherent part of one's personality. It used to be thought that shyness was a temporary personality problem that you could help kids grow out of (for ex. by getting them into team sports or part-time jobs so they could build confidence), now it seems more likely to be thought that some kids are just naturally shy and others are not. When that clearly is not true -- I mean you can see it in any social species that dominant/submissive behavior, particularly in males, is very labile depending on who they're interacting with and their relative status within the group.Meanwhile aptitude/intelligence is considered more and more to be mutable, and standardized testing ecologically invalid, culturally biased, and so on.Aptitude is more mutable than social skills. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength...</blockquote>

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