Curious if this is of popular opinion or not, but for Private Equity firms to ask a Banker for their ACT score is just so completely absurd. You’re really going to judge someone how they studied/performed on a test in high school? You’re truly going to make a judgment call off that? After graduating from college and having a couple of years of real world work experience under their belt? Would love to be enlightened…
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In fact, if you have a high ACT score I just assume your were in a privileged home (which isn't a bad thing) with parents who made sure you cared about your education and emphasized going to "the best school." And if you have a low score it's most likely just the opposite or you were literally in high school and it took a couple of years to find some drive towards something. Yeah, oversimplified, but trying to emphasize just how stupid it is and kind of highlights how people at these funds are literally "cut from the same cloth" if they're concerned about ACT scores (which isn't s revelation for me, I get that's how it is). They all had aspirations of going to Harvard with a perfect ACT score but were disappointed when they had to go to Vanderbilt. It's always bothered them how they didn't get that 35, but they surely aren't going to let the kid get by with a 28 when they had a 31. Mostly just ranting and seeing if anyone else feels the same lol. It blows my mind and I feel like someone a long time ago decided to make it a factor and everyone just blindly followed and it's here to stay.
As a privileged Vanderbilt student with a 35 ACT, this hurts 🥲
As someone who worked their ass off for a good ACT score... but is from a family who lived paycheck to paycheck and struggled to make ends meet. this hurts
Did someone get a 28? Boohoo
Was waiting for this lol. I got a 25, took it without ever studying and was too busy playing basketball, football, baseball, and hanging out with friends. However, if I would have known my second employer post college would care, I may have thought about it differently. Doesn't that just sound absurd? Being told in high school, or telling a kid, your second employer post college will care about your ACT score…
I played two high school sports and one in college. Got a 1580 on the SAT from public high school and no private test prep. Also would say I had fun.
Agree that asking for a test score from over 5 years ago is stupid, but don’t lie to yourself with the notion that you have to be rich and/or a loser to get a good SAT or ACT score.
Those aren't mutually exclusive - you can get a good ACT score AND HAVE A SOCIAL LIFE TOO? What a revelation!!!!
my brother in christ the ACT is not a hard exam
I agree - everyone's story is different and standardized test scores are like the pacer test. You could hate running at 15 years old then you are an adult and the running club wants to know your pacer test score
Imagining a hardo college senior retaking it to get a 36 as an extra resume bullet point
Agreed that it's ridiculous to ask for a test taken likely 6 years ago for candidates applying to be associates at PE firms. But, the idea that these standardized tests are meaningless and only cater to the wealthy is completely false and has been debunked by numerous studies.
In a study involving 155,191 students from 41 American colleges and universities, SAT scores predicted academic performance even after socioeconomic status (SES) was controlled. SES added negligible additional predictive power. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document
I don't disagree in principle with you, but wanted to play devil's advocate with some quasi-hard data: At Bain, the one metric that was most correlated with performance was ACT.
Now granted, this is super, super convoluted (e.g., me as a first0gen from a trailer doesn't have the same reps of social grace as a CEO's kid, and Partner's generally like people that are similar to them more), but as far as a ~proxy~ for how well the student might do, it has ~some merit.
I don't like it. I disagree with it. But it's not like it doesn't have some inherent value.
There is at the very least a moderately strong relationship between IQ and ur ACT score according to the literature. That is not to suggest that everyone with a bad score is an idiot or that everyone with a good score is smart, but it’s just one data point that helps to estimate a potential candidate’s intelligence. Whether employers should prioritize IQ over other traits is a fair question.
I'm honestly shocked by some of the replies in this thread. Even aside from all the research correlating standardized tests to traditional measures of intelligence and success, take a moment to consider what is on the test
There will be a short passage highlighting the difficulties faced by working mothers, and a question will be like:
Does this passage....
I'm sorry but if you get that wrong, you're just stupid. There are full sample tests online that you can look at. The whole thing is frankly pretty easy. If you got a bad ACT score but think you're smart, just take it again and you won't have to question if it's hurting your recruiting.
If you get another bad score, you might just have to live with the fact that you have 70th percentile reading comprehension and someone at Apollo doesn't want to deal with your crappy emails