bradwschiller

This is false. AP classes are meant to be college-level classes. The goals of these classes is to earn scores that yield college credits. The tests exist to provide some form of standardization around understanding a student's performance against a standard in these classes. AP exams are not measured on a curve like an SAT (although even the SAT has massive score inflation. AP exams are measured against a standard for learning – and the standards are clearly not being met as clearly evidenced by the scores. Similarly grades are meant to be a measurement of learning against a standard. Yet, grades have increased and learning outcomes have not increased. This is a fact.

Grade inflation is an obvious problem. It does a disservice to students, making them believe they are exceptional at something they are actually mediocre at. Some rants related to this and how awful grade inflation is for students and the world.

AP score data is especially indicative of this. In AP classes, most high school students earn As from their teachers (I estimate around ~60%). Yet, when you look at the AP scores, few get 5s on exams (the equivalent of an A). For example, 5-10% get 5's on AP English and Science-related exams. Scores are a bit higher on Social Sciences (10-15% 5s) and math/CS (~25%). But only ~50% of students even get above a 3 on the exam (the equivalent of a C). So there are people who essentially get a D by the standard (a 2) that are getting an A in their high school class.

I could go on with countless examples of how students aren't nearly as capable as their grades would indicate. At McKinsey, I interviewed over 100 people from top schools with high GPAs. Many couldn't solve simple math problems when given the problem in the context of a real-world case.

At out top institutions with our top students, we should be pushing them extremely hard and measuring them against a higher bar. I find it disappointing that they are being measured against the same (or even a lower bar) than students at other institutions. It's so bad that it seems clear that a Harvard Education isn't any better than a Penn State, Nebraska, or even UC Riverside education. The only difference is having the Harvard brand and network. It's an embarrassment. And it's not just a problem at Harvard. It's a problem at every top institution.

Grade-motivated students don't put in the extra work when little effort still earns them As. One example stands out. I run an edtech company, and in our early days, we ran an experiment at doesmyessaysuck.com. You could submit your essay, get a score, and 2 pieces of feedback on how to improve the content and structure of your writing. We did about a thousand essays before abandoning it. I always think about one student. He submitted an essay we generously gave a C (it was really bad). It was incoherent, poorly structure, didn't answer the prompt, and lacked sound logical reasoning. He responded we were wrong because he had gotten a 93% on it.

Also – https://www.gradeinflation.com/ is a good read. It's out-of-date data. But it proves the point even further than this article.

Note: There is some research out there that claims grade inflation is false and that more students actually have learned more than in previous years (i.e., the academic bar hasn't changed, but more students are above it). However, this research is unconvincing (and ripe with errors). There's essentially been zero improvement (and even a decline) in basic math and literacy skills over the past couple of decades (as measured by standardized tests). Yet grades are much higher. And high school and college graduation rates are up by about 10 percentage points since the early 2000s. As it turns out, when your only measure of success is graduation rate, you end up with more graduates – even if those graduates don't have any skills.

Selling shares in people isn't a new idea. Upstart started by doing this exact same thing in 2012 (they pivoted to personal lending and were very successful). But Upstart couldn't make the investing in people marketplace work.

There's too much information asymmetry. The highest-potential people (i.e., the ones you'd want to invest in!) know they're rockstars. And they value their future earnings potential as such. But it's very difficult to evaluate someone's potential as an ordinary investor. Just look at the hit rate on hiring people into jobs (not ideal) – and hiring likely has more diligence than here.

The highest-potential people therefore feel the deal the investors would give them is bad (and don't take it). The mediocre people will take the deal. But investors won't get a good return, and the company will need to make the deal less and less advantageous to the mediocre people until the mediocre people even find it unappealing.

There are many examples of failures in people-related investment products. The information asymmetry leaves someone holding the bag – typically the investor. 3 examples:

1. Income share agreements (ISA) for education. Many companies and even states (e.g., Oregon) have tried this to poor effect. People majoring in STEM degrees didn't take the deal (as it was a bad deal for them given their future earnings power). And people majoring in humanities did take the deal (as it was a good deal for them given their lower future earnings power). Also, many people who actually may benefit from ISAs don't really understand them and also won't take them. Note: Bloom Tech seems to be making ISA's work through force of will. But they also are in a specific niche where the ROI is much clearer and the ISAs are therefore easier to underwrite.

2. Life insurance for people with illnesses. There's a market for paying ill people money now in exchange for being the beneficiary on their life insurance. It provides the ill people a better living now and provides a return later for the investors. But, the information asymmetry and potential fraud with medicals can lead to a bad outcome for investors. For example, if I agree to pay someone $50k per year until they die in exchange for being the beneficiary on a $500k life insurance policy, then I'm in the red if they live for more than 10 years. The medicals may indicate the person may have 3 to 5 years to live. But what if they live 20? So while this market exists, it's very niche and very risky due to the information asymmetry.

3. Buying shares in an athlete. Fantex pioneered this starting with NFL players. Players took the deal because they are injury-prone and many have short careers. There was information asymmetry at work again. And nearly all investments in athletes went poorly (shorter careers, less than expected earnings).

So overall, I think we'd all love to see a model work where we can bet on individual people to succeed and share in their success. However, it just doesn't work. It's not the same as investors betting on the founders of companies – those founders have to have the money for success. The individuals probably don't need substantial capital (and even if they were using the money to create something – wouldn't you rather have the piece of the company than a piece of their earnings?).

Best of the best is very subjective. Once you're over the academic bar of being able to do the work, other factors are far more important for success in college and life.

Essentially, there's a bar for intellectual horsepower – which 4 in 5 Harvard applicants are above. And this is the same for all highly-selective institutions.

Then, other factors become far more important. Specifically, colleges look for people who are unusual even in a pool of extremely higher-performers (essentially the top 1% of all high school graduates). Students who are unusually driven, unusually intellectually curious, unusual contributors, unusual experiences, unusual at taking the initiative.

These personality traits are very similar to what YC looks for in founders. Raw intellectual horsepower is important – but only to a point. Given the choice between a student far above the academic bar without any other distinguishing features and a student just above the academic bar but is unusually driven – we'd pick the unusually driven person pretty much every time.

It's clear the SAT/ACT has predictive power for highly-selective colleges, such as MIT. And therefore, they are valuable for these colleges – especially for the Math scores as MIT suggests. The value of SAT/ACT scores decreases as selectivity decreases or as math abilities matter less for admission (e.g., liberal arts programs).

Here are some related points:

- Harvard considers roughly 4 in 5 applicants to be academically capable of doing the work at Harvard (about 50,000 applicants of which Harvard only accepts 2,000). This data is pulled from their court documents, and my team wrote about it here: https://writingcenter.prompt.com/posts/strong-essays-increas....

- This means that most applicants at highly-selective colleges are very similar academically. Colleges are mostly just using grades, academic rigor, and test scores to determine whether the student will be able to succeed doing the work in college. Absent other information on academic preparation (e.g., not having access to AP/IB classes), the SAT/ACT score can be a critical signal of whether the student can do the work. Students with well-above-the-bar academics are admitted at a 3x clip to those just above the academic bar. But other parts of the application (e.g., essays, athletics) can have a much stronger effect on admissions chances (e.g., a strong personal score, much of which is essay-related, can have a 10x increase on admissions chances).

- Math SAT really is highly predictive of math abilities. When I was with McKinsey, we asked for applicants' SAT scores because it was highly predictive of people succeeding at McKinsey. People hired with scores below 700 struggled to succeed analytically. So, McKinsey used 700 as a bar. MIT is roughly doing the same thing here. Other colleges do this as well.

- Outside of highly-selective institutions, the SAT/ACT can have less predictive power in student success in college than other factors (e.g., GPA). There are a bunch of great analyses at fairtest.org that looks at these exams - e.g., breaking scores down by race.

So overall, we tend to give weight to what we know and what data we're looking at. Most of the SAT/ACT analyses out there are looking across all students. Here, MIT is looking at just their proportion of students. So, both things can be true – the SAT/ACT may not be a useful predictor for the vast majority of students. But scores can (and do) matter for the highest performers, the approximately 1% of high school graduates attending the most selective colleges.

And as MIT states, a perfect SAT/ACT score doesn't matter all that much. All they're using the scores for is to provide an indication of whether the student is above their bar for being able to do the work (e.g., not failing multivariable calculus).

Note: I did go to MIT – some of you may think this is relevant. I also run the largest college essay coaching company globally, Prompt.com. So I've spent a lot of time understanding college admissions.

I'd test out some of your more thoughtful and detail-oriented friends. You may find one or two who you feel are adding value and pushing your work forward. If you're going to pay for someone, it's very difficult to find a good editor. Most "editors" are only used to providing sentence-level feedback and may not have enough context about the subject your writing about to be helpful with content feedback. At Prompt, we find only 2% of the thousands of Writing Coach applicants we receive are good enough to make it into our network – i.e., the writing feedback skill is really hard to find.

The philosophy of Deliberate Practice applies very well to writing. There are some online writing courses you can take (e.g., David Perrell has one), but there's a lot you can do on your own (and with the help of some friends). Here are the two biggest things.

1. Start with an outline. This will help you cement the most important points of your writing/argument in your mind and enable you to start filling in the gaps. Often, I'll spend a lot of time getting the major points I'm making very crisp before I write a full draft. Doing this will also help you identify what's missing. The most important parts to focus on are (1) where a reader may disagree (i.e. where you'll need to make your argument stronger and back with evidence), and (2) where your reader will have questions that you'll need to answer.

2. Get feedback and revise 2-3 times. Getting feedback and acting on it is the single most valuable thing you can do; however, most people don't know how to provide writing feedback. They'll focus on grammar unless you specify what you want the reader to think about. There are two strategies here – (1) Provide your reader with a list of questions you want them to answer. I always use the following four: What did you learn? Is what you learned compelling (if not, why wasn't it compelling)? What didn't you learn that you wanted to learn? Where was it clear/not clear? (2) add specific comments/questions within your writing in places you are less comfortable with and want feedback.

There's not much out there on the specifics of Amazon's approach to writing, but there are bits and pieces around.

Jeff Bezos's 2017 shareholder letter highlights some of his thinking around 6-page narratives: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518...

This Slab article by Ben Bashaw is pretty good on the topic: https://slab.com/blog/jeff-bezos-writing-management-strategy...

Scott does a good job of some of the major points of Amazon writing based on his time there (this was written based on a previous HN discussion on Amazon writing): https://blog.usejournal.com/writing-docs-at-amazon-e02580861...

Hey! Thanks for the comment and going to the site (Prompt.com). We're focused on students for now, but we will be launching supports for professionals in the future. We're almost all B2B sales, which is why you found it harder to find us than you'd have probably liked.

As it turns out, most people aren't similar to the Hacker News population – they won't seek out and act on feedback on their own. As such, we've found the best way to improve writing skills is to require people to get feedback and act on it. This means working with K-12 and higher ed institutions.

Agreed that understanding the business is critical. Writing is one of the best ways for someone to develop a better understanding of the business - e.g., what metric are we tracking and why?

Overall, I'm not saying that there aren't a bunch of other important things to running a business, just that great writing makes running a business far easier.

On a side note – implementing performance management gets crazy gains without requiring process changes. I used to get an immediate 30%+ productivity bump when I'd implement performance management (e.g., metrics, daily huddles) in a place that had little of it.

I've given significant thought to the writing problem, and I firmly believe the lack of writing is dramatically slowing the pace of innovation in the world. Writing is really Amazon's superpower. It's why they get big things done quickly.

Both the author and the audience greatly benefit from the writing. Writing clarifies and structures thinking – helping the reader understand the points the author is making.

As a bit more context, I used to work at McKinsey and much of my job fit into two roles: (1) translating what employees were thinking into something executives could understand, and (2) making PowerPoint slides. In other words, I was often there because employees couldn't write well. But, I also found PowerPoint lacking – it's hard to get some of the more important points across (creating some confusion) because it doesn't allow for longer-form thought.

I've put a bunch of thoughts together on why writing is important and how we fix our education system to make people better writers. It's based on my experiences supporting tens of thousands of students on improving writing skills – https://bradsblog.com/2020/05/15/1-writing-is-the-most-impor....

I think what's missing here is that the product is sticky for a number of people and spending on user acquisition costs are likely to go down. Each company essentially takes a 10% rake on every game and I'd imagine these companies will be profitable in the long. I don't think legal issues will destroy these companies as it's really only a matter of time before sports gambling becomes legal across the US and New York is already letting these companies continue to operate this year.

I don't believe the issue around small numbers of players making all of the money is important. As someone who uses both platforms for fun, I find I'm willing and many of my friends are willing to lose a bit of money each week as it makes the games far more entertaining to watch when you have a rooting interest. Many of the sports leagues and ESPN realize this which is why you saw them invest in these companies. Fantasy leads to more engagement with the sports and daily fantasy leads to even more engagement.

Daily fantasy is not for everyone, but it'll likely maintain a core number of users, many of whom use both FanDuel and DraftKings. Acquisition costs will be less important in the future and provided that fixed costs such as legal fees decrease in the coming years, these companies will become stable and profitable.

One of the big issues with the credit card business is fraud. Fraud is around 1% of all credit card transactions. Fraud tends to be higher on online payments where the "card not present" rate that merchants pay is higher than the "card present rate" enjoyed by brick and mortar stores.

In addition to fraud, credit card companies have to contend with the purchasing power of large companies (e.g., the Costco example ditching Amex) and also their own expenses as many people like concierge services and other "perks" that cost money and are becoming more standard on cards for people with higher credit and income.

In practice, it's fairly difficult to offer much of an incentive beyond 2% cash back (which Fidelity Amex and the Capital One Visa Spark Card offer). However; these cards are closer to being loss leaders for their institutions as they want to incentivize you to do your banking with them as well (Fidelity does this fairly well as the cash back must be deposited into a Fidelity account). Charles Schwab was the first to have a 2% cash back card many years ago and they discontinued it, likely because they lost money on it.

Travel-based rewards cards can get away with offering seemingly better incentives because of their margin. Starwood is a perfect example of this as hotels have a high fixed cost base and low variable cost base. The variable cost to stay at a high-end hotel is something like $50-60 per night if the room is vacant. So while Starwood seems to be paying out 2 cents on the dollar (e.g., 10,000 points for a $200 room), they are really only paying out 0.5 cents on the dollar. This is why the Starwood Amex is seemingly the best Credit Card. It's all about the economics of the company that brands it.

Oscar is great in the NYC / NJ area (https://www.hioscar.com/). They do a good job of lveraging technology and are less confusing than other insurance companies. They even have a program with Misfit where you get $1 per day for reaching your steps goal. Lowest premiums I've found. I'm paying less than $1,000 per month total for myself, my wife, and my kid.