a trend I dislike

Here’s the top of a New York Times story:

“For Aspiring Doctors, a People Skills Test
By GARDINER HARRIS
With the health care system demanding greater social skills, Virginia Tech Carilion invites those seeking admission to undergo a series of rapid interviews.”

There are several problems with this, as far as I can see.

1. An interview is not a good place to test people skills. It’s such a highly artificial situation, and really tests charm and schmoozing skills, not people skills. There are plenty of very fake people who blow interviewers away, and then simply turn out to be fake. This is why I am adamantly opposed to interviews for graduate school slots. Your more serious potential students are very likely to be nervous or awkward in interviews, or simply a bit flat. The kinds of potential students likely to do well in interviews are the same kinds of students who are able to charm their professors all the way through their graduate school careers– and it is not my experience that such people always turn out to be the most intellectually solid and capable of independent work.

2. Who cares if someone isn’t socially poised at age 22? Big deal! They’ll get there by 28 or 30, more likely than not.

If interviews are simply meant to screen out the tiny percentage of absolute crazies, then that may sound all right, but I thought that’s what reference letters were for. (No, no one comes right out and says “this guy is absolutely crazy,” but there are between-the-lines ways of warning people.)

I have similar issues with the move to increase emphasis on grades and decrease emphasis on standardized tests for college admissions. The argument usually given for this is that “high school grades are the best predictor of success in college.” While this is surely true, it is also a mere tautology. What it really means is this: “high school grades are the best predictor of college grades.” Well, no kidding. But the question being avoided here is whether college grades are the best indicator of success in college. Grades are often about nothing more than the ability to do what your professor wants in highly competent fashion. And sure, it takes some intelligence to do that. But the overwhelming majority of innovative thinkers I know had problems of some sort with doing their best work in either high school or college, and quite often even in graduate school.

In the end, what matters is the work you do in your lifetime. College and high school grades are at best a fuzzy early indicator of whether you’ll be competent enough to get the sorts of positions you’ll need. They are not an end in themselves, quite obviously.