Saturday, March 26, 2022

I don't care about Ketanji Brown Jackson's LSAT scores and she does not care about my GRE scores

Tucker Carlson has asked to see Ketanji Brown Jacksons's LSATs. 

When I applied to College they (not sure who they are) wanted to see my SAT scores. Putting aside the issue of whether the test means anything, they viewed the SATs (and my HS grades and letters from teachers) as a sign of my 

                                                       potential. 

When I applied to Grad school they (a different they) wanted to see my GRE scores. Putting aside the issue of whether the test means anything, they viewed the GREs (and my college grades and letters from professors) as a sign of my

                                                       potential. 

When I applied for jobs as a professor they (another they) wanted to see my resume (papers I wrote) and letters from my advisor and others (I think). They did not look at my grades (just as well- I got a B in both compiler design and operating systems. Darling is amazed I even took operating systems). This was probably the oddest of the application processes since they were looking for both

                                                    potential and achievement.

That is, the evidence that I could do research was that I had done some research. This was before the current  era where grad students had to have x papers in prestige conferences to get a job at a top y school. The letter from my advisor may well have spoken of my potential. 

When I went up for tenure ALL they cared about was PAPERS (and letters saying they were good papers), and some teaching and service. It was based just  on 

                                                          achievement.

A wise man named Lance Fortnow once told me:

The worst thing a letter of recommendation for a tenure case can say is `this person has great potential'


It would have been rather odd for Tucker Carlson to ask to see my SAT scores or GRE scores or by HS, College, or Grad School grades as a criteria for Tenure. Those tests and those grades are there to measure potential to DO something, whereas if you are going up for tenure or a Supreme Court seat, you've already DONE stuff. 

After I got into grad school one of my first thoughts was

Nobody will ever want to see my GRE's again. ( I was right.) 

After KBJ got into Law School she might have thought

Nobody will ever want to see my LSAT scores again. (She was wrong.)




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