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After Credentials

paulgraham.com · 2,407 words · saved by 1 readers

December 2008 A few months ago I read a New York Times article on South Korean cram schools that said Admission to the right university can make or break an ambitious young South Korean. A parent added: "In our country, college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent of a person's future." It was striking how old fashioned this sounded. And yet when I was in high school it wouldn't have seemed too far off as a description of the US. Which means things must have been changing here. The course of people's lives in the US now seems to be determined less by credentials and more by performance than it was 25 years ago. Where you go to college still matters, but not like it used to. What happened? _____ Judging people by their academic credentials was in its time an advance. The practice seems to have begun in China, where starting in 587 candidates for the imperial civil service had to take an exam on classical literature. [1] It was also a test of wealth, because the know

After Credentials --> December 2008 A few months ago I read a New York Times article on South Korean cram schools that said Admission to the right university can make or break an ambitious young South Korean. A parent added: "In our country, college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent of a person's future." It was striking how old fashioned this sounded. And yet when I was in high school it wouldn't have seemed too far off as a description of the US. Which means things must have been changing here. The course of people's lives in the US now seems to be determined less by credentials and

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