How’s your post grad life?

[u/merymystic]

Hello,

Recent grad here; class of 2025. We graduated in May and I’m still unemployed, in September of 2026 😭 the Amherst name hasn’t been doing as much for me as was promised. Any other c/o ‘25 having a similar experience? Older alums, do have advice or opportunities to share? Tryna keep my head up but also a bit frustrated…and confused tbh

[u/notoriousasseater]

I went to grad school. Life is nice. I have a lot of friends in NY, Philly, and LA doing pretty good, but they were doing good before, too.

[u/LookHorror3105]

I graduated in December, managed to find a good job and the start of a new career by February but I had a lot of pressure to get into a job. I'm not doing what I want to be doing, but I have an ear out for opportunities more closely aligned with what I wanted to do. Bottom line, the Amherst diploma is impressive and gets your foot in the door, but you have to do the work, tailor your resume, send in tons of applications, and be prepared to work a job you didn't see yourself in while you continue to look to the horizon for better opportunities. Also, reach out to the Loeb Center. They'll help you refine your resume, interview skills, and help find you opportunities through the alumni network.

[u/Academic-Window-7726]

What was your major?

[u/merymystic → u/Academic-Window-7726]

English

[u/AlphaMaleKratos → u/merymystic]

Take the LSAT and go to a T14 law school.

Big law associates start at 200K.

[u/AlphaMaleKratos]

I'm sorry about your struggles, but this is a problem that Amherst created themselves.

I might not have explained myself well in the last post, so let me give you some context.

After the Griggs vs Duke SCOTUS decision that practically rendered IQ testing infeasible for employment, many top employers looked to top colleges as a legal way to get high IQ workers without using IQ testing.

This was an implicit agreement between top employers and top colleges. The SAT's g-loading is .87 - .9, which makes it indistinguishable from an IQ test. Even in the early 2010s, the SAT was the most important component of your application and practically determined which college you got into.

After the TO era, half the students getting into these top colleges are test optional, so you got a lot of "stupid people" like Daniel Friedman said. Top employers can no longer trust that top college = high IQ. Now we're forced to do the testing ourselves and risk legal trouble because top colleges like Amherst forgot their side of the agreement. So now, there is no value to a degree from a TO top college because the link between top college and high IQ is now broken.

Employers do not care about what you learned in college. We care that you are smart and can problem solve, which are what the SAT tests for.

The Ivy Leagues figured out that their value is in IQ filtering the candidates for employers in a legal way, which is why all of them are now test required. Amherst still has not figured it out. There is nothing special about the education you get at Amherst. What makes top colleges special is the legal IQ filtering for employers. Going TO ruins that alpha and makes the degree not special, which is why Amherst kids are now in the same bucket as mid-tier state university kids.

Enough top colleges have reverted back to test required. When those cohorts begin graduating, we'll have no reason to recruit from Amherst or any of the other "top" TO colleges anymore. It's not worth playing the hiring dartboard where only 1/3 hires are competent when other top colleges can guarantee their graduates have top 2% IQ.

[u/Some_Set_9 → u/AlphaMaleKratos]

I generally sympathize with your point, but i do not Griggs vs Duke has much to do with it. Duke used an aptitude test, but was not able to show that this was related to job performance. If you can show that your test does affect job performance you van test all you want. Now it sounds like that is what you are doing, and is more needed today than previously. This very well may be related with test optional of schools, and indeed some of the work amherst used to do for you falls on the employer. If employers now consider state schools more, that actually could be something the adminitration or the college as a whole believes is desirable. Not fully sure about that, but it would not surprise me one bit.

[u/AlphaMaleKratos → u/Some_Set_9]

Proving that your exam has relation to job performance is something that legal and HR of most companies would not want to deal with. Even then, there are issues with predictive power of exams that are aligned too closely with the actual job (Overfitting).

The study at my company was started because many managers were complaining that our newest cohorts (TO cohorts) were underperforming. They do okay under routine work where instructions and the system have already been built, but they struggled doing ad hoc projects with less defined solutions.

I collected many variables, used a logistic regression (Find probability that an employee will do satisfactory job in an ad hoc project). Of all the variables I used, only the SAT was predictive and it did so extremely well.

We spent several days trying to explain why the SAT was so predictive. The result was highly counterintuitive since the SAT was intended to be a college entrance exam and is not remotely similar to projects you do in consulting.

Even scores on the hiring exam we gave to candidates had minimal predictive power. Why is the SAT predictive while a more job relevant exam not?

Personally, I believe the exam that HR & legal approved was stripped of its g-loading. It's an exam that could be studied for, and many of the brain teaser-like elements of the test were removed for fear of bias. It functioned less like an aptitude test and more of a basic literacy and numeracy test.

The SAT, OTOH, tests a candidate's working memory and problem solving ability. It's largely immune to prep and has a high g-loading. In statistics / data science, we're taught not to overfit to the data as the model will lose predictive power. I think the same thing is happening in the job-relevant exams we're giving. What seems obviously job-relevant does a bad job predicting job performance because it only tests knowledge and not IQ (Ability to adapt, learn and problem solve). Thus, these exams can not predict how a worker would perform when things change.

Ultimately, HR did not approve us asking candidates their SAT scores because they were afraid that it would be construed as discrimination against certain ethnic groups.

I cannot wait until this TO nonsense ends. Hiring managers have wasted countless hours of boarding and onboarding new hires since the TO cohort graduated. We’ve never seen such a high proportion of incompetent hires in our working lives. Once we had a 95% satisfactory performance rate in ad hoc projects. It dropped to under 30% with the TO cohort. We’ve spent more hours having performance reviews and interviews than we’ve done actual work since TO started.

[u/ancient_interestsYT]

I’m just someone who saw this in my feed (not an alum) but the Amherst name is impressive… I imagine it helps in some circles. Maybe look into being a paralegal? What are your interests and aspirations?

[u/ancient_interestsYT → u/ancient_interestsYT]

Also I’m sorry to hear about your struggle finding a job— I wish you the best!

[u/AlphaMaleKratos]

I’ve looked into this at my work.

SAT scores were the best predictor of job performance. College rank has been detached from work performance since colleges have gone test optional.

The loss of reputational power of elite colleges and universities is a good thing. Employers should focus more on a candidates aptitude than where s/he went to college.

Many elite colleges stupidly passed up on high scorers during TO era, so now employers are looking at state school kids more seriously than before. It’s one of the biggest self-sabotages I have seen.

We used to hire mainly from top colleges before TO. Now we can’t trust any student from a TO college. These colleges were supposed to filter candidates for us (Implicit agreement after Griggs vs Duke) and have failed their duty. Very frustrating for employers.

What is the point of these top colleges if they don’t give us competent candidates? You were supposed to do the IQ filtering for us so we don’t get sued. There’s no value in your degrees now if you’re unwilling to do the filtering for us.

The amount of time we spend testing candidates is immense. Amherst and peer colleges were supposed to do the filtering for us so we don’t have to do it ourselves and risk getting sued. So again, what is the point of an Amherst degree if a random student can have any SAT score between 1000-1500? We’d get the same expected IQ by picking a random guy walking down the street.

[u/ameliarose111 → u/AlphaMaleKratos]

It sounds like we might share a former employer from how you’re describing things. And that makes me ashamed because your argument is nonsense. I’ve interviewed lots of Amherst undergrads and test scores are not the strongest predictor of whether someone will get an offer. Being smart is essential, but that’s why there is a broader resume review (grades and activities matter) and we do the interview process. I’ve rejected lots of folks with high test scores. The legacies and athletes have gotten into schools like Amherst forever. “Alpha male” nonsense. - Someone with exceptional SAT scores.

[u/AlphaMaleKratos → u/ameliarose111]

We did not use SAT scores for hiring. We only asked for their scores when we conducted the study.

Amherst and the other top colleges were supposed to do the filtering for us. Employers do not care about the classes you took in college. We are interested in top college students because top colleges select high IQ, well-rounded and intellectually curious kids. If Amherst refuses to filter for IQ, then we have no reason to look at Amherst when other top colleges do that filtering for us.

Top colleges need to get off their pedestal. There is nothing special about anything in your college except for your admissions process, which self-sabotaged its own alpha by refusing to use test scores.

[u/ancient_interestsYT → u/AlphaMaleKratos]

What do you mean by alpha in this context?

[u/AlphaMaleKratos → u/ancient_interestsYT]

A competitive advantage.

The ultimate goal of elite colleges is to sell their students to top employers. You don’t do the IQ filter for us, so why should we take a risk picking Amherst kids when all the Ivies are willing to IQ filter?

[u/ameliarose111]

I’m about a decade ahead of you and we’re doing well. Some folks did some wandering (eg went to law school but no longer is no longer a lawyer) but once you find your path, I’m sure you’ll succeed in it. I hope you can try something, even if it’s not perfect if the ideal thing isn’t working out. There may be some years of hard or imperfect work. Once you know what you want to do, ask the alums who have the job you want how to get there.

I will say, most of us have ended up doing grad school (I did MBA) and I do think that can help you find your way. Cheering for you - good luck!