<story><title>In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/education/us-students-have-achieved-world-domination-in-computer-science-skillsfor-now</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>harias</author><text>&amp;gt; Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated.&lt;p&gt;There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with well-paying jobs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bfrydl</author><text>I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It&amp;#x27;s 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that.&lt;p&gt;And how about this lovely question:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible PINs are there?&lt;p&gt;Putting aside the value of this question in the first place, the correct answer is 720 but it also includes the answer 1000 in case you didn&amp;#x27;t notice the emphasis on “different”.&lt;p&gt;Doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a great test to me unless it&amp;#x27;s about your reading comprehension and ability to decipher code with single-letter variable names.</text></comment>
<story><title>In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/education/us-students-have-achieved-world-domination-in-computer-science-skillsfor-now</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>harias</author><text>&amp;gt; Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated.&lt;p&gt;There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with well-paying jobs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mc91</author><text>&amp;gt; many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with well-paying jobs&lt;p&gt;I switched into programming and am low paid, and am doing this right now for interviews.  Practicing for whiteboard interviews, or coding tests (real time online and in person).&lt;p&gt;I re-read the language docs and then did (so far) 20 or so self-timed programming tests.  Most of them I did in 5-30 minutes, 1 or 2 I got stuck on and subsequently reviewed.  After finishing reading the language docs I will read though the platform docs, and may do some quizzes on that as well.  As well as whiteboard high level class creation tests (HAS-A, IS-A).&lt;p&gt;The tests have a lot of array stuff, String manipulation, using long instead of int, casting from one type to another, doing a lot of stuff with maps and sorting maps by value.  It also uses things then can be done quickly and compactly in streams.  I do these things once in a while, but now have it memorized and down cold.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this all leads to the latter result you mentioned.</text></comment>