LOL, you think because someone went to "Northwestern" that makes them more qualified?? What did he/she major in? History? Art? Music? LOL Anyways the FAA really doesnt care what you majored in or where you went. In the private industry what college you went amy have some effect but really only for the first job out of college and when it comes to most govt jobs they really generally dont care they just want to know you meet the requirements. But after your first job, your work experience generally speaks for you and your degree is seen as "B.S. or B.A" and name of college really doesnt matter. A degree shows the same traits as progressive work experience, It shows that you a capable of long term commitment to something (generally you cant finish your degree by being a lazy) which shows them responsibility. Personally if it were me and I have spent all this money developeing this test im going to use it as the indicator as to whether some one has the necessary
skills to perform the job. Then Im going to use their experience(work and school) to determine if they are going to have the
commitment and motivation to complete the program. Therefore no matter what school you go to or what job you do, if you show a progressive ability to succeed then you probably possess the ability to do so with the FAA as well. Second of all why would it matter what job someone started their career at? I started at Mcdonalds when I was 15 and I am damned proud of it. In fact most people start jobs this way. There is typically a limited number of jobs that are available at this age. Great that you got a job at an accounting company and that its a "Large Corporation" (is it a FORTUNE 500 or anything else special

). But I think that actually your work background is not very diverse, if youve worked for the same company for your entire working career. I would never want to give up starting at Mcdonalds and working my way up through different jobs. I think with a little diversity in your work experience you get to meet alot of different people and see how things are done differently at different places. In fact the working relationships you pick up while changing jobs early in your career are great learning experience. And I bet you wouldnt think of a Wendys manager as a cake job if you had to go deal with teenagers all day.
But overall if youve done great things and went to a great school and your that well qualifiesd for the job. What was your problem with the test. I mean honestly this was a fairly easy exam. I beleive that this test has been thought out pretty thoroughly and a lot of money has been spent on it. So I really dont understand the Person A and Person B comparison. If you are as qualified and good as you say then this should have reflected itsslef in the exam.
Exactly...the FAA doesn't care where you went to school as long as you went to school and showed the ability to make it through and commit to bettering yourself. They don't have a copy of the
Princeton Review sitting next to them so they can flip through it to find where your school ranks in terms of academics or classroom experience.
In the private industry, it definitely matters where you went to school because certain schools traditional tend to produce better works for certain fields. The FAA doesn't care at all where you went to school. If someone has a degree from Stanford and another has one from Florida State, they are both equally qualified because they both have colllege degrees.
Being in charge of a lot of people in a business has nothing to do with the FAA unless you are going into management. The FAA cares about who can control air traffic safely and efficiently. The AT SAT is their way of determining who is better capable of doing that. Just because someone went to Harvard and ran a Fortune 500 company that means nothing to the FAA if they scored a 75 on the AT SAT. Yes, they showed great qualifications in other fields, but they didn't perform well on a FAA standardized test.
You also can't assume that someone who went to (ex. GSU) wasn't able to get into a better school. Some people choose certain schools for sports, scholarships, budget. I personally wouldn't be getting into government work if I had over $100K in student loans because I went to a private and/or out of state school. I know you weren't assuming, but just because you have a degree from NW, it doesn't mean that you are more capable of being an air traffic controller.
The FAA is going to have a checklist for people with no air traffic experience:
Age requirement- check
College Degree- check
Progressively more responsible work experience- check
AT SAT score-?
Preferred region to work-?
If you have air traffic experience (contractor, military controller, etc.) your AT SAT doesn't matter as much since 1/3 of the people accepted last year had previous aviation experience. You can probably get by with a 80 or so if you were a controller for the military.
If you went to a CTI school, you are going to have a better chance of getting in because of your aviation background and/or degree. Roughly 1,000 people were hired this way last year. Most of these people don't even have to worry about the AT SAT since their school notifies the FAA of their exceptional ability while they are still in school.
That leaves roughly 200 spots for people with no air traffic experience and the only way to separate these people is by using the common factor, the AT SAT...