Silicon valley would be better served (and better serve others) when they stop giving hand service to the same schools they they went to and the people who think and act exactly like them.
Sooo, only NC State then. When I think Non-top tier I think Chico and Northern Colorado, not Duke and U-Penn. Guess that shows more about what my idea of top-tier is looking up than what I would think looking down.
When YC posts about visiting the top-tier schools, it gives the impression that they are the only schools that matter.
And I have to ask: If the Ivies/MIT/Stanford aren't the only schools that matter, why call them out in a post that's distinct from the winter tour post?
I'm calling out the schools this time because when I submitted a post titled "YC Winter Tour 2016" last year, this is how it performed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10881402.
Is there a requirement that YC announcements perform well? I'm not trying to be negative, but just announce all the tours the same way and let people make of it what they will.
I can't imagine the amount of crying from the community if the hosts of the site would take special privilege to pin their posts at the top. (I'd be fine with it, as it's their house, but I think they actually are better served to only take a small privilege with the jobs and show posts and otherwise leave the site to the users to vote/curate.)
I recently tallied up the schools that founders from our Summer 2016 batch went to, and they attended over 180. There are many schools on that list that most people haven't heard of.
the top 25% of a place like university of Illinois (and a lot of other big state schools like it), probably represents a critical mass of intelligent young people that would be pretty competitive with ivy league schools
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also, while ivy league school give out generous amounts of aid, Illinois students aren't filtered by exactly how generous a discount the financial aid office wants to give on at 55k a year tuition (I suspect the top 25% does pretty well scholarship money wise at Illinois too)
> University of Illinois has 32,878 undergraduates
That's a fair point. It'd be interesting if YC could do some sort of data analysis on attendance for their events at a big state school vs. an elite school.
> Illinois students aren't filtered by exactly how generous a discount the financial aid office
Most elite universities are need-blind.
Spreading these myths does a disservice to smart, poor kids. Thinking they can't possibly get in, or afford it if they do, dissuades many of the underrepresented students from applying. That's part of why I push back so hard when people try to spread bullshit or the notion that you can only go to Harvard if you're rich.
> I suspect the top 25% does pretty well scholarship money wise at Illinois too
I can tell you that elite universities were a lot more generous with scholarships for me (smart, poor kid) than any lower tier schools.
Only goes so far. They don't offer aid to students wishing to take SAT prep courses. Admissions criteria include vague things like oddball extracurriculars. It's an interesting coincidence that wealthy people tend to engage in the same activities that top schools consider signals of a "well-rounded" applicant.
Oh please. You can do plenty of SAT prep at the library. My parents certainly couldn't afford an SAT prep course for me. The effect of such courses is vastly overblown—they mostly just sit you down with the same books you can get for free at the library (or for $20 on Amazon).
There are plenty of "oddball" extracurriculars that rural poor students can engage in. My admissions essay was literally about hiking with an ancient backpack covered in duct tape.
Your personal experience is contradicted by some systematic studies. Unfortunately I don't have the citations nearby, but I'm sure if you search Google Scholar you'll find that you are an unusual person.
I think you're overestimating the extent that SAT prep courses play in college admissions compared to, say, personal tutors or involved parents who have knowledge about the particular rituals needed to get into good schools.
I should add that while it's true a child can visit the library to study for the SAT, it seems that's not very common.
I looked up some articles about SAT prep, reports say preparing for the test increases scores about 25 points on average. I'm not sure whether that was from the 2400 or 1600 test.
Not that it matters, but I'm sort of confused as to what lower tier schools you applied to
At every state school whose scholarship packages I'm familiar with (granted sample size of 3, plus antedotally maybe 5 or so more), an applicant with your SAT scores would have almost certainly been offered a full ride, probably with a stipend as well
I should probably have left out the last point as it was a distraction from the overall point
whether what's dissuading them from going to ivy league schools are myths or not, the larger point, is that big state schools tend to have pretty (statistically) good critical masses at the top of them
Is Illinois really a good choice for contrast with Columbia? Yes it is a state school, so it has less elite-sounding brand than Columbia, but UI actually outranks Columbia in most STEM fields.
>Top schools attract a disproportionate of intelligent young people.
Top schools scrape off a tiny cohort of the wealthiest and best college-prepped among the smartest. The other 97% of the smartest are, well, not at top schools.
> Being set up for success is different than being inherently intelligent.
Sure, but you're arguing against a straw man.
It's simply objectively true that students at elite are on average much smarter than students at other schools, and more ambitious. They're much more likely to have a viable YC application.
In fact, students who get into elite schools but don't attend them still far out-perform students who never got into one.
> It's simply objectively true that students at elite are on average much smarter than students at other schools, and more ambitious. They're much more likely to have a viable YC application.
In fact, students who get into elite schools but don't attend them still far out-perform students who never got into one.
No no no...
First, your "objectivity" is not objective, at best it is a common assumption.
Second, nobody stumbles into Harvard and the like. That tier of school is an aim for both the child and parent from birth (probably before birth for the parents). Acceptance into these schools is the product of hard work (that I am not trying to detract from) and a financial investment (on behalf of the parent). Sure, there are some very intelligent people who take up residence in these schools, but for the VAST majority it was the hard work that got them there, not brilliant work. So yes, students who get in but don't attend can go on to be successful. However, that is a reflection of their work ethic more than their intelligence.
SO being at that tier of school doesn't guarantee intelligence, just being outside of the tier doesn't exclude intelligence. At best it shows that you can work hard and probably had a bankroll of some sort.
> SO being at that tier of school doesn't guarantee intelligence, just being outside of the tier doesn't exclude intelligence.
You continue to argue against straw men. I never said everyone at top schools is smart, nor did I claim that everyone who is smart is at a top school. Just that the average IQ at a top university is higher than at a random one.
Do you have any evidence to disprove that the average IQ at elite universities is higher? It's almost a farcical thing to argue against. For one thing, IQ correlates with SAT scores pretty heavily and SAT scores at elite universities are much higher. [0]
> That tier of school is an aim for both the child and parent from birth (probably before birth for the parents).
Oh give me a break. Have you ever been to an elite university? Do you know anyone there? My parents sure as hell weren't thinking about my college acceptances when they conceived me. I certainly didn't work hard to get there.
There's a small population of crazy Manhattan elites who are obsessed with preparation and education status, but that's far from being everyone who goes to a top school. Most of my friends were people who just happened to be very intelligent and (in many cases) hard working.
The argument that I was making is that the determining factor for getting into this tier of school (aside from luck) is your hard work and determination. Intelligence comes after that. Sure, there is a minimum level of competency. The world's best ditch digger isn't getting into Harvard, all they know how to do is dig ditches.
If you want to make the argument that there is a concentration of intelligence around top tier campuses, sure (though that makes less sense when you realize that the average state school is 4x the size of Harvard and the like). However, I argue that what got those people there was primarily their determination to be there in combination with their competency (competency which was learned by the way, not inherent to the student/person).
> Oh give me a break. Have you ever been to an elite university? Do you know anyone there? My parents sure as hell weren't thinking about my college acceptances when they conceived me. I certainly didn't work hard to get there.
While I did not go to a to a top tier school (I was offered and couldn't ironically, due to money), I work very closely with people who did. Those people possess a drive that took them to success. Sure "from birth" was a hyperbole, but I'm sure you didn't just finish your SAT and say "well I guess I'll go to {top tier}". I'm sure it was premeditated. If you went yourself that is.
> The argument that I was making is that the determining factor for getting into this tier of school (aside from luck) is your hard work and determination. Intelligence comes after that.
It seems fairly clear to me that YC would be well served to select for hard work and determination, probably before intelligence, but if they can find all three, why wouldn't they stack the deck in their (and the applicant's) favor?
Sure, it was "premeditated" but that's because I always did extremely well in school and it seemed like the obvious choice. It's not like my parents groomed me to succeed or something. They were busy enough with their own work.
If you want to argue that ambition and hard work are also essential to getting into a top school, I won't dispute that. I'd also say those are both essential qualities for successful founders.
Sure, but do you disagree that P(smart|elite school) > P(smart)?
I feel like people on HN have a giant chip on their shoulder when it comes to top schools. They're filled with lots of very smart students and ignoring that is ridiculous.
Nowhere do I pretend that all smart kids are at top schools, or even that the majority is. But if I wanted to select a school to go to with the highest average IQ it would definitely be an elite school.
It's not like everyone is buying their way into elite schools. I certainly didn't, nor did many of my classmates.
>Sure, but do you disagree that P(smart|elite school) > P(smart)?
I expect it to be only negligibly higher, but in the case of some elite schools like MIT or Georgia Tech, I do expect the elite kid to have received a better education.
I mean, I got my master's at the Technion, so I'm one to bag on elite schools, but still. My experience was that the people weren't innately smarter than everyone else, but they had been given a bunch more background coursework and research experience when they completed their official degree level.
Top schools attract a disproportionate demographic of wealthy students. Of the 5 schools on the list, students from wealthy families are substantially over-represented in the student body (with MIT being a relative outlier). Nearly half of the student body at each university comes from the top 5-10% by income tier.
% of students from top 1% by income ($630K)
UPenn - 18.7%
Stanford - 17.5%
Harvard - 15.1%
Columbia - 13.4%
MIT - 5.7%
% of students from the bottom 60% by income ($65K)
UPenn - 16.5%
Stanford - 18.6%
Harvard - 20.4%
Columbia - 21.1%
MIT - 23.4%
Yeah, but what do you want them to do? Nationwide tour of schools? Why only American schools? Why not highschools? Why schools at all; why not start hosting events in libraries?
But they're not. They're showing up at a few places, then doing other things. Fair enough, I think. It's not their job to do otherwise and you don't own their time.
> if you go to a the same 10 schools, you will by definition lack a diversity of thoughts and perspectives
I agree. I'm pointing out that YC can't be everything to everyone (that would be extreme) and elite colleges are kind of their thing (for worse, I think). It just strikes me as a whiny thing to complain about.
Why is it whining? The echo chamber of CS/Silicon Valley types is a real thing and if our objective is to move forward and become more influential/helpful to the public at large, existing within an echo chamber hurts us.
I attended their office hours with Kevin Hale at my school - NC State, very far from a top tier school. Neat experience, but [0] they never posted about visiting on HackerNews.
[0] Apparently they did in their Winter Tour last year, my mistake.
NC State is more qualified than you give credit. US News ranks NC State's Engineering program higher than Duke's. Duke / NC State / UNC are three strong universities.
Is there a way to request that a school be considered for a visit? I'm sure you'll get a ton of requests, but with ~ 2,500 4-year schools, it would be a "voting" exercise.
It, should, give YC a more diverse exposure as well?
These schools are actually some of the most affordable in the country due to their extremely generous financial aid. Poor families pay nothing and even middle class families have minimal contributions. (For example, all of the elite universities I was accepted to cost less than my state school would have.)
Being the exception doesn't exclude the fact that poor kids are at disadvantage of gaining admissions to Ivies. A student from Phillips Exeter Academy has a much higher chance of being accepted vs a very smart but poor kid from a rural America high school.
As an example of this comment's point, one of the problems where I grew up is that when you told the guidance counselor you wanted to go to MIT she said, basically, don't bother.
She probably said that because of all the people pushing the narrative that elite schools are only for rich kids. Spreading this myth dissuades thousands of qualified students from applying to top schools where they would get a great education for free.
>These schools are actually some of the most affordable in the country due to their extremely generous financial aid. Poor families pay nothing and even middle class families have minimal contributions.
Except they do not lower the admissions requirements for poor kid that attended sub-par secondary schools. These are the exact kids that would be excluded admissions (in most cases) because third rate secondary school prep does not compare to the prep a student obtains at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Which supports my point poor kids getting into Harvard are at a disavagantage. These poor rural secondary schools don't give excellent college prep for their students, even bright ones. So these bright students risk having lower SAT scores (not matching their potential) & thus would not be admitted.
Offering free tuition sound great until you realize these poor kids would have to have access to the same resources as kids in better positions to be on an even playing field. Except they aren't, but they are still judged the same. Due to that many poor kids are rejected.
Yes. Neither of my parents went to college, and my mother dropped out of high school. I didn't know what the SAT or ACT really was, and never studied in high school because I didn't know how. My family did ok, but I had 0 chance of ever going to a great school. I ended up going to a mid-tier university and have a good job (I got in because I transferred) but getting into a great school would have changed my life so much more. It makes me sad to think about it. Had I had parents who knew what was going on, they could have pushed me toward after school activities, or knew that I actually needed to buy an instrument to be part of the school band, or that I should take the ACT/SAT prep courses. But of course I didn't. Being a white male doesn't help either.
I attended MIT during a time of perceived reduced standards of admissions (IMO; I'm not sure it was an overt and public thing) for some under-represented populations.
I saw some good outcomes from that (friends I met there graduated and became successful who might not have gotten in otherwise), but I also some people come in un or under prepared and wash out, which in my mind is undoubtedly a worse outcome for them than "merely" not being accepted, attending another school and succeeding there.
We do office hours in cities that anyone is welcome to sign up for. We're also going to be opening up signups for the MOOC shortly that anyone anywhere is welcome to participate in.
The marketing departments at these schools have done wonders. People whose families have modest incomes of 100-150k annually are going to pay a very large sum of money to attend these schools. It is only the very poor and very wealthy who do not have issues funding their education at one of these schools.
Except that the median household income in the US is ~55k. There is very likely a middle range of people too wealthy to get financial aid, but not wealthy enough to easily afford it, but calling it 99% is laughable.
Stanford takes care of tuition for families under $125k of assets, but even that means the upper middle classes will spend tons because they'll fall out of that range.
Exactly, less than 125k in assets is absolutely nothing. The reality is that a married couple consisting of two working professionals will not qualify for any of these reduced tuition schemes.
It would help if they also considered whether that income was from one or two people, and divided it by the number of kids so larger families with parents working multiple jobs aren't penalized.
But correlated. A two-parent, four-income, six-child family in a house just big enough to hold everyone might have $125k in assets, but in no way would they be able to help their kids pay for school, especially the older kids.
They can probably pay for some of the kid's food (because they have been up until now, possibly more efficiently than a college meal plan, but in any case, the household expenses go down when the 18 year old moves out). Some of that money can go to college costs.
I assume GGP was posting the "at no cost" threshold and that doesn't mean that $125,001 in assets and you get no help.
It's been a long time since I appli d for financial aid, but I do recall that other kids in college (though perhaps not college-bound) was definitely a factor in financial aid calculations.
It's more expensive in terms of opportunity than money. Sure, an expensive SAT tutor will help but lower class kids usually have to work or take care of a substantial amount of chores in the household. That takes time away from the activities that get them into top schools.
That's really the problem. Sure, its cheap and they have great financial aid, but they don't pay for the tutors and the "life changing" experiences in Africa the rich kids have.
This just ain't reality. Most kids don't get in because they took a trip to Africa. Parents that pay a ton of money on making their kids the perfect college applicant generally get a bad deal and are a small minority.
It's not about paying to pad the application. There are legit methods of expanding your kid's world/mind. Those method generally cost more money than sitting in the house all summer watching tv.
Poor kids may not have a house to sit in and watch tv all day. They are at a major disadvantage and Ivies and other elite schools don't do a good job incorporating them into their schools due to their low sat scores and poor educational training, which is due to their poor socioeconomic status. You speak as if everyone is privileged and have the same opportunities but lazy.
And when everyone does those exact same things, nobody stands out (unless you lack those activities, in which case you are hurt). Look at what a high school degree has become... or what a bachelors is becoming. Truly standing out takes money and/or rare opportunity.
Kat Manalac, (Kate), I tried to sign up for Columbia (alum here in NYC) and it said all sold out. Other universities have spots. I'm on Columbia Entrepreneur email list and didn't see notification of the event.
Wall Street is also known for visiting and doing on-campus recruiting at only a very small list of target schools. Right or wrong every year we pick which schools to give this extra attention to and every year we debate if we are doing this right and if we should target schools at all.
Entirely anecdotal, maybe obvious to some, but here's what I have experienced (I'll focus on STEM students):
TL; DR I have had to visit and do on-campus recruiting. The top of top talented, skilled, smart student could be at any school. Every school has dumb as fuck kids too. But there is higher % chance the valedictorian at Stanford is smarter than the valedictorian at San Jose State. But who cares, when a cream of the crop student ends up at non-target school for whatever, they know how to work with those circumstances and get to where they want to go. I think if you know how to "disrupt" or "hack" or whatever stupid word we are using these days, it is easier to stand out as applicant from a no-name school. Good luck
1. The practical stuff: The "budget" of time and people and money to do recruiting and campus outreach is not unlimited. There are only so many hours in a day, you can't visit every school and meet every kid.
2. School visits are worth doing, for the students to learn about a company and for a company to get to know a few of the students better. Companies that do visit schools can attract more applicants and higher quality applicants.
3. The school someone went to tells you ZERO about how talented or skilled that individual is as an engineer or potential founder or employee. Zero. The best person for a job or to fund could have studied at Stanford or San Jose State or Joe Bummwarts University. There are plenty of kids at no-name schools that crush the skills of kids at top-ranked schools. (Also the whole "but the department's reputation is good" doesn't matter nor do grades tell you very much either - I don't even care if someone has a degree to be honest - but that's another story).
4. If a top company or VC or Grad school is looking for those best of the best young people; they often seem to be the type of student that can self-teach and have done so. They are frequently miles ahead of their classmates at their school and any school in terms of knowledge. They know things the schools don't even teach.
5. Unfortunately where someone went to school still matters for several reasons. I'm sorry if this offends. There are many reasons your schools makes a difference. I won't go into things like PR pedigree and friendships and alumni networks. And just to be clear there are a shitload of dumb people at every school, tons and tons of dumb people at the top ranked-schools. Spot them a mile away. But: when you are looking for the one or two or three students who are miles ahead of other people their same age, the % chance that person is going to be at a top-ranked school is slightly higher. i.e. if you are looking for the smartest kid in the sandbox, the odds the valedictorian at Stanford is smarter than the valedictorian at San Jose State is higher on average, not guarantee, but enough to say it's more likely.
6. Lastly, I'll just say in my experience when legit talented students ends up at a non-target school for whatever reason (family, cost, bad luck, whatever) they are mature and they know why they are there and they know what it means and they know what they need to do to succeed at their goal under these circumstances - these are not the students you see complaining about school recruiting being unfair. It's the idiots and the average people who complain the loudest about this :( Those talented students at no-name school are aware of how the world works and that life's not fair. They know how much better they are than their peers and they know the school they went to will not matter. They also know they will have to take a couple different steps to get where they want to go vs. target-schools kids. (it's a known secret it's actually much easier for a no-name school students to stand out). They seem to know what to do: they just keep quiet about it, they network with the people who get it and they find the other doors. Sorry. Look around. Students from no-name non-target schools get top jobs right out of school and they get funded and they get into a top grad schools all the time, every year. If you don't understand how they did what they did, that's the point. Seriously, no offense some people are more skilled and talented than others. But if you are so smart and happened to have gone to a crap school, but want to get in somewhere difficult, then figure it out, many others have before you. If you feel you need someone to come visit your school to get something you are missing the point of how this works. Good luck YC SUMMA CLASS
