Jack Ma: 'Harvard rejected me 10 times' [video] | Hacker News Reader

Jack Ma: 'Harvard rejected me 10 times' [video]

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81 pointsjimsojim129 comments

It is an interesting claim. I think Harvard would still reject him, he doesn't seem to fit in with what a "Harvard Man" is.

The mistake is thinking that Harvard wants all the successful people in the world to go there, as far as I can tell they don't. Every private University recruits from their "tribe" whether it is 'quirky' at Reed or 'cosmopolitan' at Harvard, while not discriminating on race, religion, Etc they do pick people who create a community "like them".

The weird conflict comes in when someone like Jack, who by many accounts would have not "fit in" with the community at Harvard (he would have been fine at MIT I suspect) but Jack gets focused on "Harvard is the 'best' so I really want to go there." which isn't focused on the question of whether it is the best for him.

I really encourage folks to find a college that fits them rather than picking a college by some score it has. If you are lucky the college will reject you if you don't fit and that will save you from a bad experience there, if you are unlucky you'll get in and hate the experience.

>while not discriminating on race

Affirmative action IS discrimination on race. AFAIK Harvard has been sued because of that not too long ago - I don't know the outcome though.

Not necessarily, if hypothetically silver people make up 20% of the population, but due to cultural bias in testing they make up 10% of the student body you could correct for that bias without discriminating.

For an actual example, rich people tend to look better on Harvard applications, but preform worse at Harvard than poor people. Adjusting for a bias in the application process would not be discrimination based on income.

If you strongly feel that affirmative action is wrong then the best way to end it is to end racial segregation in housing and K-12 education. When colleges see that all kids are getting the same opportunities they will end their programs to correct for that societal flaw. It seems very shortsighted to think that displacing affirmative action students is the best way to improve our society or that not getting into Harvard will take something from you that you deserve or need.

> I think Harvard would still reject him, he doesn't seem to fit in with what a "Harvard Man" is.

I disagree for a simple reason- suppose Harvard could go back in time and reject Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, or Stanford could reject Sergey Brin and Larry Page- do you think they would?

Of course not, even though you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they were great fits for their programs since they dropped out after their first year. The reason is that unicorn students like that give those schools a huge amount of mystique, not to mention press, which adds a lot more to their image than most doctors, lawyers, or consultants could.

> Of course not, even though you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they were great fits for their programs since they dropped out after their first year.

Bill Gates was just a semester shy of graduating and even published a paper in his junior year at Harvard. There are many many Stanford graduate students who take leave of absences to work on entrepreneurship -- Larry and Sergey just were wildly successful with theirs. Both Larry and Sergey got their Masters degrees. I'd chalk up neither case to a bad fit nor did they drop out after 1 year.

And Zuckerberg? Jobs? Ellison? Dell? If you think that elite schools wouldn't want one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful entrepreneurs on their list of alumni instead of another lawyer or investment banker even if they knew they were not a "great fit," you put more stock in the principles of admissions committees than I.

The reality is pretty simple. The Harvard's and Stanford's of the world put out an enormous number of hugely successful graduates because of selectivity bias. If you pool a group of 10,000 eager 18 year-olds with high standardized test scores from top high schools and mostly from privileged and wealthy families and compare that to a pool of 10,000 18 year-olds with average test scores and from average backgrounds, and pick one at random, which is more likely to be successful in their career?

The point being that if Harvard could pick their classes with the benefit of hindsight, my opinion is that that they would take a lot of students that they would otherwise turn down in place of a lot of others that they would otherwise accept.

Zuck started his business at Harvard with Harvard cofounders and harvard content and later Harvard employees.

Jobs credited Reed classes for inspiring the beauty and font quality that made Mac a standout.

They were great fits for their school, they just didn't need he arbtirary 4-year degree.

I don't know about the others.

Um that's like saying the founders of Intel were a great fit for Fairchild Semiconductor because they all met there. Just because their schools created an extremely fortuitous environment for meeting cofounders does not mean that that's the reason the schools admitted them, and to suggest such is absurd. Jobs wasn't even enrolled at Reed when he took those classes, as has been well-documented.

I don't know about Gates but Larry Page went to UMich for his undergrad degree and Sergey to the University of Maryland. Both had excellent academic track records when they applied to Stanford and Stanford's engineering graduate program seems to be filled with people like that (STEM undergrad, some technical projects or notable activity, entrepreneur tendencies ...) So in general I think they would have gotten in (and fit in).

I heard claims that Ivies were analyzing the living hell out of alumni donation probabilities... and Asians flunked.

Also, I think Ron Unz claimed empirical evidence for anti-Asian discrimination.

That looks different if Asians are greatly over-represented in their applications.

> Every private University recruits from their "tribe" whether it is 'quirky' at Reed or 'cosmopolitan' at Harvard, while not discriminating on race, religion, Etc they do pick people who create a community "like them".

This is about building generations and generations worth of brand loyalty, as far as I can tell

> he would have been fine at MIT I suspect

Why? Because he is Asian and must be good with numbers?

Chuck, what you describe, does indeed exist in American universities, but it is a discrimination. We should fight such atrocities.

Not at all, because everything I read about him suggests he is a focused problem solver. Someone who meets challenges with creative solutions out of the stuff he has on hand versus someone going back and doing a lot of set up research and then testing phases and then development. Many of the folks I've met from MIT fit that same model, basically uniting around solving complex problems.

I was thinking the same thing. The speed at which parent jumped to that conclusion made me think he was the discriminating one, not you.

I guess I should've put /s at the end of the first statement/question. I meant we shouldn't judge by stereotypes - I'm glad Chuck meant a different thing... at that level though.

MIT is actually more diverse than Harvard. In the past several years, it's been >10% international. Both schools have about the same percentage of Asian students.

Harvard: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

MIT: http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/students/diversity.html

Natural diversity is good of course, but we've heard some horrible stories regarding forced diversity (race, gender, ...) - preferring A over B only because B's race quota has been filled...

What are you basing this analysis on?

I went to harvard. In freshman orientation, we were told that harvard doesn't "admit" mistakes. But obviously they do; a small percentage of students are mentally ill for example. My freshman roommate was one of them.

Another interesting orientation tip mentioned was that harvard accepts the top 10% of high school students but 90% of them won't be in the top 10% at harvard. The take away is that students need to stop their obsession with ranking and figure out how to be successful anyway.

They are definitely "Harvard Type" students (and not just in terms of wealth) but I think 30% or so of the Harvard students don't fit that stereotype and I don't see why Ma wouldn't have done well. Harvard classes aren't any different from classes at any other good school. I understand the obsession with going to Harvard (it is a fashion statement) but you aren't missing anything. Having Harvard on your resume will move it to the top of the pile but you still need to be impressive and few schools teach that or any of the things that Jack mentioned in the interview.

Mentally ill students are "mistakes"?

Clearly someone needs to tell Princeton that accepting John Nash was a mistake

I grew up in a Chinese household, and I swear, Chinese people are way too obsessed with university branding. It's not even about quality of education, it's a cultural status phenomenon. If you take 10 mothers, the dick size of each one is directly proportional to the US News (yes, specifically US News) ranking of the university of her child. And if Timmy, some random kid in school, had a 2380 SAT, then as a fellow Chinese kid, you'd hear about it somehow.

Thankfully my parents weren't this crazy, but I've seen Chinese families spend thousands on SAT preps, or parents discouraging their kids from playing sports to chase a 4.4 GPA. I hear it's even worse in areas like Cupertino.

I mean, I respect the pusuit of education, but this obsession with college is a poisonous byproduct. Those kids aren't even better off after college anyways. It's all pride. Look at Jack Ma. 22.5 Billion dollars, and Harvard is still like Gatsby's Daisy to him.

Valid point, but there's something to be said for the Asian American community's obsession with education. Is it any surprise that they are the most successful minority group in America?

Not even close to the success of Indian Americans

Who don't have as many PhDs per capita as Nigerian Americans (tops in the US!).

Self-selection bias. The Asian American community is immensely diverse and consists of many different immigrant (and native!) waves. Wealthy, well-educated Taiwanese semiconductor engineers from the '70s and '80s are not the same as LA Korean grocers are not the same as Vietnamese boat people are not the same as Hmong refugees are not the same as recent mainland Chinese nouveau riche are not the same as Nisei and Sansei who have been in the U.S. for decades are not the same as Pacific Islanders or South Asians or Middle Easterners.

Yes, thanks for pointing out that important distinction.

Anecdote: The only Hmong people I ever met were at an Ivy League school.

Well, German Americans are not the same as Irish Americans are not the same as Italians who've just gotten their citizenship are not the same as... but they all get lumped under the category "white people", so it is what it is. Any way you slice up "Asian American" they still far exceed their minority peers (and even whites), so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Not all of those groups were considered "white" at the same time. A century ago, a hypothetically accurate census would have distinguished between more assimilated, older arrivals (WASPs, Scots-Irish, Germans, etc.) with Catholic immigrants.

Point is, different immigrant groups have different origins. Some have a leg up over other ones in terms of socioeconomic and education backgrounds, leading to different results. Asian-American isn't a monolithic bloc, regardless of what activists might say.

Asian-Americans (including Chinese-Americans) have to have better grades and test scores to have the same chance as your average white American to get into an elite university, so I can see why Asian-American parents would think it's necessary for their children to focus so much on improving their test scores.

I think the natural followup question is- why do Asian American parents think their children need to get into elite universities?

Because they were born in China and they learned the rules of the system where they grew up.

"Asian-Americans (including Chinese-Americans) have to have better grades and test scores to have the same chance as your average white American "

It's because Asian-Americans statistically score much higher than white Americans so the competition is fierce.

If you check the "Asian" box when you take the SATs, you actually get points deducted from your overall score.

I'm not sure what started it, but the vicious cycle of over-achieving continues to make it so they need to get extremely high scores to be accepted to many ivy-league universities.

On top of this, most universities in the US have student quotas based on ethnicity, instead of basing admission on merit.

As for perfect SAT test scores equating to a right to get into Harvard... It is pretty clear that SAT scores are not always indicative of merit. When I was a Harvard senior I tutored another Harvard senior in high school algebra. She mentioned she got a perfect SAT score because her elite high school had a really good test prep program. There are many stories of people paying others to take the test, or people taking the test and sharing the questions with others, or people spending a lot of money or time to get a good score. In a way, that high score doesn't show that some students are more worthy to get in as much as it shows that affirmative action students need more affirmative action if the cycle of poverty is to be broken.

Tbh I don't take this for fact. My alternate theory is that schools aren't rejecting Asians for being Asian, but rather they are rejecting profiles that are common to ASians. How many apps do you think Cal receives every year with 4.3 GPA/2200 SAT, 4 yrs key club, no sports, and an essay about being nervous in a piano recital? If you get ten of those, and maybe one application from a kid in Inglewood with an 1850 SAT and a childhood fraught with gang violence, then I can't blame Cal for taking three from Category A and one from Category B, leaving seven families angry that their higher SAT was rejected.

The disconnect for some Asian parents is that they're stuck with the Chinese idea that highest marks always equals best university. As a result they push push push their child to test higher on the SAT, GPA, farm community service hours, play more piano... But they don't realize American schools aren't solely score based, and at the end of the day, there comes a point where the University just isn't impressed by the same profile over and over again.

As a supporting anecode, I'm Chinese, and I was admitted to a competitive department at UCLA with a 3.7 unweighted GPA in 2009, which was far below the average for whites, or asians. So I don't think there's a conspiracy against Asians.

I certainly do think what you have described it's a well accepted stereotype, and it may well be true in your anecdotal experience, but I don't think there's been any real evidence that Asian applicants, as a whole, are nothing but test taking, piano/violin playing robots or are as a whole less well-rounded (by whatever measure) than white applicants.

As for your own experience, prop 209 passed in California banned the state, including state universities, from considering race, so you were not judged by any heightened Asian standard like some other schools.

Yeah, I dont want to accuse asian kids of being robots - that would be unfair, for example, to some non East Asian kids who dont have privileged upbringings. I just want to provide a counterpoint. And I was not aware that the AA ban was a California only prop, but that makes sense.

The real question is, what is the acceptance rate of non-asian with similar profile as you just described. I'd be interested in this piece of data.

For 1300 years the gateway to great status in China was the imperial examination. That must have left a mark.

Hyper-competition with over a billion people does weird things to people. Even when they move away from their homes to other places, this leaves a mark.

>or parents discouraging their kids from playing sports to chase a 4.4 GPA.

Sounds like they could use a class on how to get into a good school. Grades alone aren't it.

There is also another important factor people tend to overlook. There were relatively few asians in America before the door of immigration opened a couple decades ago. This is unique compared to African American community or the mainstream European American.

The influx of highly educated immigrants who probably value education more than general public have a large impact to the relatively small community.

It's not just Chinese-Americans. I live in Fairfax, VA and the entire county is bonkers over GPAs. It's to the point that >20% of my son's high school class had "better than perfect" GPAs (possible because honors/AP come with bonus points).

Many of those same kids spent their afternoons being shuttled from enrichment program to enrichment program. Very little unscheduled time where they could just be kids.

I question the sanity of it all. I didn't have anywhere the level of structured activity as a teen and still managed to gain entry to a top-20 university. Presumably because I was successful in things I enjoyed, not things my parents thought were good application boosters.

> I question the sanity of it all. I didn't have anywhere the level of structured activity as a teen and still managed to gain entry to a top-20 university. Presumably because I was successful in things I enjoyed, not things my parents thought were good application boosters.

It's much more difficult today. The US has unquestionably the best university system in the world, which means American students are competing with students from around the world for entrance into American schools. And of course, everyone only wants to go to the best schools, so they have all these structured activities as a resume-builder.

What I've read is that, ironically, kids with perfect SATs, 80 extracurriculars, who play the violin and speak 5 languages fluently are so common that they don't stand out anymore. The credential inflation has led schools to find alternate methods of evaluating candidates.

>What I've read is that, ironically, kids with perfect SATs, 80 extracurriculars, who play the violin and speak 5 languages fluently are so common that they don't stand out anymore.

Can't wait for the day when traditional parents catch on and we see the mass enrollment of Chinese kids in linebacker camps.

> The US has unquestionably the best university system in the world

A bold assertion. Well-educated Europeans with near-zero debt on graduation might argue otherwise.

Every developed country has long lines of overseas students competing for college places, including very mediocre colleges. It's a route to immigration and not necessarily an endorsement of the university system.

The system may have problems, but the universities themselves are the best in the world in both education and research.

Some of them are, yes indeed. The US dominates the world top-20. The US has lots of the world's best hospitals too, and few would claim it has the world's best health care system.

I'm very happy the extremely good places exist, but I'm sad about crazy student debt and crappy for-profit universities.

While I agree to a point, for most of these students, Harvard isn't an option (and never would have been). These are typical upper-middle-class kids and parents. Smart enough to get a six-figure job, but far from the top tier of thinkers and doers (I don't mean this disparagingly - I'm firmly in that same category).

I wonder how much impact international students have on the prospects of US students applying to US universities? I'm sure at the super-elite schools, there is an effect. But, at the big state schools? I don't know.

I'd also love to see a plot of college "seats" vs overall population. I know all the Virginia state schools have increased enrollment, but probably not enough to keep up with population growth. Is this true across the nation? Probably.

But then again, look at the side effect - Jack Ma threw down so damn hard, and one has to guess a lot of it is out of spite for being rejected.

I'm surprised that people still find such claims interesting. Colleges like Harvard are so popular that many people like Ma are inevitably going to be excluded. It doesn't mean much. There are at least three things going on:

1) Harvard has to make its decision on the basis of limited information.

2) Even if Harvard had perfect information, there are probably more 'ideal' candidates in the world than Harvard could hope to admit. Most are still going to be excluded.

3) Just because Jack Ma has become successful doesn't mean he would have been a good fit for Harvard. Success in entrepreneurship is not the ultimate educational goal for all (or even most) people, and does not necessary reflect all the qualities that a school like Harvard wants in its students (except, cynically, the ability to make big donations later in life...).

So where does this leave us? Don't beat yourself up if you don't get into Harvard. Most successful people didn't. But, at the same time, actually going to Harvard (and schools like it) remains an incredible opportunity for those who are admitted and have suitably aligned educational goals.

Colleges such as Harvard that base admissions decisions on grades, standardized test scores, traditional social/leadership signals (club x, sports team y), alumni connections, geographic/ethnic background, and writing/storytelling skills (i.e., the “personal essay”) are going to miss a lot of brilliant, innovative people and future leaders. The 17-year-old Steve Jobs (free spirit), Barack Obama (slacker), and Jack Ma (failed entrance exam) would never be admitted to a place like Harvard, at least as undergraduates.

Yup. The thing is, they get so many applicants that they have no reason to care if they miss some good ones. The ones they end up taking are just as good. Any of the elite schools could throw out their entire admitted class, admit their next 2k choices, and no one would be able to tell the difference.

The schools have a huge incentive to admit students who will succeed. They have no incentive to admit all such students. This results in the admissions process that we have today.

> The ones they end up taking are just as good

I disagree with this sentiment. humans are individuals and unique. none is "just as good" as another. each is different. the college admissions process treats human beings as fungible commodities. like ears of corn at the grain silo.

> The schools have a huge incentive to admit students who will succeed. They have no incentive to admit all such students.

what does succeed mean? some of the most well-regarded members of our society were poor students, or dropped out of college when they were young. some of our most damaging criminals were excellent students and graduated from Ivy League schools with honors.

"Just as good" in the sense of "equally viable on the scale used by admissions", not in the capital-G sense of Good or in a hypothetical "equally valuable as human beings" sense. Yes, they are different, but those differences are often not relevant to the task set before the admissions committee.

@Metaphorm, Good post. A good example of damaging criminals from an Ivy League School is Marc Dreier (Yale for undergraduate studies and then Harvard Law). In the 45 minutes interview "Unraveled", he said there is so much pressure to succeed when you graduate from such top schools that you do all sort of things just to prove you have made it. But then again, you wonder how true that comment is.. :)

Barack Obama went to Columbia, which is literally in the same league as Harvard. He also went to Harvard Law after undergrad, so I don't think he fits your narrative.

We don't need to include how an elite university selects their students to claim that they are going to miss a lot of brilliant and innovative people. The mere fact that they admit only thousands of people a year make this necessarily so.

Didn't he start at Occidental and transfer to Columbia?

Correct, but Occidental is still considered today to be a fairly selective liberal arts school.

George W. went to Yale. I think they could do better.

This is a great point and illustrates that Harvard tries to get people at the peak of their academic/intellectual careers.

By comparison, a lot of the people they miss out on, tend to develop later in life. Steve Jobs didn't turn Apple around until 1997 when he was 42. Obama didn't get serious about public service until he was in his 30's after being a lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Well of course: they prescribe an enormous laundry list of things you must do to be accepted and they accept the ones who restructure their entire lives and personalities (or their parents force them to do this) so they may obey. They select for obedience to authority and so they get the obedient.

Every college and university has a strong incentive to attempt to select the best applicants. It is safe to assume that the best schools have thought a lot about how to pick the best candidates and it is also safe to assume that the administrations have figured out criteria that highly correlate to future applicant success.

I did not grow up in a big city. I grew up in a place where a state degree from a good college was enough to show aptitude and I did not understand the value of attending and paying for a school like Harvard. Now that I am older, I have moved to a few big cities and currently live in SF. Unfortunately, in SF, having a Harvard degree is pretty standard / common and people that did not attend a 'top university' are regularly passed over for funding (YC) and positions at top companies etc.

I understand why. If I am a hiring manager and everyone in the world is applying to my company, I might as well pick people who went to Harvard / MIT / Stanford. But... it does mean that a decision someone made when they were 17 years old will keep them out of a lot of interviews regardless of how successful they were after they attending XYZ state college.

I attended a state college 15 years ago that most people on the west coast do not pay much attention to. I have now worked at some of the top companies in the world and I have noticed a really, really strong pattern.

People who attended no name schools and worked to get an offer at a great company are typically the best performers at the next company.

If I were looking to hire / fund someone, I would always look favorably on those that attended a top institution, then had a track record of success. In addition to the 'standard' applicant, I would look really hard at those that attended a lower tier school and 'outperformed' their peers.

In my opinion elite universities are more for traditional career paths. They are nothing for entrepeneurs.

You waste too much time with exams.

There should be an opportunity to get credits for entrepeneurial work at university.

Edit: I am engineering alumnus of a so called elite university in germany and struggled much with exams because I just wanted to do more practical work which one can sell.

Many universities do have opportunity to get credits for entrepreneurial work. I would venture to say most do, if you talk to the department chair. Often they'll be called "independent study", but it is there.

The bigger question is whether you should be paying 3-4 figures per credit just to be recognized by the university for doing that independent study.

This was true at UVA. Independent study was allowed, but not advertised, at least when I was there (late-90s).

Paying per credit wasn't a problem, as tuition was fixed for full-time students.

It's called an 'honorary degree.'

My sample size is one, but I have a high school friend who went to a top school for college and is now at another one for graduate work

From my more humble vantage point it's been incredibly damaging. He has no social life outside of his career ( basically the people living the same lifestyle) and has been molded to be single mindedly focused on his studies. He's honestly in most ways has because a more dull individual.

(This is kinda funny b/c they were sorta conceived to emulate Oxford and Cambridge - which as I understand are all about he well-rounded "liberal arts eduction")

However that being said, it's hard to argue with the fact that all his colleagues and all the people he meets are incredibly intelligent/hard-working and he in effect has access to the best minds in the world. The fact he is so "networked" mean ofcourse he will always have a very well paying job, and most likely will eventually be in a position of power.

EDIT: A corollary would be that if young Jack Ma went to Harvard, he wouldn't have become current Jack Ma, and would probably be another wealthy lawyer or something

> (This is kinda funny b/c they were sorta conceived to emulate Oxford and Cambridge - which as I understand are all about he well-rounded "liberal arts eduction")

Undergrad programs at Oxford and Cambridge are actually very specialized compared to American degrees. Students typically don't take any classes from outside their primary course. While some courses are broader than a typical major at an American university (e.g "Natural Sciences" at Cambridge or "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" at Oxford) only a small number mix the sciences and humanities, and even then only in certain approved combinations (e.g. at Oxford you can do {Mathematics,CS,Physics} with Philosophy, but not {Chemistry,Biology} with Philosophy).

http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses?ucam-ref=gl...

Except you can't get a job doing "entrepenuering."

You create companies by doing a lot of hard work yourself which requires — gasp! — traditional skills like working competently, rapidly and playing nicely in groups of other people.

Only after you've started one or two companies yourself do you get elevated to the lofty heights of pure thought leadership where you don't have to work and people still want to employ you to "lead" them.

Except you can't get a job doing "entrepenuering."

What about when you get acquihired?

There's a good chance you had to do real, material work before that happens though (unless you have friends in high places that get you on-boarded to Google before you even release a product).

and, 'acquihire' without actually building a successful product is the ultimate entreper-poser move, isn't it? You didn't build something users want, you just showed you can be a worthwhile employee for a larger corporate entity.

Private success isn't always progress.

"They are nothing for entrepeneurs. (sic)"

Well the exception to that is that having an elite university degree can definitely help getting taken more seriously when fund raising, hiring employees, and gaining customers (as I have found out from personal experience).

> They are nothing for entrepeneurs.

This is absolutely false. Great colleges are extremely hard, and in top programs kids are always fighting for life to not get kicked out.

To me, CMU taught invaluable lessons in hard work, getting kicked in the teeth over and over, surviving mostly on coffee and alcohol, and persisting till success comes along. All these lessons help while starting a startup.

A great college program will make graduate's problems feel small in comparison to what they put him through.

Besides, starting a company is not the only entrepreneurial work one can do. Is Sundar Pichai less or more entrepreneurial than Zuckerberg? There are far more ways to inhibit courage than starting a company.

> Great colleges are extremely hard, and in top programs kids are always fighting for life to not get kicked out.

This is a lie when it comes to non-technical degrees at elite colleges like Harvard. Most people get A's. It's a joke.

Edit: source: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-...

There are classes where a lot of people get A's. But I have a first hand experience to tell you that it's not easy. Just because majority got an A in a very small number of classes, does not disregard equal number of classes where majority fights for a C. It also does not say that people getting A's did not work their asses off.

Grade inflation does happen in some courses. But it's not easy and is far from a joke.

In the article you mentioned, the average is A-. Which means half of the smartest people recruited off from high school struggled to make it to 90 average, even after worrisome inflation. At worst, that's a 5-7% grade inflation.

People are fighting for As, and maybe working their butts off, but they could be doing a lot less, getting their straight Cs, and not get kicked out. It is easy to be mediocre and stay in Harvard if you already got in.

(What gets people kicked out is a major depressive episode that results in DNFing all their classes for a while, not handing in mediocre homework consistently.)

True, but nobody is trying to get a C. Mediocrity is possible everywhere. Zuckerberg could have just made a university-specific social network and have gotten by. Bill Gates could have just made software for altair and gotten by. Larry Page could have just let Google work for libraries and would have made good money. Elon Musk could have stopped after selling PayPal.

When talking about people just trying to get by, you're naturally ruling out people who can start a company. The argument here is refuting the assertion that college is useless for a wannabe entrepreneur. I say it's not, for the person who wants to use it. All great CEOs did use college effectively. Some started companies there, some found talent there, some learned lessons, some learned hard work, some got inspired, and some learned skills.

I had some friends who used college as a placeholder time to work on their entrepreneurship or other endeavors while getting mediocre grades.

Since 'entrepreneur' literally means someone who starts a business, yes, Sundar Pichai is less entrepreneurial.

As you mentioned those universities are extremeley hard what means time consuming. Starting a company is time consuming too. Doing both at the same time is nearly impossible.

But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company. It would be better if colleges would honor this instead of just ignoring.

There are avenues such as taking project based classes in the area you want to start something, doing an independent study, working on senior research in field one wants to work in. You can do what Google guys did in senior thesis time.

But I agree, it would be nice to have a guided entrepreneur-track independent study style option. Or at least a more startup-friendly environment and outlook in departments.

>But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company.

What?

Most people would argue that having knowledge of the field, experience and contacts; the sort of thing you get after working in a field for a while, is going to help more than the slightly increased physical stamina you have as a very young person.

Later you have a family and responsibility for your children. In college you are free and can take risks.

I certainly agree that children are a big responsibility, and take a lot of time... From what I've seen, though, of small businesses? Experience matters even more. I know a bunch of Entrepreneurs who are also parents. I don't personally understand how, I don't think I could handle being a parent even with an easy office job, but many entrepreneurs seem to be able to be a parent and run a business at the same time. I can't tell you how many of the informal meetings that are also dinner parties had children underfoot, but it's a reasonably large percentage.

Even if you do think that having a child will slow you down, being older doesn't automatically mean you will become a parent... the technology in that field is pretty good at this point.

There is good decade between when you graduate and when you expect children.

Starting a business before 20-21 is not really ideal. Yes, some people can do it. But those people have an over the top mental and emotional maturity that nominal case is lacking, and college is a great way to get there.

Are you really suggesting that you see a CEO in a nominal high school graduate? Most of them don't have a slightest clue how to deal with people, let alone negotiate their terms -- knowledge in domain being aside.

He claims that out of 25 people, he was the only one rejected for a job at KFC. That to me is more inspirational. On the other hand, could he be lying about some of these hardships to make him seem more relatable?

Now THAT should have been the headline.

"I applied for jobs 30 times - got rejected. I went for the police, they said 'No, you're not good.' I went to even the KFC, when KFC came to China, to my state - 24 people went for the job...23 people were accepted, I was the only guy. And when I went for the police, 5 people - 4 of them accepted, I was the only guy who did not receive it."

Much more motivational than being turned down by Harvard...I seriously doubt he's lying, given that he failed middle school/high school/college exams multiple times.

It could be that he wouldn't have been good at any of those things too, and this was apparent to the people interviewing him.

I had real troubles with school, and jobs where I had no interest in, luckily I tripped into an industry I enjoy working in!

I think that (rejected from KFC) is a variation of the "humble brag". A way of attempting to relate to people that are not billionaires as if to say "hey keep plugging away you could be me one day!".

The fact is we don't know if the story is true first or why the KFC manager rejected him. Perhaps the KFC manager spotted that a guy like Jack was not simple enough or was to motivated or intense to stay for more than a week at that job. Not unusual for any company anywhere to reject people they feel are overqualified for a particular job for any number of reasons. Just because you tell Apple or Google you would be happy to start sweeping floors with your masters degree in computer science doesn't mean they are going to offer you a job doing that even if you would do a damn good job cleaning those floors.

Another possibility was that his family or himself got itself on a blacklist by the government and somebody hinted to his prospective employers that they do not want to hire that person.

Or he could be full of shit.

I like how interviewer called him out when he was talking about how inspired he is by Hollywood - that in reality he is looking to do business in Hollywood, not reach enlightenment.

it reminds me of the Einstein was bad at math myth.

It's kind of funny how people who have made it as big as Jack Ma are still obsessed enough with Harvard to mention almost as a badge of honor that they were rejected from Harvard. As if to say "see Harvard was obviously wrong here". Harvard or any top school in no way can accept anywhere near all of the applicants that are qualified to attend those schools. As such there will be people that will be rejected and accepted almost arbitrarily at the whims of the admissions staff and or quotas of one type or another.

It's like calling an old girlfriend just to passive-aggressively tell her you bought a car dealership

No it's like calling up the dealership you applied to (1o times!) in college, to tell them you now own a dealership.

... that dealership.

10 times is a lot worse than being wrong once, however.

The admissions may be random, but apaprently not independent

On the other hand:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Without being knowledgeable about Harvard admission process, I would expect that the same evaluation done for one application would hold, at least in part, for the following ones submitted by the same person ?

College admissions process over an year is an introspective and gut-wrenching experience and irrespective of the outcome, it does leave a lasting experience. Now considering if he did indeed apply 10 times, that says a lot about how much it would have affected him.

I guess he wants to stress that having a degree from Harvard is not as important as one might think. In his case, I guess it was the hardships that took him to the heights; maybe the Harvard degree would not have been any good for him.

"Still obsessed"

If anything, his tone implied that learning to deal with rejection and to keep trying is one of the things that made him successful.

Like several others have mentioned how the video contains so much more than then just headline, I get the sense that you did not watch the video before commenting.

His passing mention of Harvard could hardly imply he is "still obsessed" with Harvard.

Maybe that's the best thing that ever happened to him? If he had gone to Harvard, he could very well have ended up as a well-paid, well-connected cog in a huge corporation.

Whatever, I find it useless to think about what 1-in-a-billion entrepreneurs do or don't do. Harvard is a fine university and anyone who gets admitted should count themselves lucky and privileged. Those that don't, well, there's plenty of other excellent options.

There is so much more to this video than Jack Ma's rejection from Harvard. His company, Alibaba, is second only to Walmart in e-commerce business. He talks about Alibaba's success internationally (places like Russia and Norway). He also talks about the company's relationship with government regarding technology projects and privacy.

Thank you. That's really a small part of the video. I get the sense that most of these comments are coming from people who didn't watch it.

Agreed. Having watched the video after reading the comments, I am actually rather disappointed at some of the negative things written here.

The interview contains a lot of other more inspiring stories than just his Harvard rejections.

For example, he talks about how he comes from a pretty bad elementary school, how he learned about the internet, how Alibaba got its name, how none of his capital came from the government, that Alibaba's workforce is actually ~47% women, how he rather would be respected than be rich, and his philosophy on businesses helping people.

Near the end, he says: "I believe when you have 1 million dollars, that’s your money. When you have 20 million dollars, you start to have problems, worry about inflation, worry about which stock to buy, this and that - When you have 1 billion dollars, that’s not your money. That’s the trust society gives you. They believe you can manage the money - use the money better than the government, than the others. So I think today, I have the resources to do more things. With the money we have, with the influence we have, we should spend more time on the young people."

He also said that his goal is always to keep his employees happy, so they in turn keep the customers happy. Lots of companies out there have that backwards.

The qualities that make someone a successful entrepreneur often make them a poor student / employee. The same disregard of authority that makes people say "Why can't I do that? Who is going to stop me?" tends to lead you to more interesting conclusions than solving 40 problems from a math textbook.

But keep in mind that Harvard's goal isn't to recruit the best students; it's to create an environment where the well-connected can co-mingle with accomplished academics. This is why Harvard and other Ivy League schools admit "legacy" students: it's an explicit recognition that sometimes, who you know does matter. If you have a good mix of smart people, driven people, and politically savvy people from powerful families, they can help push each other to great heights.

I'm not so sure if the model works as well anymore, but also keep in mind that Harvard is almost 400 years old. It worked well for a long time.

Great entrepreneurs don't necessarily make great academics and vice versa.

@jcfrei, I agree. One has to take into consideration the circumstances one is raised in, culture etc. That plays a huge role also. When you read about Jack Ma, although he failed to get a job at KFC, that did not deter him but rather egged him on. He is/was just a hustler with a keen eye to identify opportunities in the worse situations.

Classical education is DEAD. I see this worldwide and there're countless examples about it. 1. Smart people do not get accepted for various reasons 2. There's no personalization of classes - people are not machines and shouldn't be treated to study the same thing in the same ways. No creativity inspired. 3. Big gap between businesses and universities.

and on and on..

> Classical education is DEAD for outstanding individuals.

Fixed that for you. The vast majority of people are not outstanding.

The technical founders of Google, Facebook, even Apple all went to world class schools.

That seems to play into the parent's point though:

   * Not-so-exceptional people are not granted admission
   * Exceptional people are demonstrably exceptional even before admission

There is no path for unexceptional people to find exceptional success by simply going to the right school, like certain interest groups want you to believe. The flaw is thinking that academia and business are supposed to be intertwined at all, of course. They are completely separate institutions for a reason.

And many/most of the people they hire too.

On being asked what he worries about:

I worry today that a lot of young people lose hope, lose vision, and start to complain. We also had the same problem - it's not a good feeling being rejected by so many people. We were also depressed. But at least later, we find that the world has a lot of opportunity, how you see the world, how you catch the opportunity.

I think the interview is worth watching entirely as it's so much more than a rejection from an elite institution such as Harvard. Rejection from KFC, from even middle school -- these stories are just as powerful if not much more so.

Above all, what matters is your true grit. There're MIT's in India, too. A renowned aerospace scientist, former President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was an alumnus of Madras Institute of Technology (MIT). The current CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella got his engineering degree from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT). Think about the autodidacts listed at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts

Alibaba is indeed a force in China (and less-so globally) but the stock price is doing pretty poorly (down below IPO price.)

https://www.google.com/finance?q=baba&ei=fFT4VanDAdLisAHx9r7...

It's a bit weird to see him lauded at WEF when, say Twitter, which is also below IPO price, is in fire-fighting mode (without CEO, etc.)

I'm surprised they let him apply ten times. I was rejected from Stanford three times and didn't allow me to apply a fourth time.

As long as you're paying application fees, why should they stop you from trying?

I was going to post this when I saw it. Beat me to it. Thanks for sharing! And agree, the KFC story is powerful.

thelastpsychiatrist has a great exposé on the Harvard cheating scandal that speaks to the 'everyone passes xyz classes' claims.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_harvard_cheating_...

how successful do I need to be in order to be accepted into Harvard MBA from a western province university with mediocre GPA?

How much much under the table damn it.

You have no idea how much social capital an ivy league degree gives you in Korea, no idea! (ex. generous bank loans, women, social status, tv shows, your own kpop girl group wow!)

Most inspirational part:

"If everybody agreed with me, if everybody believed my/our idea is good, we'd have no chance!"

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