A focus on elite schools ignores the issues most college students face
fivethirtyeight.com
fivethirtyeight.com
Though it's unclear if restricting to ivy league or w/e is a strategy there that actually works... I don't get that part.
This isn't even a secret, an immigration attorney posted a promotional video on their own site explaining how they do this.
I met several students like this. In one project for an advanced AI class, I was awed by a student's code written in SML. It was his first experience using a functional programming language. He not only grasped the concepts but also applied it in coding exceedingly well. I talked to him a few times. Very smart and a nice guy. If he didn't even get an interview opportunity just because he went into a second-tier public university, shame on the hiring managers.
Midwesterner here (who did know about prestigious private schools, tyvm). I've yet to see a "need-based financial aid" package that made a private school worth it.
Ugh, the Bay Area attitude toward the Midwest is so exhausting. What a surprise that there are smart people that graduate from public schools! Jeesh.
Honestly, I'd take out loans just for the name and prestige.
I once applied for an internal job at a major options exchange to go from NOC to app support and managed to get an interview with HR. When I got up there, the HR person looks at my resume, notices a lack of degree and says "Sorry, we require that you have a degree." I quit about a month later to do a near identical job for higher pay and aced it. Their loss.
Lesson learned? If a company requires a degree, permanently refuse to work with them in the future, since, for some reason, they love calling back a year later with a great opportunity I can "learn" at.
Another guy I know wrote a hugely profitable HFT equity system without a degree at 20 years old.
As a child living in a mountain town in NH I had no idea financial aid existed. I was always told by my parents that I would never go to college because they couldn't afford it. I believed them until a guidance counselor called a meeting with my parents where he laid out all the options. by then my GPA was quite poor due to not doing the work (it was always trivial to past tests w/o doing the homework, so why bother with it), so top tier was out.
And, it doesn't matter. You get the education that you want, for the most part. I did independent study when a class wasn't offered, as did my friends. I'm sure there are substandard colleges (I've interviewed people that just weren't prepared for the field, and digging into their classwork showed why) but in general it holds.
Go to the local gas station, talk to the clerk, and you very well be encountering an IQ that exceeds yours by a standard deviation or two. I was almost that clerk until that guidance counselor gave me a different future. And I know people from high school that are that clerk, and have formidable minds.
Top school doesn't mean too much at all. Yes, kids who get themselves there by their bootstraps are to be admired. But the amount of support given to many there makes it pretty easy to get in at least one school. I never once had help with my homework from my parents - they couldn't do it if they tried (and, they didn't try). I went to school hungry, and didn't eat breakfast or lunch - no money for it. Last time I ate before/in school was 5th grade. I shivered all day because they kept the heat low and i didn't have sweaters to wear. I wasn't allowed to do extracurricular activities for reasons. And so on. That all says 0 about what I can do, know, think, feel, accomplish, except to the extent it taught me not to be held back by challenges. It says nothing negative about me, except that I was pretty unworldly when I entered the world at age 18. I changed that soon enough.
I just snort, internally, when somebody feels the need to name drop where they graduated from. Means almost nothing. Did you do interesting research or something there? That means something. Did you learn and grow? That means something. Did you face hardship and learn those life skills? Etc. All that matters, not the name.
From what I have seen, though, we are failing. When a regime fails, it's not visible from the centers of power and the shiny hallways. It's first visible in the periphery, amongst the least powerful.
"Barely half of first-time, full-time bachelor’s degree students graduate within six years; for part-time or community college students, that share is even lower."
Observation from UK: that just would not fly here. Including mature/part time students.
So you get more people panicking in the first year or two when they find they can't hack the basics.
Or they just don't care, because daddy's trust fund awaits.
Tangentially, the subject with the worst drop out rate in the UK is CS, at around 11%. It's also the subject with the worst employment prospects.
That could be because it's hard, but it could also be because the pay here can be terrible compared to the US.
But seriously, 50% drop out? We should export OFSTED. That'll sort them (I work as a teacher).
I've had it with the Ivy talk, given I have no chance at that sort of prestige now.
Also, the article seems to imply that discussing selective institutions on a national stage is like discussing which Ferrari to purchase at a soup kitchen, but in reality, so few students attend selective institutions because theyre selective. A significantly larger number apply and are waiting for those decision letters, even if they recognize that it will almost certainly be a rejection. In the grand scheme of things this point doesn't really matter, but it was something I noticed.
*Disclosure: I attend a large, public research university
>"A significantly larger number apply" True, but that number is still vanishingly small relative to the number of college applicants as a whole.
I've never applied to any other sfo startup after that but won't be surprised if that attitude is common at other places.
Complete sob story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11291155
And it really sucks; while I didn't go to it for CS, I attended one of the best 4 schools in the world for that, and while interviewing as I've done in times past, would never dream of assuming a fellow alum who got a CS degree was definitely competent, nor that someone like you couldn't prove to me you were.
This seemed to upset them, but I may have accidentally dissed their school.
Honestly, I think it's mostly insecurity on their part. If you spend 3+ years going somewhere you like to think it was a good 'deal' even if you overpay for a sub par education.
A. Stand up
2. Collect your things
D. Say, "Fuck. Right. Off."
And then walk out.
Don't ever let anyone devalue or dehumanize you. Tell them to fuck off every time.
I definitely agree a move like that is an abusive tactic, but I guess I feel a simple "fuck off" doesn't cut quite deep enough. A concise, polite, retort that actually attacks their competence is even better IMO. A bit harder for them to mentally write off than "that guy was just bitter that I won the conversation"
Telling an interviewer they're not qualified while keeping your dignity is far more effective.
The school question isn't a filter for competence but for social class - and if that matters in an interview, it's definitely not a good omen.
At that point, I thank them for their time and wish them well. They always start backtracking and then say it is not an issue.
Granted this was in the early 90's, when tuitions varied wildly and kids were less informed of differences between the school. Not sure this argument is meaningful now since just about every school is unaffordable without financial-aid and information is more accessible.
This also demonstrates a cultural/demographic bias. At 17 I would have told you MIT and NYC's Apex Tech were both "tech" schools, but Apex tech was a better deal because you got a box of tools with your diploma and it only takes 6 weeks. I wonder if this level of ignorance is even possible now.
With that said, there is a difference in the courses. I went to MIT for grad school after Berkeley and met many students from lower ranked schools. They were always the top student in their school. They also all complained they were underprepared because their schools had crappy courses.
This right here is why. The narrative goes that if you don't go to an elite school, you won't get an elite job. (Let's not argue about how true that is, but I think we can agree it's a common narrative.) People want elite jobs, so they want to go to the elite schools. The article points out that most students don't go to selective schools, but this sounds to me like, when discussing wealth inequality, pointing out that most people aren't billionaires. When talking about selectivity and competition in trying to get good schools/jobs, the fact that most students don't make the cut is the whole point of the conversation.
For example, my undergrad has an acceptance rate of ~95%, but it's still a regionally very well-respected school.
State schools, particularly the "non-flagship" state schools have a _very_ clear mission of educating the local populace. A low acceptance rate is in direct opposition to that.
All that having been said, with a high acceptance rate comes "weed out classes". People who went to high schools that didn't prepare them for college will struggle _much_ more than people from suburban/wealthy areas. A high acceptance rate usually implies less individual attention until you get past the intro classes.
Dealing with reality, most state colleges have a program to bootstrap students or it is heavily hinted they should attend community college for the first year or two to get their skills up.
People I met from other high schools did not realize the difference in rigor (which most colleges keep large amounts of data on) and thus had no metric to determine which school they should go to.
Yes, plenty of schools have non-competitive admissions.
And even when applying to super-selective schools, there are always fallback choices[1]. The angst felt by applicants, as described in many articles and op-eds, is almost entirely self-inflicted.
[1] The only stressful part about my own college admissions experience was not being accepted early to UVA. I had to wait until April to find out if I'd be forced to slum it at VT. The horror!
I sort of see top-tire schools like I see fake doctors wearing lab coats, if you want a lazy signal go for it, but it shouldn't be more than an ok and move on.
What's left for someone that still graduates?
Also, if lazy signals work, PR if the lack of the signal causes problems, that's a real incentive for real doctors to wear the lab coats or students to attend top-tier schools. It would be nice to make decisions based only on real value and assume all participants are rational and well-informed, but actual humans use lazy signals all the time.
What an ironic article, given that most of the article doesn't stop talking about elite colleges. I thought the rule was if you wanted to tackle something like this, you just don't write about them.
Ah, since when has the MSM let the truth complicate a good, simple, formula-fiction style story?
Or the MSM needs to pay the bills, which with the Internet has gotten more difficult. Then, sure, to pay the bills, grab eyeballs for ad revenue.
How to grab the eyeballs? Grab the readers with the sure-fire technique for getting and keeping the attention of an audience, discovered already by the ancient Greeks, that is, by formula fiction. So, the content is a take-off on formula fiction, not passing out solid, important information about reality.
In particular grab the readers by the heart, the gut, or below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears. Grab them one of these three ways, and their eyeballs will be sure to follow!
So, in formula fiction, there is a protagonist, that is, central character, the reader is supposed to identify with. Next, the protagonist has a problem, enough to get us concerned enough to keep reading. So maybe there is a threat, maybe from some scandal. So, we're into scandal. Uh, we're into the E. Fromm human anxiety from the human realization that we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of society -- callous college admissions committees seeking $10 million donations.
Then, with high irony, we have 538 writing about the scandal of the MSM writing about the scandal of the college admission process. Hmm ....
If readers have not yet figured out much of how the MSM works, then before they assume that they can trust the MSM to be factual and objective sources of information and, thus, get manipulated, they need to hear a more skeptical, realistic, and appropriate description.
And the MSM manipulations can also descend into propaganda: Some of the propaganda can be paid. And a media source can pass out propaganda because they can, thus, attract an audience that likes to see their view of the world, the one given in the propaganda, the same as their own -- such readers feel better seeing the agreement. So, when the media sets aside facts and objectivity, we get manipulation, readers with unnecessary anxiety, and maybe also propaganda, some of which can be dangerous.
"More formula fiction, Ma!"