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Comment by tristanj | Hacker News Reader

This ordering is bunk because the author makes no attempt to normalize for student population. Larger schools have a massive advantage compared to smaller ones.

Compare the University of California and MIT. University of California has 250,000 students and MIT has 11,000. After normalizing the data, MIT produces 1 unicorn per 1,200 yearly enrolled student, while UoC produces 1 unicorn per 13,900 yearly enrolled student. By this list, MIT students are 10x more likely to found a unicorn compared to UoC students but are ranked lower in this list.

The authors shouldn't even be combining all ten UC schools in the first place as each runs as a separate university with their own faculty, admissions, etc.

A similar argument applies to the IITs.

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>After normalizing the data, MIT produces 1 unicorn per 1,200 yearly enrolled student, while UoC produces 1 unicorn per 13,900 yearly enrolled student. By this list, MIT students are 10x more likely to found a unicorn compared to UoC students but are ranked lower in this list.

For this to be a fair criticism you would have to look only at the respective Colleges of Engineering for each UC, rather than the undergrad aggregate. MIT is a STEM focused university, with a far narrower list of majors than UC. Naturally that would lead to higher rates overall.

IITs collectively have only 33k undergrads, according to wikipedia:

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

That would make the entire system comparable to a large state school in the US. They do have proportionally more grad students, so total student body is right around the biggest state schools - Florida, Texas, Ohio, etc.

Definitely not on the same level as Stanford or Harvard, but still very impressive.

That's after accounting for the recent increases in student intake. All but the oldest seven have started in the last decade, and the older seven have also increased their intake by 50-100% in the meanwhile. So, as of a decade ago, the IITs would have been graduating ~2000 undergrads per year, all seven institutions combined. (The counting is a little complicated, but I expect that number to be less than ~3000 nonetheless)

That's the relevant number, since those who've founded unicorns can probably be assumed to have started their undergraduate education at least a decade ago. (4-5 years in college and then at least a few years working).

A billion people and such a tiny investment in education. Wow. Indians are lucky that's finally starting to change.

Surprisingly, most oppose the creation of new IITs, claiming that it "dilutes" the brand.

Interesting fact, per capita Israelis have founded more billion dollar startups than any other nationality.

Populating a nation completely with immigrants, and getting a lot of foreign investment, creates and enablesand ambitious population.

It isn't at all clear from the article (or from the source article either) whether it is talking about UC Berkeley (aka Cal) or the UC system. The source is British and might not see the difference. Cal is a fair comparison with Stanford, MIT, .... The UC system wouldn't be.

I heard Mike Naples from floodgate say that 90% worldwide >$1B exits are on a 50 miles radius from Stanford, I searched but never knew where he got this numbers.

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