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Comment by cup | Hacker News Reader

>1. The Harvard part of the degree is completely irrelevant

Except It's a pretty good indicator of his socioeconomic background and the numerous opportunities that were made available to him in his life that others didn't have. Apart from that yeah..

Oh and also the copious networking opportunities it gave him and access to circles that others don't have. yeah.....

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Instead of past opportunities, his Harvard degree gives him future opportunities. As in, something to fall back on when the startup fails. That gives him the advantage (risk tolerance) that other people don’t have (eg. single mom). So, agreeing with you but for different reasons. Harvard degree matters.

Not knocking his persistence and really like that his company helps people instead of doing facial recognition emojis.

Anyone can apply to Harvard, and they all have to be good enough to create the opportunity to be accepted in the first place.

Except realistically, 80% of harvard grads come from high income households.

So at least 20% don't? Given the high standard of qualifications which are obviously easier to meet when you have more resources, that's pretty good. We're talking about the #1 school here, which is also free for any low-income families.

Yeah, 20% come from families under 65k family income.

stanford is #1

Maybe it's more like 80% from the families that value education in general, and not surprisingly this leads to higher income?

Is that unrepresentative of performance in K12?

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