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I got my start at Glendale Community College (number 4 on that list). From there, I went on to UCLA, NASA/JPL, and, now, Google. It has been quite the journey. I wasn’t born in the US, nor was I from a wealthy or educated family (at one point we were on foodstamps, but reached ‘middle’ class by the time I started high-school). Though, in comparison, my parent’s journey has been a much longer one, where they were born in a third world country as second class citizens—-into the life of subsistance farming in a remote village on land they did not own.

The “inferiority complex” is real until you get to your new destination, and realize the people at UCLA or JPL or Google aren’t very different from you. Furthermore, projects/institutions that you have put on a pedestal since childhood are a lot less “magical” once you have seen how the sausage is made.

I’ve met exceptional people from Cal State schools and people I wouldn’t hire from MIT. At this point, I find the school a person graduated from, for undergrad, to be a weak signal at best; and in many cases their grad school as well.

"...a lot less 'magical' once you have seen how the sausage is made."

I remember discovering this phenomenon too coming up from a underprivileged background (to use a common term). I had great appreciation for recognizing this phenomenon reading a forward to some homeschooling book. You might appreciate this blurb too...

"The Roman writer Tacitus said, "Omne ignotum, pro magnifico," which translates roughly, "Everything unknown is taken for wonderful."

Think about it. Somehow we humans have this complex to assume great ideal things when ignorant of them. I've been pondering this for the past 10 months or so.

I use to apply that to get ideas: Avoid learning how something works at first. Study outside factors. E.g. look at screenshots of an application. Try to imagine how it works. Only learn how it actually works after that.

I started doing that after realizing that I used to do this with software I saw in magazines as a child, and then get disappointed when I got the actual software: When you just look at the surface, it's easy to infer a lot of qualities that are not there, and be entirely unaware of the shortcomings.

I think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of your points. In particular:

>> 1. Smart, capable students have the "inferiority complex" of being surrounded by CalTech, USC, UCLA. They know they need to push harder to have equal footing when stepping into the industry.

I just ended my graduate studies at a UC school and had some miscellaneous encounters with CSU students, both undergrad and graduate. I found that for the most part they were just as capable as many UC students, but what set many of them apart was their maturity. This may be because many of them came from unconventional backgrounds, they were either lucky to be attending college or were attending college later on in life. At the same time, a lot of them felt like UC was a more legitimate college, or that they were somehow less intelligent because they were going to a state school.

As a highschooler hearing back from UCs and CSUs at the moment, this is true from the start. The UCs are magnitudes harder to get in to vs the CSUs, and are therefore more prestigious.

However, that does depend on the CSU. Cal Poly is highly regarded (engineering-wise), while UC Merced or Riverside are often held at a "lower tier".

Anecdotally, a lot of people hold Chico at the bottom, and Berkeley/Cal at the top of CA public schools.

  Anecdotally, a lot of people hold Chico at the bottom

Fairly or unfairly, Chico State has a reputation within the CSU system as the "party school".

Similarly with UCSB on the UC side.

I think UCSC is higher on the list of party UC schools

UCSB is #2 in California, Chico #3, UCSC isn't even on the first page (#30).

https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/top-party-schools/s/ca...

If this ranks Chico about UCSB it loses all credibility with me

No, and I’ve never heard anyone else make that mistake. Maybe you are not from California?

I’m in California, Bay Area.

I don't think this is unique to the LA area or even California and is a common misconception when people apply to colleges. As a high school or returning student you are told that some schools are better than others, and that might true from an entry standpoint. But, in most cases (except for ivy league or a Cal Tech, MIT) an employer is going to value your technical and interpersonal skills 1000x more than where you went to school.

Maybe that's true for tech in the Bay. But everywhere else, for any other field, the very first filter applied to a stack of resumes is degree/school.

Your technical/interpersonal skills are definitely more important, but odds are you won't get a chance to demonstrate it.

Yes, but they only look for the presence of the degree, not so much the pedigree of the school, barring Ivy leagues of course.

>I got my BSCS from this school, and landed a great gig within a month of graduation. As a "re-entry" student on a tight budget (30 year-old working food service), I met many others who were similarly driven to build the skillsets and relationships to launch their careers as efficiently as possible.

As someone working their way through the California public school system in a similar situation, I've hit a roadblock with the math classes. Having no background in even basic high school math has killed me, failing pre-calculus twice now. Any tips?

Try https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus for an alternative explanation, especially when traditional teaching methods don’t click.

Find somebody on Craigslist for tutoring or reade the fine print of your degree requirements. Often there are semi-loopholes such as the ability to transfer in credits from outside courses that can help you figure out replacements.

Math tip: seek to understand wherever possible, not just learn a series of rules. Things that you can construct from first principles are almost by definition understood and learned at a deeper level. It may take longer that way at first, but it’s a shortcut in the end.

YMMV

I was in a similar situation in college. What helped me was to do /every/ problem in the homework and check them -- many math books will provide answers to even or odd numbered questions. It sounds like a drag (and it was), but I also finally passed with a very good grade!

Also after you've done the homework, make sure you consult with your teacher about things that troubled you. Having battled your way through so many examples, you will be able to appreciate their explanation better than if you never tried them.

Good luck!

Slader.com also has solutions for pretty much every problem in a mass published textbook

I also struggled with the level of mathematics my first year. I got a tutor - the school paid up to a certain number of hours and that set me straight (that, and doing homework before office hours and showing up to every available office hour).

  Having no background in even basic high school math has killed me, failing pre-calculus twice now.

Perhaps you needed to start a little farther upstream, even if that means remedial math classes.

For anecdotes: I took the calculus sequence at a community college, and the teachers I had for (differential) Calculus I and (integral) Calculus II were among the best teachers I had at any level. The Calculus I teacher, the late Jack Minnick, was the best teacher I had in any discipline and at any level. He also published some math texts.

The key takeaway from both those instructors is that both had quizzes based on the homework material essentially every class, a methodology that pre-empted my tendency toward procrastination.

This view has helped me: math is a language, not a puzzle. I used to think, "If I can't figure this out from first principles, then I'm an idiot". So I would stare, and stare and stare at some thing and I wouldn't be able to figure it out. Which made me sad ;-)

After failing calculus once, I decided to go into physics (because, really I am an idiot), but I knew I needed to up my math game. I camped out in the library and saw a whole bunch of foreign students memorising stuff. Now, I used to scoff at this kind of behaviour, but I thought "I just failed calculus and now I want to go into physics", so what the heck -- nothing is crazier than that.

I sat down with a deck of index cards and I wrote a memorable name on one side and a theorem, lemma, equation, proof, etc on the back. I think I wrote something like 600 of them for my calculus class. And I memorised them -- all at once (because I'm an idiot).

But something wonderful happened after I memorised the cards. When I started to do example questions... I understood them... completely. The answers were blatantly obvious. All I had to do was write them down.

Well, very unfortunately, Physics was super hard (who'd have thunk it) and I still wasn't that great at math, so I switched to Computer Science. I was so intrigued by math, though, that I enrolled in every course I could fit in. Bizarrely, due to a miscalculation on my part, I accidentally graduated with a math degree and had to go back to convert it to a CS degree (like, I said, idiot).

Anyway, the point is that you can't speak without vocabulary. And even if you understand the vocabulary, you can't use it if you don't intuitively have a feeling for where it is appropriate. I later became a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and learned that language acquisition comes from repeated exposure to things that you comprehend.

If you memorise things, you won't acquire it, but it gives you a kind of super fast dictionary in your head that you can use to build comprehension. Then if you repeatedly expose yourself to natural language (problems in your text book, and especially proofs) you will acquire the language. After a while, it will just come naturally to you. However, the key is first memorising (see note) and then repeatedly exposing yourself to it over time.

Note - memorisation is not strictly necessary, but it saves a huge amount of time because either you have to keep looking things up that you don't understand (which is very tiring), or you have to expose yourself a billion times so that you understand it from context.

I highly recommend using spaced repetition software (Anki is great and perfect for this as it can handle LaTeX input) and work through your text book adding everything that could possibly fit on a card. Get creative about ways of breaking things down that don't fit on a card. Go through about 20 every day and review every single day. Do a couple of problems in your text book every day. At one point it will just "click" and everything will be obvious. It's kind of magical, really. I'm not saying you will be a math genius, but every casual undergraduate math course is doable by the average student, IMHO. Good Luck (even though you won't need it!)

My sister's a Yale Ph.D who has taught in the SUNY system and other public schools and has really gotten a lot of out teaching these student populations, and finds them far more impressive than Ivy League students. Hard working, many of them first-generation college students, often working full time jobs and supporting families, all with minimal complaints. They're paying their bills and they're expecting ROI on that tuition -- and put in the corresponding amount of work on their studies.

Number 2 could be a positive spin on not wanting to pay employees more.

Absolutely. I've personally experienced a workplace where the managers preferred hiring from the lesser respected university in the area, because they were able to undercut even more on salaries.

Eh... maybe. But that is only an initial hire effect. Once you get into a big company, there is a salary band for each pay grade, so things even out if there is meritocracy.

Years ago, when I lived in the upper Midwest, I had fellow manager tell me he liked to hire engineers that grew up on dairy farms. "They know that they have to show up every day. They know that a certain amount of st comes along with every job, even great ones, so you might as well just spend a few minutes with a shovel and get it out of the way. They know the work doesn't get done by somebody else if they don't do it."

As a manager I've had the experience myself of convincing kids from fancy schools that, yes, I really do expect them to contribute to the less fun assignments, too. Only once did that not have a good outcome -- but that guy had other issues, too.

Sometimes it does. In my experience, starting salary is an albatross around your neck. I was by far our best performer but was compensated the same as everyone else in my position after years of excellent work, which my coworkers and supervisors would corroborate. That’s part of why I’m earning a PhD.

This is part of why potential employers in California aren’t permitted to ask you your current salary.

My starting salary in 1994 was (converting to USD), $18,000 by 2001 I was earning $84,000 (my last salary in the UK)

Starting salary doesn’t have to be a limitation, it is an uphill climb, but it’s not on your “permanent record”

I've noticed this as well. Folks from less elite schools are less likely to know how much their skills are worth as well.

Lots of people I've talked to at my school don't believe software engineers can make $160k-$200k TC out of undergrad.

People need confidence, entitlement, or experience to ask for their worth. Employers know this. Companies brag about taking advantage of information asymmetry to pay us less and we applaud them for it?

No, people need multiple offers to compete for their worth. If you let one company tell you how much you're worth, then that is on you. Learning to sell yourself is also a skill, so unless employers are colluding (which I know does happen, and am not excusing), then there isn't anything insidious about paying less for people without brand name reputations.

It's the same as buying anything brand name, you're paying for the (presumed) higher probability of higher quality or reduced chance of failure.

Transparency of salaries would be a boon to the general public, but we have such a huge social stigma against discussing pay, that employers can take advantage of this, however that's not the employer's fault.

There's no substitute for hard work. Of course, working hard is not enough. You have to work smartly

I think more people that go to Ivies are hard workers then have so much natural ability that it doesn't require much work. Nowadays you have to be doing multiple extra curricular activities and qualifying for summer programs, etc.

People at ivies mostly just had a lucky background (if you look at the statistics based on income). I really doubt they work any harder. Even side by side you're not really comparing apples to oranges if you compare the amount of work a low income person has to do to get into an ivy and the typical high income ivy kid.

Eh - I could see that but there are people with lucky backgrounds at state schools as well. Most of the folks I know at elite schools grew up in very similar circumstances to myself.

other than like, the children of international royalty and whatnot, you just can't get into an Ivy League school without working really hard one way or another.

rich kids might go to less-prestigious private schools, but they're not getting into the Ivy League without working hard at something.

This is essentially what I was trying to get at. I think people have many misconceptions when it comes to different tiers of education, it might be a topic worth some research.

As someone who went to an Ivy, I don’t think so. There are lots of hard workers, especially international students from poorer areas, but there are also tons of rich kids (international and domestic) that get in because their families could afford to send them to Africa / have them be taught horse-riding. In fact, extra-curricular activities are to me to very strongly associated with middle class / upper class families.

Even the not rich kids often have had very supportive families. The vast majority of students don’t take college classes in high school / decide to compete in olympiads by themselves. At the least it takes a supportive teacher or more likely a supportive parent to suggest the idea—most kids in most neighborhoods aren’t even aware of the existence of such programs.

I was kinda excluding the people who bought there way in or have family connections, I thought about this as I was posting.

> I think more people that go to Ivies are hard workers then have so much natural ability that it doesn't require much work.

Or not. I've been told by someone teaching introductory courses at an ivy, that a major challenge they face is that their students have had such good teachers, presenting ("spoon feeding") information so clearly, that their students now have neither the skills, nor the inclination, to wrestle with a body of knowledge and extract understanding.