Even better deal is to go to community college for 2 years before transferring to a 4 year college. You can get a great education and come out with the exact same credentials for much cheaper.
Ask me how I know. :(
So, if you have good chances of getting in after high school to such programs, do it. There's no reason to risk your future on community college. Professors at all colleges are a gamble and even a slight misstep can ruin your chances of getting into a good program. (which then leads to better chances of getting good jobs - if you care) That said, if you don't get into the programs after high school then community college could be fine.
What type of “top ranked” program are we talking about here? If parent is trying to get into MIT after a long educational hiatus, then, ok, maybe it’d be a bit difficult. But if they’re hoping to obtain an EE or CS degree (for example), these programs—in the states—are usually accredited and if their engineering program is not accredited, you shouldn’t even entertain the idea of entering that program.
There seems to be this constant myth that comes up when talking about higher education and that is a top ranking = better. Don’t get me wrong, a social science education from Yale or Brown will differ greatly then one at a state school but that is a given. Same goes for the select engineering programs or CS—think Cal, Georgia, MIT, etc.—but something like engineering is a program that has to follow strict course requirements so your end goal is practically the same no matter what your alma mater is.
The point of going to a top program isn't that it's a better program academically (maybe it is - maybe it isn't). It's about the resume and other things the university offers. Some of the schools help place you in co-op programs, have catered career fairs, and much more. They can set you far apart from other "lower tier" schools and make you stand out in the overwhelming crowd of new grads. It's mostly about signalling more than anything.
If you want to run a business that isn't but has the potential to maybe be very large then easiest way to do that is to build your own and CS has a very low bar for entrepreneurial activity.
If you just want to run any business then no degree necessary. Just work in food service and treat it like a career. Maybe do a bookkeeping course. You'll get to manage a restaurant eventually.
Transfers don't include foreign students as they generally aren't eligible for transfers.
Freshman 869 (admit)
Transfer 379
Graduate 1,786
Private like ivy leagues didn’t make sense for me then because tuition assistance was so poor. Unless you’re super highly ranked and can get a ton of merit based scholarships that was a bad idea anyway.
However, it’s perfectly reasonable to work hard in undergrad as a researcher and student then make your way into the top tier. James Mickens is a great example of this path. This is obviously not for everyone but neither are private world acclaimed universities.
I had a 4.0 before I moved up to Seattle. I thought it was going to be a done deal but then I got some bad professors and it screwed me over. Quite unfortunate.
I don't think people need to get into top private schools. It's just a matter of how hard you want to work after college because you won't have had the same footing as those other folks.
Another option (depending on the school) is low to no tuition if coming from a lower income family. I want to say it’s Stanford but i may be wrong, that offers free tuition to eligible students whose family income was less than something like $50,000/yr. So there are ways for poor students to get a great ivy league education but like you said, you must also have extremely high rankings in your class to attempt that route.
Did you know that, for example, Stanford’s CS program is not accredited?
Do you think people shouldn’t entertain the idea of going to Stanford for CS?!
> something like engineering is a program that has to follow strict course requirements
From what I know accreditation sets a super low bar because it’s all above that bar. What colleges teach varies massively. You definitely can go to a lower ranked but still accredited college and come out with massive gaps in your knowledge compared to an unaccredited program like Stanford that would push you much more.
I don’t think that any of us think that, but there are people doing the hiring that do think that. There are jobs you can get if you graduated from MIT that you can’t get if you graduated from Idaho State. Mr. Idaho State will find a job, and it will be a good job, but Mr. MIT will find a better one.
I’d actually argue there is more value in being a well known open source contributor than where you went to school in our industry.
There are way more candidates that went to X great university than have contributed to X great open source project.
That's irresponsibly false. Just because you want something to be true, don't repeat it as if it were a fact.
Forget about top schools for a second--there are plenty of people at top companies who did not even attend university at all. Compare that to the management consultant industry where one's school is practically the beginning and end of their resume.
Of course the reason most students don't contribute to FOSS is that it's hard. Very few just-out-of-high-schoolers could really make inroads to contributing. Colleges and universities are helping hands that guide them to where they need to go.
I wish I had a cite, but I remember reading a while back a study that concluded it doesn't matter where you go to college - provided you major in STEM. I suppose the corollary is that it does matter quite a bit if you don't major in STEM.
This, as an aside, might explain why the most elite students in the US (unlike internationally) still eschew engineering and hard science in favor of economics, humanities, law, and other non-STEM fields. If you're at Harvard, why not study the thing where the Harvard pedigree actually gets you ahead? A CS degree from Harvard may land you that google interview, but if you're applying for an SWE position, you still need to be able to write snappy tight code a the whiteboard to find all matching subtrees in a binary tree. Law school interviews seem to be more general and conversational (this is anecdotal, but based on quite a few close friends who went this route) - law firms don't subject their candidates to a detailed re-hash of their 1L civil procedure exam.
That said, our industry is so obsessed with technical interview exams that I'd say neither degree nor open source projects is especially important, beyond what it takes to get you into the door. After that, you really do need very sharp whiteboard coding skills, and if you have them, it doesn't really matter if you went to SJSU or MIT.
I don't love interview coding exams, but I actually do like the fact that high tech is less obsessed with where you got your degree (or whether it was a math, CS, other related fields), provided it was from a program that teaches the proper curriculum. And I am genuinely relieved that we haven't empowered some NGO to decide what degree is required and where it can be earned, the sort of thing that allows law schools to put a $150,000 degree between smart people and the practice of law (backed with the force of criminal and civil sanctions). That last bit about SJSU wasn't meant as any sort of dig art all, there are lots of very talented people at that school, the curriculum is proper and rigorous, and their tech graduates have a much better crack at joining top tech companies than a 3rd tier law school grad would have at a big firm job (whether a big law job is any sort of prize to covet is a different matter, of course!)
A classic example of this is that people read the resume before they enter the room to interview someone. They see the person went to their alma-matter (let's say MIT/Stanford). They will have a bias - whatever way it swings. (I've seen it go both ways - people hating on their alma and some loving it) It will completely color the way they give hints, the way they evaluate the candidate, and much more. If they went to a less competitive school, they might nitpick every thing the candidate does to confirm their belief that less competitive school candidates are garbage. Whereas if the candidate went to a very competitive school, they might overlook the candidates mistakes by saying, "oh, it happens - but they're clearly very smart, they went to that competitive school."
Whether you like it or not, I've seen top 10 schools overrepresented within the bay area wildly. One could say that it's because those who went to those competitive schools are more likely to be competitive and strive to work at the most prestigious companies but that alone cannot explain just how wide this division is.
I also think you have overestimated the probability that interviewers read the resume. My interviewers at most jobs were at best faintly aware of the projects, degrees, and jobs I’d held. They tend to come in with their own agenda. I’ve mentioned things in it during interviews and it seems pretty clear they are trying to feign awareness if the contents of the resume or cover letter.
In spite of that anecdote, I think there’s a good chance your thesis has some merit. I certainly don’t want to defend the technical interview as it is currently practiced.
How are you even defining prestigious? Am I incapable of doing so? Please explain.
You might work at Amazon - that's fine - congrats. I'm saying that it's /more difficult/ to get there on average than if you had gone to Stanford. You're more likely to get overlooked for another candidate who has all the same credentials you do but went to Stanford instead of generic school.
Just because you did it does not mean that it's a completely level playing field.
Are you sure? Where exactly did you go?
It does not say that someone who did not go to a top school performs more poorly. It does not say that those who did not graduate from a top school are not good enough. All it says is that from a relative starting point, if you graduate from e.g. Harvard, you are more likely to be successful than if you did not.
My nitpicks with this premise are: is success defined in financial terms? Is it in position (CEO vs engineer)? What is the empirical evidence that graduating from a top school confers greater success (I think that there is such data, but citing it would be nice). There's enough stuff here to talk about that I am somewhat flabbergasted that you took this as a personal affront and misconstrue what's actually being talked about.
These seem like they’re saying the same thing. If people like me were considered “good enough” OP wouldn’t have said that to begin with and CC to state school would have been fine
https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/new-data-shows-that...
That...depends. There are a number of very highly ranked public universities with transfer agreements with same-state community colleges, in which case it's not all that difficult.
Most of the high ranked public schools afaik have gotten rid of such things because they are impacted heavily on all their programs.