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Comment by maltyr | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced on this - with a large enough student base (e.g. most state schools), I think it's possible to find peers that would have excelled even at top 5 universities. Similarly, at top tier colleges, you can find people who don't really perform to the expected level and coast along.

You stand out by being a top performer, and will attract other top performers as long as you search them out. Also, in those scenarios, professors will give you more attention, because you are a better student and more enthusiastic than most of your peers.

Perhaps if you are a true prodigy, you might need a top-tier program to reach your full potential... at that point your peers are the professors and high-performing graduate students, but for most students, I think there are pros and cons for being in a top 5 vs a top 50 program.

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> I'm not convinced on this... I think there are pros and cons for being in a top 5 vs a top 50 program.

Yes. That's why I used the top 50 CS programs as an equivalence class in my post:

>> the difference between "unranked LAC" and "top 50 CS" is difficult to overstate.

The US has 5,000 colleges and universities. Not 500. 5,000.

You are absolutely not going to find more than one top performer every half decade or two at a small non-selective LAC or the branch campus of a university system. If ever. I spoke with on faculty member at a branch campus who said that he's never had a single student who is as good as the average undergrad he taught at <top 5 program>. He's been teaching for 20 years. Those types of institutions comprise the vast majority of US colleges and universities.

I think the "rankings are just noise" attitude is mostly held by people who don't even think about the existence of 90% of US colleges and universities. If you consider Stevens Institute of Technology a "backup" as opposed to a "reach", then I guess the attitude has merit. But if you're one of the 50% of college students who get rejected from Stevens -- or the even larger percentage who don't even apply because they know they can't get in -- then the world looks different.

Said teacher likely has a reason to further the myth that "top tier schools" have "top tier students." Academia is largely nothing but group think and elitism these days.

He's a professor who has spent his entire career at one low-ranked institution. If he has a reason for being down on his own employer, where he's tenured, I'm not sure what it could be...

(Also, he didn't state this as a negative or a positive. Just as a fact. "Different institutions serve different clientelle". You don't have to be a hotel snob to say that the Holiday Inn you manage isn't as nice as the Ritz, or a elitist that the youth swim team you coach has nothing on the US olympic program... some people -- particularly educators -- aren't obsessed with being "the best".)

The key concept here is that there are some truly no-name schools out there. Many of them in fact.

This is entirely compatible with the idea that top tier schools are overselling the quality of their students.

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