Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

Some are born with goals, some find their own goals, and some have goals thrust upon them.

Being a smart kid can be hard. Parents, teachers and peers see that mythical attribute "potential" and push you in directions to reach it.

Get A's in school? Gotta be a doctor or lawyer. (OK, that ages me, today they'd be pushing for programmer.)

Graduating college with a degree you never wanted must be depressing for the person who sees it as a work-prison and a life sentence. Better to fail, to drop out, to disappointed all, to get a chance to start over.

The very lucky few, and I count myself among them, have both potential and the freedom to find their own path - the thing that provides pleasure - where people pay you to do what you love. And adults around you who accept that, even if it's not a high-prestige occupation. (Programming in the 80s wasn't the career choice it is today.)

Ivy league students don't get there by themselves. A life-time of adults help you, pay for you, drive you around, push you. To those whom much is given, much is expected. And the weight of expectation can sit very heavy.

> Ivy league students don't get there by themselves. A life-time of adults help you.

See, this is what I do not get. I got without excessive effort into a top university in Europe. I never had to be taken care nearly this much. Learned calculus at 14-15 by buying an old book in a used book store. Learned programming at around the same age by reading C++ tutorials and doing programming competitions (ACM style, but easier). Ran in various science competitions, here indeed teachers helped me by giving me books, exercises and guidance, with greater or smaller success. Most of my university peers had similar histories. I believe I would be admitted to an Ivy school if I were American, based on my professional experience with people that studied there.

What gives? Is it the last >=2 decades that changed the picture too much? Is it somehow an exclusively American problem? Where are the self-motivated kids, why aren't they taking most spots in those schools? Did something systematically kill the motivation?

The slight (or perhaps not so slight) neurosis and coping mechanisms like "I wasn't even trying, so I didn't fail" imply that those kids are way, way past their comfort zone. Being this far out is very unhealthy, can even be lethal.

It's way easier to get into elite schools in Europe than top tier American ivies.

That may be it, under-supply of schools. What's required there besides perfect, or near perfect SAT scores?

Also, I've always wondered why so few Americans decide to study in Europe. I understand some might not be able to afford the remote study, but this doesn't explain everything. Language is not a problem, every top university offers all, or almost all master's level courses also in English.

Citation needed?

I think you can still find the admission rates for Oxbridge online. Keep in mind you can only apply to one or the other when comparing.

It varies a lot depending on course, but here is Oxford: https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-stat...

For undergrad it's 14%.

Harvard: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

3%

That's quite some difference, especially if we consider that Harvard has special tracks for legacies and various others. What's the real admission rate? 2%?

For other European unis I don't know what exactly the criteria are for being elite.

I've always had a problem with admission rates, since they obviously depend on self-selection (and supply of schools).

Germany is a good example here, they have a wide spectrum of schools starting already past primary education (around 10 years old). Many of those schools, those of the "mid" and especially "lower" rank do not bash into children's heads that they absolutely must go to a good university or they will be a failure. As a result those kids do not apply there, instead they go into internships and get a job. Overall there is a continuum that a) reduces pressure on people that probably shouldn't study medicine or law, b) gives better education to talented children by putting them together in more aligned groups.

Crucially, the admission to those schools past age of 10 is not zip-code based. Admitting children by zip-code past the very first school where you learn how to sit, read, write and multiply numbers is nonsense.

A process like this will result in a higher university admission rate, all else being equal, including the "true difficulty" of getting into a specific university.

Just go with national / global pool for the denominator. There are about 4 million high school graduation age children in the usa. Probably about 80-100 million world wide. About 20000 ivy league spots per year. So you need to be about one of 5 in a 1000 in the usa. Maybe 1 in a 1000 globally after adding global equivalents of us Ivy League schools. basically top 0.1 to 0.5 %.

The admission rate alone doesn't tell you if, as a candidate, I have more chances of getting into this or that university, because it doesn't say anything about who applies. There might big differences between the pools of applicants.

The facts are straightforward.

Oxbridge's admissions rates are not the lowest in the UK; schools no one outside the UK has heard of, like Warwick, have the lowest, and their admissions rates are still two to three times higher than the Ivies'. In many countries, universities admit all applicants that meet the qualifications. An example is Switzerland, where ETH Zurich—by every measure, among the world's finest universities—admits every Swiss with a Matura (university-track high school diploma) who applies.

People do get kicked out of ETH, the selection is after admission, not before (as opposed to e.g. most US universities), at least when you enter right after high school. So it's not comparable. Granted it's still easier to "get into", but that won't get you much if you can't graduate.

Another thing to consider is that the pool of applicants might be different between universities. 1% admission rate tells you a very different story whether 100% or 10% were decent applicants in the first place.

I imagine this is a generalisation, some of the elite universities in Europe require 2 year prep programs before you can even apply (e.g. France) which doesn't sound easier than top American ivies?

Admission rates are heavily dependent on how easy it is to apply, how many times you're allowed to apply, how likely a student thinks their chances are, basically heavily dependent on the college application process, which is very different in different countries. E.g, I think Indian IITs have <1% acceptance rates but you probably don't have to shell over a $100 to apply.

> I believe I would be admitted to an Ivy school if I were American, based on my professional experience with people that studied there.

The admission rates are very, very low. I have no problem believing you could follow the studies there, but so could most people who applied. In the US the advertised admission rates are in the single digit percents, and that is after people who have a leg up from having parents who attended the school and various others.

So you end up with a bunch of kids who need to have absolutely top grades, with ridiculous extracurricular activities like publishing research or starting a business. You end up having to give up your entire childhood to do things to have a chance at one of these schools.

Where does self-motivation go? Well if you already know you're going to be a programmer, your motivation is to code, that's how you get good at it. But you also need to be doing your other classes like literature and French plus running your charity. You'll be reminded of this by helpful teachers and parents.

I think part of the answer is found here:

The Power Company Podcast: Episode 64: Fixed vs. Growth Mindset with Trevor Ragan Starting from: 00:48:10

Episode webpage: https://powercompanyclimbing.podbean.com/e/episode-64-fixed-...

Media file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/rrc4sv/Episode_64_Fixed_vs_G...

How, and what, budding minds are praised for early on matters a ton

> I believe I would be admitted to an Ivy school if I were American, based on my professional experience with people that studied there.

They do take exceptional students from poorer backgrounds in many cases. But the biggest qualification for Ivy League places is your prestige and how rich you are. They want Names and old money to be admitted and try to keep the riff-raff out as much as possible. They accept poor but extraordinary students because they can becomes Names in the future to enhance the reputation of the establishment. Don't ever believe it's anything to do with you personally.

> Gotta be a doctor or lawyer ... today they'd be pushing for programmer.

Where are you getting that from? Parents and teachers still push for doctor or lawyer for smart kids. Only if doctor or lawyer is unattainable would they suggest programmer. Furthermore, everybody still perceives doctors and lawyers to have higher status than programmers. Just look at TV shows from the 80s vs recent years: The high prestige characters are still doctors and lawyers, and also business leaders, sports figures, and military, but never programmers or engineers.

Forget about status, I would rather not subject my kid to the constant catchup treadmill; jquery then, SPA yesterday, AI today, god-knows-what tomorrow, its like a never ending thing - its not enough to be stressed by work all week long, now you need to spend the couple of days of break also on learning the next flavor of the month.

Sure lawyers have to catchup with changing laws and doctors need to catchup with new medical breakthroughs but I doubt it is as much drinking from the firehose as programming is.

The real difference is lawyers and doctors are protected by law from competition.

If programmers had similar gatekeeping, the union would make sure everyone had access to training from time to time.

I am 45 and I had to catch up on a lot of things. I started programming in 1995 and my language of choice was Pascal 5.5.

Catching up is hard, but it is also "gym for your brain". Plenty of people grow complacent and mentally lazy, because they do not face any additional demands over their careers. It is even possible that mental training postpones dementia.

> It is even possible that mental training postpones dementia.

Thats what I tell myself as the saving grace (sometimes it is indeed a lot of fun).

Doctors get 200k minimum in almost any community which is why the profession is coveted. You basically never see a poor doctor in the USA. This is because of intense regulation of residency spots.

Honestly, if you are a smart American kid who likes research get an MD and/or an MD/PhD. That way you aren't competing with the foreign grad student labor pool. The MD is the golden ticket. Of course if you hate medicine it isn't.

Lawyers are more variable and a lot of the work is rote contracts.

Programming is more of the wild west since you can practice without a license as they say.

I love 12th night!

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