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> “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn't afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.”

This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The averages at selective schools are a lot higher (work a few career fairs where you ask basic technical questions and this is obvious), but everyone is competing over them and the outliers at state schools are people like you with extenuating circumstances. Since the actual education product isn’t that different (though there is some difference), there’s probably opportunity in trying to recruit the best students from state schools companies tend to ignore.

> the outliers at state schools are people like you with extenuating circumstances.

Being middle class is an extenuating circumstance? ;-)

This word choice surprised me as well. The average Big 10 tuition for nonresidents is approaching $40,000. It is better for in-state tuition, but locking students into wherever they happened to grow up also seems unfair.

Maybe states are paying them for locals so there is more graduates staying in the state and paying good taxes?

In my case, I attended a Big 10 school specifically because I was a resident, so the tuition was in-state.

I just meant things like couldn’t afford tuition, don’t know how or can’t get loans, or couldn’t move from family, or w/e - someone who was accepted but didn’t go due to stuff unrelated to getting in (my dad was also in this category). Some large percentage of people think they’re middle class so it’s hard to know what that means without specifics.

A lot of elite schools do cover tuition now if your parents are below a certain income, but it’s imperfect and doesn’t scale with number of siblings etc.

Recruiters and HR people are usually not subject matter experts, so they don't have the expertise to select great people from among outlier groups or from the larger population. They end up relying on indicators like top schools or top prior employers.

I've hired outstanding people for dev roles with all kinds of backgrounds including self-taught, low-mid tier state schools, unfinished college, etc., but that's because I am a developer and I can tell who knows things and who doesn't. I couldn't do the same for, say, a mechanical engineering position since I am not an expert in that field.

Yeah, this is one reason why I think the outliers at state schools are undervalued. These heuristics are indirect and lead to inefficient selection, competition over the same scarce resources.

If you’re a startup there’s a strategic advantage in trying to look for talent where others aren’t and leveraging your own subject matter expertise to do so.

In moneyball the scouts selected on stupid stuff rather than on base percentage - if you know what to actually look for you can find stuff mispriced.

>Yeah, this is one reason why I think the outliers at state schools are undervalued.

What I've always heard about the big state schools is that you can get in (probably relatively easily) and then you can either spend your days doing a lot of doing sports and partying (not that there's anything wrong with that in moderation) or you can get a pretty world-class STEM degree.

> If you’re a startup there’s a strategic advantage in trying to look for talent where others aren’t and leveraging your own subject matter expertise to do so.

That's the huge take-away, and why startups and other small to medium sized businesses are so critical for class mobility.

> The averages at selective schools are a lot higher

This is what I expected when I went from undergrad at a solid but not elite shool (top 100, ~50% admission rate) to grad school (top 10, single digit admission rate).

It's not what I experienced. The undergrad students I taught and TA for at the elite school were no better, on average, than my peers at my undergrad school. They were more ambitious and entitled. They were not smarter or harder working or more engaged or motivated.

My observation from doing hundreds of interviews at career fairs was the fancy schools (Stanford) had students that were way better at basic questions. This isn’t a perfect metric, but it’s signal.

If your peers in undergrad were your friends, you were probably selecting a non-representative group (smart people you liked) and your job as a TA shows you a more random sample (or even skewed negative, poor students grubbing for grades).

At least that’s my guess (selection bias).

Of course if I’m wrong there’s an even bigger opportunity in undervalued students, but I’ve done enough interviews to believe that’s not true.

Your reaction to the parent was wondering at selection bias in schools, which was a nice context to me wondering at the selection bias you have in interviews. Thanks.

Yeah there's definitely a selection bias in an interview setting too, but since I was doing the same thing in both locations (career fair interviews as a company employee) there was more in common between the groups and me (imo) as opposed to undergrad peers/friends when you're an undergrad and students you TA when you're a grad student.

I agree and have noticed this too. Even the median kid from Stanford, Harvard, etc., has a level of elevator pitching skills that are unmatched by anyone below the 90th to 95th percentile at 'lower ranked' schools.

In terms of raw smarts I wouldn't make so bold a claim, but in terms of what folks can realistically assess in a single minute of interaction...

It wasn’t just basic social skills, I was asking some simple CS/data structure questions.

The best way to get the elite school benefits as a state school undergraduate is to attend a graduate program at an elite school. The financial ROI on a Yale JD or Harvard MBA will be really strong, and if you want a paid-for program you can do a PhD.

The “Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic” idea is repeated a couple of times, and the article doesn’t seem to make any argument at all that it’s correct.

An alternative hypothesis, entirely consistent with the author’s arguments, is that Harvard exists to educate its students (and to do research and have fancy sports and pretty buildings and cultural events, etc), that it’s quite good at this but not necessarily substantially better than its lower class competition, and that its gating function developed over time and is unfortunate.

> its gating function developed over time and is unfortunate.

It seems like you're mistaking the article for some kind of historical origin hypothesis?

Harvard as it currently exists has the function of making society less meritocratic, while society continues to subsidize Harvard in various ways. How Harvard came into existence originally and its function in the 17th century are not particularly relevant to the argument.

No, I’m reading the text of the article as written. It says:

“Harvard would still be an organization designed to reduce meritocracy…”

“Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic”

These are statements about Harvard’s purpose or intent, not about its effect. And I think it’s more likely that the original intent, as well and the present intent of those involved, is to foster meritocracy: admit the best students (for some, fairly clearly extremely flawed, concept of “best”), give the best ones the best grades (again, there are flaws here), and hopefully let the best ones succeed.

The article argues that it fails at this, and perhaps even that it can’t succeed, but the article states, without justification, that it was not intended to succeed.

> These are statements about Harvard’s purpose or intent, not about its effect.

Yes, the current purpose or intent. Harvard was established 387 years ago; what was its original purpose or intent? I don't know. In fact, I don't care. It's not relevant to the current argument. Institutions change over time, and we're talking about hundreds of years at Harvard.

> the current purpose or intent

… is to make society less meritocratic? Where’s the evidence that this is what the institution is currently driving at as its mission? Versus this being an emergent effect, subjectively?

"The purpose of a system is what it does"

OK. But the problem here is that people disagree on what Harvard does. That has to be established before we can even work backwards to a purpose, assuming this framework you suggest is even valid, which I separately doubt.

My a priori assumption of the purpose of a car is to transport people. Cars kill thousands of people each year. Is the purpose of a car then to kill people?

The 6 comments before accepted for discussion's sake at least a view on what Harvard does. Why stop now?

The dominant purpose of a car is to use a system of car centered infrastructure. Why did some places replace car centered infrastructure with other systems and some not?

> Why did some places replace car centered infrastructure with other systems and some not?

Are we really gonna do this? My point was that intentions can be, and often are, different from outcomes. You don’t throw out babies with bathwater.

> Harvard ... gating function developed over time and is unfortunate.

You're not quite arguing that it doesn't do that gating function.

"The purpose of a system is what it does"

>The hardest part of Harvard is getting in.

This is always such an interesting argument people make when nearly every 'next step' after undergrad is more selective than Ivy League schools.

Tier-1 Tech/Banking/Consulting/Law School/Med School all reject plenty of people from Harvard because they didn't do a good enough job there. Plenty of Harvard grads languish.

It's true that getting a degree is simple once you're in, but doing something with it still has capability-based gates.

>It's true that getting a degree is simple once you're in

Historically, that was at least somewhat true of undergrads in general. But wasn't necessarily the case for the top law schools and Big Law still, as far as I know, has something up an up or out career ladder.

If they only accept the very best academically there is probably a bias: it may not be that 'simple' to get a degree once you're in but since those who are in are very good they have a high graduation rate.

The Ivy League schools have extensive financial aid now. Stanford for instance will have zero cost for people from families making $150k or less, no need for student loans.

The issue is that about 15% of every incoming class at Stanford is there through nepotism, not merit.

Looking back, that's not a bad life lesson to get into your system early. I think it's also important for those to not place too much of their worth in college and realize that there are many "Stanford qualified" students who don't get into Stanford for one reason or another.

Exactly, I had to go to a junior college and transfer later on due to funds. Plus driving to and from out of state is expensive so I was stuck being a commuter at local institutions. Not to mention some kids that are good at sports can’t afford to play either and possibly get a scholarship.

That’s life though, but most of the upper class and higher don’t realize it.