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Comment by retyred | Hacker News Reader

sadly i think college credentials in the US have lost their luster because its always a let-down. without a doubt there is only one school that i have never met a single retard from: caltech. cmu is a close second. every other school has let me down by graduating some goof who i have interviewed or worked with. never again will i get uptight or impressed by stanford, mit or the ivies.

my attitude is that i do not care where you went to school. in an interview, if you ace the questions, why do i care if you went to ball state? so what, maybe that is all you could afford. on the other hand, if you can't answer my questions, why do i care if you went to stanford?

furthermore its likely that most people here do not know what the best colleges in korea, japan, china and india really are. so best to just skip the education section of the resume entirely

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I agree with this sentiment entirely. I went to a public magnet high school with SAT scores averaging around 1480 and at least half our graduating class every year ends up in an ivy / mit / stanford. I'd say more than half of those who made it to the top tier got in from legacy / extracurriculars / obsessive dedication to good grades and making teachers happy as opposed to genuine intelligence and love of learning. Also curiously, like you said, everybody from my graduating class who went to caltech, although not necessarily teh uberg3nius math wiz, was at least minimally competent in some technical field.

Although one could make the case that a lot of those schools, especially the ivies, are picking people based on their ability to lead and 'make a difference' in some general sense rather than pure raw ability. Therefore they may intentionally focus on apparently manifested soft qualifications like achievement in extracurriculars, personal discipline as exhibited by a flawless GPA, or well-established personal connections.

This is all strictly re: undergrads of course. I've never seen a single retard get admitted to a top-tier PhD program in science or engineering.

"This is all strictly re: undergrads of course. I've never seen a single retard get admitted to a top-tier PhD program in science or engineering."

That's not the case as I've witnessed it. I won't directly name names, but I am thinking about a school that is ranked number 4 for graduate engineering on U.S. News.

U.S. News has a fairly broken ranking system. I think they try and set things up so schools jump around with little rime or reason so people will buy this years ranking vs just reading last years. I mean if if my school will rise and fall 5-10 points while I am their why try and give a number just list those that make the cut.

i was one of them

"... every other school has let me down by graduating some goof who i have interviewed or worked with. never again will i get uptight or impressed by stanford, mit or the ivies. ..."

Don't confuse 'intelligence' and 'education'. There are plenty of smart people who have never been to University. Likewise there are plenty of people who go to University who graduate but can't think beyond what they have been taught.

any type of creative field runs into this problem a lot. a lot of people reach a certain level and realize that they don't actually have any talent for X, they were just good at following the directions.

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