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Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

I'm just wondering how such an obviously intelligent and enterprising young man ends up studying at an institution with only marginally more academic credibility than Hamburger University.

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It's not that uncommon for people this intelligent and enterprising to be completely bored out of their mind in high school and get mediocre grades. Prestigious schools, in general, don't accept "the best" but instead accept a certain type of student/personality.

That's one thing I think is good about the California state system. I know some very intelligent people who went to community college first and then transferred to a UC to finish, because they didn't have the high-school grades to get into a "good" school directly, but the public university system is designed for that kind of transfer to be possible (there is a specific transfer process, and in addition the 4-year college degree programs must be designed so that transferring in is possible, with prereqs fulfillable via community college courses).

I'm pretty sure it's like that most places, being a community college -> state university transfer myself (in Illinois), and knowing plenty of other people who went from community college to Northwestern and a few other nice private colleges. Anything out of your degree's core reqs. seems to usually be easy to transfer from community college, and that's usually what the first 2 years are. CC is also a good place for knocking out your math requirements, and a lot of the people in my math classes were traditional university students doing it to save money, or to get it done during a summer semester at home.

Problems might be more from not having a decent community college to go to, families that think community college is unacceptable, or just slacker inertia. I had an excellent community college, and went back to school as an adult over 10 years after dropping out of high school, so none of that stuff applied to me.

edit: better explanation at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4338579

I agree. I went to a community college before transferring to the University of California, San Diego. I had an excellent experience at my CC; smaller class sizes, dedicated teachers,ect..I felt I got more value out of it than the big classes at UCSD. Where, like most big universities, the teachers there were there mostly for research. I did get a lot of shit for it though. A lot of condescending people who jump to the conclusion that I was unmotivated and stupid because I went to a CC.

Especially if he's local. Florida's public schools are terrible and from what I've seen have gotten even worse since I graduated high school.

I was born in upstate New York, moved to Florida when I was 9, over the summer between 3rd and 4th grade. Everything I learned in 4th grade in Florida was a repeat of what I learned in 3rd grade in New York.

I am offended by your dismissal of the institution from which I graduated.

David Cohen, cofounder of Techstars, came out of UCF.

Alan Eustace, SVP of Knowledge at google, came out of UCF.

I came out of UCF, and I do pretty well.

UCF is a school that has an absurdly large sample size with vairous academic standards.

The spectrum of success is so wide-- you can be an incredibly successful programmer/scientist/businessman with all the opportunities available, or you can be a boozehound for seven years and graduate in the middle of your class in hospitality management.

It's like saying America is a bunch of rednecks-- that's true only for a portion of the population.

You may be right, but that's not a strong argument against the GP. "Academic credibility" is only somewhat correlated with graduate success.

I think it's more likely a failure on the part of the 'better' institutions. Whether through valuing something more than intelligence and an enterprising attitude, or through perception, or simply through old school mentality. There are a large number of reasons why this man would choose UCF over these other schools.

I think that's a bit much. It's hardly Hamburger University. Although, I do agree, the University is behaving childishly.

Actually, I know a couple of damned good coders who came out of UCF. Judging from a sample of two is risky, but these guys know their stuff.

they have a very competitive programming team. The school its self isn't special, but their CS program is probably the best in florida.

Safety school!

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