How to game the U.S. higher-education system | Hacker News Reader

How to game the U.S. higher-education system

kuro5hin.org

50 pointsAlex391732 comments

Why game the U.S higher education system? The author seems to base his entire article on the premise that "In most careers, a Master's degree is required". He is a Stanford PhD student so I can see why he thinks that way, but I just don't see that need in 'most careers' outside academia.

Tunnel vision: almost by definition, disables the subject from noticing it.

I found life a whole lot more enjoyable by not giving a crap about prestige, and not planning out the entire next 12+ years of my life (HS, undergrad, grad school) when I was an 8th grader.

You're lucky you realised this trick so early :-).

Prestige may be part of the equation to the extent that prestige is a proxy for the quality of education and research that you'll find at a given university.

That said, I chose my school based on a lot more than the limited metric implied by the author. College (and grad school...) is about more than just the job you get after graduation. I've met so many incredible people and had so many awesome experiences here... to simplify it to a "game" measured in terms of post-grad salary is ridiculous.

Daniel Pink's new career advice book makes this the first lesson:

http://www.squidoo.com/Johnny_Bunko

Yeah I have news for the author. State schools don't have money and private schools do. If you/your family don't actually have enough money to pay for your college education, you'll get financial aid from the private school but you'll have to pay full tuition at a state school. The schools who he was throwing around (Brown, Stanford) all guarantee 100% need based financial aid. And if you are a genius like the author suggests, you're sure to get some merit based financial aid as well.

Personal anecdote: If I had decided to attend University of Chicago instead of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I would have paid $15k less per year. Urbana's tuition is ~$25k per year and Chicago's is $50k. Of course, since I wanted to study Computer Science the choice was obvious, but if money had been the issue I would have gone to Chicago. If money is a _serious_ concern, you _will_ get financial aid from a top private school.

If you do have enough money, the monetary aspects of your college choice become a question of value, not necessity. The author should have framed his article in that sense. There's good advice in this article, but none of it applies to people who are contained by money. Rather, it should have been written for the people who want to get the most of their money.

Your math is a little beyond my level:

If I had decided to attend University of Chicago instead of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I would have paid $15k less per year. Urbana's tuition is ~$25k per year and Chicago's is $50k.

So you paid ~$25k per year, and if you had gone to UC you would have paid $50k per year? How is that $15k per year less?

Probably he meant he could get much higher financial aid at UC (thus illustrating that expensive private schools can be actually cheaper).

For example:

  UC:   $50K tuition - $40K aid => $10K total cost
  UIUC: $25K tuition - $0K aid  => $25K total cost

I don't think this is necessarily the case, because second-tier schools may have more money to spend on merit-based scholarships.

When I was an undergrad (1986-1991), MIT and the Ivies had an agreement that they would only offer scholarships on the basis of financial need, because they didn't want to get into an "arms race" offering scholarships to poach one another's best applicants. This deal was the subject of an antitrust lawsuit and while I know MIT settled the suit, I don't know if the policy stands today.

So if you're smart enough to get merit-based scholarships from a second-tier school, and if your definition of "financial need" is not as Spartan as the student financial aid office's definition, then you may still come out ahead by going to a second-tier school.

I actually got a ton of money from a state school while private schools universally denied me any aid. Being a white middle class male kind of hurts from that perspective.

Yes, we are a perennially screwed socio-economic subset in that regard.

I went to Iowa State University. The tuition was 1300 a semester when I started, and 1800 when I left. All national merit scholars get a full ride, including room and board. And the engineering college had plenty of scholarships for women. It was a great deal.

yes, the terminal school matters. which is why people care about the quality of the undergrad school they go to. most people don't know whether or not they are going to pursue a masters. if they at least go to a decent undergrad school and they wind up not pursuing the masters they still have viable career options. beware premature optimization.

yeah, though there are some times when you pretty much know you're going on.

For example, if you definitely 100% want to be a psychiatrist, you can't do anything without at least a masters, preferably a PhD.

But in most fields, there are good jobs that don't require masters degrees, and then premature optimization like this is bad.

You need an MD to be a psychiatrist.

So basically it's saying work hard and act smart? How is that gaming the system? Is this article a parody?

I think he is 'gaming' the system purely from a financial perspective. His argument is that the sum total spent on undergraduate + graduate study can be a lot less with the same end result.

And it pretty much assumes that you have wealthy parents and therefore won't be getting the generous financial aid that all of the top schools offer to students from middle-class families.

The path this article prescribes is almost identical to my own story, and so far I strongly agree that financially it makes a lot of sense (although there are cases where this may not necessarily be true, based on tsally's comment).

The only difference in my own personal path from the article's is that before coming to grad school I worked for two years in a position that was extremely relevant to what I wanted to study. Not only did I make enough money to pay off my undergrad debt, but I also gained a great recommendation from my boss (who was a PhD, which helps a lot) as well as an interesting story to add to my personal statement when applying to grad school.

The author forgot the writing portion of the GRE, which is not easily gamed at all, not to mention that writing is crucial for academic success. You must be able to write. How about some tips for writing well?

Writing well? http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonficti...

Thanks, I just ordered the audio book.

Have you heard of Prof. Drout's A Way With Words? It's great.

http://www.recordedbooks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=scholar.sh...

How to write well:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html

I wonder if he would write the same article twenty years after receiving his last degree.

If you're after saving money (and pursuing the same general strategy), even a better idea is attend a reputable community college (in SF Bay Area, the best by far are De Anza and Foothill) and then transfer (again, to a top-tier public school such as Penn State, U Michigan or UC Berkeley/UCLA).

A further shortcut is also doing a combined BS/MS program: some very reputable public/many private universities do this (UCLA does, UC Berkeley does not) -- in this way, you only spend an extra year on your masters and carry over a great deal of undergraduate credit. If you aren't looking for a Ph.D right away, this may be a better course (and having a Masters thesis written, recommendations from graduate course professors as well as a few years of work experience (after the Masters) give a significant admissions boost).

Am I missing something? If you're parents really can't afford your tuition at a top tier school, won't the school just pay for it? Most prestigious schools have a giant endowment and tons of financial aid. This has been the case with pretty much everyone I know. Just go to the best undergraduate school you can get in to.

But I guess this article could apply if you have rich parents that refuse to pay your tuition. Now you're in trouble.

It happens more often than you think.

My parents made too much for me to qualify for financial aid, but didn't contribute much to my educational expenses. I had to take out loans to cover the cost of my tuition. I also was able to pay for a few semesters by working and living cheaply.

I don't think most families pay 100% for their children to go to school. I think that is a suburban middle class day dream. I could be wrong, though.

A lot changes in four years. Especially those four years. This much planning makes little sense.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your degree matters A LOT with your first job.

After that the importance of your degree is reduced by roughly half each year and pretty soon all that matters is your work, not what school you went to.

That's not "gaming the education system" any more than buying a Honda instead of a BMW is "gaming the auto system"

But, yeah, go to a state school.

Just don't go.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com