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The company I worked for in the past, its founder was good friends with a CS college professor. And I'm told the founder asked the prof. if there were any particular students who were "relentlessly good", and then the founder would go full-force to get them.

I got to work with one of the guys who was hired this way... ohh boy was he something. The most important lesson I got out of that was there are students in B-tier schools that easily are more capable than A-tier schools any day of the week -- I suspect the reason the founder of the company took this approach was that you'd get workers who're extremely capable, but would accept a lower salary than MIT grads are expected to (because, yes, at some point I asked the guy how much he was making and I remember my jaw just dropped on the floor at how little the amount he said was).

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This is exactly what I've done over the past several years with great results. I stayed in constant contact with my old college professor (we play a sport at the same club) at a school none of you have ever heard of in the Chicago suburbs. The top CS student(s) at small schools can have extremely high potential.

When you combine this with investing time in candidates via a good internship or apprenticeship program the results can be spectacular. When you are outside SV it doesn't take much to make your internship program stand out by letting your interns do full stack development on actual applications that ship.

You need to invest the time on training/mentoring/pairing to make it work though.

I don't have a technical education so I'm not sure what differentiates here-- could I get some examples of A versus B tiered schools (besides the obvious A schools like MIT/Stanford)

Purdue, Duke, Vanderbilt and so on I would consider B-tier.

I went to a B-tier school. Interestingly, I recently learned that one of my smartest friends only applied to one school (Stanford) and got rejected, and afterward applied to the school I went to because it was only 10 miles away from where he lived.

While we're on the subject, one other thing --

There's a lot of Russians, Indians etc. who recently came here and have poor English, and so a lot of people just look past them. But a lot of them are the most persevering and focused folks you'll ever meet, and in my experiences they learn English quickly enough anyway (considering they got to America before they were 15 years old or so).

The way I'd define it in terms of engineering schools:

A-Tier: International reputation for engineering

B-Tier: The school is known internationally (or nationally in the U.S.) but not specifically for engineering

If you're at a B-Tier school you'll probably notice a lot of your professors did their PhD at an A-Tier school.

I say this with the caveat that obviously all manners of university ranking are highly contentious, fluid, and usually say more about the ranker than the ranked.

I worked with what i refer to as the "Croatian Coalition" at Lockheed Martin. DAMN smart people. One of my best friends is from this group and I am constantly bouncing ideas off him and seeking to find a way to work together again.

I would never underestimate the skills of anyone based on where they were from....

Also, don't overestimate the skills of someone either...

Purdue is B-tier? It's ranked top 10 in both undergrad and grad school (we're talking about engineering, of course).

I like how you guys are arguing about A. vs B. when many of us went to schools that are in a tier so low that there aren't even enough letters to give the tier a letter-based rank. (Maybe that's why Unicode exists!)

I'm in a same situation here.

Trust me going to a big school is as much about having rich parents, exposure and massive social/financial push from people around you as much it is about personal genius and hard work.

I would say big schools only act as a hub for smart people to gather learn from each other and become more smart.

Despite many people who go to big schools never make it big, and many people who go to small school make it big.

Ehh.. don't worry about it. I don't think my grad school is in a tier either. What matters is what you do with yourself!

Tiers are highly subjective. I know many will disagree with tiering. But Purdue is at the very least a tier below A. I'm speaking of undergrad.

We at least know it's not A tier (Harvard Princeton Stanford MIT, I think I'm missing a few). Or if you want to get even more resolution, it's not necessarily A- tier either (Berkeley, "lower" Ivies, etc.)

For Computer Science:

A-tier: MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU (in no particular order)

Purdue is B-tier?

Yes, without any doubt.

I think tiers are a bit silly. There are certainly a-tier schools like Stanford. That said, some very bright a-tier students I have met have nothing on b or c-tier school students that have a bit of life experience.

Not everyone can afford (or is willing to fork out the $$) places like Stanford.

"This year more than 3,400 of Stanford's 6,700 undergraduates [more than half] are receiving needs-based financial aid. Another 20 percent receive other types of financial aid from internal or external sources.

Stanford students from families with income below $60,000 pay no tuition, room or board. Those from families with incomes between $60,000 and $100,000 pay no tuition."

That may be true, but students at top schools still tend to come from more affluent backgrounds. Yes, there are "homeless to Harvard" stories out there, but generally speaking Harvard students were able to dedicate as much time as they wanted to school and extracurriculars and exploratory learning in high school because they weren't distracted by a difficult home life or forced to work just to help provide for their family.

I realize this isn't exactly what jmspring meant, but it is still true, in a certain sense, that not everyone can afford a top school. The difference is that the costs come before you even send out your applications.

As a B-tier school student looking for a silicon valley internship, this is extremely comforting to hear.

That you'll make less money than people with the same skill set?

No, that our resumes aren't always thrown out.

I've never hired anyone nor been employed at a Silicon Valley company but this isn't banking so don't worry too much about people throwing out your resume because of where you went to school.

Yeah, a CS degree isn't judged the same way an MBA is.

I come from a no-tier satellite school, and I applied to two different startups in the valley. I did research and different internships, and had a github portfolio. I made it to a 4th and final interview, where they unfortunately decided I wasn't a good fit. Point is, they'll definitely look at you if you show them a decent portfolio.

As a C or D-tier school student, I'm jealous :p

Not aimed at you specifically, but in no particular order...

* Fill out your profile

* List your interesting projects

* Have interesting projects

* Expect to be asked in a job interview, "so, what's your username on hacker news/stack overflow/whatever else" and post accordingly. (statements that are dumb in retrospect are fine; being an asshole all the time isn't).

Again, in no way aimed at you specifically; but I'm constantly reading comments about job search and thinking, "I wonder what he/she is all about", click on their profile and... nothing.

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