YC Ivy League Bias | Hacker News Reader

YC Ivy League Bias

davidduey.typepad.com

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I enjoy reading Paul Graham's essays. He's obviously a smart guy and usually has thought provoking and interesting essays. He often looks at things from a different perspective and I like that a lot, although I don't always agree with his conclusions. I've also followed along with his Y Combinator "seed investment firm." However, I've never applied to Y Combinator or even considered applying because I've always felt like he leans heavily toward the Ivy League crowd.

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Speaking from someone who attended one, it is very easy to go to an Ivy League school and not excel simply because you (and everyone else there) are assumed to excel because you attend one.

As a point of a comparison take China. China's most acclaimed school Peking University is fiendishly difficult to get into but gives a ridiculously easy education once you are there. Still, Peking U grads are able to go most places they want. Schools with a science/math/engineering focus seem to do better at maintaining a higher standard, but their students frequently come out looking like they just popped out of a cookie-cutter - not even a hint of an independent idea.

A fuller exploration question is of course more complicated than this, and would have to address at least the following questions: Why did the core curriculum of the West die? Could it be replaced with a broad and rigorous humanities education or are broad and rigorous contradictory? If not, how can they productively be combined?

I think the more important thing is depth and rigor. To have truly original ideas, we need to understand the underpinnings of our current civilization. Otherwise, many 'innovations' are merely going back down the path we came from.

I had an undergrad education like this. We went through the main books of the Western canon, and instead of being lectured at all the time, most of what we did was creative and rigorously scholarly. We'd read a couple classics a week, with a couple class debates/discussions concerning the works. Then, we'd have to write a thesis every semester. Finally, we were highly encouraged to do important extra-curricular activities such as acting or music. Probably one of the best educations you can get in the US.

St. John's?

No, it was at Biola University (private Christian college) with the Torrey Honors Institute. Probably not quite up to par with St John's and the other one (Thomas Aquinas?), since THI only started about 10 or so years ago.

Fascinating. Were the THI students segregated from the rest of everyone? Sounds like you enjoyed it? Any criticisms?

I suppose it doesn't surprise me that a conservative Christian would offer a Western classics program. Still I am surprised I never heard of it before, especially since it is based on D. Sayers philosophy of teaching (whom I adore).

FYI my university's English program followed the reverse track, recently removing Bunyan from the curriculum.

We were segregated in the sense that THI took the place of GE. Otherwise, we were even more involved in campus life, representatively, than the normal students. Plus, we all had normal majors.

Yeah, I thought it was an incredible experience, much more interesting and fun than any schooling I'd received before. The professors worked hard to encourage the students to take ownership of their education. In a way, the fact that it is a young program works in its favor, since it hasn't been encrusted by tedious layers of administrative BS. My main criticism is of myself, that I did not take the initiative more and was not brave enough during discussions.

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It wouldn't surprise me if a very large majority of YC applicants did NOT go to the Ivy League.

Regardless of whether students/graduates of those schools are smarter, from what I've heard there is much less of an entrepreneurial spirit in the Ivies.

If anything, I would think YC has a bias towards schools like MIT, Berkeley, CalTech, Stanford, UIUC, etc., none of which are in the Ivy League.

(And by bias I don't mean an admissions bias, simply that a greater percentage of accepted teams go to these schools)

When the author says Ivy League, I took it to imply Ivy-League-caliber schools.

People from the 'top-tier' schools are shooting for a multitude of things besides entrepreneurial success. I graduated from UChicago, and it seemed as if a massive majority of my fellow students were going after law, banking, or academia. At my five-year reunion I was one of the only people I met not pursuing one of these paths. In addition, many students at these schools have some kind of anti-business ideology or another, so subtract them from the picture as well.

I agree that there are probably more great teams from the technical universities and high-end state schools than from the ivies and famous private universities.

I'm a data point on the side of YC not having an Ivy League (or "top tier") school bias. I went to community college. For audio recording and music--I've never taken a single computer class after high school AP classes. My co-founder went to a good school in Australia, but I didn't know what it was when filling out the application so I just said, "some school in Australia, probably a good one, and probably for computer science".

That said, the number of Stanford, CMU, UC, MIT, etc. students and graduates is quite high in YC, and I can't think of any other community college bums in the bunch.

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