American Horror, Ivy League Edition

This is a fair point, and what I meant was something more along the lines of "It's certainly true that my school did not emphasize résumé-padding or even resume building".

No one at my school ever discussed career development, and it was a fundamental disservice to the students. The assumption on the part of the faculty was that students would go to 1 of 3 mediocre grad programs or low tier medical programs that our students were regularly admitted to, and that furthering students' development outside of undergrad was not their concern. The only reason I ended up in a better place was because of fantastic mentoring outside of school.

To put this into context, I majored in biochemistry in undergrad, and was the only person in my department (or out of anyone else that I knew in STEM) to do summer research internships at other universities (we didn't have such a thing) / in industry while I was there. I was also the only person to push for a more independent senior research thesis rather than a cookie cutter project which was handed to me.

The university I performed research at for two summers had large, well organized career counseling and job placement efforts, including multiple large scale career fairs each year. When I returned to my school and suggested that we organize a trip to a large university career fair nearby, I was met with blank stares by the faculty and the students. When I asked people what their career plans were soon after the start of senior year, no one even had a general sense of what they wanted to do or what opportunities were out there...

That's interesting, isn't it? The concept of "holistic" admissions is far less prevalent in PhD programs in general, and this is probably because of the laser-like focus on research. I'm surprised this hasn't been discussed more often in the general media and even here on HN where people tend to know quite a bit more about these things.

"Holistic" undergraduate admissions, especially in elite American universities, is extremely prevalent (less so at elite publics than privates). Sports, drama, music, art, volunteer work, "leadership potential", and so forth are all a really big deal. Personal statements tend to be about the applicant as a person. Interestingly, in this regard, professional schools may be more like undergraduate admissions than PhD programs. Personal statements do need to be more specific - you should be able, for instance, to articulate why you want to study law when you apply to Yale law school, whereas it's ok to be applying to Yale undergrad without a very clear academic plan, but they're still very interested (or at least claim to be) in holistic, well rounded individuals.

This probably shouldn't be such a surprise, people often say "you can do anything with a law degree", whereas people tend not to say that about a PhD in biochemistry. Not that you can't, but nobody thinks it makes sense to do that as a generalist degree. So it's ok to go to law school with the intent of becoming a generalist, or just a "leader" (attrition rates at elite law schools are close to zero anyway, so you can pursue your studies somewhat indifferently if you aren't keen on law review or being at the top of your class). It's unlikely that you could pursue a PhD in Mathematics with this attitude or approach (many of the hard science PhD programs have close to a 50% attrition rate).

Another big factor is that graduate students in STEM programs aren't really students in the same way an undergraduate is (or a Law or MBA student, or to a lesser extent a first or second year med student). STEM Phd students are really (to put the most positive spin possible on this) low paid apprentices who generate far more in value than they recoup in teaching or research stipends.

I've read plenty of valid criticisms of "holistic" admissions, now and in the past. But I actually do think that the absence of the generalist STEM degree does harm our field. We could benefit from people who believe "you can do anything with a STEM MS or Phd" but who intend to work in government, for instance. As it stands, most of our leaders are lawyers who encourage engineering for others…

It always amazes me when a future where everyone can make a good living, but where there may be reduced opportunities for insanely extravagant wealth concentration, makes people scoff, but I see it often. Since technology has solved the problem of distribution - the main product that companies were invented to solve - it only seems natural for centralized companies to dissolve entirely. Aside from solving distribution (both of work and of product), everything companies provide can be provided for nearly no cost by software. And companies today have tremendous overhead, doing unwise things like maintaining offices. They do nothing but drain resources and subtract value. Physical co-location of workers is worthless thanks to technology in most every industry.

And it always seems to be the people who are most dedicated to economic ideals and capitalism who refuse to see that capitalism dictates that the current system of megacorps will be defeated by capitalism itself because they are radically inefficient when compared to swarms of freelancers coordinated by and through software. Simply because we may never see another 'Goldman Sachs' strangling the wealth out of millions and putting it into the pockets of a handful who did nothing to earn it, they ignore the fact that most people only need $72k/yr to get to a point where more money won't even make them happier.

That's kind of my point. How is forcing that indie developer in live in Alaska, much different from the Soviets shipping someone off to Siberia because they didn't get with the plan?

Finance will continue to grow as the preferred choice of those who want to avoid being punished by US society and forced live in Alaska or not have enough to eat or a safe place to live.

Thiel was a derivatives trader, not an investment banker.

You may want to read what I wrote one more time. I did not say that those outside of finance deal with lack of food, safety and health. I stated that if one has less money than someone else, they are much more likely to have to deal with things like being assaulted or killed or going without enough to eat etc.

So it just seems obvious that if you don't want to deal with these punishments for finding yourself with less money than 50 to 60 percent of the population, you would go into finance as it gives you the best chances of having more money than most and therefore dealing with less, if any, of the punishments US society hands out for having less money than others.

Great economist would optimize the money at the start of their career? I would expect him to optimize lifetime earnings.

My recollections of Cornell and UW are the same. Show up and ask questions and you might wind up working in their lab.

UCSC, early 2000's: About 15 of us. Faculty interaction was nearly unavoidable, working in labs was a great way to help pay for beer, as they were next to the class rooms and study halls. That said, you could only pay for beer with that cash, as costs of rooms and tuition in Santa Cruz is not student friendly.

> only the ability to quickly and precisely do exactly as you are told

In my experience, my 4.0 existed because I didn't do what I'm told. If I disagreed with a teacher's answer, I would write in "(e) bsilvereagle's answer" and usually get full credit. Similarly, not once did I write a Bing-Bang-Bongo paper in high school as instructed, yet I got top grades in English because I could independently construct a worthwhile essay. I don't think I ever completed a Chemistry lab as instructed either, I would stop half way through and start tinkering around and could usually come up with a hypothesis/experiment/conclusion that was much better than what the lab set out to do.

In short, don't assume every 4.0 you see is going to do exactly as they're told.