Comment by vessenes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vessenes | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree with this article. I'm a successful entrepreneur with an Ivy degree, and I've spent a lot of time with Entrepreneurs from around the world. A surprising number didn't go to a 'top-tier' school; by surprising, I mean to say that where I live if you throw a brick at a law firm, marketing agency, publisher, or accounting firm, you will hit a bunch of Ivy grads. If you throw a brick at a successful startup-CEO meet-and-greet, you will hit a bunch of immigrant kids, local 'townies', and 1 time in 15, someone with an MBA, (usually from a top school.) This is so prevalent that at a recent dinner I had with a highly successful real-estate developer, I was shocked to learn that he went to Harvard. I expected him to be a local non-Ivy grad, given his huge self-made business success.

I've come to a similar conclusion that the author of the article does: risk-aversion is real, and prevalent for Ivy grads. This is probably for a mix of reasons -- I could imagine wealthy students not 'needing' the success as much, and poor ones saddled with loans which make risking much harder. I started out in a risk-averse career, management consulting, but I just couldn't hack the lifestyle and people, and left to do something that was crazy and eventually much more lucrative.

From my own personal experience of having a degree from a prestigious university, my main source of risk aversion when it comes to startups is opportunity cost. Job offers of +100k a year for a 25 year old are really tempting when you've just spent the last 25 years wondering if you have enough money in your checking account to afford a double cheeseburger.

There's also a lot of pressure from society, family, etc, to go out and "get a real job" once you've graduated, because that's how most people define success. School is a major investment of time and money, and graduating from a prestigious school sets high expectations for that investment.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that it's a good idea to give in to these pressures/temptations. I'm just saying that they exist, and perhaps more so for people who graduate from prestigious schools.

Written by a Yale professor:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-el...

The article is long but it's a very good read. I like to reread from time to time.

A point I liked especially:

They [his graduate students] were talking about trying to write poetry, how friends of theirs from college called it quits within a year or two while people they know from less prestigious schools are still at it. Why should this be? Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They’ve been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure....

I believe empirical proof is needed for the claim that elite university grads are more risk averse.

If you are an elite grad, you likely have (1) a wealthier family and (2) enough job offers over the course of your life that your "baseline" is extremely comfortable. Hence you have some margin to take risks.

On the other hand, one could also say that the type of person who is likely to become wealthy might be more prudent and less of a risk taker than a daredevil.

I guess one needs to drill down into "risk aversion".

Actually this does not mean that Ivy gards are risk averse just because they are from Ivy college - in fact it may be other way round. People who prepare for getting into Ivy colleges maybe inherently risk averse hence want a no-brainer, proven method of moderate success. So there might be a self-selection going on there.

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