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Success Despite College Rejection
selan writes "Are those who are rejected by prestigious schools destined to lead mediocre lives? Or are great people more likely to succeed if they were rejected by top universities? An inspirational column in the Washington Post discusses the "Spielberg Effect", a theory that it really doesn't matter where you went to school."
I would go to the best college, that I can afford to go to. I dont think UnderGraduate studies matter that much. It is for the higher degrees that you need to go to the prestigeous institutions....
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
it's coming up to the start of a new academic year I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain how lucky you Americans are to have a fraternity system.
;-). And while cliques certainly form in English Universities, the are all much too boring to come up with the idea of hazing. I fondly recall diving off a weir and almost drowning when I was 12 because everyone said I was chicken. If only it had been possible for me to gain respect in later life through similar tests, and if these tests could have been combined with pseudo Masonic rituals culminating in the awarding of a little badge, then that truly would have made my time at University worthwhile. And while I still have friends from University, these friendships seem so hollow compared to bonds of fraternal brotherhood since they are not based on solemn vows of fellowship, mutual sacrifice, group solidarity and owning the same poxy little badge.
English Universities are so dull by comparison. Like most students in England I had to rent private accommodation for my second and third years, but it never occurred to us to build a whole culture around collectively renting a rather dilapidated house in Clapham. It wasn't even single sex accommodation, so we couldn't engage in the fun and games of para-homosexual activities - Girls just don't have the same grip on your loyalties as your Greek brothers
Then there's sheer joy alcohol seems to bring fraternity members.. By the time I went to university the delights of getting dangerously drunk at parties had started to seem mundane. But to American students in fraternities, the bravado of excessive alcohol consumption is a an exciting new and illicit game where you can prove yourself worthy to all your male friends and simultaneously circumvent college alcohol policy - thereby proving what a rebel you are too. Gosh.
I am also rather fond of the references to ancient Greece. It reeks of a history far nobler and grander than anything a British University can instil its students with, and the wearing of togas must make it seem as authentic as a ploughman's lunch.
I think what I am trying to say is that Fraternities give young Americans the chance to grow up in their own time, and that it is regrettable that no similar opportunity is afforded to European Students. In particular, I find it sad that even some American students forego the opportunity to wear togas and claim to be Greek. Really this should be mandatory, so every graduate will be secure in the knowledge that they have gained something much more valuable than a degree from an American University - a little badge with some Greek letters on it.
Although I am not American, I admire the system so much that I would dearly love to become an honorary member of a fraternity. I have set my heart on becoming an alumni of Theta Omicron Sigma Sigma Epsilon Ro Sigma. I do so hope this is possible
See subject.
Many people see finishing collegue as the end of something, instead of a beginning. The difference is in how you apply the knowledge afterwards, and in how much one is willing to do to keep developing oneself.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I was brought up the traditional way fir a reasonably educated family in England. Led to believe that you go to school, college then university. It was never questioned and always assumed that this is the way it goes. If you want a good job, you go to uni. So I went and did it, at a decent uni too, came home and now, 3 years after leaving, I'm working in some crappy tech support job for peanuts. Meanwhile, the people I used to look at with pity that left school at 16 to take on some government youth training scheme have been working for almost 8 years. They've worked their way to a higher employment status than I'm at now. I assumed that since I had the degree I would quickly be able to progress past these and all the years of studying (well, partying) would become worthwhile, but I'm finding this isn't the case. To employers, I'm just another kid out of university like the thousands of others. The other kids though, the ones that left school? They're seen as valuable workers that have years of experience on the job. I don't regret going to uni, but occasionally I feel the bitterness rising :)
From http://www.bullyonline.org/schoolbully/truanc Obsession with academic exam results at the root of failed education policy Academic exam results are one of the poorest indicators of potential. Many of the world's most successful people left school with few, and sometimes no, qualifications. These include Albert Einstein (scientist), Soichira Honda (founder of Honda Motor Corporation), Ray Kroc (founder of MacDonalds), Pete Waterman (multi-millionaire record producer), Richard Branson (multimillionaire entrepreneur and inspiration), Philip Green (self-made millionaire businessman and CEO of BHS [British Home Stores]) etc. It could even be said that a surfeit of academic qualifications might condemn one to a life of mediocrity.
I demonstrate at Manchester University and there are people I know would be better off if they went straight to a job. Some people are planning to be HTML writers and have no desire to learn about computer architecture. They are wasting 3 years of their life during which they could get vital experience of a real job. People coming out of university cant get jobs because emplyers think they will want to move onto something better very soon after.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
When it comes time for my kid(s) (whenever I have them!) to go to college, if they're anything like me I'll encourage them to go to a smaller, less prestigious school for at least the start of their undergraduate work.
From the experiences of myself and my wife, the primary difference between schools with "rigorous" academic programs and the rest is the professors in the "lesser" schools are more prone to actually *teach* the material, and to actually *care* that they're doing it right and their students understand. For example: I went to a pretty tough engineering school, and I had a hell of a time with Calc II. I took it (and dropped it) twice; for whatever reason it just didn't sink in. During the summer I took the same class at a local college, and I was astounded at how much fun learning a difficult subject could be when the professor actually knew how to teach. I got an A in that summer class, and the tests weren't any easier than before.
I think you need to look at the definition of "succeed" in this instance. I'm betting that it will come from the same kind of place as all that "having a life" and "making the most of yourself" nonsense.
E.g. if you become the head of a medium-sized business selling widgets worldwide then you have "succeeded". Big Fucking Deal.
The point of life is to have fun. That's it.
I recommend not working. Why give most of your life to an unfeeling corporation ?
I also recommend not getting married. It always ends in tears.
Forget what society expects you to be. Ignore what your parents want you to be. Be what you want to be- for yourself and no-one else.
graspee
..however, it is ultimately up to the individual if he/she will make it or not. Even if they are successful and got a diploma, that still does not mean they are talented or have a nack for what they studied. E.g. I've seen CS majors from, let's just say, a renown older CS university who even after graduation wasn't sure what the hell is the difference between a "char *" and a "char []" in C/C++... Now, I know you cannot know every obscure detail of a language, but come on.. this was trivial.
Being in a good school definitely helps, because those schools that are 'good' or known/rated to be good by others have a natural selection of students who are more interested in learning rather than fucking around in college, so the environment definitely fosters a learning rather than a 'party' experience, however, no best Ivy league school will inject an ounce of intelligence or talent or most importantly, _motivation_ in someone to succeed.
Just my USD $.02.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Spielberg Effect? Is that where you start out very creative and talented but don't know when it's time to put the "Jerry Sienfeld effect" into effect? I think George Lucas has the same affliction.
A university degree does not guarantee the graduate anything ... but it helps get him into-the-door.
A degree from an known* Ivy-League school, therefore, will only help him get into some more doors.
*Harvard and Princeton. How many people have heard of Brown and Dartmouth in Europe?
Why does this sound to me like "Observational selection" that Carl Sagan listed in his Baloney detection kit ? What about those who got rejected and did not exactly shake up the world later in their life ?
The effects of a rejection could be positive or negative. There could be many reasons why Greg Forbes Siegman did what he did...too many variables and circumstances. "theorising" does not seem to be the right thing to do.
Science as a way of life.
graduated from Univ of Texas 81, now at 1% of the top percentile in pay for Chem E's; go figure thats north of 130,000; so no you don't have to go to harvard, yale or half a dozen other snob schools to come out smokin by the time your 40.
Because I left school when I was 14!
no brainer. what's the first thing you learn in baby school? why it's sharing, of course. some kids were abseNT/failed that day.
having rejected "success" ourselves, we're now invited to give talks on about how insightful/ludicrous that might be.
I graduated 2nd in my class because an overzealous Spanish teacher felt that, no matter how well I did, I deserved a B in class. This threw my unweighted GPA down to a 3.99 by graduation time and deprived me of the honor of valedictorian. While, my weighted GPA was close to 4.55, the denial of getting A in that class really hurt me a lot. It was the first time in my life that I realized that no matter what I did and how hard I worked, this teacher just did not like me. My only goal was get that achievement of being number one in my class and I felt I was robbed.
Since this took place my third year, it adversely affected my ability to put in the effort needed to succeed at my other classes. Instead of going the extra mile to learn, I was doing only enough to get an A in the class. I realized that I was smart enough that I did not have to put much work in to scoot by. When it came time to study for SATs, I didn't try. I opened up the study book at 1am the night before the test and took the test the next day. What did I score? 990 total. Dismal? You better believe it.
My parents noticed that I had been down due to my failure to get the grade I wanted in my Spanish class and they did their best to tell me that it wasn't the end of the world. It helped and the next SAT I took got me 1470. Better? Yes. Actually, so much better that the college board tried to pin me for cheating on the exam. I was quite upset and retook the SAT again and scored a 1550. To the amazement of the college board, my score went up again under strict supervision. Regardless, this wasn't the last battle I was going to face.
My sincere desire was to become a doctor and work to bring my love of computer into the medical world. To this end, I decided the best decision was for me to apply to the B.S. / M.D. programs that spit you out in 6, 7, or 8 years with both degrees. Guess what? I got rejected from every single one. I guess being Senate President and President of over half the clubs on campus and tons of community service wasn't enough for them.
I ended up at UCLA for my undergraduate work. I have crashed and burned in UCLA too. My third year was very bad but I have become a better person who realizes what he is capable of. Medical school applications go out this June and I hope that my low GPA will be overlooked and I get accepted. It has been a rough ride but I hope others can benefit from my experiences and realized that many people in those world are complete asses. What matters is if you apply yourself or not.
I work at a company that has several hundred employees, most of which of have PhDs in the hard sciences. (This includes myself.) Over the years, I've been on numerous hiring committees. From my experience I can say this, there is a broad tiering of schools -- community college versus major universities (including state schools and Ivy League). Which tier you attended can affect hiring decisions. Past that the specific school doesn't matter. Having discussed the qualifications of many interview candidates, I have NEVER heard anyone say hire person A over person B because they went to an Ivy League school. The discussions center around oral and written skills and personality. Specifically, whether the person's personality would be a good fit in the corporate culture. (Because of our work, we need to avoid the shy, introverted scientist. We need extroverts.)
Let's look at the facts:
From a forbes article: The vast majority of the 234 U.S. billionaires whose education level is tracked by Forbes magazine through 1999 finished college; 100 have some form of advanced degree, but 41--that's 18%--never got their college diplomas and two never even finished high school.
The world's richest man(i don't have to stress here
The point I am trying to make is not that education doesn't help you or isn't necessary, but rather bookish/college education is not the be all or end all in making a person a great individual or entrepreneur or leader.
Interesting comment - as an English guy (who never made it to uni bacause of family issues), the dependance on College in the USA is much stronger than in the UK. It's almost as if you are useless if you didn't go to college (even though people like Bill Gates seem to have done OK). To get my H1-B visa, they had two get to college professors to evaluate my 20+ years experience and equate it to a degree.
I think the big difference is that in the UK you begin to specialize at 16, if not before. That, within the US High School system, is almost impossible. So in the USA, at 18, you don't know much more that you did at 16.
Believe me, you'd be just one of the 'college kids' in the US (and a year older). The difference is they would know that, straight from High School, you're pretty much useless (excepting, of course, those smart enough to overcome that handicap).
Of course, in the current economy, many graduates are working at McDonalds, but that's another story.
In 1985 or so I got a letter from UCB. At the time Berkeley had the best com sci program of any university and I so applied. The letter I go back said "Thanks for your application"..."it hasn't even been considered since we have had over a million applicants since we filled up. Please consider one of these University of California schools"... there there was a list of crossed out schools. The application fee was $20 and they did cash the check and didn't return it.
I don't think undergrad school makes much of a difference. After all, you're not really doing any research or anything, just learning the basics and getting a liberal arts degree. Graduate school is where you specialize and then the quality of the researchers and the resources of the school matter. For example, take a physics class at Harvard and compare with one at "Random State University." Are the laws of physics any different at Harvard? I think not. In fact, I've heard a few professors complain about some of these prestigious schools because they inflate their grades to make their students look smarter. One of them said that at Duke something like 75% of the class (biology 101 I think) got A's. That's preposterous.
In my opinion, undergrad school matters a little bit, but it's a waste of money to go to a prestigious expensive school. Just go to a school you know doesn't suck and do really well, you'll get into a good grad school. I went to Rutgers, which is a decent school but it's not Harvard, and I knew someone who got into Harvard for their developmental biology PhD program. And as someone else said, it's ultimately the individual that decides how far they will go in life.
Karma: Excellent (In Soviet Russia, karma pimps YOU)
Nobody cares where you went to school. Other things like E.Q. and I.Q are more important when working well with people.
Hell, you don't even need to have graduated from college/MS/PhD anymore. Most of the people that kick ass and take names are college drop-outs. Probably because they don't have a degree to fall back on. Apple, MS, etc.. Anyhow, it's what you know, not who you sucked up to for 4 years.
invited? talk? for money?
getting paid to "talk" about rejecting "success"?
this must be some kind of fairytail? what would you "talk" about? "dress for rejection"? "rejectcessorIEs"? shortselling?
If your makeup is that of someone who is entrepreneurial, creative, takes initiative/risks and works at it, college just becomes a formality to please the business mentality at large when you're starting. You're likely to succeed anyway.
The college you go to doesn't matter*
*Elitist wall-street and legal firms not included.
Depends how you define success. I am the only one of my closest friends who did not graduate (although I did go to what was then a polytechnic here in the U.K. but dropped out and took a job) and I am the second highest earner. Mind you I did learn a lot when I was there. And I think I.T. gives you more opportunity to succeed without qualifications than some other (engineering) fields. I think it's probably been easier for me to convince people that I can make their computers do what they want than I it would be to convince people to let me design their bridges if I'd done civil engineering instead of electrical/electronic.
My conclusion - ability and no qualifications can take you as far as no ability and qualifications with luck and a following wind...
I reserve the right to be wrong.
However, if you're an ordinary person, then the school you attend is the only thing to make you stand out from the crowd.
Hi all,
I never had to deal with testing for entry to a school. I did take one test for math placement, but the school basicly said, "If you can afford it, you can attend."
I don't see why every school isn't set up this way. If I can afford to take classes at MIT or Berkley(sp?), then why would they turn me away? In a capatilist system, demand drives supply. If MIT has 1000 slots open for Intro to C++, and 10000 people apply, then the price for the semester should rise until the applicant base falls to a reasonable level.
I do think that a school should look at your highschool GPA when you apply, but I don't see why any "4.0" student shouldn't be able to get into any school they can afford. The schools should either expand their services or boost their prices until they meet a balance. If they need an additional system of balance, then make the classes uberfuckinghard. Let Darwin sort it out.
I'm not bitter (I love my school, U. of Maryland), but if I have the money for a service, it is bullshit for that service to be denied. Kinda like WalMart saying that they have Nike shoes, but not for you.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
this thread has a distnctly Brit sound to it. After all aren't they the folks that think they're the worlds smartest doctor/lawyer/chemist, etc (fill in the blank on that)
Oh, what I've found, they are very qualified, but like the holiday more than work, so any yank is worth 2 brits just because the yank works harder (being equally educated that is.
cheers from the US of A!!
A degree gives you a "formal" knowledge framework, and perhaps make some frieds, rich ones if you go to a "expensive" college. How relevant that knowledge is to a real situation is a different matter, but for most degress the real world is a completly different thing. I did CS as my degree and it was only useful to find the first job. More important is your willing to learn/change/adapt to new things, different situations, new jobs and new challenges. Learning does not stop at college, it only gives you the formality of having to pass some exams. I know very capable/intelligent people that did not fit within the framework and drop out college as their learning styles/motivations were different to what the system required, and they are not doing bad...
I don't think the degree is as important as the process. It's your personal challenges that count. Of course, you still have to give the teacher exactly what is asked off you, but hey, that's the game.
;P ).
After failing high school miserably, I wasn't able to get into any university. While all my friends started their degrees, I was forced to go to a 'lower level' form of tertiary education (let's just say it's not a university).
Anyway, long story short, I used that 'failure' as the reason for kicking everybody's ass. I made sure that I beat everybody in all my classes (academically of course
More importantly, I started thinking positively to attract positive energy. I figured, if I do bad things, bad things will happen to me. If I do good things (or just don't do bad things), then karma will kick in.
And it worked. That was 5 years ago. Now I have a diploma, and degree with Honors! (I found a way to a university). My final year was under scholarship, during which I also had a full time job doing R&D. Now I work for a very large, solid global company doing exactly what I want.
Along the way I learned a lot of things. But more importantly I learnt about myself - when to apply pressure, when to relax, when to go out, when to study, when to spend time with my family.
Hard work and enthusiasm. That's all it takes. If you do your part, God will do the rest.
Now I plan to get lots and lots of money, and then show all the rich people how they should be helping others instead of buying unnecessary things (like expensive shit). I don't know how I'm going to do it. I just know it will happen.
Let's see... my roommate was a guy who just didn't feel ready for the University, and therefore went to a 2yr college, and *really* learned the basics well.
He then came in to the Va Tech EE program (Electrical engineering), and found himself tutoring his classmates for money.
He then graduated, went into their computer engineering program, and has a PhD in that now. I have no idea whether he is successful now, but I suspect he is.
I suspect that a lot of other things, such as distractions, matter more than which college you go to.
On the other hand, if you want to do the bare minimum, just get by, and get a great job based on connections and nothing else, I'm sure Harvard or Yale or even MIT would be great!
Likewise, if you're really good, think that you will do great research, and yet want a Nobel prize, better have those good universities (and thesis professor) under your name: it *does* make a difference there.
And anything political? Again, the good universities can be important, though more important is to "have the right views". Character, behavior, and skill all matter not a whit there, for *both* sides of the Officially Approved American Political Party.
Anyhow, I'm probably wrong in most of this. Everything I said here is an opinion, not stated fact, and I've been known to be wrong before. I'm often wrong [but did not invent Data... that was Al Gore. He's the other often wrong.]
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I think that about sums that one up.
Depending on how you measure success...
I was rejected by CalTech and MIT (flamers do yer wurst) and due to being young and stoopid my back-up school was the local state university system.
But, I ended up cruising through the CS degree program with so much time on my hands that I was able to take a campus job in the IT department and use it to explore lots of leading edge technology at the time. I got my name in the credits for all kinds of projects - perl, tcl/tk, Mosaic, XFree86, etc (last time I ego-surfed google I got about 300 hits on my name with probably 90% of them referencing my actual self and not some travel agent in in podunk Indiana) and really learned my shit. Much more than just vocational level too, I picked up experience and insight that lots of MS and PhD grads don't have (of course there are plenty of graduate students with deeper specific knowledge then I had, but I figure I was ahead of say, at least 50% of them by the time I graduated with my lowly BS from a lowly school).
So, 9 or so years later, I haven't put my name on an a public internet project for at least 6-7 years, instead working in the private industry. But, even in these crappy times I'm able to consistently bill $250/hr for my consulting services - last year I pulled down over $400K pre-tax.
But, I ended up getting divorced from my wife of 8+ years. I don't have any kids, but I also don't have a social life to speak of (the wife was it outside of work), I'm growing bald and I've put on a few extra pounds -- but the bank account is fat too and will keep getting fatter for at least another 12 months if not longer.
So, if a fatwallet is your measure of sucess then yeah, being rejected by the top schools might be part of my "success." But being rejected is certainly not the only price I've had to pay for where I am today and I certainly don't think of it as success now as much as I would have considered it success 10 years ago.
Im 32 years old and moved 24 times in my life, most of it as a child and teenager. I attended 5 different schools and lived in the states, germany, scotland and germany again. Along the way, as you can imagine, I grew somewhat emotionally independet of the judgement by academic authorities over me that at points I often came to disbelief at how so many people, especially in my homecountry germany, can take the system for granted. Only gradually are things changing to a more unconventional way of dealing with this. That's one of the rare things that are actually *good* to be copied from the US.
Everything that article says is so very true.
And there is still one thing I might want to add:
The reason for going to a University should be that you want to learn, not that you want a degree. If you can't gain that amount of self esteem (spelling???) without a degree it's almost shure a degree isn't the right thing for you. That probably is more so when studying an art.
If I where young again (gee I'm 32 now...:-) ) I'd be even more reckless. I'd pick the masters I've allways considered the best of trade, let's say for instance Frank Miller the comic artist, back a backpack travel to him, knock on his door and ask him to let me help him with anything I can offer for free and therefore let me look over his shoulder while he's drawing. For now I don't give a shit what papers or titles people have. They hardly mean zilch apart from showing their ability to walk the treadmill.
What counts is what ones self is willing to do and what ones self considers a great achievement or a poor performance. It's difficult, requires honesty but in the long run get's you farther. I bet that's the common demoninator all the people we call 'originals' have.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Who needs a PhD?
I went to a crappy school district and was fucked over when it came time for a real education. I got bored with the remedial quality teaching and not only didn't I go to college (I once had a teacher actually say "good luck - you won't even get a community college to accept you with this highschool on your record") but I didn't finish highschool either.
I dropped out after my freshman year with 7 credits to my name. Then I got my GED and have been making a six figure salary as a software engineer for the last eight years.
I've been looking at many of the ivy-leage schools for graduate school, and so I've been glancing at their undergraduate degrees for a basis of what they expect. Guess what, they don't teach a lot to undergraduates. Actually, its pretty average. I was pretty surprised at first, even though I go to a great school its not a 'name-brand', but some are just pathetic.
Most college rankings seem to rely on reputation, peer-review, famous faculty, research, and the education recieved by graduate students. Instead undergraduate is by and large who you are and how much your worth, not brains. And to top it off, and this really got me, a large number of the 'best-of-the-best' schools use a partial or full pass/fail system to hide GPAs. This means that if you pass (usually 50-65% on course webpages), you get a pass - equal to a 3.0 when converted to a GPA by the school. Quite a nice trick, especially for those that use a partial system to hide tougher courses where GPAs would fall.
And the graduate programs aren't all that great at times. Many take 1 year to complete, not two. I actually laughed when I looked at UC Berkeley's for Computer Engineering: 10-11 crh (out of 24) can be applied to any 100-level or above course. Okay, okay, its not ivy-leage, but the school has a good rep.
So ivy-leage schools having great reputations is false, and I can tell you numerous stories related to me by PhD graduates from them. The thing is, for some people reputation is just as or more important than the education - like the MBA programs. Stanford and many others don't actually release an MBA student's grades to potential employers, but the key aspect to their program lies in the connections built in, advice from famous CEOs, and the education. The mere fact that Stanford is on your resume determines your salary.
So repeat after me: reputation does not equal education. And the article shows this, the name attached to his degree didn't make much of a difference. You just have to decide what mixture you want, obscurity vs fame, hardcore vs. hand-holding.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
I've been from University of San Francisco to Community colleges and now to U.C. Berkeley. The recognition of the schools do matter.
You tend to meet much more ambitious people at the higher up schools. Obviously, you're more likely to find the next CEO in Harvard than in any community college. In addition, the professors at the "name brand" schools tend to be the creme of the crop. My nobel prize winning professors trumps any regular professors any day.
Lastly, many of those that do become a success regardless of their schools are indicative of their own amazing personalities. But can many people honestly compare themselves to the greatness of Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg or Einstein?
How to describe tests, e.g. in this case college admission, has been a well studied practice for a long time. A specific tests is evaluated by how close it meets the desired student body composition of the college. Factors involved are the sensitivity, specificity, prevalence, positive and negative predictive value and others. In college admission terms these could perhaps be translated to:
Sensitivity - what proportion of high-school students with post priori or retrospective success in a college will be admitted by the test. Or the question "If with omniscience we know that some student would do well in a college, how likely is it that the student to be accepted by the admission tests of that college?"
Specificity - what proportion of high-school students with post priori or retrospective success in a college will be rejected by the test.
Sensitivity and specificity often relate reciprocally.
Positive predicitive value - what proportion of the students who were accepted by the admission test of college will actually succeed in that college.
Negative predicitive value - what proportion of the students who were rejected by the admission test of college would in fact actually have succeed in that college.
I believe that the article is inspiring and that the purpose of the article were to illustrate success in spite of (over-)whelming odds. However, without knowledge of the above test describing variables and knowledge of college admission goals as distilled in the tests I find it difficult to immediately come to the conclusion that one/some/all tests are a failure. (Note before rest of text: I sort of presume that most Ivy league students are dull and don't do miracles and the brilliant one's are at least a bit eccentric or out-of-the-box). For example if an Ivy league school's admission test goal is to minizime future failing students over admitting perceived "high-risk" students with potential genius capability then it would prefer a test with a high positivt predictive value and you would expect the outcome illustrated in the article (I don't think a genius necessitates a "high-risk" personality but bear with me). Another school perhaps wants to find all the gems hidden in the mainstream Ivy league applying sand and would consequently value a test with a high sensitivity and a low negativt predictive value even if that means they admit some rather dull but performing students. Of course my points may be moot coming from U of Rant at Nonsensespam-by-the-sea.
The point of the article seems to be that one's ambition has more to do with a widely lauded and recognized life than where one goes to college. Um, Duh. However, it's interesting to note that the study quoted in the article is by a Princeton professor, which should tell you a bit about how important naming colleges is to the person writing the article (one wonders if a study would be even considered if it came out of Bumfuck state?)
Finally, isn't this all fairly obvious? Of course you can be very rich and very famous without going to an ivy league college. But we still have a couple problems with the average Slashdot Reader Response to this article, which seems to be, "It doesn't matter which college you go to at all". One, this article named two (2) people who are fairly well recognized and did not go to ivy league schools. Off the top of all of our heads, if we methodically listed all of the people who we consider to be successful in life (and nationally "known"), I think we'll easily find that the majority went to a school in the top tier (say top 50 universities or top 50 liberal arts)
Also, one attends university to learn how to think, not to learn how to be creative. Note that the people quoted in this article are primarily successful because of their creativity. If you are an incredibly creative person, not going to an ivy league college won't take that away from you (i.e., Michelangelo!). However, look at people in professions which require intelligence. Doctors, lawyers, supreme court justices, senators, and the list goes on. The top people in these fields are mainly top tier grads.
Finally, the comment somewhere here that the education at Harvard is just as "easy" as anywhere else, you just have to get in -- that's horse shit. The educational rigor at Harvard and other ivy league schools is much tougher than pretty much every other school in the nation (perhaps not Deep Springs or other experimental collegs, but those might as well be ivy league for their quality of student).
An ivy league education doesn't guarantee anything, but it certainly ups the odds.
As a longtime TOSSER, I hereby nominate you, AC, for Theta Omicron membership. However, we require brothers to have long greasy hair, heavy glasses, poor oral hygiene, and appalling body odor. Nothing else meets our standards of excellence.
Now why is this "The Spielburg Effect"? I realize it's not a popular name to mention around here, but why not "The Bill Gates Effect?" or "The Steve Jobs Effect". Not only have these two people proven just how irrelevant these pieces of paper are, they actually have something to do with the software/technology industry...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
With all the articles going around putting focus on the college admissions process at top schools and how flawed it is im glad someone finally realizes the truth. That the importance of the name of your school is a distant third in my opinion to first what you make of your experience there and second to whether it's the right school for you. I know people at my school who are throwing away their four years drinking and partying. I also know people at Dartmouth who are miserable because they really wanted the environment that a large city school would provide but they chose Dartmouth for the name value (not to say that there arent others for whom living two seconds from miles of hiking and skiing isnt heaven.)
I wish more parents would think about this when theyre pressuring their kids to do after school activities that they have no interest in and take AP classes which arent right for them.
That said you cant totally discount the advantages to going to a big name school. But these advantages have less to do with the curriculum than they do with the people you can come in contact with both while at the university and after you graduate. For example there arent many places where you can take a course from ed Felten on IT and the law, and a course on programing from Kernighan while at the same time studying photography with emmet gowin. But like I said before having a prestigious faculty to work with doesnt do you any good unless you put the time in to get to know them.
--aiee
There's a reason this phenomenon is worth a newspaper article: it is, to be very generous, uncommon.
You can't keep a natural born salesman down, because shit floats. For the rest of us, determination, a dream and a degree from a good school beats determination, a dream and a degree from Land Grant University. Mr. Land Grant and Mr. I Teached My Own Self compete on a level playing field, but the literate and presentable one will win eight times out of ten, and even LGUs tend to weed out people who put smileys on their resumes.
If your goal is to acquire a decent education, there are many places you can do that: excellent state universities, small liberal-arts colleges, even community colleges. All you need is a good teacher and a willingness to work.
Attending a prestigious school is good for one thing: networking. By going to Ivy-Covered University, you'll meet people from "good" families whose uncles and cousins hold powerful positions in government and the corporate world - the people who give their kids names like "Strobe" and "Gray". It's your ticket into the American aristocracy.
If your goal is to ride the gravy train, then claw your way into a prestigious university. If your goal is get an education, then find the school that you can afford whose faculty has the best reputation for teaching, and go there. If your goal is to learn about life and the world, then go to work, or enlist in the military - you'll learn in a month than any prestigious university could show you in a lifetime.
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You need to wait a few more years, and perhaps you need to more actively make value from your education. By the sounds of it, you're expecting the rest of the world to pay you back - life just doesn't work that way.
Take interest in professional associations, ensure that in your work assignments you make use of the skills you learnt (analytical, critical thinking, good judgement), retain connections with your peers in the industry from university, etc. Make better use of your education.
Studies show that after 5-10 years, university educated students catch up and surpass those that didn't go to university. University pays off eventually, but you have to make it work for you.
Here's a story. . .
Some dumb @$$ teacher at my High School had the F#cking balls to tell my best friend; who pretty much had a low self esteem at the time, she wasn't college material.
Now, I know teachers are entitled to their opinions but their some things do say(encourage) and there are things you do not say(discourage) especially. This b*tch of a english teacher most likely had the same opinion of me as well since I could never do well in her class but never had the b@ll$ to tell me but I could see it in face and the way she spoke to me.
Now, 9 years after my graduation from HS including 6 of years college, yep took me six years. I got my degree and am a successful web programmer. I wish I (and most likely I will) could go to see that f*cking teacher and let her know where I am at.
Unfortunately, my best friend still remembers what the b#tch english teacher told her and never went on to college. Not that going to college makes you any better then rest but this girl really wanted to go and her esteem was/is hanging on a string and still believes to this day she is not college material. I think other wise as long as you apply and believe in yourself. Like they say in the WWF, anything is possible. Unfortunately, that english made it impossible for my buddy.
my two cents. . .
Universities do lots of research. But can they be trusted to look into the value of their own products? I am beginning to hear the term "Evidence Based Education" more often but believe that there are few academics that are willing to bite the hands that feed them.
Ronald Dore was one but who heard of his brilliant book "The Diploma Disease". References to his work can be found on www.faxfn.org here.
. I love the comment from Alison Wolf on the National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) Some of us wonder if the current UK target of 50% of school leavers going into higher education (as it exists today) is equally barmy.But other criticisms of the (UK) education industry on Faxfn includes : Are Graduates up to the Job?
- Educated to manage the dole office
- Graduates with the social skills of a caterpillar
- The English Disease - Senior Engineer
- Too posh to do a proper job?
- Golden rule for IT managers: Never hire the graduate
It seems there is some dissatisfaction with the products of UK universities. Exams, Competencies and Psychometrics has some interesting contributions on examinations- IQ did not contribute to GCSE [exam] performance
- You can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it's easier to hire a squirrel
- They learn then forget
- My Degree: 3 weeks work, 87 weeks drunk
Exams and Handwriting raises some other interesting questions- Handwriting style affects exam results
- Three fast writers, with first class degrees
The suggestion is that writing speed and style unfairly affects exam results.If we paper the UK with degree certificates, will jobs from heaven decend on us. Or will they decend instead on the call centres and software houses of Hyderabad.
If you don't have an education, you are more likely to risk all on the theory you started with nothing, so you might as well end with nothing. Under these conditions, one will be more willing to follow an offbeat path, gatecrash meetings, make loud noises and generally do things an 'educated' person one would not do.
The reporter wrote:
"Dale and Krueger noticed something odd. In many cases, they found that applicants who were rejected by brand-name schools did as well in later life as those who were accepted."
Not so.
What Dale & Krueger noted is that people who were accepted by highly selective schools, but chose to attend less selective schools, later enjoyed the same level of professional success, on average, as their peers who did matriculate at the highly selective schools.
It may also be worth mentioning that D & K found this to the case only when the less selective school was only moderately less selective (so, for example, Harvard might be foregone in favor of, say, NYU, but not Remedial U.)
Everything else depends on how you answer my programming questions. If you have an MIT Ph.D, what good is that if you don't know answers to rudimentary programming questions? I don't care about "capacity to learn" at this point, I want someone who can produce. Being a big thinker is far less important to me than the ability to crank out good code fast. In fact I have found the big thinkers to be more useless than the humble trench soldier.
Allow me to tell you my story (and since I am posting as an AC I am sure this will be moderated into obscurity anyway).
I grew up in an area where if you wanted to go to a "great" college you had to come from a private high school. People such as myself coming from public schools just didn't have a chance. Unfortunately, you learn this truth only when it is all too late. At most maybe 2 or 3 of the 300 or so kids in the graduating class from my school would go on to an Ivy.
Even graduating number 2 in my class I still didn't have a chance. Instead, I was accepted into only one school, the local state school. Every other school I applied to rejected me. To add insult to injury I was even denied admission to the honors program at the state school as I "would be unable to earn an A on the college level, despite high school performance".
Well four years later, I graduated with a 3.9/4.0 GPA with 4 undergraduate degrees (highest honors in one, high honors in another and general honors overall) and was off to Harvard Medical School.
I too will be turning 30 this year and I am now a medical doctor and have already worked at the NIH and been published in top scientific journals such as Nature.
It has been over 10 years since I was rejected from virtually every college I applied to and you know something, I wouldn't have done it any other way. That early rejection forced me to push myself even harder, and to learn the importance of selling myself at every step of the way. I now take nothing for granted. If I hadn't been rejected then, I wouldn't be the man I am today.
So for all those people out there who get thin letters this year, just go out and get the best education you can. It might just be the best darn thing that has ever happened to you. As my father told me, "a diamond stands out more in a bucket of shit than it does in a bucket of gem stones".
-J
I went to one. I was a grade A nerd with the social skills of a louse, and it showed. I ended up with a degree that got me straight into the wrong sort of job, and cruised for 7 years. It took me that long to realise that I wasn't bad enough to be fired but I was unpromotable beyond a certain level. I had to identify my real abilities, find a job that used them - working with people who would never have got into a first tier university but were very good at what they did. Result: rapid promotion. In fact, further down the line my "Ivy league" degree actually held me back because of perceptions by management of the kind of person I "must" be. So I moved, re-qualified, de-emphasise my first degree on my resume, and emphasise my actual achievements. So far, it works.
What utter nonsense. I'd like to see some sources for these "studies". Anyone who manages to get the foot into a career without the piece of paper (more and more difficult as the economy tanks) will do just fine after 5 to 10 years. On top of that, the skills you mention are alot more likely to come from work experience that university.
I think most of the people here are missing the point about what's a decent life after university. The most widespread idea here is, "I am happy if (and only if) I become a CEO, and some guy in Redmond is the richest person in the world, and because he did not finish university, then university is not useful".
Ok. First of all, there are other ways of being succesful. For example, if you are interested in a scientifc career (e.g. in research), then your academic background is extremely important. Because you need a PhD for that, the most important thing is where (and with which professor) you did it. If you want to apply for a good Ph. D. position, you are most likely to succeed if you come from a good university, and this is reality. Unless you are very very very good and some professor (e.g. supervisor of your Master Thesis) knows someone with a good position in some well ranked university.
For positions in managment then I agree that the university you come from does not matter that much, although I have to say good universities tend to estabilish good programs for students in this area (as for example UNITECH in Europe)
I cannot agree that university are not useful on the work place. A univerisity is certainly not the place where you learn every detail of a programming language, the student is supposed to learn that alone, and if he does not, oh well, it's his problem. Universities have mainly two goals: the first one is to provide education in a scientific and rigorous way so that studens might be able to understand the last efforts in the field they are specialized in (and this is in the most cases well beyond what you need on the workplace), on the other side what you learn there is to learn (quickly), to adapt to new situations and to be prepared for new situations. Good universities therefore should invest more time in teaching problem-solving skills to their students.
But after all, what is important in your life is not only your CV, but to be happy, so I would not care that much. Just try do to what you like to.
Get a new job?
Nobody is forcing you to work there for that amount. That's like saying "I'm the king of spain and I'm stuck shovelling pig shit for a dollar a day, boy being king sure sucks!"
You are equating university degree with your crappy job and let me assure you, it's also possible to find many crappy jobs without a degree as well.
- Toby
... mediocre lives lead YOU!
I've read a lot of threads where people are saying that undergrad isn't really all that important, but where you go to grad school is. Horseshit! Who do you think has the better shot at getting into an elite grad program? Somebody that went to an elite undergrad program!
Drop out of school, did you read that anecdotal evidence? Wow that's powerful stuff!
Now where is my billion dollars?
- Toby
Honestly, I think you are biased cuz of the h1b program. The degree requirements in it are weird, and heavily, heavily weigh degree over experience. Over time, the h1b program has become used for technical people, whereas when it was created, congress probably assumed that it was more for hard science and academic types.
Some fields seem to want degrees more than others, but I do see people succeed without them. It is becoming more expected over time, simply because american high schools are so bad, employers want to see an extra 4 years of seasoning. Anyone under 30 in the US ought to have, or be working on a degree, because the trend isn't going to change - if anything, demographic changes in the next decade or two will leave the US with more university seats then needed, and thus probably result in almost everyone of that age cohort attempting to get degrees as standards at the bottom rungs sink.
ostiguy
I am told that Alison Wolf, who is now Professor of Education, Head of Mathematical Sciences Group and Executive Director of the International Centre for Research in Education has some of the answers in her new book "Does Education Matter? Myths about education and economic growth. (Penguin Press). Have any slashdotters read it?
I assume the above Grandparent poster is talking about the UK Goverment as a source, who regually recite the statistics that University Graduates earn on average almost £500,000 more ( its four hundred and something fairly high, I can't remember exacly ) than non graduates. Like all statistics the reality is questionable.
Having found nothing here I want to spend my last two mod points on, I will obey your tagline :)
The point of the article seem to me to be NOT anything to do with the value (or lack thereof) of a name-brand diploma at all. It struck me as being about how *driven* a person can be, and how that can lead them to succeed despite not having top-level "credentials".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The value of a degree as a predictor of success isn't so much that it shows you have learned something as it is that it shows you can apply your self for a couple years. This is why colleges recruit graduating seniors more heavily than they recruit people with degrees in general. The person that went to college and graduated in 4 years has shown they can apply themselves without being distracted. While this is not a perfect system, it does help in soliciting the more dependable (if not brilliant) worker. Employers want pliable employees, and anyone that gives up $200k (including opportunity cost) to get a degree certainly qualifies.
Of course some degrees really do reflect a specific learning or skill (engineering, accounting, etc...)
t
A good education gives you a choice: you can limit your risks and your rewards, or you can accept a lot of risk and possibly make it to the very top. Most people apparently do the rational thing given this choice: they limit their risk and their rewards. Most people are happy with a decent income, a nice family, predictable work, and reasonable success at their job. Most people deep down don't really desire to be Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg.
The teacher didn't want the student going to college and showing the system what a piss-poor education he had already received.
is to have sex. It can't get any simpler than that.
LOL, I wish I had some mod points left, you really deserved them. But then you're already at 5:Funny.
It's unusual to come across such a gem on Slashdot, but once in a blue moon makes it all worthwhile.
Pity that most Americans won't appreciate this posting, as they're not very good at laughing at themselves. Oh well.
OK, I'll bite.
I am currently working for a company in which the director of software, who has a major problem with Ph. D.s, feels like this. He proudly says that Ph. D. are useless and that he would not trust them to code unsupervised.
Well, over the past few years, he turned down lots of resumes just because they had "Ph. D." on them. He hired a bunch of people with BS from no-name colleges because of the experience listed on the resume and their supposed familiarity with currently popular coding methodologies and paradigms.
This guy turned down people so brilliant that, in a just world, he would have been cleaning their socks.
However, one of the team leads here had enough political clout to resist this, and he packed his team with people with advanced degrees from good schools. Despite being specifically warned by the said Director of Software that he would be fired if his team slipped. The salaries offered to these people were up to 20% less than those offered to the "experienced programmers".
As you might guess, I am in this latter group. For my sins, I have a Ph.D from a good school.
Well, guess what happened?
It took longer for the Ph.Ds to "boot up", as it were, to become familiar with the development environment, to learn the finer points of C++ etc. But once that happened, they started outperforming the rest so much that it was not even funny. They delivered faster, their architectures were so much better designed, and their code had far fewer bugs.
Finally, when the product deadlines started slipping, the same Ph. Ds (whose component had less than 1% of all the filed bugs) were put to work to help the others pull their shit together.
I worked on fixing bugs in several components filed by the so-called experienced programmers. What I found was an appalling mishmash of poorly thought-out, poorly designed code held together by glue and duct tape. Race conditions and memory leaks abounded.
However, I also found that these "experienced programmers" were masters of political maneuvering, deflecting blame and of the ignoble art of covering their sorry asses. They had a good excuse for every bug found in their code.
However, over time, it became obvious to the higher management as to who are the really valuable people in the Software group. When the layoffs came (as they have done everywhere), they hit mostly the "experienced programmers". The Director of Software is now on the run trying to cover his ass for his choice of hires.
Magnus.
What irks me is that people with a degree assume that they are more talented and educated than people who are self educated. In many cases, the only difference between someone with a degree and someone without one is that piece of paper. When you're 35 or 40 it's nothing but a worthless piece of paper when you have 15-20 years of experience behind you. "I see here you got a 4.0 GPA during your college years and have been working as a tech support person for 15 years. This other guy dropped out of college, became a sysadmin, worked his way up to network admin, and now is a CIO for the last 8 years. Hmm.. I think we'll hire him."
One of the most famous
trolls ever. Out of context here, but a great piece of newsgroup history nevertheless.
Abhishek Roy
Fraternities are our way of making up for not having only two universities of any note -- The One Where the Soviets Recruited Most of Their Queer Stooges Bound for British Intelligence, and the Other One Full Of Commie Faggots Who Had the Good Grace to Kill Themselves Before they Could Be Described as a "Ring" in the Popular Press.
Boo hoo.
My application fee was $35 per UC school in 1987.
I was accepted to the 4 UC's I applied to. I went to Berkeley. And did the other 3 even return my *application fee*? NO! Shocking!
Maybe your problem wasn't that Cal was overloaded and they never looked at your application (which is total bullshit, no one gets a letter that says that). Maybe your problem was your inability to *read the application correctly* which clearly stated that it was a non-refundable fee.
GO BEARS!
...what IS the difference between "char *" and "char []"?
My father immigrated to the United States in the early 70s. He had the equivalent of perhaps a 5th grade education. He learned to speak English by watching the Flintstones in his tiny flat while working construction for some company. He eventually saved up enough money to move his family here too.
In the late 70s he was laid off. Since then, he has run a fruit store, partially owned a Pizza place, and today he runs a construction company. In my opinion, he provided very adequete shelter, food, and clothing for his 4 kids and wife remarkably well under the cirmcumstances, and is now financially well off that he owns and rents 3 houses, and has a sound retirement plan, and can still give his kids a boost if they need it ("Dad, can I borrow $85,000 to buy a house?").
My dad also helped my eldest sister go to college. She trained to be an architect, worked for someone else for about 10 years, and very recently started her own firm. She also agrees that school is meaningless bullshit, but regrets that it was required for her choice of career.
My second eldest sister received a GED after dropping out of High School. Since then she has been a hair stylist, a pastry chef at some top rated restaurants, a stock broker assistant, a mother of two, and is currently pursuing a successful graphics design business which services the culinary industry.
My older brother dropped out of High School when he was 16, and worked construction with my father until about 28. After that he went to work for a construction supplier, grew his department by perhaps 500%, and eventually started his own construction equipment sales business which seems to be doing him well.
Myself? I graduated High School, skipped college, studied computers, worked MCS at Dean Witter, then worked at an ISP for 3 years, and now I run my own computer consulting practice which I think has remarkable potential.
When you're in High School it's easy for those sadists to make you think you're going to be a fucking loser for not obeying their rules. Sadly, it can really get to some of the students. While the white kids who shoot up their schools make the news, there are thousands of others who take their own lives every year who you never hear about.
But the truly disturbed people are the ones who believe the mantra, and devote their entire lives to fanatic pursuit of the straight A's, who craft every action in their life so that it appeases the all powerful college admissions, and then the big corporation which will employ them. These are the people who I feel for now. They believed that the formula for success was to follow the rules, take no risks, do as you're told, think inside the boundaries. They are wrong, this is the formula for mediocrity.
It's not until maybe a year or two after you're out of school that it occurs to you that you've spent years of your life putting up with bullshit, that everything that your teachers swore would happen has in fact been a lie, and that your life isn't really over. In fact, more the opposite, you find that your life is now beginning.
If you're in that situation now, please don't let it get you down. Everyone is shouting at you about how important it is, but if you have any intelligence at all, it's really not. Once you exit the hell that is education, a sudden sensation of freedom will wash over you. For awhile you will be terrified, afraid, but soon you realize that what you mistook for fear is in fact something you've simply never experienced until now: Unlimited potential.
The piece of paper? It is an inferior substitute for experience, intelligence, and creativity. If you already possess one of these essential traits, you don't need to waste your time trying to obtain a superficial surrogate.
Do something worthwhile with your time. Anything you do is the right decision--the only truly wrong decision you can make is deciding to do nothing.
What school you went to (or whether or not you got a degree) matters until approximately four seconds after you get your first job. Then it's all about your performance (including, under performance, your ability to play office politics (and including, under your ability to play office politics, your ability to act as professional as the job requires)). Many of these things can be shaped at college, but whether your degree says Harvard or Oakland University matters not one shit once you've gotten a job in your chosen career track. I've been in the workforce 10 years and no one has asked what school I've been to since my first job interview, even then, it was my ability to intern for free for three months that got me the gig, not the fact that I went to some school on the east coast.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
> The discussions center around oral and written skills and personality.
I am surprised you don't discuss the candidate's technical achievements. Makes me wonder what kind of hiring committees have you been in.
I hope you are never on a committee to hire good mathematicians because a good mathematician is most likely to be an introverted type. With clueless committee members like you, extroverted mediocre mathematicians are bound to get hired.
By the way, there is whole psychological category of people out there who are neither shy/introverted nor extroverted but rather a vague mix of both. How do you evaluate these people in a single interview?
If anyone comes up to you and asks you to provide a reference, NEVER NEVER NEVER shoot them down. The teacher in this story was the one who came up with the idea that he wasn't "ivy league material" whatever that means.
A reference isn't a chance for you to play god, to decide what happens to someone else. It's just a chance for you to lend your authority to someone who might need a little help.
If that person fails miserably, nobody will remember you at all. But if that person succeeds and you provided a negative reference, then you're going to get pasted by history.
Never shoot anyone down. Don't try to protect anyone else from their own mistakes. Either give a good reference, or give none at all.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I have NEVER heard anyone say hire person A over person B because they went to an Ivy League school. The discussions center around oral and written skills and personality. Specifically, whether the person's personality would be a good fit in the corporate culture.
Thus the best course of action would be to goof off by socializing where-ever you can. Socialize, socialize, socialize. Go to a cheap school and save yourself the money.
Jobs that one can do without much interaction are slowing being shipped overseas to people who are paid $2 an hour. The lone geek is going the way of the factory worker.
That's just life.
Table-ized A.I.
a theory that it really doesn't matter where you went to school.
No shit sherlock!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
So Im posting this anonymous, and its probably too late to get modded up, but here's pretty much what I experienced. I'm a pretty good student, probably academically qualified for a "big name" school.
So I did college tours in the summer of my junior year, I looked primarily at Engineering schools, Harvey Mudd, Caltech, MIT, Harvard. Of these four, the only school that really impressed me was MIT. I dont know how I can describe it, or even how people pick colleges, but there was this energy there that was so incredible.
Anyways, I took the SATs*, scored pretty well (into the top quartile at MIT), and I applied Early Admission (in which you find out in December, but its not binding. Anyways, I got deferred at MIT, which essentially means rejected. Why?
How the hell should I know. But I've got a guess: Bullshit Extracurriculars. Namely, I didnt have them. I, rather obstinately, refused to play any organized sports, hoping that MIT wasnt the kind of place that let less-qualified people in because of sports.
The more experiences I observe with colleges, the more I see people getting in or not getting in based on really apassionate, crappy extracurricular activities. Things like President of National Honor Society club, etc. There was a kid at my school who got in early at Princeton with a 1250 SAT (thats not good) because he played water polo. Last year, one of my friends won the National Merit Scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins....and they wouldnt even admit him!
It just seems to me that the current college admissions system is a horrible process filled with lies and catches and broken dreams. And yes, I'm bitter.
*For those who don't know, the SATs are a Standardized Test consisting of a Math and a Verbal section, each scored out of 800 points. The average score at the "top institutions" is generally about 1520 cumulative.
Figure out who I am.
You suck and are a drag on the team. I only hope you quit soon and stop dragging down the team and company.
You're pompous and full of crap.
"OH, I have a PHD and I came up to speed faster than the mediocrities around me".
The rest of us think you suck. We constantly have to clean up you messes.
I say again, I hope you quit. Or else, we'll figure out how to get you fired.
Moron.
> In fact I have found the big thinkers to be more useless than the humble trench soldier.
Speak for yourselves. There are jobs that need big thinkers and obviously those are not to be found at your firm. Fine. This very friggin internet that you can't live without owes it existence to big thinkers much more than big tinkerers.
To say the least, it needed some careful big thinking to come up with the IP protocol and the end-to-end architecture. Ya think, your army of quick coders could architect the internet given a million years? One might as well hope for a million clattering monkeys to type out Hamlet.
Successful people work for a very short time in "crappy support" jobs before moving on to better things. Successful people don't whine about their crappy job, they go out into the big, scary world, and work, push, cajole, and sweet-talk their way into the kind of job they realy want. They take risks. They take action.
Anarchists never rule
While people in IT may not care from what school you received your degree, law firms care almost too much. Far more important that your personality is the law school you attend and your class rank.
For example, if you wish to get a job with a "Top 100" law firm, the following table is often used:
- At a top 5 law school: top 40% of your class
- At a top 25 law school: top 30% of your class
- At a top tier law school: top 25% of your class
- At a second tier law school: top 10-15% of your class
- At a third tier law school: top 5% of your class
- At a fourth tier law school: top 1-5% of your class
As you can see, if you are pursuing a legal career, it helps a great deal to go to a better school and do quite well. However, you can still make it to the top firms by other means. Even if you went to a not-so-great law school and had somewhat respectable grades, you can still be a desirable candidate for the top law firms by working as an assistant state's attorney for a few years.
It is certainly possible to succeed without going to a great college or even going to college at all. But, it is much easier to be successful if you go to a prestigious school. Many companies use alumni as recruiters, and there is often a preexisting relationship between the best companies and the best schools. In other words, going to a good school puts you on the inside track.
" The educational rigor at Harvard and other ivy league schools is much tougher than pretty much every other school in the nation"
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hah a
You either are stupid or trolling. Either way, its funny.
"Who do you think has the better shot at getting into an elite grad program?"
Duh.
If you have money, you get into an ivy. If you have a lot of money, you get into the graduate program.
Now be a good little cookie cutter and help mumsy before you get back to class.
"The other thing I would dispute is that University teaches you to think. In my experience, University does no such thing. The number of incurious, unintellectual, ignorant unndergrads I met at college surprised and disappointed me. The number of undergrads who actually apply critical thinking skills to anything outside their narrow degree specialisation, is few indeed."
That's because college is grade 13, 14, 15, & 16 no matter where you go.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Why kind of poontang do you get?
In the end, that's what matters.
Gee, that's great, but there's only a few CEO's in the world, and most aren't going to get that job.
Just don't be stupid and take out loan for college. Dumbest investment on earth.
I remember when in a previous company we had 12 IT professionals, six with "Computer Science" degrees - you know what I mean NpComplete/Knuth/Z stuff. The computer scientists were mostly people with good or very good first degrees and some with masters and PhDs.
The technical management, myself included, had mostly science or engineering degrees of varying quality. After a turbulent time, and some job losses, which we managed humanely, we took stock. We concluded that most of our technical problems were down to the computer scientists. We never really managed to explain why. The computer scientists were undoubtedly clever, hard working and pleasant people.
I know other people have found the same problem - one with a spooky similarity to our own. I have tried lots of explanations but most of them do not quite fit. Has anybody got any?
Was it us or was it them? Or a clash of cultures?
Are Eric Raymond's comments relevant?
Maybe but there is an upper limit.
For example., my father, who skipped college did quite well at his job on wall street, but once he reached a certain level his employer was not interested in promoting him any further.
Also, the army (navy, airforce etc. too) does this, try getting to be a full bird colonel without a degree from westpoint (anapolis, etc). Its not impossible, nothing is, but the odds are strongly against it.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
When I was 16 i started dropping the classes in my high school that i didn't have to take and loading up on sciences... i think that counts
A few of them may make more money now than I do. (but not most) Less than 25% of my friends ended up with careers in the fields that they studied for in school. Half of them are not happy, half of them are.
It is my subjective opinion that the happy people are happy because of their own self directed nature reasonable goals and aspirations and perseverence. They probably would have been happy in the 17th century, or in ancient egypt. It wouldn't have mattered if they were born in a privileged wealthy family or in a poor oppressed class.
And the people who are frustrated in their careers, are bitter and hating life... Well, I don't think it would matter if they had graduated 1st in their class from the most prestigious school in their field, they would still be frustrated and struggling (even if by others standards, they were making a lot of money and were in an advanced position).
The prestegious schools have very competitive admissions policies, and they tend to be marginally more capable of selecting people for admission who are already predisposed to success and happiness. It is not the caliber of the school that produces good students, it is the caliber of the students that make the reputation of the school.
I think that it is pretty rediculous that so much weight is placed on College and such when after having been in the job market for 11 years I have not had anyone ask me anything about higher education for the last 8 years.
Otherwise it matters!
Besides, I thought the /. party line was that school is irrelevant. Or did that notion die with the dotcoms?
Best Buy can have you arrested
I did read the article. And it is true that people succeed without Going to fancy schools. In fact, success often comes (at least in America) from hard work. That's the american dream. And I agree with the intent of the article. Just because Harvard or (in slashdot land ) Cal tech rejected you and you had to go to Cal State Northridge, does not mean you will be a failure (far from it).
Now, the article did not argue that university is useless, or that the best schools are bad. But there are those in this thread who seem to think because famous person x did not graduate from college, therefore a college degree is useless. This is just absurd.
I have a degree in film production from the school that rejected spielberg. I am also a worthless film director. My student films are incoherent crap. I heard, over and over again from the people that didn't get in the story of Spielberg's rejection. It is always cited as proof that school is a waste of time, the USC production program is stupid, etc. I asked my advisor about the Spielberg effect. He told me that that's what USC film uses to describe people who insist on measuring their success against the wunderkind like Spielberg. The fact was that Spielberg was rejected because USC cinema had nothing to offer him. He was already a talented film maker. He didn't want to learn the craft, he wanted to direct films. Film school would have done nothing for him.
I am obviously biased. But I am very glad I went to school and got an expensive degree. It was worth every penny, not because it put me in a position to be a super successful and famous film director. You can't teach that. But you can teach the sort of universal skills that I use every day in my work. School was useful for me. I specialized in cinematography and also did a lot of computer graphics learning on the side. I had a chance to learn from some amazing teachers(and some bad ones too of course). I got my hands on equipment you can't just play with on your own. And I got to learn the way things are done and why, instead of having to go out and screw up on my own. I was very prepared for my career. (I work as a 3d artist) A one semester cinematography course from Woody Omens was worth the price of admission.
Universities are not designed to create the super succesful. Those people are not created, they are born. Universities are intended to teach people a broad range of information, to create well rounded individuals capable of success in any aspect of their future careers. In school I learned to speak french, the history of japan and how to draw. I also learned the basics of editing, cinematography, animation, sound, direction and acting. I am terrible film director. I don't feel bad about that. I am not going to be Steven Spielberg. Nor am I going to be Hemingway or Nabokov. University is not for the geniuses. Its for the rest of us. So put it to rest. Just because people who don't go to university are succesful does not mean that universities are useless. If people that didn't go to high school learned algebra on their own, would you claim that Universities offer nothing? No, a degree is not necessarily an indicator of future performance. But it will often be useful to YOU in your career.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
right. either an ivy league degree is a golden ticket, or it is useless and it is better to be a drop out. i am tempted to believe that since most people don't go to ivy league schools, most people have an interest in knocking them for their own self image, but I think that is probably not the only reason people like these stories. people love the underdog, the rag to riches horatio alger tale. it is very american. also, I would point out that success is always a journey, and for some people it peaks with high school football fame, and for others it builds over a lifetime to finally result in winning a nobel prize at 90. folks who get in to an ivy league have a sort of early success, but no monopoly on success beyond 21 years of age. tomorrow is promised to no one, ivy league or little league. I went to one, learned alot, made moderate grades, and found out that I had been a big fish in a small pond all my life. that alone was worth the trip. the connections thing has done nothing for me, but I got alot more interviews with a big name degree. it also meant to some people that I probably knew how to communicate well, think on my feet, and be adaptable as time goes by beyond knowing all the intricasies of the JDK or every arcane perl syntax. no, I wasn't taught to be a critical thinker, but when you are in a seminar of 6 people and the whole point is to be guided by a prof with years more experience to form and communicate your own opinions on the works studied, you get good practice, and feedback. you also get confidence and experience in thinking for yourself, and taught the lesson that that way of thinking is the commonality to your course of studies. in the tech zone, there seems to be especially little repect for academic knowledge and for a liberel arts education where you learn useless things like art history instead of how to hack linux onto NES. look, I code for a living, and love it, and chose it over IB and strategic/management consulting, but I appreciate that having studies other things in school, there is a real difference in studying some things at a great school - like literature, philosophy, etc. b/c at such schools you find the leaders in studying these things, and you find other students who really get it and can challenge you. besides all that, the real reason to go to university is to learn something, become a well rounded person, mature and "actualize" - blah - it's droll, but I was exposed to worlds well beyond IT and science I would never have touched on my own as a high school grad. the point is not to make a bunch of money when you get out - that's what MBAs are for - the point is to take a few years to learn more about the world and to hopefully learn to think, what's important to you, and to deal with other preople. there are plenty of people making more money than me, but I still feel like I am better for having gone to a good college and broadened my knowledge and interests, and getting the background in intellectual concerns so that I can approach on my own nearly any topic and get somewhere in understanding it. I also learned what is important to me, and it isn't being richer than you, it is being rich enough to do what matters to me and my family, and then getting on with living not just being more 'successful'.
...begins in wonder
The thing that struck me about this article is just how obvious its conclusions should be. The article starts of as if the rational assumption is that your destiny and accomplishments are somehow pre-determined by what some ivy league university thinks of your application. I'm sure the ivy league universities would just love it if everyone believed that, but it is patently false.
I really shouldn't have to be saying this, but the things that lead to sucess are character and hard work. Where one goes to school makes no difference at all. The ivy league schools get a good reputation because they are able to pick and choose applicants who they believe have the character and intelligence to suceed. From there it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Going to Harvard no more gives you character and discipline any more than not going there deprives you of them.
When one looks at history it is evident that most of the great discoveries and accomplishments were achieved by those with mediocre academic records. Einstein was working as a patent clerk because he couldn't get a teaching job. Edison didn't even have a sixth grade education. Both Newton and Maxwell were undistinguished prior to their major discoveries.
Once upon a time people understood that it is character and hard work that lead to greatness, why our culture has forgotten that I just don't know. Nowadays people seem to think that success is some kind of trick, or is achieved though one's image. So people chase after degrees from the ivy league because they think that if other people think that they are great then they will be. Sorry Charlie, the most someone with that approach will achieve is the ability to con everyone including themself. True greatness comes from within and it is not something that can be bought, faked or manufactured.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I have not had anyone ask me anything about higher education for the last 8 years.
It would be an interesting academic research project to follow up this sort of thing. But the academic turkeys won't vote for Christmas.
So anecdotes is all we have
but make high 90's without loans to repay.
dum de dum dumbass
Because the "computer scientists" think they're smarter and need to "innovate" when in reality what's needed is common sense and hard work.
"Computer Scientists" are great for inventing the next new network protocol, but their track record for producing working, operational systems is really bad.
A BS Degree matters, but it doesn't matter where it comes from.
Except India. The colleges there are for shit.
The new ones are inflated anyway.
But here's my story.
I got 1170 on my SAT's. It was the 4ths highest in my school. A fair amount of people scored under 600.
We must all be idiots, right?
After all, only 15% of our class even went to college.
Well the woman who was #1 in SATs had a 1250. She's now the head of a large medical clinic in the east.
#2 became partner at one of big consulting companies.
#3 is currently unemployed
And me, #4 is head of application architecture at one of the largest transportation companies in the world.
But heck, we're all stupid because we didn't get the high SAT's that you did. We didn't even go to MIT; we all went to the local state school because our parents were all poor and couldn't afford to send us to these fancy colleges.
Draw your own conclusions, I know I've drawn mine, and that's Drive and Hard Work count *far more* than any degree.
You'd be better off going to the cheapest school, excelling, and busting you butt in the real world, because you seem to live in a fantasy land right now that will lead you down the road of bitter when you'll be working for $6 an hour as a secretary at the loan bank because you lack the skills necessary to excel.
Oh, and don't be PO'd at this; I'm doing you the biggest favor in your short life. Only you don't realize it yet.
For my chosen profession, law, where you went to school makes all the difference in the world - and it matters not a hill of beans.
If your goal is to end up on the U.S. Supreme Court, well, five of the nine current justices went to Harvard Law (Darth Bader graduated from Columbia but went to Harvard), two went to Stanford, and the other two went to Northwestern and Yale. Roughly the same goes for most federal district and appellate judges.
Want to work for Bill's daddy at the 213-attorney Seattle home office of Preston, Gates and Ellis? Ask yourself, where do they do on-campus interviews? Aside from the local schools (Seattle U. and the Universities of Washington and Oregon), PG&E recruits from Bezerkely, Columbia, U of Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, NYU, Penn, Stanford, UVA, and Yale. Only about a third of their hires come from the local schools, and most of those are from the ultra-super-mega-hyper-prestigious (just ask 'em, they'll tell ya) UW. In other words, your chances of being hired by them are about zero if you did not attend any of those schools - and this firm is based in Seattle. I would submit that most large law firms have similar hiring practices.
Before giving up hope, though, consider what it's like to work there. Sure, the pay is good and the resources are near infinite, but the hours are long - 100 hour weeks are the norm rather than the exception. What are you doing then, practicing real law, representing real clients? Hardly. Most of the work involved is adding a few more zeroes to the end of some already-obscenely-wealthy white guy's bottom line. Finally, the careers there are generally quite short - a select few make partner, but most are cut loose after a few years.
Okay, so what's a young non-Ivy JD grad to do? Practice real law, of course. Represent ordinary people in real-world disputes and actually go to court once in awhile. Most attorneys make their living this way and their clients don't much care where they went to law school.
In sum, the black-and-white answer is that there is no black-and-white answer.
I know. I am applying right now. I have my master's dergee in cultural studies. I wrote my thesis on videogames. I want to do my phd on videogame players as a subculture. get out there and interview my fellow gamers. just like people go talk to homeless people, or punks or people in papu new guinea. but it is a horrible time to be trying to get into a phd program.
i talked to the graduate advisor at my old progam and he said that for their small department (5 profs) they had 180 applicants this year. i think they had like 50 the year i applied.
none of my friends got accepted to phd programs last eayr. we can't ALL be stupid. our theory is that with the downturn in the economy lots of people are tryig to go back to school.
so untill i get back into school, i'm working at a riverboat casino. not the most intellectually stimulating job in the world and trying to get stuff published to make me look better.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
There's nothing higher than 4.0 on GPA. Its stupid saying 4.5...its like saying "I'm going to give 110%"
But people equate high GPAs and Ivy league with success, so there's always a market for that kind of thing.
If the upper-echelon schools like MIT and Harvard decided to move to a system where they accepted the top 10% of applicants who are willing to pay the most, instead of the top 10% in terms of academic qualifications, they would get a set of rich kids but their overall ability as a group would be lower. As a result, either a large percentage of the students would fail to graduate, or they would have to dumb down the course material so more of them would pass. If they did either of those things, they would become less desirable as schools, and before long very few people would be willing to pay big bucks to attend them.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
"[Gallup's] hundreds of studies proved time after time that talent makes a huge impact on profitable growth across every major type of occupation and industry...Superior performers...follow their instincts and thereby identify and develop their specialties. [Given the current modi operandi of education and corporate training] almost always they do this on their own."
Excerpted from Follow This Path, by The Gallup Organization: "[Gallup's] hundreds of studies proved time after time that talent makes a huge impact on profitable growth across every major type of occupation and industry...Superior performers...follow their instincts and thereby identify and develop their specialties. [Given the current modi operandi of education and corporate training] almost always they do this on their own."
One thing I keep forgetting to add -- I'm not sure how you can make the claim that Harvard's standards doom it to being second-rate when it is the most selective college in the US.
It doesn't surprise me that a few extremely successful people like Spielberg succeed brilliantly despite a less prestigious and possibly less rigorous education. What would surprise me is to find that the typical student applying to elite schools would not have a far more successful career after graduating from an elite school like Harvard than after graduating from a 'lesser' college like Cal State Long Beach.
To drastically oversimplify the situation, I have noticed that there are three broad groups of people in any almost every work or school situation:
- Inherently Successful People: People who will succeed brilliantly no matter what obstacles they face. Most of us like to think of ourselves as members of this group, but few of us really are.
- Ordinary People: People, often very smart, capable, and hard working, who given a few lucky breaks or good opportunities can capitalize on them to build a good career. These are the vast majority of the people I have known in school and at work.
- Screw-Ups: Screw ups are unable to do a good job, no matter what opportunities they are given and no matter how many breaks they receive. Fortunately few people are inherently screw ups, but there are always a few of them in any large group.
An Ivy League or Stanford education, a rich well connected family, friends in high places, and all of the other traditional predictors of success are nice but unnecessary bonuses for the inherently sucessful, a huge help to the vast majority of ordinary people, and very little help to the screw-ups.And all this goes to show that even the best schools in the land can't ruin a good mind.
People make fun of liberal arts education saying that you don't learn anything applicable to the real world. Sometimes, this is true. One of the difficulties with a liberal arts education is that you have to believe in it for it to work. I know many students who took the easy classes to fulfill requirements outside of their major. If you do that, a liberal arts education won't work. You have to push yourself in other disciplines and open up to alternate ways of looking at problems. It's through attacking a variety of problems from many angles that makes real thinkers.
One of my main regrets of my undergrad is that I didn't realize this until the end of my second year. If I had know this when I was applying to college, I would have applied to smaller schools (or interdisciplinary programs) and put much more thought into which classes I took my first two years.
he was a sub at my hs for a while. Whitney Young hHgh School in Chicago which was at the time the best public school in the city. In my recolection he was an ok guy, you couldn't say much too him however w/o hearing the life story. he seemed kinda goofy and i guess taking public school kids to brunch floats his boat
"The school is there to make money. That's it."
Many colleges and universities have not-for-profit status. They don't exactly have "shareholders" in the traditional sense of a for-profit public corporation.
-Stu
The educational rigor at Harvard and other ivy league schools is much tougher than pretty much every other school in the nation
;-)
The ivy league label is overrated. My alma mater (Johns Hopkins) has repeatedly refused to join the ivy league, mostly for finacial reasons. When I was an undergradute, there was a growing annoyance with the assumption that "ivy league" always means the best education. Most of this resentment stemmed from the grade inflation that was going on at the ivies. I remember one student publication had a nice set of graphs showing the declining SAT scores of incoming freshmen at Harvard contrasted with the increasing GPAs of the same students after admittance to Harvard. Hopkins proudly shunned grade inflation, but it was frustrating nonetheless, especially if you were applying to professional schools.
Then again, Hopkins students love to complain about how bad they have it
is go to a 'brand name' college with no grade inflation.
:D
I can't vouch for other types of grad schools, but law school admissions is almost entirely about the LSAT, with a secondary emphasis on GPA. Borderline candidates will then have their extracurriculars looked at, and the college is in there somewhere, but at the top law schools it's almost as good that you went to a state school in Wyoming- they like geographic diversity, too.
Your degree from Harvard, which generally puts you a hundred thousand or so in the hole before you ever take a law school class, and a 3.5 will get you into the exact same place as someone who graduated from any state school with a 3.6 and the same LSAT. Moreover, they'll have gotten there for free.
Good luck to the high school seniors applying. Just remember, it's not the end of the world if you get turned down
U of M Law '05
Depends on how you defined mediocre. And do you consider dropping out as bad as being rejected? 'Cause I dropped out of college to go directly to work as a programmer and am making a very healthy income (more that most of my peers) doing what I love. Hardly mediocre...
You have a wonderful point there,
I am still in the Marine Corps (enlisted but 5 classes from a MSCIS). I can tell you that officers do top out at relatively low ranks if they have not graduated from a prestigious Uni. In the Corps, the preferred clique is the "Boat Schooler" or Annapolis grad. The problem is actually pervasive; Boat Schoolers tend to watch out for one another at the expense of those outside the clique.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Welcome to America, if you are smart, work hard, and are determined to make it in life no matter what anybody says, you'll make it.
Is that not kind of the entire point of this countries existence? To create a place where that is possible?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I've seen more than a few academics crank out very elegant, very intricate designs...
Does this mean they tend to design everything first and code later? So they can't use any of the "lightweight" methodologies.
It seems that you're doing your darndest to justify paying too much for an average education.
Hey, I paid too much for my BMW too; the difference between you and me is that I don't try to make excuses for stupid excess.
The SATs today are a shadow of their former self back in the 60's & 70's. Back then, if you scored 1400 you were considered a genius. Many people scored 700. Today, I see kids who can't calculate sales tax in their head routinely getting 1480 on their first try without much effort.
Do you know what? It had no effect on their eventual college career.
My Grandmother told me, many years ago, that the only thing I'll ever have that can't be taken from me is knowledge. I believe that to this day, which is the main reason I'm back in college (I'm 52 years old). Over the years, everything I've ever learned came in handy at one time or another. Moral of the story: get all the education you can, get jobs that are interesting to you (and on which you can continue to learn interesting things), and most of all, don't spend too much time looking back. Yes, I have friends with very little education who make a lot more money than I can. But I wouldn't trade places with a one of them and have to do what they do every day. I try to count my blessings, but I have so many I can't keep track of them all. Hope the New Year is a great one for you all!
I recieved an email a few weeks ago explaining how I could be given a PhD from prestigious nonaccreditted universities based on my life experience. I told them that I have a first aid kit, and I now I'm an MD!
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
who are unencumbered by such subties. Americans are so sarcastic, dumbass!
While I like your general point, your specific argument is utterly ridiculous. I can't believe that somebody else on Slashdot hasn't called you on this.
"Princeton is the first of the vaunted Ivies to make this list at #21 (11.7%), and only because it is the one that behaves most like a small college. "
OK, so you are arguing that Princeton acts the most like a small liberal arts college BECAUSE IT PRODUCES THE MOST PHDs, BY PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATES?
Please tell me someone else finds this statement ridiculous. Since when is a PHD the end all and be all of a liberal arts education? Must one do research to be a well rounded individual?
I would almost prefer that you make your statistics by the percentage of grads that DON'T go into medicine, law, or investment banking. But even that would be silly.
For all the insulting that people do against the Useless News and Worthless Reports, they do a solid job of factoring in all the MANY facets of a school in reaching their final ranking. It is extremely dangerous to argue from a single statistic something as wide ranging as "acts the most like a small college".
But then, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You must be working for some small college that didn't make it to the top of that ranking.
The kids who opted out at 16 got a head start....by the time you college heads graduated and started applying for jobs, THEY were the majority in the workforce ! Guess it's no surprise that they would like to keep their fraternity strong...translation: stiff the grads.
I don't think the segfault isn't happening where you think it is happening.
I think the segfault is occurring at the line
*p = 'b';
You can confirm this with a debugger, but I didn't
check.
The reason it is crashing here is that the string
"foo" is in a portion of memory that is read-only, from the binary's point of view.
This behavior may be compiler-dependent and OS-dependent.
That's why id doesn't matter (in this case) whether or not p is declared to be static. The function foo() is never called a second time.
OK, so you are arguing that Princeton acts the most like a small liberal arts college BECAUSE IT PRODUCES THE MOST PHDs, BY PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATES?
No, you're reading my statement backwards. Of the Ivies, Princeton is the most like a small college simply by comparison: lack of a graduate school, focus on teaching quality, etc.
I made the assertion that it scores higher on the "PhD metric" than the other Ivies because of that. Not the other way round. Of course, you're free to disagree with that.
Naturally, I never stated or implied that anyone should judge by a single metric. Still, I should've made that clearer.
I would almost prefer that you make your statistics by the percentage of grads that DON'T go into medicine, law, or investment banking. But even that would be silly.
I don't have the chart handy right now, but I don't think those are included. The practical degrees in medicine, law, and business are not the PhD (although you can get one if you, for example, plan to research or teach rather than practice).
[USNews does] a solid job of factoring in all the MANY facets of a school in reaching their final ranking
If by "solid" you mean "deliberately fudged every year to sell more magazines," then you're right. Colleges don't change fast enough to justify a new list every year; USNews needs to manufacture the effect. See the article I linked in another reply in this thread.
Furthermore, if you look at the "facets" they combine, many of them have no justifiable bearing on the undergraduate experience at any given school.
But then, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You must be working for some small college that didn't make it to the top of that ranking.
Almost a nice try. Try thinking a little more clearly. College counselors work for high schools, not colleges. Or we consult in private practice.
I'm an exception, though. I work for free. For my paycheck, I do Unix kernel hacking for 60 hours a week. But every winter, I spend 20-30 more at night consulting pro bono (which my professional colleagues think is insane; some of them pull down $2k per student. But I do my job as well as they do, without the parents holding my pursestrings).
I do it because I see too many bright students work their asses off for four years just to beg and claw for the meager scraps of self-esteem that the prestige colleges hand out in April. I have no loyalty to any institution except for overall demonstrable quality.
Playing into the prestige game means that "first choice" and "most difficult" are synonymous; therefore, the fate of 4 out of 5 college applicants is to attend their second or third or sixth choice -- except for those poor souls who have already surrendered to the myth, adjusting their self-image downward to "realistic" levels. What a way to start a life.
---
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
I think there is a serious flaw in education in America because it puts too much emphasis on college and not enough on ambition and creativity. College certainly should not be overlooked however America engrains the idea in peoples minds that college is the turning point to success. Kids are brought up to believe that if they do not go to college then they will not succeed. Ironically I know some young multi-mullionaires that either skipped college all together or received a joke of a degree. What made the difference in their life was their determination. For those that do get into the school of their choice, good luck. And to those that are rejected, do not give up because college is not your last chance to succeed in life.
I know that. But the grandparent claimed it would be allocated on the stack. My point was that for GCC at least, it isn't; it's a pointer to a constant.
Not entirely true. For instance, in engineering, you learn a lot of junk in university about forces, waves, systems, etc. Most of the actual content you learn turns out to be useless in your career (in my experience), but the underlying principles learnt (logical thinking, systems perspective, etc) are invaluable. In my years in industry, I see that non-university people learn all the technical skills, do their job well (and in many cases better) than the university graduates, but I consistently see the quality of approach / process in the university graduates that isn't in the non-graduates. I agree that you need _both_ work experience and university - many university graduates with no experience are not very practical or useful. The people that do extremely well are the ones that have a combination of both: they have the only the job work smarts and street smarts, and the get in there and do it approach, but they also have the methodical, systems, disciplined theorical balance that really only comes from a good university education.
What irks me is that people with a degree assume that they are more talented and educated than people who are self educated. In many cases, the only difference between someone with a degree and someone without one is that piece of paper.
Hey, I hope you aren't suggesting that is what I meant: it works both ways, there are many talented and educated people that didn't go to university. But, at least university uses the wisdom of many many years of experience about learning processes and the brains trust of very good people. And lets talk about _averages_ here. We're talking that _on average_ people do better if they go to university than if they don't. There are always exceptions, and "stars" (and equally, "dropouts"), but speaking statistically, unless you are gifted, a genius, or have some special qualities about you that but you above the league in the first place, then the _chances are_ you're going to do better with a university education.
When you're 35 or 40 it's nothing but a worthless piece of paper when you have 15-20 years of experience behind you.
Not entirely true: it's value does decrease over time. This is why I say that you need to make use of your education: in 15 years time, mmany of your college educated peers are going to be in good positions having made a career, so if you're wise and have retained your connections, then you're making some use of your education more than just a piece of paper. But, I'm 10 years out of university, and I still draw upon my education.
Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)"
series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets
and deliver this message of joy to the masses.
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
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