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Success Despite College Rejection

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-think-i-can dept.

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."

15 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. I don't even think going at all is that important by mathe_an · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 :)

  2. Qualifications by brejc8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  3. Rigorous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:for my PhD... by MonkeyBoyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But you have a much better chance of getting into a top graduate school comming from a top undergraduate one. And this is just not snob factor. You are more likely to find professors who can tell you what the leading edge and issues are in your field there.

  5. I've hired many people and it doesn't matter by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)

    1. Re:I've hired many people and it doesn't matter by Matt+-+Duke+'05 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "As for me going to an ivy league school, yeah, I was accepted into Stanford based upon college entrance scores"....

      Except that Stanford isn't an Ivy League school =) Sorry.. I just had to bite and point that out.

      However, semantics aside, that doesn't really mean anything. Stanford is one of the finest colleges in the country and probably produces graduates just as strong, if not stronger, than a large portion of the Ivy League.

      For some people, myself included, the Ivies are actually a bit of a turnoff. In high school, I noticed that most people who were applying to Ivies were doing so soley because they "needed" to go to an Ivy... not because they actually liked the school or thought it was a good fit for themselves. I can't tell you how many of these people applied to _every_ Ivy, without having even visited most of them. At that point, I decided that I definitely didn't want that. I had dealt with people like this all of my life - there was no way I was going to do it again for the next four years.

      Now, I'm not saying that all Ivies student are like this. While visiting friends at Ivies I've met a lot of very nice kids who I really got along with. However, at the same time, I've perceived a very definite aura of pretentiousness with the oh-so-familiar, "Oh, so you don't go to an Ivy?", etc.

      There is even a phrase used by some to describe people who share my views - "Ivy Envy." And you know what.. the people who use that phrase are the very people who I'm talking about. But to each his own. Some people want that and others don't.

      Although the college you attend may help you in your first step out of college (whether that is law school, graduate school, or your first job) in the end, it doesn't really matter. If in ten years people are still judging you on the college you went to, instead of the person that you are, then I'd say that you're probably surrounding yourself with the wrong people.

      But that's just my 2 cents...

      --
      -Matt
      Duke '05
  6. one factor.. by pamri · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ..that separates the haves(college-educated) and have-not's(drop-outs) are 'risk'. Most of the educated people are generally averse to risk, in the sense that they whatever subject they learn, be it management or engineering they are taught to manage risk. While I am not saying that educated people don't take risks, but people who haven't gone to college maybe less prone to over analysis and take the plunge in following their vision.Ok, I am being overtly simplistic and may be generalisations, but it's not entirely false.
    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 :-) ) is a dropout, India's richest men: Dhirubhai Ambani(Reliance founder), Azim Premji(Wipro) are all great examples. One IIMB professor told me that 10 of the richest people are dropouts or have basic education & the 11th(i believe ballmer) works for the 1st(bill). I haven't verified it though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

    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.

  7. reputation != education by NovaX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  8. Re:huh by Gyan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, mod parent up (#4993402)

    Comment : The point of life is to have fun. That's it

    Reply : If you think thats the entire point of life, you're missing the point

    I kinda disagree. IMHO, there's no ordained point to life. You decide what the point of your life is (depending on your outlook). No obligation or duty is imposed on you to make any difference in anyone's life, even your own. But that's not going to work out very well.

  9. Prestigious universities have downsides too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    A confession.

    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.

  10. Re:for my PhD... by lrichardson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It varies immensely depending on your field. Some like your standard degree. It's good enough.

    Some - acturial sciences springs to mind - have a serious negative towards masters (and, heaven forefend, PhDs) without real-world experience.

    And then, of course, there's math ... where one degree leads to the next leads to the next leads to an academic position ... ;) (Actually, this holds true for certain University positions - e.g. English, History - but is completely reversed for others - e.g. Engineering - where they pretty much won't touch you without a good deal of real world experience (which was learned the hard way when the professors came staight from the ranks of the grads for many generations, and were teaching steam engines when the world was running on IC)

    More seriously, sometimes continuing on the 'education' track is easier without taking time off ... you don't lose the mind-set. And sometimes (oh, Engineering and certain Sciences) the 'education' following your first degree becomes indistinguishable from 'work' (i.e. research)

    There is a growing trend, in certain fields, for 'continuing' education. The acturies mentioned above generally follow a fairly rigid timeline ... degree and certification, two years work, masters, two-three years more work, PhD. Life Insurance has the LOMA series (which is taken concurrently with working, and averages four or five years to complete). And I can't remember the number of times I've smiled politely and declined when some !@#$ suggested I take an M$CE/SA/xy course.

    Best advice I have was originally coined awhile back ... "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

  11. my personal opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  12. Re:for my PhD... by Delphix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. can be counted on one hand. While they're nice examples of where you can go without finishing school, or going the drug route and trancendental meditation... *ahem* They are 2 people of roughly 6 billion. (or 250 million-ish in the US alone)

    While you can get somewhere without a good education, I can tell you as an engineer, and as a college recruiter we do look at transcripts and resumes. I can also tell you the school that you come from matters. If you went to a Tier 3 state supported school, you better do significantly better than someone who comes from a Tier 1 school. The academic programs are generally much tougher in the Tier 1 schools, and we expect slighly lower grades from those applicants on average. And this is not just generalization.

    After I finished undergrad and moved to my first apartment, I started taking classes at the local university. It was a farce. Compared to the work I did in my undergraduate classes it was nothing. I took graduate classes before leaving undergrad and they involved quite a bit work. The classes I took at the local university were mostly memorization and had very little to do with learning concepts and theories. ie: Memorizing details of the 8086->Pentium processors does not a Computer Architecture class make. That lasted for two classes, as I thought I chose a bad class. The next semester I transfered to the arch-rival of the Tier 1 I went to as undergrad (they have a local campus) and things were more like I would expect.

    Also, low grades don't always reflect inability to learn the subject. Sometimes it's from laziness, an unwillingness to work, or not caring about the work. This is the last kind of person we want to hire. You don't have to have straight A's and participate in 50 activities. But you do have to demonstrate a healthy like for this type of work, and a willingness to...well, work. Involvment in extra-curricular projects or practical experience is a nice plus.

    For academic positions, research, publications, etc. take a more prominent position. But either way, what managers/professors look for is that you really are interested in the field, and that you don't want to get a degree just to have the paper.

    Motivation and skill are key. Poor academic performance is a good indicator one of them is missing. Success at a more challenging university generally indicates you have more of both.

  13. Your team will be full of mediocrities. by Magnus+Pym · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  14. Re:for my PhD... by mr_sheel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think that the percentage of students who eventually earn a PhD is a very accurate or fair characterization of said schools. It certainly speaks well of liberal arts schools, which I completely respect, but I'm at Harvard, and I'd like to think that the energy that I put into what I do (mathematics) will make me happy/successful with my life (and yes, I fully plan to go for the PhD). "Surpassing" can't be measured by who gets a PhD. Also note that PhD's are often dictated by fields of choice, and your list includes many technical schools (and Harvey Mudd, which has all of six majors) and liberal arts schools. Just because Caltech students get so many PhD's doesn't make it a "better school" or make it's students more competitive or anything of the sort--it's simply a function of the fact that many students there do science.

    And I'm not sure whether saying a college "produced" a great student out of an average student means much either. Sometimes students just become more motivated in college, and that's great, certainly. And sure, the college has a part in motivating the student. But many students who come to good schools begin motivated, and if they come out motivated, I still think it speaks for the school--it takes a lot to maintain one's motivation.