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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."

8 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. 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.

  4. 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.)

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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."

  8. 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.