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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
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 :)
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
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
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.
Why should he be? Is there some requirement to always write glowing recommendations when describing students to colleges?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Anyways, I got deferred at MIT, which essentially means rejected. Why?
No, it means deferred. I think you're assuming and awful lot about what the admissions people care about, over-estimating your own credentials, and under-estimating your peer's. MIT is one of the preeminent technology schools in the world. You are probably a great student, but the number of applicants to a school like MIT is enormous. Out of a pool this large, there are bound to be people better qualified than you. Them's the breaks. I don't think MIT gives cares about if you played a sport or not.
I'm applying there for grad school (among many other places). I will graduate from Virginia Tech this May with a 3.6 in-major GPA and about the same for my cumulative GPA. I'm doing undergraduate research next semester. I'm a computer science major with a minor in math and a minor in physics. And I think my chances of getting into MIT are slim.
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!
An SAT score of 1250 is just fine. SAT scores are bunk. They demonstrate one thing: your ability to take the SATs. You don't know why these people were accepted and rejected, so stop pretending.
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.
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.