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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."
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 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.
Ok, I'll bite.
There's an old saying that if you want to be happy you need three things.
1. Something to do - Usually translates to some sort of job. You'll never be happy if you don't contribute to society and waste the gifts you've been given.
2. Someone to Love - Go ahead never take a risk because it ends in tears. Marriage also ends in tears of laughter. I've shed tears in my marriage but I can't imagine my life without her.
3. Something to look forward to - Without hope, life is pointless. You sound like you need something to look forward to.
A couple of more thoughts on your less salient points.
E.g. if you become the head of a medium-sized business selling widgets worldwide then you have "succeeded". Big Fucking Deal
I hate to break the news to you but the Big Fucking Deal of being the head of the medium-sized business isn't the glamorous challenge of selling widgets, its the lifestyle which such a position would afford you. It means a comfortable house, a car more enjoyable than a used Hyundai, and the resources to travel and enjoy a few vacations.
The point of life is to have fun. That's it.
If you think thats the entire point of life, you're missing the point. Perhaps the point is making a difference in the lives of others. That head of a business employs other people and in a small mundane way, probably makes the world a better place.
Having fun is much easier with a job. I enjoy skiing. Lift tickets cost money. I enjoy gadgets. Gadgets costs money. The irony is that if you make money your goal, you're doomed to unhappiness and you won't have any fun. A money centered or self centered life will guaranteee very little fun and very little joy.
I choose joy.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Please back up your assertions. This is completely false. I speak as a college counselor with about 8 years of experience.
It does matter what undergraduate college you go to, but reputation, prestige, and ranking have nothing to do with it. Here is the principle:
When you look at results, most of the prestigious schools are defeated, beaten down, and put to shame by a relatively unknown class of schools, the small liberal-arts college. The mechanism should be obvious: small classes; professors who love to teach, have no research burden, and take an interest in your work; broad education that teaches you mental skills, not just job skills.
Since we're talking about grad school, let's take the percentage of graduates from college that eventually earn a PhD (from any institution, not necessarily the same one). So we're talking about your personal chances of getting a future PhD as a result of undergraduate college choice. Here's the top of that list:
I'll leave out the rest. Buy Loren Pope's excellent book Looking Beyond the Ivy League if you want the rest of the chart. Interesting to note, 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. The next Ivy to show its face is Harvard at #37 (9.0%). Three of the Ivies and Stanford don't make top 50.
The list plays out the same way whatever measure you choose: MCAT scores, grad/med/law school admission rates (often 30-100% better than the prestige colleges), leaders and prominent figures produced, you name it.
Although their population is collectively tiny, the small liberal-arts schools produce half the professional scientists in this country. (Don't be fooled into thinking you need a technical school for a technical education.)
And now, here's the real kicker: many of these schools are not very selective. Reed, #3 on the list, will take you if you've got a B+ average, around 1300 on the SAT, and some demonstrable intellectual curiosity. But they will invariably turn out graduates that surpass those at famous schools.
Schools like Harvard deserve no credit for admitting "successful" people and then graduating "successful" people. I went there, and it improved me not at all. It's much more impressive to see a school take in an average student and make them great; or a good student and make them stellar.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.