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Canadian University Puts Tech Whiz Kids in 'Dormcubator'
jades writes "The University of Waterloo (Canada), sometimes billed as the 'MIT of the North' is establishing a residence 'incubator'. Meant to challenge 70 of their very top students in the tech and business fields, students will live together and work on 'the future of mobile communications, the web and digital media'. It's called 'VeloCity', and it launches in Fall 2008 after renovations are completed this summer."
I was going to say PIX PLZ but then, hey, why not start "Geek Big Brother" or "I'm a Geek... Get Me Out of Here!"
I'm not sure, that it is the best way to get serious things done, but it sounds fun.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
We have a similar thing going at the University I go to. It's nice to be around other people that are as academically minded as yourself.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I have friends who go to The U of Waterloo, and not one has EVER called that school "the MIT of the North"
when asked, "how's your University", most of them just shrug and say "meh, it's alright, its a University."
MIT of the North? who said that? the Marketing department for Waterloo?
-I only code in BASIC.-
That's funny, I never heard of MIT before, I've always heard of it as "The University of Waterloo (Canada) of the South."
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
but known as the "Dorkubator"
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
They wanted an incubator for academically minded people and they called it VeloCity? Seriously? You'd have thought they'd have come up with a decent name rather than trying to combine a word for speed with a word for a large conurbation (which I doubt it is) in some jauntily capitalised construction.
The basic idea is quite good, even if it does just sound like a slightly more segregated version of "Halls of Residence" from the summary.
Waterloo has always fancied itself an industry supplier of productive bodies. My brother the EE went there and benefited from their work-term model. He got lots of practical experience which helped him land a job, although he took longer to get his degree than me.
I did an ME at the U of T. (Funny that the article calls Waterloo "MIT North", because U of T profs liked to call MIT "U of T South". Which is all very embarrassing, like stop with the MIT comparisons for heck's sake.)
The problem I have with this Velocity thing is: who pays and who benefits? Seems to me a chunk of everyone's tuition will go toward it, while only some will be in a position to get in. And those who can get in will be the ones who can deal with the extra work load.
In a perfect world, it would be the more clever who could handle the added work. In reality, it is the ones who have external support, like whose parents live not far away, or who come from richer families, that can focus on the work. The poor slobs who have 2 pair of pants for 4 years and who eat leftover mac & cheese for 5 days in a row wouldn't fit in.
I have no problem with elitism, it's a central component of hereditary capitalism, our beloved system. But not when the winners are being subsidized by the losers, that just strikes me as wrong.
I'm obviously biased, but I like the U of T approach: classical. Give everyone the same education and chuck them all into the market and let life sort them out. I hate the idea of university admins having the power to pick winners.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Did they mean Dorkubator? And what will be the implications of this ungodly dork breeding program, if hell in fact does freeze over and it is successful?
If anybody is interested in further reading, the campus newspaper did a story on this a couple of months ago, as well as the engineering newspaper.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
That, or a Pirated copy of Windows. These are students, and therefore dirt poor
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
It realy "grinds my gears" to see bright people waste their valuable time on Web/Social/Communication applications. If one thing in the world is currently going well, it's that field. That field has been developing well, there are plenty of bright minds working on it, no need to direct more geniuses that way.
Let them work on REAL challenges. Like better engines (we've been using the same combustion engine for 100 years now), better flight (which as not progressed much since WW2 jets), new energy sources (we never went beyond nuclear, which was 60 years ago). Why not let them work on wireless power, on indoor agriculture, desalinization technologies ? REAL challenges, not some hyper-popular niche that doesn't suffer from the lack of talented people.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
What is the average air speed VeloCity of an unladen geek?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I have been trying to get the state of Colorado to offer various X prizes for needs of the state. For example, one of the suggestions was to come up with a means of stopping Pine beetles, which are devastating literally 100 of millions worth of lodge pole and other pines. I figured that ppl, roughly students, would go into the woods and look for lodge pole trees that appeared to survive the beetles. Once they do that, they could then look for what is different. What is amazing is that now a company in Mass (from MIT), has a way to stop them. They found it by following the method that I suggested. It appears that Colorado will spend somewhere between 10-100 millions to save just a fraction of the lodgepole pines. I suspect that other states will spend similar amounts or more.
All in all, Gov. CAN help fund ideas. The Canadian approach will help lead to companies with loads of ideas AND ppl to try and incubate them. My suggestion would only have costs iff an idea was worthy. Hopefully more universities will pick up the idea of integrating ppl, rather than separating them (and perhaps offer incentives).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
you code only in basic, and you rip a decent university. Let me guess. You were shot down for admission?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yep. Dirt poor and smart - therefore Linux.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Waterloo is only ONE degree north of Cambridge, and not too far west. On a global scale, they're in the same place.
I was just kidding. Every nation has what they regard as their own MIT. Some really do compete, and others do not. All nations are proud of what they have to offer, for in general, they have at least one person in each major fields who is competitive. After all, I noticed that North Korea was matching their child prodigies around the stage for the philharmonic. Says a lot.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
These are "top students", not necessarily smart ones. There's usually a difference. There's little in this world in which the only way to succeed is true intelligence; hard work, organization, and time investment can almost always substitute (and are usually more important).
ResidntGeek
Cramming the night before (or even right before hand) also helps.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
This is a sign of a good management, actually.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I wouldn't really say that. I'm a Canadian, and most of our students aren't dirt poor. If these really are the best students, they probably have a scholarship covering their most of their tuition. Not only that, tution is probably only around $6000 a year. Not bad for the best tech school in the country. Also, being that they are the best students, they probably get the best co-op placements. If you have a reasonable sized scholarship, and get a good co-op placement, you could probably get through without having any loans.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Judging by my freaking freezing ears, MIT is in the North.
Gotta love the article saying how they got applicants from "As far away as Wilfred Laurier" (a university that is literally a block away from UW) and UofT (90 minutes away by the 401). In any case, seems like UW's looking at ways to turn their new company budding into a formal process of sorts.
Is it just me, or does this idea sound straight out of the movie Real Genius??
I am going to be modded down for this, because there is no "+1 I hate this person and he is fucking wrong" mod thingy.
I agree with you, that our great challenges are sociological, economical and political. But Thing is, we are already living in the peaceful times in human history. We have not a single real war outside of Africa. If you think I am wrong, I advise you to take a few history classes.
But the real social challenge is moving away from democracy and capitalism, and embracing a more advanced model which does not revolve around individualism and revenue. Of course, the USSR stands as shining beacon of colossal failure, which simply makes communism and the lack of individual rights look bad, and it pisses me off even more to see China "opening up" instead of other countries taking its model and improving it. Democracy is not the end of political and social evolution. Nothing truly great can be achieved as long as we act as individuals.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
Poor kids is right.
The ones that don't get rich will commit suicide. This project is the academic equivalent of cockfighting.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Gene Ray, is that you?
No one else in college drinks as much as business majors. So by mixing them with engineering types, you are only going to get drunk engineers. Maybe they stay in the Ballmer peak , and make beautiful, functional programs that the business majors will market, giving little of the profit to the computer science majors.
Our government will support social networking DORMS... which will probably lead to research on better methods of intoxication. If we were american, it'd lead to faster methods of (insert aggressive american stereotype here).
Bill Gates - college drop out
Michael Dell - college drop out
Larry Ellison - college drop out
All tech billionaires. Thus ends the lesson.
Indeed, you can. I went to Waterloo and got through without taking out any loans, and I didn't, generally speaking, have the top marks in my classes. It's actually pretty easy to do, if you budget reasonably.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Shad Valley does this already, doesn't it? They still have it at the U of Waterloo, I think.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - 43 28'
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - 42 36'
Most people forget that southern Ontario dips well south into the great-lakes basin.
...I have to say that the geekubator concept is already up and running, and has been for a long time. It's called WCRI. It was well-established when I was there in the 80s.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
We segregate our student athletes at a lot of schools, now we're going to segregate the nerds? Am I the only one who feels uneasy about this?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Where the whole school is that way. Its an amzing experience to be surrounded by people with 140 IQs 24/7 and interested in technology.
2 blocks is considered far away?
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Nice obscure reference. :) Mod parent up!
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
I'm also a Canadian... and I was dirt poor through undergrad. Not everyone goes into a coop programme or gets a good summer job. Some of us borrow heavily from parents or banks and work the drive through at Tim Hortons 40 hours a week four months of the year before returning to school in September and barely scrape by with the rent.
what's that now?
You're conflating the students with the families they come from. Students don't have a lot of spending money just because their parents have decent incomes.
Hey ! Those are my hyphens ! Somebody - stop that man !
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Actually all University of Waterloo students get a free copy of XP pro or Vista through MSDN-AA. There shouldn't be a need to Pirate their copy.
70 is not enough to form a culture. In fact, it is barely enough to represent most fields.
"I went to Waterloo and got through without taking out any loans[/quote]"
Me too.
Did yo notice this in TFA: "The university has received applications from as far away as Wilfrid Laurier University"
WLU is down the street about 4 blocks.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Why not go into the coop programme? In the end, it takes an extra semester or two to complete your degree, but with that, you get a lot of job experience, and a lot less debt. I would really question the usefulness of getting a tech degree without any coop experience. If your school doesn't have a coop program, then your school, quite frankly, sucks. I'm not aware of any schools that don't offer coop programs. I'm not saying that all students are rich, but that the top students at the top tech university in the country probably don't have too much to worry about if they budget their money correctly.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Waterloo is not "MIT North".
MIT is "Waterloo South".
I didn't go into the coop programme because I went to McMaster and wanted to do a physics degree with a specialization in astrophysics, but the only coop programmes that were available were those in core physics and in medical physics (though they're accommodating people who want to do co-op and specialize now). And I'm done my undergraduate degree anyways, so I'm not nearly as broke since I'm a grad student and get paid to be here.
I can't say I'm particularly interested in any tech fields either. Computers are neat in their way, but they're mostly just useful tools for doing science, which is actually interesting, imo. However, when you said that Canadian students weren't poor, it didn't seem like you were just referring to those in tech programmes and also, a student being poor doesn't really have a lot to do with parents being poor. My parents made enough money that I couldn't get OSAP or any scholarships and bursaries aimed at people in financial need, but not enough that I wasn't poor throughout undergrad, even with summer jobs.
what's that now?
Sounds like Big Brother. What channel do I tune into to see who gets evicted next?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If they go to Waterloo, odds are they don't have a scholarship. That's not to say that they're poor, but UW is too young and too un-endowed to have much money for scholarships. The common gripe a lot of my friends had when we were at UW was that every school but UW that we applied to offered us scholarships. UW a) can't afford to, and b) doesn't have to.
Hi, I'm one of the students selected for this "dormcubator" thing, and I've had the chance to talk to many of the other students, as well as the organizers themselves. The focus of this initiative definitely wasn't to look for brainiacs with high grades - my marks suck. More focus was put on having an existing portfolio and history of pursuing extracurricular projects - building your own roomba on the side, for example. These are guys who have not only the smarts, but also proven their ability to work.
As if CS/Engineering majors needed their college experience to be even more of a sausage-fest.
Also, imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
Yup, it was the same when I went to Waterloo for CS (class of 2001 baby!) - I was offered thousands in scholarships from other schools, including UofT, but Waterloo's co-op program sold me (and, to be honest, the scholarships still would have balanced out to less than the money that I made through co-op).
It's better to study the old exams (your professors will reuse the questions they developed over the years) and develop a rapport with the TAs / professors (they are people and like people who like them.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
... decorated to look like their mom's basement.
Have gnu, will travel.
The school wants you to think of your profitable ideas while they still have some financial claim to them...
I'm serious.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I went thorough Computer Engineering at that university. Generally the top students in the first and second year that got by memorizing the textbook didn't do well in the upper years when you had to time manage and think for yourself. It was generally the creative types that could think on their feet that became the top students.
Given that the article says they are upper year students, I'd say that very likely they are also smart.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Ability to make money does not mean you are smart - just look at George W Bush.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Everyone has a different leartning style. Some think best when in an incubator-like evironment and others think more by walking around outside.
I hope they give these kids lots of healthy fresh air too. No point in burning them out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I went there for engineering and never saw any Linux rally, or any pro/anti software rally whatsoever. Not to say it didn't happen but it certainly isn't common occurrence. The geekiest thing I ever saw was a paper airplane contest. Free outdoor concerts and filling the bar with sand for indoor winter beach volleyball were the cool things I saw.
They were likely transients hopped up on crack or something.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The point is that high intelligence is not a pre-requisite as long as the qualities are present. It is great folly to think creating some artificial dorkubator at U of Woo will result in anything other than more mediocrity (already in high abundance at most institutions of higher learning). Being a janitor never necessitated a college level education, however, one has to wonder why its not a requirement for the captains of high tech.
Oh yeah, Steve Jobs - college dropout
In their deepest fantasies.
Americans really need to realize that their concept of secondary education is nothing more than football teams with daycare centers bolted to them.
Outside of the US, the schools are pretty much viewed as a joke. Even the supposedly prestigious "ivy league" schools.
Just saying.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You are absolutely right. And having "friends that XXX" means you'd have keen insight to a well established cultural reference like this...that is to say that NOONE has EVER called it MIT of the North.
Jack-ass.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
On that note, I read somewhere that the guy with the current highest IQ in the world (that is alive and that had is IQ tested) is a bouncer in a nightclub.
His IQ is 200+, and a no I don't have a source.
Smart = more than intelligence.
To work hard = smart.
To plan ahead = smart.
To invest = smart.
To grab opportunity regardless of how intelligent you are = smart.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity