Wow, today I learned that there are colleges that accept >50% of their applicants. I guess I just kind of assumed that most colleges and universities were bloodbaths of competition, requiring the whole array of essays, interviews and letters of recommendation. Interesting article.
an undergrad rep came to my high school and at one point said, 'if you have a 3.0 you can probably leave the essay portion blank and still get in here'.
I can't imagine that most state universities accept less than 50% of their applicatants.
For example, my undergrad has an acceptance rate of ~95%, but it's still a regionally very well-respected school.
State schools, particularly the "non-flagship" state schools have a _very_ clear mission of educating the local populace. A low acceptance rate is in direct opposition to that.
All that having been said, with a high acceptance rate comes "weed out classes". People who went to high schools that didn't prepare them for college will struggle _much_ more than people from suburban/wealthy areas. A high acceptance rate usually implies less individual attention until you get past the intro classes.
That's a strange way to define failure. If you think that a student cannot make it through your curriculum why drain your available resources and waste their time? Should schools have sub curricula with different rigor?
I assume the acceptance rate is calculated only from those who meet the requirements. Why would you apply to a school you do not qualify for? I don't doubt it ever happens, but it would not account for the very low acceptance rates at many schools.
Also, your talking about students from the state that graduated from state high schools. It would be a failure of the state educational system if they weren't qualified for college.
Dealing with reality, most state colleges have a program to bootstrap students or it is heavily hinted they should attend community college for the first year or two to get their skills up.
Most people I knew applied to at least one college they knew they were not qualified for.
People I met from other high schools did not realize the difference in rigor (which most colleges keep large amounts of data on) and thus had no metric to determine which school they should go to.
Yes, plenty of schools have non-competitive admissions.
And even when applying to super-selective schools, there are always fallback choices[1]. The angst felt by applicants, as described in many articles and op-eds, is almost entirely self-inflicted.
[1] The only stressful part about my own college admissions experience was not being accepted early to UVA. I had to wait until April to find out if I'd be forced to slum it at VT. The horror!
Are selective schools overrepresented, or are nonselective schools underrepresented? I don't think these two ideas are the same, because I think there is room for discussion about both.
Also, the article seems to imply that discussing selective institutions on a national stage is like discussing which Ferrari to purchase at a soup kitchen, but in reality, so few students attend selective institutions because theyre selective. A significantly larger number apply and are waiting for those decision letters, even if they recognize that it will almost certainly be a rejection. In the grand scheme of things this point doesn't really matter, but it was something I noticed.
*Disclosure: I attend a large, public research university
Love it. fivethirtyeight++. We should totally be talking about how to improve college for the vast majority of students, not the ones who basically made it already.
I've found this type of attitude to be a huge problem at my company that no one wants to admit. We only recruit from top tier schools because we only want top tier talent, while at the same time and with a completely straight face complaining that we can't fill positions fast enough.
h1b requirements are a joke. companies can make any requirements they want. The easiest way to hire a foreigner on an h1b is put a language requirement in the job description that would be nearly impossible for any to have that the candidate you want to hire just so happens knows how to speak. It does not matter that the actual job does not require this skill they are allowed to put it in the job description and throw out all resumes who dont claim to meet this and then give an impossible interview to anyone who claims to meet the requirements
this is exactly right. I happen to know a few key persons at some of these companies who do this, and they still have the gall to complain over social media over how they can't hire enough foreigners.
they complain under the guise of being "globally-minded" but most people know they would just prefer to cut costs of human labor.
H1bs are only given out when the company has needs that can't be met by US persons. Some companies get around this requirement by making job openings that are impossible to fill.
I've never understood the tendency towards thinking that the silver spoon darlings are somehow more competent than decent grads from less selective institutions who have actually had to deal with life.
Particularly when their recruiting is so geo-limited. In the 80's, I applied to a lot of schools, had very good SAT and ACT scores (ND is an ACT state so I took the SAT myself), and never received even an acknowledgment letter (pre-web, pain in butt to get the applications and it was money I could have used elsewhere). Texas A&M sent me a scholarship even though I didn't apply, but I really didn't want to be a petroleum engineer. Ended up going to the state institution.
There's a general issue of pattern-matching when it comes to recruiting and furthermore investing in founders. The reality is that it's much easier on the human brain to say "that person didn't work out, which is surprising because they went to Stanford", then to say "that person didn't work that because they went to State University X. next time we don't hire from there".
This is bewildering to me as well. There are many talented students in second-tier (if we have to use ranking to define them) public universities. For example, many kids in small midwest towns didn't know much about the prestigious private colleges, and if they heard of them, they were scared off by the expensive tuitions. They didn't know a large part of the expenses would be taken care of by need-based financial aid. In many cases, that kid is the first in the whole family who got into college. Naturally, they enroll the state's public universities.
I met several students like this. In one project for an advanced AI class, I was awed by a student's code written in SML. It was his first experience using a functional programming language. He not only grasped the concepts but also applied it in coding exceedingly well. I talked to him a few times. Very smart and a nice guy. If he didn't even get an interview opportunity just because he went into a second-tier public university, shame on the hiring managers.
> They didn't know a large part of the expenses would be taken care of by need-based financial aid.
Midwesterner here (who did know about prestigious private schools, tyvm). I've yet to see a "need-based financial aid" package that made a private school worth it.
Ugh, the Bay Area attitude toward the Midwest is so exhausting. What a surprise that there are smart people that graduate from public schools! Jeesh.
It's much worse if you don't have ANY sort of degree, despite having skills.
I once applied for an internal job at a major options exchange to go from NOC to app support and managed to get an interview with HR. When I got up there, the HR person looks at my resume, notices a lack of degree and says "Sorry, we require that you have a degree." I quit about a month later to do a near identical job for higher pay and aced it. Their loss.
Lesson learned? If a company requires a degree, permanently refuse to work with them in the future, since, for some reason, they love calling back a year later with a great opportunity I can "learn" at.
Got to a job offer once as a software engineer in a US-based high frequency trading company, without any degree. Say what you want about "greedy financists", but they really don't care about anything except getting the job done.
As a child living in a mountain town in NH I had no idea financial aid existed. I was always told by my parents that I would never go to college because they couldn't afford it. I believed them until a guidance counselor called a meeting with my parents where he laid out all the options. by then my GPA was quite poor due to not doing the work (it was always trivial to past tests w/o doing the homework, so why bother with it), so top tier was out.
And, it doesn't matter. You get the education that you want, for the most part. I did independent study when a class wasn't offered, as did my friends. I'm sure there are substandard colleges (I've interviewed people that just weren't prepared for the field, and digging into their classwork showed why) but in general it holds.
Go to the local gas station, talk to the clerk, and you very well be encountering an IQ that exceeds yours by a standard deviation or two. I was almost that clerk until that guidance counselor gave me a different future. And I know people from high school that are that clerk, and have formidable minds.
Top school doesn't mean too much at all. Yes, kids who get themselves there by their bootstraps are to be admired. But the amount of support given to many there makes it pretty easy to get in at least one school. I never once had help with my homework from my parents - they couldn't do it if they tried (and, they didn't try). I went to school hungry, and didn't eat breakfast or lunch - no money for it. Last time I ate before/in school was 5th grade. I shivered all day because they kept the heat low and i didn't have sweaters to wear. I wasn't allowed to do extracurricular activities for reasons. And so on. That all says 0 about what I can do, know, think, feel, accomplish, except to the extent it taught me not to be held back by challenges. It says nothing negative about me, except that I was pretty unworldly when I entered the world at age 18. I changed that soon enough.
I just snort, internally, when somebody feels the need to name drop where they graduated from. Means almost nothing. Did you do interesting research or something there? That means something. Did you learn and grow? That means something. Did you face hardship and learn those life skills? Etc. All that matters, not the name.
> FiveThirtyEight is just as bad: The vast majority of our editorial staff, including me, went to elite, selective colleges. (I went to Columbia.)
What an ironic article, given that most of the article doesn't stop talking about elite colleges. I thought the rule was if you wanted to tackle something like this, you just don't write about them.
I think this is an important issue that's worthy of coverage. I also thought it was important to disclose that I'm not innocent/unbiased in this. FWIW, in my own higher ed writing I try to emphasize more representative schools.
(I'm the author of this piece.)
I interviewed at airbnb in 2012 and the very first interviewer started with "your degree is not from a good school" like the very first sentence right to my face. He just seemed insulted that he has to spend time with someone lesser like me.
I've never applied to any other sfo startup after that but won't be surprised if that attitude is common at other places.
I didn't see that discussion previously, but it sounds like a potential example of "Death by Lethal Reputation" as detailed by the Ask the Headhunter guy: http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/halethalrep.htm
And it really sucks; while I didn't go to it for CS, I attended one of the best 4 schools in the world for that, and while interviewing as I've done in times past, would never dream of assuming a fellow alum who got a CS degree was definitely competent, nor that someone like you couldn't prove to me you were.
I had someone ask that once in an interview. My response was I got into a better school, but sitting in classes I was less than impressed.
This seemed to upset them, but I may have accidentally dissed their school.
Honestly, I think it's mostly insecurity on their part. If you spend 3+ years going somewhere you like to think it was a good 'deal' even if you overpay for a sub par education.
I'm at a Canadian school and work for a pretty well known prof (well known in my field, at least). The more I've encountered people who've always been in "elite" institutions, the less I've been impressed.
You may not have directly dissed their school. My impression of these types of people is that they have the group-think mentality, so if you insult one school in that group you just insulted them all.
Or you can be diplomatic about it. Tell the interviewer that you don't think the company will be a right fit for you instead of telling them to fuck off.
This is not a case of not being a good fit, in which being diplomatic is the right move. This is a recruiter/company passing a subjective and intentionally insulting assessment on a candidate at the outset. This is a brazen power play to increase the existing imbalance of power further toward the recruiter/company, by devaluing the candidate as the opening move. And there is more the OP said about what happened in the interview. That opening statement was intentional psychological fuckery.
Don't ever let anyone devalue or dehumanize you. Tell them to fuck off every time.
My first inclination upon hearing this situation was to reply with something along the lines of "if you're putting that much stock in my school, that just tells me you're not qualified to judge me by my merits as an engineer, so please stop wasting everyone's time. Good-bye."
I definitely agree a move like that is an abusive tactic, but I guess I feel a simple "fuck off" doesn't cut quite deep enough. A concise, polite, retort that actually attacks their competence is even better IMO. A bit harder for them to mentally write off than "that guy was just bitter that I won the conversation"
Heh. Yours is the right hook followed by a left jab type of fuck off. One could also merely walk out without saying a word. The method matters little. Drawing the line and communicating it is what matters.
Delayed reply, but, I think the method matters. How we act should driven by the context of the situation. In an interview I don't think telling someone to fuck off is effective. What you want to do is to rebuke the interviewer. The interviewer might be making the distinction of "elite school" == competence without even thinking about it, in this instance telling them to fuck off will probably just reinforce this view. There is no need to go from polite interview to full nuclear, "fuck off" is an unnecessary escalation.
Occasionally I will have a phone conversation with a recruiter (external or internal), asking me if I know X or if I have Y years experience with Z. When I tell them I do not, they always something to the effect of "oh, we are looking for someone that really knows X".
At that point, I thank them for their time and wish them well. They always start backtracking and then say it is not an issue.
Oh, of course. It's all relational power dynamics. With this approach, you can always be diplomatic and stop the recruiter from wasting your time further. It's the obvious move in the game to call them on their bluff, as it's a mild form of trying to put you in a box of "this person doesn't fit our requirements, so we can make them a lower offer and say this is why". But as soon as a recruiter starts saying things meant to insult, devalue, or put you on the defensive, that's where you draw the line.
This is sadly common in the supposedly meritocratic startup land. Two large startups I recently worked with didn't even bother recruiting new grads outside of about ten universities, and also placed overly high importance on the universities of even experienced hires. Their reasoning was that they only wanted "the best" employees. I understand that college admission boards already act as a sort of pre-recruiting filter to select competitive students, but it just seems absurd to exclude 95+% of available employees based on a single credential.
While my Alma Matter is often the butt of jokes I often say "Arizona State was the best school my family and I could afford." Once I became an AZ resident, tuition was less than $500 a semester.
Granted this was in the early 90's, when tuitions varied wildly and kids were less informed of differences between the school. Not sure this argument is meaningful now since just about every school is unaffordable without financial-aid and information is more accessible.
This also demonstrates a cultural/demographic bias. At 17 I would have told you MIT and NYC's Apex Tech were both "tech" schools, but Apex tech was a better deal because you got a box of tools with your diploma and it only takes 6 weeks. I wonder if this level of ignorance is even possible now.
There doesn't seem to be much difference between the courses at "elite" universities and regular ones, difference is the student selection criteria. I'm surprise anybody will ask about your school if you've been more than a couple years out of it.
I posted this article because I think our obsessions with "elite" universities is bad for society.
With that said, there is a difference in the courses. I went to MIT for grad school after Berkeley and met many students from lower ranked schools. They were always the top student in their school. They also all complained they were underprepared because their schools had crappy courses.
I've been told that Harvard Law is pass/fail, so you can be a crappy student (as long as you can get in) and still get a degree. Thus, firms that focus on top-tire schools get lots of bad lawyers who went to the right schools.
I sort of see top-tire schools like I see fake doctors wearing lab coats, if you want a lazy signal go for it, but it shouldn't be more than an ok and move on.
It's not pass/fail - there are grades (high pass, pass, low pass, etc.), and top law firms certainly take grades into account during the interview process.
Also, if lazy signals work, PR if the lack of the signal causes problems, that's a real incentive for real doctors to wear the lab coats or students to attend top-tier schools. It would be nice to make decisions based only on real value and assume all participants are rational and well-informed, but actual humans use lazy signals all the time.
>“Ninety-five percent of the newsroom probably went to private institutions, they went to four-year institutions, and they went to elite institutions,” said Jeff Selingo...
This right here is why. The narrative goes that if you don't go to an elite school, you won't get an elite job. (Let's not argue about how true that is, but I think we can agree it's a common narrative.) People want elite jobs, so they want to go to the elite schools. The article points out that most students don't go to selective schools, but this sounds to me like, when discussing wealth inequality, pointing out that most people aren't billionaires. When talking about selectivity and competition in trying to get good schools/jobs, the fact that most students don't make the cut is the whole point of the conversation.
The population of the educated 1st world offers higher education as an invitation to, "Join us! It's great in here!" So it behooves us to make sure this pathway is genuine, not filled with traps and fraud, and doesn't exploit or drain the participants.
From what I have seen, though, we are failing. When a regime fails, it's not visible from the centers of power and the shiny hallways. It's first visible in the periphery, amongst the least powerful.
"Barely half of first-time, full-time bachelor’s degree students graduate within six years; for part-time or community college students, that share is even lower."
Observation from UK: that just would not fly here. Including mature/part time students.
I have a vague memory of being told by someone that the US system is slightly different, because it includes a year or two of what we'd consider A Level content in the UK.
So you get more people panicking in the first year or two when they find they can't hack the basics.
Or they just don't care, because daddy's trust fund awaits.
Tangentially, the subject with the worst drop out rate in the UK is CS, at around 11%. It's also the subject with the worst employment prospects.
That could be because it's hard, but it could also be because the pay here can be terrible compared to the US.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadFor example, my undergrad has an acceptance rate of ~95%, but it's still a regionally very well-respected school.
State schools, particularly the "non-flagship" state schools have a _very_ clear mission of educating the local populace. A low acceptance rate is in direct opposition to that.
All that having been said, with a high acceptance rate comes "weed out classes". People who went to high schools that didn't prepare them for college will struggle _much_ more than people from suburban/wealthy areas. A high acceptance rate usually implies less individual attention until you get past the intro classes.
Dealing with reality, most state colleges have a program to bootstrap students or it is heavily hinted they should attend community college for the first year or two to get their skills up.
People I met from other high schools did not realize the difference in rigor (which most colleges keep large amounts of data on) and thus had no metric to determine which school they should go to.
Yes, plenty of schools have non-competitive admissions.
And even when applying to super-selective schools, there are always fallback choices[1]. The angst felt by applicants, as described in many articles and op-eds, is almost entirely self-inflicted.
[1] The only stressful part about my own college admissions experience was not being accepted early to UVA. I had to wait until April to find out if I'd be forced to slum it at VT. The horror!
Also, the article seems to imply that discussing selective institutions on a national stage is like discussing which Ferrari to purchase at a soup kitchen, but in reality, so few students attend selective institutions because theyre selective. A significantly larger number apply and are waiting for those decision letters, even if they recognize that it will almost certainly be a rejection. In the grand scheme of things this point doesn't really matter, but it was something I noticed.
*Disclosure: I attend a large, public research university
>"A significantly larger number apply" True, but that number is still vanishingly small relative to the number of college applicants as a whole.
I've had it with the Ivy talk, given I have no chance at that sort of prestige now.
Though it's unclear if restricting to ivy league or w/e is a strategy there that actually works... I don't get that part.
This isn't even a secret, an immigration attorney posted a promotional video on their own site explaining how they do this.
I met several students like this. In one project for an advanced AI class, I was awed by a student's code written in SML. It was his first experience using a functional programming language. He not only grasped the concepts but also applied it in coding exceedingly well. I talked to him a few times. Very smart and a nice guy. If he didn't even get an interview opportunity just because he went into a second-tier public university, shame on the hiring managers.
Midwesterner here (who did know about prestigious private schools, tyvm). I've yet to see a "need-based financial aid" package that made a private school worth it.
Ugh, the Bay Area attitude toward the Midwest is so exhausting. What a surprise that there are smart people that graduate from public schools! Jeesh.
Honestly, I'd take out loans just for the name and prestige.
I once applied for an internal job at a major options exchange to go from NOC to app support and managed to get an interview with HR. When I got up there, the HR person looks at my resume, notices a lack of degree and says "Sorry, we require that you have a degree." I quit about a month later to do a near identical job for higher pay and aced it. Their loss.
Lesson learned? If a company requires a degree, permanently refuse to work with them in the future, since, for some reason, they love calling back a year later with a great opportunity I can "learn" at.
Another guy I know wrote a hugely profitable HFT equity system without a degree at 20 years old.
As a child living in a mountain town in NH I had no idea financial aid existed. I was always told by my parents that I would never go to college because they couldn't afford it. I believed them until a guidance counselor called a meeting with my parents where he laid out all the options. by then my GPA was quite poor due to not doing the work (it was always trivial to past tests w/o doing the homework, so why bother with it), so top tier was out.
And, it doesn't matter. You get the education that you want, for the most part. I did independent study when a class wasn't offered, as did my friends. I'm sure there are substandard colleges (I've interviewed people that just weren't prepared for the field, and digging into their classwork showed why) but in general it holds.
Go to the local gas station, talk to the clerk, and you very well be encountering an IQ that exceeds yours by a standard deviation or two. I was almost that clerk until that guidance counselor gave me a different future. And I know people from high school that are that clerk, and have formidable minds.
Top school doesn't mean too much at all. Yes, kids who get themselves there by their bootstraps are to be admired. But the amount of support given to many there makes it pretty easy to get in at least one school. I never once had help with my homework from my parents - they couldn't do it if they tried (and, they didn't try). I went to school hungry, and didn't eat breakfast or lunch - no money for it. Last time I ate before/in school was 5th grade. I shivered all day because they kept the heat low and i didn't have sweaters to wear. I wasn't allowed to do extracurricular activities for reasons. And so on. That all says 0 about what I can do, know, think, feel, accomplish, except to the extent it taught me not to be held back by challenges. It says nothing negative about me, except that I was pretty unworldly when I entered the world at age 18. I changed that soon enough.
I just snort, internally, when somebody feels the need to name drop where they graduated from. Means almost nothing. Did you do interesting research or something there? That means something. Did you learn and grow? That means something. Did you face hardship and learn those life skills? Etc. All that matters, not the name.
What an ironic article, given that most of the article doesn't stop talking about elite colleges. I thought the rule was if you wanted to tackle something like this, you just don't write about them.
I've never applied to any other sfo startup after that but won't be surprised if that attitude is common at other places.
Complete sob story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11291155
And it really sucks; while I didn't go to it for CS, I attended one of the best 4 schools in the world for that, and while interviewing as I've done in times past, would never dream of assuming a fellow alum who got a CS degree was definitely competent, nor that someone like you couldn't prove to me you were.
This seemed to upset them, but I may have accidentally dissed their school.
Honestly, I think it's mostly insecurity on their part. If you spend 3+ years going somewhere you like to think it was a good 'deal' even if you overpay for a sub par education.
A. Stand up
2. Collect your things
D. Say, "Fuck. Right. Off."
And then walk out.
Don't ever let anyone devalue or dehumanize you. Tell them to fuck off every time.
I definitely agree a move like that is an abusive tactic, but I guess I feel a simple "fuck off" doesn't cut quite deep enough. A concise, polite, retort that actually attacks their competence is even better IMO. A bit harder for them to mentally write off than "that guy was just bitter that I won the conversation"
Telling an interviewer they're not qualified while keeping your dignity is far more effective.
The school question isn't a filter for competence but for social class - and if that matters in an interview, it's definitely not a good omen.
At that point, I thank them for their time and wish them well. They always start backtracking and then say it is not an issue.
Granted this was in the early 90's, when tuitions varied wildly and kids were less informed of differences between the school. Not sure this argument is meaningful now since just about every school is unaffordable without financial-aid and information is more accessible.
This also demonstrates a cultural/demographic bias. At 17 I would have told you MIT and NYC's Apex Tech were both "tech" schools, but Apex tech was a better deal because you got a box of tools with your diploma and it only takes 6 weeks. I wonder if this level of ignorance is even possible now.
With that said, there is a difference in the courses. I went to MIT for grad school after Berkeley and met many students from lower ranked schools. They were always the top student in their school. They also all complained they were underprepared because their schools had crappy courses.
I sort of see top-tire schools like I see fake doctors wearing lab coats, if you want a lazy signal go for it, but it shouldn't be more than an ok and move on.
What's left for someone that still graduates?
Also, if lazy signals work, PR if the lack of the signal causes problems, that's a real incentive for real doctors to wear the lab coats or students to attend top-tier schools. It would be nice to make decisions based only on real value and assume all participants are rational and well-informed, but actual humans use lazy signals all the time.
This right here is why. The narrative goes that if you don't go to an elite school, you won't get an elite job. (Let's not argue about how true that is, but I think we can agree it's a common narrative.) People want elite jobs, so they want to go to the elite schools. The article points out that most students don't go to selective schools, but this sounds to me like, when discussing wealth inequality, pointing out that most people aren't billionaires. When talking about selectivity and competition in trying to get good schools/jobs, the fact that most students don't make the cut is the whole point of the conversation.
From what I have seen, though, we are failing. When a regime fails, it's not visible from the centers of power and the shiny hallways. It's first visible in the periphery, amongst the least powerful.
"Barely half of first-time, full-time bachelor’s degree students graduate within six years; for part-time or community college students, that share is even lower."
Observation from UK: that just would not fly here. Including mature/part time students.
So you get more people panicking in the first year or two when they find they can't hack the basics.
Or they just don't care, because daddy's trust fund awaits.
Tangentially, the subject with the worst drop out rate in the UK is CS, at around 11%. It's also the subject with the worst employment prospects.
That could be because it's hard, but it could also be because the pay here can be terrible compared to the US.
But seriously, 50% drop out? We should export OFSTED. That'll sort them (I work as a teacher).