I think that we idealize that it doesn't matter, but at a certain level, it does matter - even decades later. I went to no-name university and graduated with a high GPA in CS in '95. My work experience since has been solid, and I have some respectable accomplishments, but places like Google and Facebook don't even notice me. The only "black mark" on my resume that I can imagine would be holding me back is "graduated from no-name university".
I don't think this is always the case. I graduated in 2014, from a small state university with a CS degree and a decent GPA. Last year after only have a couple years in the field with a big US based Tech company, and I landed interviews with Amazon and Google while searching for jobs after being laid off. I think it really just depends on location, and probably a million other things.
I think it depends on companies you worked for prior. I can develop complete applications. However, I don't have much experience with large teams and I don't want to work for a tech company because I prefer a laid back environment and less hours.
I doubt google would hire me due to lack of experience working on a large team with many departments,even though my GPA was 3.9 from a average Chicago Uni.
Ditto. I've been in IT since 1998 and attended a smallish college in VA. Done fine all these years. I don't need the feather in my cap from working for large companies like some feel the need to pursue. I worked for Microsoft for a short time and wondered why I even took the job. It was among the worst of my tech jobs. The people were stuck up, they were on the verge of losing out on the mobile race (while still pushing Windows Mobile). Never again. I work for a non-profit and am quite happy to, as you say, have more control, less hours, but far more sanity.
A professor of mine mentioned a study by Bell/AT&T from mid 20th century which found that the success of their executives was correlated with how well they did at the school they went to, and less with which school they went to. I took that class in 1988, and the study was already old by then.
My impression was that that they spam every CS grad over LinkedIn trying to hoover up as many engineers as they can. I'd be surprised your school even comes into play. Usually it's more like, if you're from a top30 school +5 otherwise they don't even have an opinion.
I suspect I'm kinda in the middle, UC Davis represent! Great school, glad to have attended, but not really seen as a Stanford, Berkeley, UIUC, or CMU tier either.
Counter-example: I went to a state university, graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering in '89. I've had a number of jobs over the years - several startups, but also roles at Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, and (currently) Google. While I don't feel like my choice of university has ever particularly helped me, it also hasn't (that I'm aware) hurt me - I've never gotten an inkling that I was passed over for a role because I didn't go to a top-tier school.
There is a lot of talk about elite universities offering full-tuition to those that make under a certain income, but what this ignores is usually you have to be in a certain income bracket to obtain certain SAT, AP scores along with the right ECs and upper division college prep courses. This usually means attending the best private, public, or STEM magnent school in your state, which sadly most families in those income brackets cannot afford. The people getting into these elite schools come from elite secondary schools and the poor people that can't attend these schools are usually excluded from admissions to elite colleges. So the "free tuition" advertisement is nice, but in practice their admissions standards do a good job of keeping such poor folks out.
It is not mandatory to be in a certain income bracket to get a high score on your SAT or on your AP exams.
If the universities want to help low income students, and are only able to help a certain number of them given the resources they have available, academic merit is the best way to do it.
It isn't mandatory, but it certainly helps when you can pay for private tutors or professional consulatants that craft your application package. Students that tend to score high on SATs tend to come from higher income brackets. It also hurts when you attend a school that doesn't offer an expansive list of AP courses, or if you come from a family that never attended college and do not even know what the college process is like.
Edit: To your "This is patently untrue" comment. Taking AP courses and scoring 5s on the exams is pretty standard for applicants getting into elite colleges. By not taking those courses you are huritng yourself when applying to such places.
I worked at a small liberal arts college for a few years that basically admitted (1) legacy students, (2) rich kids, (3) sports kids from the South (from states with no D3 football, basically), and (4) poor kids who got high SAT scores. They used (1) for history, (1) and (2) for revenue, (3) for school spirit, and (4) to boost the average SAT for the whole student body.
So many schools are doing exactly what you suggest. It is kind of weird to teach there & realize pretty quickly that the rich kids are mostly not the smart ones, to be blunt.
This is at best a half truth. Going to these schools helps, but it is not necessary.
There are an abundance of people who are qualified to get into elite universities at less-than-best schools in a given state.
There are three main issues that I see:
1. They self-select out of applying. They know lots of smart people, but they don’t know anyone else who applied, so those elite schools must be impossible to get into.
2. Their teachers/administrators have no idea how to write a strong recommendation for a stellar student. The applicants don’t know how to choose people who can write good recommendations.
3. The applicants don’t know about the small tweaks in their extracurriculars that will make them standout (e.g., demonstrating leadership, vision, etc.), and/or they don’t know how to write about their considerable achievements in a compelling way (e.g., I’ve heard an incredible and incredibly modest person saying that their considerable achievements were not worth discussing on an appication because “Well, what else would you do? Isn’t this just normal?” Answer, no, it was not normal.).
Note also that plenty of the “poor” students have been recruited in one way or another, with athletes probably being the biggest recruiting pool.
I think the admissions practices are largely fine, and they dont, by design, aim to keep poor people out (as you suggested).
I think that these schools could do a better job at educating potential applicants and the circle of people around said potential applicants much better. In my opinion, the internet has democratized this process considerably over the past 20 years or so, but I think there is still considerable room for improvement, especially by the universities themselves.
I worked at a well-known Texas college for a few years in the IT department. I can tell you first hand they overcharge. Tenured professors are largely lazy. They are paid enormous sums of money for as little as 4 hours' work daily. The adjuncts work their tails off and while they are making 75k+, the whole thing is a sham. Let's not talk about incoming students with credits from other institutions who are like 4 credit hours short and they make them take a full year or more (because they can), and charge out the wazoo and think you should be grateful.
Working for this college let me know one thing: those who can't, teach. More than once I had to step in and assist the CS professors with basic things they should have known. Tenured professors whose CV read like they must have been there at the epoch and worked with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson.
I guess I'd disagree, in that admissions practices at many schools are designed to admit children of rich people. Sure, poor people aren't penalized for being poor per se, but they're not going to contribute to the endowment, you know?
So you get a boost for being a legacy, for having parents who are rich, for being from a rich feeder school that indicates you have parents who are rich, etc. It's not that you get a -1 on your point total for being poor. It's that you get a lot of +1s for being well-off, because ultimately well-off people give more money back to the school & produce well-off alumni who are attractive to well-off applicants. At private colleges and universities in particular there is a careful attention paid to long-term revenue, as colleges are feeling the economic squeeze in the amenities arms race. Colleges are separating into 'winners' and 'losers' and that sorting is along the lines of revenue and endowment.
The article is right on that connecting unconnected kids with connected peers is the biggest benefit of an 'elite' education. 'Winner' colleges today are trying to surf the wave of existing power structures rather than create/educate a new wave of potential elites.
In addition access to exclusive and expensive sports, if you have the money, some easy tickets into the Ivy League include: fencing, sailing, rowing (crew), lacrosse, golf, tennis and equestrian.
And if you don't have the money, being elite at any other sport will do. Soccer, basketball, football, track, etc.
A run of the mill guy or gal with a straight A record and shooting 60% from three will find a ready welcome at Stanford. That same run of the mill straight A student would be laughed out of the room if they applied without the elite basketball skills. Your daughter might not have much of a chance as a simple straight A student, but if she has straight A's and runs a 48 or 49 second 400... yeah... I can guarantee you that they'll make room for her.
If you're talking about using sports to get in, then almost any sport will do, you don't have to have money for the expensive ones. Problem is, you kind of have to be elite to make it work. Four year varsity starter, state champion level basically.
> Problem is, you kind of have to be elite to make it work. Four year varsity starter, state champion level basically.
Maybe at Stanford. Maybe at Ivies in certain highly competitive sports (e.g., rowing).
In most sports, simply being a recruitable athlete at a level lower than “power conference” but higher than NAIA (maybe?) is possible depending on the sport and/or specialty. In terms of skill, any high school with 1000+ students probably has 10-50+ students in this category — grades and/or lack of desire are often holding them back from a tertiary education of any kind. Said another way, that’s much lower than “state champion” level.
Again, knowing how to get recruited and having a coach who knows how to showcase talent for recruiters goes a long way. That said, it only helps, but is not required in most sports.
I’m really glad you mentioned running as an example. There are a ton of good track & field and cross-country folks who: 1) can improve significantly just by training well, and 2) are very recruitable at the Ivy League level. Want-to goes a long way.
Have to be? Or tend to be. I think we often overlook that richer families tend to have a lot better parenting. It's not just about money. Good parenting is arguably more important than being wealthy.
Having money to throw around makes it a lot easier to be a "good" parent.
I grew up helping my dad with every project around the home. Economics improved over the course of my childhood and my much younger brother spent his after school time playing sports and musical instruments. He got to put that on his college applications. "Dig's a good fence post hole" is not something you put on a college application. I went to the state school that gave me the best aid. He got an almost full ride at an exclusive liberal arts college. His side projects during college were audio related. My side projects involved parting out vehicles. When you're interviewing for an entry level job at FAANG and they ask you to tell them a little bit about yourself talking about how you do custom speaker enclosures is probably a good choice. Talking about your side gig selling used car parts will get blank stares if you're lucky and make you look like white trash if you're not. We'll see what he does after college but I suspect he'll be doing better than me by the time he's 30.
Having enough money to give your kids a marginally higher class upbringing from day 1 makes a world of difference.
So it's a tautology. Prestigious schools attract top talent because top talent goes to prestigious schools. The best way to be successful is to be top talent—regardless of where you go to school for the majority—but top talent are likely to be those people who push and stress and play to win the "collegiate sweepstakes".
I think you missed the point of the article. It only matters for certain demographics. The byline says it all: "they can have a big effect if you’re not rich, not white, or not a guy"
I'm not sure what 'rich' means in the article, but if it means 'not poor' then for middle class white males it doesn't matter what school is on your resume.
> for middle class white males it doesn't matter what school is on your resume
That's not what the studies show. What the studies show is that, if you're a well-off white male who is in the top 1% academically then it doesn't matter, long-term financially, where you go to university.
I mean, I found the article interesting but that's a pretty niche bunch of chaps right there.
Disagree, because the article/studies essentially indicate that if you're (for instance) a black female who got into MIT but chose to go to State U for cost reasons you'll see an incredible hit in terms of career progression and future earnings. It argues that if you're poor, a racial minority, or female you should go to the top school you can manage even if it causes temporary debt because the payoff will be large. If you're well off and white and a guy you might as well save on college costs, as the career and earning gains are marginal.
I believe if you want knowledge, then the answer is no. College can teach you a lot and show a ton. That said, ultimately, you will have to become your own teacher anyway and you can do it in your own room at your own house. But if your goal is getting a job, you absolutely want the biggest names (the bigger, the better chance at getting a job) to vouch for you. According to the article, this may not be true for rich white men (presumably, American), but if you are from Kazakhstan or Nigeria, I believe you'll definitely get a bang for your buck waving that Harvard paper in front of a potential employer.
"The simplest answer to the question “Do elite colleges matter?” is: It depends on who you are. In the big picture, elite colleges don’t seem to do much extra for rich white guys. But if you’re not rich, not white, or not a guy, the elite-college effect is huge. It increases earnings for minorities and low-income students, and it encourages women to delay marriage and work more, even though it doesn’t raise their per-hour wages."
This is not what these studies measure, but people in Academia are much more likely to have gone to elite grad schools (in their respective fields, which is not the same as undergrad rankings of course). And, in my experience (Stanford undergrad, MIT PhD, currently UChicago postdoc), elite grad schools predominantly select people from elite undergrad institutions. It's possible to get into a great grad program from a non-elite school, but it's much harder, while someone like me in the middle of my class at Stanford was able to get into good grad schools without too much trouble.
This is probably not just due to snobbery; it's much more likely for the admissions committee to have heard of your recommenders and such. If you do research with a famous professor at a non-elite school you'd probably have similar results, but the barrier is a bit higher.
Networking is one of the main reasons when going to college.
While education, the courses and knowledge is really really, really important. Networking is just as important as that.
Your social skills really matter in your life after college and it might help you paying your student debt.
That's almost certainly true, but interestingly, the list of elite schools does get shuffled up a bit at the grad level. Few undergrads would consider UCSD more of a prize than any Ivy, but as a graduate research program, it would be considered very elite. Berkeley arguably has more top 5 PhD programs than any other university, but again, when two high school students bump into each other in the hallway, whip out a ruler, and measure admissions packages, Harvard is definitely a longer and thicker acceptance letter than Berkeley.
I do remember an interesting flurry or articles from a study a couple of years ago suggesting it doesn't matter much where you go to college provided you major in STEM. From my limited observations and experience, I'd say that's true - I doubt a strong CS major from UCSD experiences any real disadvantage vis-a-vis more selective ivies, but an international relations major from Yale definitely has a leg up on securing those prestigious early career internships and positions.
Interestingly there are significant differences across fields, and the data do indicate that this effect in mathematics, for instance, is much smaller than in the humanities.
It not only matters where you go to college but which professors you study under. Got one that doesn't care? Sorry, their research is more important than effectively teaching you. Got one that carries out favoritism and/or discrimination? Sorry, your grade and chance of getting a good first job out of college just got lower if they don't like you, and you still get to pay thousands for that. I see MOOCs as a step in the right direction to solving many problems within education.
My anectodal experience tells me no. I went to a CUNY (NYC system college) school with a 99% acceptance rate and sub 20% graduation rate. It was more important that I lived in New York than that I went to this specific school. I was able to find internships which got me into the industry, network with folks from different industries, and generally have a lot of opportunities available to me. Also, I graduated in 4 years with no student debt and low overall expenses, I was able to pay my way with a part time job and government subsidies. I've given way more in taxes than what it cost the city and federal government to send me to school.
It may not be an elite Yale or Stanford education, but most folks don't have that anyway.
It's atypical but I think it provides a completely different model about how to think about college. A lot of parents are stressing out about how to pay for college and for good reason, but I think you can derive 80% of the value of going to college for 20% of the cost.
For one: I don't think most families can pay the extra fees associated w/ going to an out of state school. Second: most states have at least one solid state school that has a relatively high acceptance rate for residents, third: students and parents really need to have frank discussions about the economic potential of a degree. Fourth: Students and parents should strongly consider a "half and half" between community college and a state school to complete their degree.
At the end of the day, a lot of parents are paying for prestige, but if you can get the right degree and internship experience I don't think where you went to school is weighted as heavily.
I'm fortunate to be in software (although I did do market research before declaring), I doubt anyone who's read my resume has heard of the school I went to, but a critical internship really opened up the doors for me and I've had opportunities to interview at some of the biggest companies in the world. You gotta think outside the box.
They should run a location effect study to accompany this.
Is it better to have a high SAT score and go to San Jose State vs low SAT score and go to (say) UVa (University of Virginia which is a good school far away from Silicon Valley) to get a job in Silicon Valley.
It matters especially if you're not from the US.
You could've gone to the best university in your country, but if it's not a top institution in the US or a handful of others (ETH and a few more in top positions according to Qs Rankings) I feel like most big names in tech won't even look at your resume.
Anedoctal example, but I graduated with a decent mark from the top CS department in my country (106/110) as an UG, I couldn't even apply for a masters in top universities in the UK (let alone US) since their requirements are skewed towards not accepting people from my country (if you came from the UK you needed a 2:1, which if I remember correctly is around 70%, if you came from my country you needed 109/110, which is over 99%. Scores for other EU countries like Spain and France were converted to their 70%). This led me to going into a masters in my country, which will most likely hinder me from getting a PhD in any top institution in the EU just because of the country I was born in, even though some of the professors in my current masters degree course are top researchers in their fields.
So yes, I feel like where you go to school earlier in life greatly influences where you will end up in the future; and even more so, where you were born influences your chances of making it anywhere in life.
This is not to say that I am some unrecognised genius, I feel like I am a "median" CS student with a poor math background to booth; but at the same time I absolutely feel like a lot of talent will go unrecognised and won't have the same chances in life others have just because they happened to be born in a country rather than another (even more so after having studied in the UK for a year and having met people who went on to work for top companies when they clearly were subpar compared to people studying in my own country)
You could have a Github portfolio that has one or two personal projects that demonstrates a proficiency in the language/framework needed at the company you're applying?
I've interviewed plenty of people in SF - candidates from top tier universities like MIT. And have passed on them. They simply lacked a proficiency in doing the basics (Rails in this case).
There's so many opportunity to be had by just showing very specific proficiencies with a personal project.
Skip all of the hoops you've outlined above, because they never matter anyway. A majority of candidates never have a portfolio, it's the biggest opportunity that is missed by most.
I did mean FAANG companies, yeah. At the same time I feel what s/he's saying is also right; in fact I am slowly building up repos on github while I work on my masters and hopefully I'll start contributing to librabries I use so that I can show all of that off to potential employers.
I also feel like having a website in your name works wonders, but I am not too sure companies are really interested in that.
I can't speak for the "big names" but as someone who has done tech hiring for multiple SMBs, having a website that shows off your abilities absolutely makes a difference. I don't care if you hand coded the website or it's a bunch of articles on Medium. Showing that you know what you're talking about and can explain it well in English (or the company's language of choice), puts you at the top of my list of people I want to bring in to talk to. It's also likely to make me skip the stupid first steps that most companies take to filter out candidates that have no business applying like fizzbuzz tests when I'm talking to you.
Thanks for your input, I definitely want to set it up asap so that I can start blogging about stuff I'm interested in or ramblings I want to go on about after tackling some of the bigger assignments.
As a follow up to this I wanted to give some additional thoughts on how to make your site more valuable for getting hired as a software dev at the kind of SMBs that I've worked for.
1) Keep your personal items separate from your technical. If I'm looking to hire you to do something technical I really don't care about your kids t-ball game, the latest recipe you made, or pretty much anything that doesn't have to do with technology. Non-software related tech is fine as long as it's not most of the content.
2) There needs to be more than just code in your software related posts. If the post is 90% code I have no way to know if you actually know what it does or if you wrote it.
3) Provide links to working demos of the concepts if possible. Public repos with instructions for setting up and running it are almost as good.
4) Please no videocasts. Text is so much easier to consume and scan through. I'm not going to watch a bunch of 30min videos of you explaining a concept. I will read an in-depth article from beginning to end.
5) If you have side projects you work on in your spare time, please make it a prominent part of your site. Even more than in-depth articles, this is what shows me you can build working software which is the single most important thing I care about when hiring to fill software positions.
Just a few items that might help you out depending on what sort of company you're looking to land a job with.
I'm an Australian with no degree who got poor marks in high school, and I got a job at Microsoft (software engineer doing C++ dev and some light reverse-engineering) after about 5 years of freelance work, with zero qualifications.
IIRC my education history came up once in the interview process (I was interviewed by 6 different people that day and only one brought it up), and that part of the conversation basically consisted of:
Interviewer: "You don't have a degree?"
Me: "No, I'm self-taught."
Interviewer: "Oh okay, that's cool."
Literally nobody that I work with talks or cares about where you went to school or what your grades were. YMMV I guess.
I was responding directly to:
"You could've gone to the best university in your country, but if it's not a top institution in the US or a handful of others [...] I feel like most big names in tech won't even look at your resume."
I feel like the problem lies in getting your feet through the front door, after that how you got your education really doesn't matter anymore. You were lucky enough to get an interview with Microsoft thanks to your past work experience, but other people (especially the ones who try academia before going into the private sector) don't have that chance and most of the time won't even be invited to an interview, that's the problem.
I am confident that if big companies actually interviewed people coming from different universities they would find that most top-uni grads are worse that people coming from different institutions who always feel like they have to perform 110% just to level the playing field.
Actually my work experience had almost nothing to do with it, as pretty much all of it was done under NDA. What really helped me was having a set of public personal projects which demonstrated competency in relevant areas (I know because I had a discussion about it with my hiring manager after I'd been working there for a couple of months - I was curious about how much the lack of a degree mattered when they were filtering candidates).
Education is not the same as work. Plus the point is that in most top uni there are a lot of competion some some criterias are always "unfair" because u need to lower the pool size quickly
>Third, to admissions officers of elite colleges: Do better. America’s most selective colleges can, it seems, change the lives of minorities and low-income students. But they’re still bastions of privilege. They enroll more students from the top 1 percent of the income scale than the entire bottom 60 percent. In this way, elite institutions are like factories of social mobility being used as storage facilities for privilege; they have the potential to use their space to manufacture opportunity at scale, but mostly they clear out real estate for the already rich, who are going to be fine, anyway.
I wonder if this this advice would actually be harmful. The real cachet of the elite colleges is not so much their elite teaching, but that the elite go to them. Going to these colleges as a non-elite kind of "adopts" you into the elite and has great benefits for these non-elites. However, if these elite colleges basically become a reflection of the United States where the vast majority of people are non-elite, these elite colleges will lose their aura over time. The elite won't really be affected by this as they have other social networks to connect with fellow elite. However, the non-elite will lose this important way of networking with the elite.
I think "where" you study matters, but for a different reason. It's not the prestige of the school, it's the geographic proximity to potential jobs.
I'm (still) trying to find a job in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada. Despite an MEng and 4 years work experience to satisfy immigration, companies aren't interested in interviewing people who aren't already physically there and have the right to work.
The only solution seems to be to get a student visa by joining a course in underwater basket weaving, and continue looking for a job locally when physically present. It's a terrible misuse of the visa system, but there seems to be no other way.
>In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers.
I've read that SATs are heavily g-loaded.
In such a case, your success being correlated with the SAT is obvious, as IQ being positively correlated with income is well-accepted in psychometrics.
So yes, you can be successful without going to a good school, but mostly because you're relatively intelligent.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 23.1 ms ] threadI doubt google would hire me due to lack of experience working on a large team with many departments,even though my GPA was 3.9 from a average Chicago Uni.
I suspect I'm kinda in the middle, UC Davis represent! Great school, glad to have attended, but not really seen as a Stanford, Berkeley, UIUC, or CMU tier either.
If the universities want to help low income students, and are only able to help a certain number of them given the resources they have available, academic merit is the best way to do it.
Edit: To your "This is patently untrue" comment. Taking AP courses and scoring 5s on the exams is pretty standard for applicants getting into elite colleges. By not taking those courses you are huritng yourself when applying to such places.
This is patently untrue.
The rest of youe post is accurate, although the words help and hurt are the keys to keeping it accurate. None of these things are required.
So many schools are doing exactly what you suggest. It is kind of weird to teach there & realize pretty quickly that the rich kids are mostly not the smart ones, to be blunt.
There are an abundance of people who are qualified to get into elite universities at less-than-best schools in a given state.
There are three main issues that I see:
1. They self-select out of applying. They know lots of smart people, but they don’t know anyone else who applied, so those elite schools must be impossible to get into.
2. Their teachers/administrators have no idea how to write a strong recommendation for a stellar student. The applicants don’t know how to choose people who can write good recommendations.
3. The applicants don’t know about the small tweaks in their extracurriculars that will make them standout (e.g., demonstrating leadership, vision, etc.), and/or they don’t know how to write about their considerable achievements in a compelling way (e.g., I’ve heard an incredible and incredibly modest person saying that their considerable achievements were not worth discussing on an appication because “Well, what else would you do? Isn’t this just normal?” Answer, no, it was not normal.).
Note also that plenty of the “poor” students have been recruited in one way or another, with athletes probably being the biggest recruiting pool.
I think that these schools could do a better job at educating potential applicants and the circle of people around said potential applicants much better. In my opinion, the internet has democratized this process considerably over the past 20 years or so, but I think there is still considerable room for improvement, especially by the universities themselves.
So you get a boost for being a legacy, for having parents who are rich, for being from a rich feeder school that indicates you have parents who are rich, etc. It's not that you get a -1 on your point total for being poor. It's that you get a lot of +1s for being well-off, because ultimately well-off people give more money back to the school & produce well-off alumni who are attractive to well-off applicants. At private colleges and universities in particular there is a careful attention paid to long-term revenue, as colleges are feeling the economic squeeze in the amenities arms race. Colleges are separating into 'winners' and 'losers' and that sorting is along the lines of revenue and endowment.
The article is right on that connecting unconnected kids with connected peers is the biggest benefit of an 'elite' education. 'Winner' colleges today are trying to surf the wave of existing power structures rather than create/educate a new wave of potential elites.
A run of the mill guy or gal with a straight A record and shooting 60% from three will find a ready welcome at Stanford. That same run of the mill straight A student would be laughed out of the room if they applied without the elite basketball skills. Your daughter might not have much of a chance as a simple straight A student, but if she has straight A's and runs a 48 or 49 second 400... yeah... I can guarantee you that they'll make room for her.
If you're talking about using sports to get in, then almost any sport will do, you don't have to have money for the expensive ones. Problem is, you kind of have to be elite to make it work. Four year varsity starter, state champion level basically.
Maybe at Stanford. Maybe at Ivies in certain highly competitive sports (e.g., rowing).
In most sports, simply being a recruitable athlete at a level lower than “power conference” but higher than NAIA (maybe?) is possible depending on the sport and/or specialty. In terms of skill, any high school with 1000+ students probably has 10-50+ students in this category — grades and/or lack of desire are often holding them back from a tertiary education of any kind. Said another way, that’s much lower than “state champion” level.
Again, knowing how to get recruited and having a coach who knows how to showcase talent for recruiters goes a long way. That said, it only helps, but is not required in most sports.
I’m really glad you mentioned running as an example. There are a ton of good track & field and cross-country folks who: 1) can improve significantly just by training well, and 2) are very recruitable at the Ivy League level. Want-to goes a long way.
Have to be? Or tend to be. I think we often overlook that richer families tend to have a lot better parenting. It's not just about money. Good parenting is arguably more important than being wealthy.
I grew up helping my dad with every project around the home. Economics improved over the course of my childhood and my much younger brother spent his after school time playing sports and musical instruments. He got to put that on his college applications. "Dig's a good fence post hole" is not something you put on a college application. I went to the state school that gave me the best aid. He got an almost full ride at an exclusive liberal arts college. His side projects during college were audio related. My side projects involved parting out vehicles. When you're interviewing for an entry level job at FAANG and they ask you to tell them a little bit about yourself talking about how you do custom speaker enclosures is probably a good choice. Talking about your side gig selling used car parts will get blank stares if you're lucky and make you look like white trash if you're not. We'll see what he does after college but I suspect he'll be doing better than me by the time he's 30.
Having enough money to give your kids a marginally higher class upbringing from day 1 makes a world of difference.
I'm not sure what 'rich' means in the article, but if it means 'not poor' then for middle class white males it doesn't matter what school is on your resume.
That's not what the studies show. What the studies show is that, if you're a well-off white male who is in the top 1% academically then it doesn't matter, long-term financially, where you go to university.
I mean, I found the article interesting but that's a pretty niche bunch of chaps right there.
"The simplest answer to the question “Do elite colleges matter?” is: It depends on who you are. In the big picture, elite colleges don’t seem to do much extra for rich white guys. But if you’re not rich, not white, or not a guy, the elite-college effect is huge. It increases earnings for minorities and low-income students, and it encourages women to delay marriage and work more, even though it doesn’t raise their per-hour wages."
Horrible for society.
This is probably not just due to snobbery; it's much more likely for the admissions committee to have heard of your recommenders and such. If you do research with a famous professor at a non-elite school you'd probably have similar results, but the barrier is a bit higher.
Your social skills really matter in your life after college and it might help you paying your student debt.
I do remember an interesting flurry or articles from a study a couple of years ago suggesting it doesn't matter much where you go to college provided you major in STEM. From my limited observations and experience, I'd say that's true - I doubt a strong CS major from UCSD experiences any real disadvantage vis-a-vis more selective ivies, but an international relations major from Yale definitely has a leg up on securing those prestigious early career internships and positions.
It may not be an elite Yale or Stanford education, but most folks don't have that anyway.
For one: I don't think most families can pay the extra fees associated w/ going to an out of state school. Second: most states have at least one solid state school that has a relatively high acceptance rate for residents, third: students and parents really need to have frank discussions about the economic potential of a degree. Fourth: Students and parents should strongly consider a "half and half" between community college and a state school to complete their degree.
At the end of the day, a lot of parents are paying for prestige, but if you can get the right degree and internship experience I don't think where you went to school is weighted as heavily.
I'm fortunate to be in software (although I did do market research before declaring), I doubt anyone who's read my resume has heard of the school I went to, but a critical internship really opened up the doors for me and I've had opportunities to interview at some of the biggest companies in the world. You gotta think outside the box.
Is it better to have a high SAT score and go to San Jose State vs low SAT score and go to (say) UVa (University of Virginia which is a good school far away from Silicon Valley) to get a job in Silicon Valley.
Anedoctal example, but I graduated with a decent mark from the top CS department in my country (106/110) as an UG, I couldn't even apply for a masters in top universities in the UK (let alone US) since their requirements are skewed towards not accepting people from my country (if you came from the UK you needed a 2:1, which if I remember correctly is around 70%, if you came from my country you needed 109/110, which is over 99%. Scores for other EU countries like Spain and France were converted to their 70%). This led me to going into a masters in my country, which will most likely hinder me from getting a PhD in any top institution in the EU just because of the country I was born in, even though some of the professors in my current masters degree course are top researchers in their fields. So yes, I feel like where you go to school earlier in life greatly influences where you will end up in the future; and even more so, where you were born influences your chances of making it anywhere in life. This is not to say that I am some unrecognised genius, I feel like I am a "median" CS student with a poor math background to booth; but at the same time I absolutely feel like a lot of talent will go unrecognised and won't have the same chances in life others have just because they happened to be born in a country rather than another (even more so after having studied in the UK for a year and having met people who went on to work for top companies when they clearly were subpar compared to people studying in my own country)
I've interviewed plenty of people in SF - candidates from top tier universities like MIT. And have passed on them. They simply lacked a proficiency in doing the basics (Rails in this case).
There's so many opportunity to be had by just showing very specific proficiencies with a personal project.
Skip all of the hoops you've outlined above, because they never matter anyway. A majority of candidates never have a portfolio, it's the biggest opportunity that is missed by most.
> I feel like most big names in tech won't even look at your resume.
Do you think your suggestions work for Facebook or Google (which i assume OP means by "big names", among others)?
1) Keep your personal items separate from your technical. If I'm looking to hire you to do something technical I really don't care about your kids t-ball game, the latest recipe you made, or pretty much anything that doesn't have to do with technology. Non-software related tech is fine as long as it's not most of the content. 2) There needs to be more than just code in your software related posts. If the post is 90% code I have no way to know if you actually know what it does or if you wrote it. 3) Provide links to working demos of the concepts if possible. Public repos with instructions for setting up and running it are almost as good. 4) Please no videocasts. Text is so much easier to consume and scan through. I'm not going to watch a bunch of 30min videos of you explaining a concept. I will read an in-depth article from beginning to end. 5) If you have side projects you work on in your spare time, please make it a prominent part of your site. Even more than in-depth articles, this is what shows me you can build working software which is the single most important thing I care about when hiring to fill software positions.
Just a few items that might help you out depending on what sort of company you're looking to land a job with.
IIRC my education history came up once in the interview process (I was interviewed by 6 different people that day and only one brought it up), and that part of the conversation basically consisted of:
Interviewer: "You don't have a degree?"
Me: "No, I'm self-taught."
Interviewer: "Oh okay, that's cool."
Literally nobody that I work with talks or cares about where you went to school or what your grades were. YMMV I guess.
All either of these anecdotes illustrate is it really depends on the circumstances.
Definitely agree that it's very circumstantial.
I am confident that if big companies actually interviewed people coming from different universities they would find that most top-uni grads are worse that people coming from different institutions who always feel like they have to perform 110% just to level the playing field.
I wonder if this this advice would actually be harmful. The real cachet of the elite colleges is not so much their elite teaching, but that the elite go to them. Going to these colleges as a non-elite kind of "adopts" you into the elite and has great benefits for these non-elites. However, if these elite colleges basically become a reflection of the United States where the vast majority of people are non-elite, these elite colleges will lose their aura over time. The elite won't really be affected by this as they have other social networks to connect with fellow elite. However, the non-elite will lose this important way of networking with the elite.
I'm (still) trying to find a job in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada. Despite an MEng and 4 years work experience to satisfy immigration, companies aren't interested in interviewing people who aren't already physically there and have the right to work.
The only solution seems to be to get a student visa by joining a course in underwater basket weaving, and continue looking for a job locally when physically present. It's a terrible misuse of the visa system, but there seems to be no other way.
I've read that SATs are heavily g-loaded.
In such a case, your success being correlated with the SAT is obvious, as IQ being positively correlated with income is well-accepted in psychometrics.
So yes, you can be successful without going to a good school, but mostly because you're relatively intelligent.