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Ask HN: Am I screwed if I don't get accepted to a top CS school like Stanford?

5 points by Archio ↗ HN
I'm a high school senior. I've done web development since I was 13, released an iPhone app at age 15, and continue to have aspirations to start my own company someday.

However, I'm only really good at what I'm interested in, but not much else- my HS GPA is only a 3.8, and my SAT's hover around 2100.

The statistics are really depressing- I feel like I'd be a perfect fit for a school like Stanford or Carnegie Mellon, but chances are I won't get accepted.

Is all lost if I don't get into an renowned school for CS? Will VC's take one look at me and laugh once they find out I didn't graduate from Harvard? Are there any stories of HNers who've been successful without the Stanford degree?

Thanks guys, I love this community and I'm glad to be a part of it.

5 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 22.4 ms ] thread
josegonzalez
Yes, they will laugh at you the minute you walk in front of them without a degree from a prestigious school.

While a great school will open doors, actually doing something will open more. So no, you aren't screwed, unless you plan on spending the next four years sitting on your ass like a bump on a log.

zoowar
The only winner is the bank that loans you money.
klochner
If you love this community, I'm surprised you missed all the recent top-voted "unschooling" articles claiming that college isn't even a worthwhile investment anymore, and/or saying that starting a business is a better education for entrepreneurs.

There are a ton of successful tech people in the valley that don't have more than a high school diploma.

msutherl
Other posters have emphasized the apparent declining value of college. I agree with their positions, but I would like to emphasize that college isn't so much about becoming a better programmer as it is about gaining deep knowledge in an _academic_ area (not practical), broadening your knowledge (something you should do if you're only good at programming), a very particular and magical social setting that you will only have access to for 4-5 years after the age of 18 (you never get those years back and if you spend them working, then you missed a chance to have a _unique_ experience. You will be working your whole life. You can only go to college for the first time once.)

Studying an academic discipline may seem pointless to you, and that's fine, but if you do decide to go to college, I would recommend that you see it more as a luxury than a means to an end. Try to geek out and enjoy yourself, purely intellectual pursuits are one of the main reasons for living in this world.

Two other perks of university:

(1) if you get into a good one, people will be more likely to respect your opinion. By good one I mean name brand: Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. This is perhaps an unfortunate artifact of the transition from a more stratified society to (an even more stratified) meritocracy that may disappear in our lifetimes, but it's very much the case now.

(2) you will learn how to write better. This is super important.

All that said, there's no reason to go into 100-200k of debt. I managed to get out of university with no debt thanks to inexpensive tuition in Canada, but I promise you that university is not worth 10-30 years of wage slavery.