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> Of course not, even though you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they were great fits for their programs since they dropped out after their first year. Bill

by bdhe 11y ago

> Of course not, even though you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they were great fits for their programs since they dropped out after their first year. Bill Gates was just a semester shy of graduating and even published a paper in his junior year at Harvard. There are many many Stanford graduate students who take leave of absences to work on entrepreneurship -- Larry and Sergey just were wildly successful with theirs. Both Larry and Sergey got their Masters degrees. I'd chalk up neither case to a bad fit nor did they drop out after 1 year.

dkrich 11y ago
And Zuckerberg? Jobs? Ellison? Dell? If you think that elite schools wouldn't want one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful entrepreneurs on their list of alumni instead of another lawyer or investment banker even if they knew they were not a "great fit," you put more stock in the principles of admissions committees than I. The reality is pretty simple. The Harvard's and Stanford's of the world put out an enormous number of hugely successful graduates because of selectivity bias. If you pool a group of 10,000 eager 18 year-olds with high standardized test scores from top high schools and mostly from privileged and wealthy families and compare that to a pool of 10,000 18 year-olds with average test scores and from average backgrounds, and pick one at random, which is more likely to be successful in their career? The point being that if Harvard could pick their classes with the benefit of hindsight, my opinion is that that they would take a lot of students that they would otherwise turn down in place of a lot of others that they would otherwise accept.
- plonh 11y ago
  Zuck started his business at Harvard with Harvard cofounders and harvard content and later Harvard employees. Jobs credited Reed classes for inspiring the beauty and font quality that made Mac a standout. They were great fits for their school, they just didn't need he arbtirary 4-year degree. I don't know about the others.
  - dkrich 11y ago
    Um that's like saying the founders of Intel were a great fit for Fairchild Semiconductor because they all met there. Just because their schools created an extremely fortuitous environment for meeting cofounders does not mean that that's the reason the schools admitted them, and to suggest such is absurd. Jobs wasn't even enrolled at Reed when he took those classes, as has been well-documented.

by bdhe 11y ago

dkrich 11y ago

And Zuckerberg? Jobs? Ellison? Dell? If you think that elite schools wouldn't want one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful entrepreneurs on their list of alumni instead of another lawyer or investment banker even if they knew they were not a "great fit," you put more stock in the principles of admissions committees than I. The reality is pretty simple. The Harvard's and Stanford's of the world put out an enormous number of hugely successful graduates because of selectivity bias. If you pool a group of 10,000 eager 18 year-olds with high standardized test scores from top high schools and mostly from privileged and wealthy families and compare that to a pool of 10,000 18 year-olds with average test scores and from average backgrounds, and pick one at random, which is more likely to be successful in their career? The point being that if Harvard could pick their classes with the benefit of hindsight, my opinion is that that they would take a lot of students that they would otherwise turn down in place of a lot of others that they would otherwise accept.

plonh 11y ago
Zuck started his business at Harvard with Harvard cofounders and harvard content and later Harvard employees. Jobs credited Reed classes for inspiring the beauty and font quality that made Mac a standout. They were great fits for their school, they just didn't need he arbtirary 4-year degree. I don't know about the others.
- dkrich 11y ago
  Um that's like saying the founders of Intel were a great fit for Fairchild Semiconductor because they all met there. Just because their schools created an extremely fortuitous environment for meeting cofounders does not mean that that's the reason the schools admitted them, and to suggest such is absurd. Jobs wasn't even enrolled at Reed when he took those classes, as has been well-documented.