I've witnessed the imperfection of using the brand name of a degree as a measure of ability. Numerous times throughout my career as an engineer, I've seen someo

I've witnessed the imperfection of using the brand name of a degree as a measure of ability. Numerous times throughout my career as an engineer, I've seen someone from [INSERT WELL-KNOWN DEGREE HERE] outperformed by [INSERT LESSER-KNOWN DEGREE HERE], or in one case by an engineer without a college degree. I've also witnessed the corruption of the college admissions process first-hand. I went to a high school where many of the students came from privileged families. I've witnessed a student cheat on multiple exams, including an AP exam, get caught multiple times, and have nothing happen to her -- only to later be admitted to an Ivy League. I've seen students who could barely pass AP Calculus get into Stanford and other Ivy Leagues, because their parents had the right name / connections. The bright students also got into good colleges, but the ratio was shockingly close to 50/50. Unsurprisingly, one of the college admissions counselors for the high school was later caught fabricating admissions materials, and was fired, but only because he became extremely brazen in his lies. If he had been less lazy, he probably would never have been caught. And who knows how many admissions counselors are out there that are just a bit less lazy than he was... I'm not the only person who feels this way. Look at this Quora thread about MIT admissions: https://www.quora.com/If-MIT-only-admits-people-with-a-4-0-unweighted-gpa-and-2300+-test-scores-why-doesnt-everyone-with-a-4-0-get-in-and-why-do-people-with-low-GPAs-get-in https://www.quora.com/If-MIT-only-admits-people-with-a-4-0-u.... An admissions counselor admits to rejecting students who have higher GPA's and test scores. The reasons for doing so may or may not be valid, but that's not the point. The applicants who got rejected in this manner have the potential to become better engineers than many of those who were accepted. And all the brand name universities suffer from this same problem. The university one attends is a noisy signal that can and should be improved upon. That's why I respected Google's Foobar initiative. It is an unbiased measure of a prospective engineer. The Foobar test doesn't know what college you went to. All it knows is whether you can handle some pretty tough engineering problems. But I think Foobar is only the beginning. In the age of MOOC's, increasingly comprehensive, unbiased tests of this nature should only become more prevalent.