4 ms·

Didn't know Newell was a Harvard dropout. What's it with Harvard C.S. students dropping out and making it rich?

• kirubakaran 16y ago
  Survivorship bias, selection bias etc
  • DevX101 16y ago
    I agree with the survivorship bias, maybe there are other dropouts who I never heard of. But on the selection bias, I can't really think off the top of my head many other major founders from top C.S. schools that dropped out and were successful. Is Harvard even a "top" C.S. school?
    • mdwrigh2 16y ago
      According to US News [1], it's ranked 17th which is decent, but not great. On the other hand that ranking is for graduate schools though, which takes into account things like citations of research published, which is less important at the undergraduate level. I'd say at the undergraduate level, Harvard is a top CS school if only because the competition is so fierce to get into it at that level, the students will be among the top. And, in my opinion, the quality of the students is of more importance than the quality of the teaching at the undergraduate level, when you start talking about the top 20 schools anyways. [1]: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings/page+1 http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...
    • Retric 16y ago
      If you include grad school it seems fairly common. Sergey Brin "is on leave from his Ph.D. studies at Stanford."
• endtime 16y ago
  You mean, what's with people smart enough to get into Harvard, studying one of the fields most conducive to tech entrepreneurship, who then see a business opportunity with so much potential that they are willing to leave Harvard for it, being successful?