4 ms·

The downside is that you basically won't get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale... or most any other "top" college after going to community college. I know of on

by kurthr 7y ago

The downside is that you basically won't get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale... or most any other "top" college after going to community college. I know of one counter example, and I know of many very smart capable people who would have been capable and profited from such a degree, but missed their chance... which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree. Maybe that doesn't matter in CS/programming, but it does in lots of other (e.g. Engineering/Science) disciplines.

derangedHorse 7y ago
And where are you getting this information from? Just anecdotes of people you think are smart, went to community college, and got rejected?
ng12 7y ago
Depends on where you live. The state schools in California are part of one big system so it's very easy to transfer from a community college to a UC (e.g. Berkeley) as long as you have the grades/aptitude.
danaris 7y ago
> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name. The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts college—in fact, it's often worse, because you're just one of tens of thousands, lost in the crowd, and you're extremely unlikely to get one-on-one attention from the professor if you have any trouble with the material. Small liberal-arts colleges, on the other hand, so long as you're avoiding the ones that are specifically party schools, generally tend to focus much more on the teaching aspect, and especially on the personal attention aspect. For more specialized degrees like engineering you may need to narrow your pool of those schools to find one that has a good program, but there are enough that unless your field (at undergrad level) is suuuuper-niche, you're very likely to be able to find one that works for you. And while it's not universally true, they tend to be pretty good about taking transfer students.
- SpelingBeeChamp 7y ago
  You say that as if the name has no value. It's an enormously valuable social signal.
- sfifs 7y ago
  I didn't study in the US, but having studied in college faculties staffed by professors who are at the cutting edge of their fields in my country, I can confidently say that the experience was unparalleled vs. my friends who didn't. In my undergrad one of my profs was a "may have been" Nobel prize winner. In my B-school, some of the profs essentially created the government's public policy in some fields. Their perspectives and insights during classes was quite enriching. So I find your comments quite curious. Nowadays I tell my younger cousins and nephews/neices to research the faculties in colleges they are applying to and look at the quality and impact of their publications.
  - danaris 7y ago
    Outside the US, I don't know much about top universities beyond Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne, but my point really was pretty specific to the schools in the US that have big names—not big-name professors, but the schools themselves have names which, for whatever reasons, are well-known and confer prestige. A university having a prestigious name is not synonymous with having Nobel Prize winners and influential professors. Hell, one of the professors at the small liberal arts college I work at is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.
  - wink 7y ago
    How deep is your connection to that star professor though? I tend to believe I visited a good university, and we also have some leading researchers. The problem is that you wouldn't know beforehand if they are even giving the lectures you're interested in. The other people in the department can still be bad at their job. Being a researcher doesn't transmit to being a good teacher. Or not a complete idiot. Sorry if this sounds harsh, also I'm not trying to deliberately shit on my uni education, but let's just say I didn't find it great for many reasons. One course by a "leading expert" could have been pretty great, just that it was done in not so stellar English (the prof was German, so am I) and so it wasn't so great to understand. If you just show up to learn and don't plan to stay in academia there (do a PhD, get to know the faculty) I really don't see a point.
N1H1L 7y ago
> which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree. Absolutely false for STEM fields. Except for Stanford/MIT your flagship public school is probably a better tech school than any other private name-brand school. Yale is an ordinary tech school, with several public schools (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UWash, UIUC, UMich, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisc-Mad off the top of my head) being significantly better and cheaper. And all will allow you in from community colleges.

by kurthr 7y ago

derangedHorse 7y ago

And where are you getting this information from? Just anecdotes of people you think are smart, went to community college, and got rejected?

ng12 7y ago

Depends on where you live. The state schools in California are part of one big system so it's very easy to transfer from a community college to a UC (e.g. Berkeley) as long as you have the grades/aptitude.

danaris 7y ago

> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name. The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts college—in fact, it's often worse, because you're just one of tens of thousands, lost in the crowd, and you're extremely unlikely to get one-on-one attention from the professor if you have any trouble with the material. Small liberal-arts colleges, on the other hand, so long as you're avoiding the ones that are specifically party schools, generally tend to focus much more on the teaching aspect, and especially on the personal attention aspect. For more specialized degrees like engineering you may need to narrow your pool of those schools to find one that has a good program, but there are enough that unless your field (at undergrad level) is suuuuper-niche, you're very likely to be able to find one that works for you. And while it's not universally true, they tend to be pretty good about taking transfer students.

SpelingBeeChamp 7y ago
You say that as if the name has no value. It's an enormously valuable social signal.
sfifs 7y ago
I didn't study in the US, but having studied in college faculties staffed by professors who are at the cutting edge of their fields in my country, I can confidently say that the experience was unparalleled vs. my friends who didn't. In my undergrad one of my profs was a "may have been" Nobel prize winner. In my B-school, some of the profs essentially created the government's public policy in some fields. Their perspectives and insights during classes was quite enriching. So I find your comments quite curious. Nowadays I tell my younger cousins and nephews/neices to research the faculties in colleges they are applying to and look at the quality and impact of their publications.
- danaris 7y ago
  Outside the US, I don't know much about top universities beyond Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne, but my point really was pretty specific to the schools in the US that have big names—not big-name professors, but the schools themselves have names which, for whatever reasons, are well-known and confer prestige. A university having a prestigious name is not synonymous with having Nobel Prize winners and influential professors. Hell, one of the professors at the small liberal arts college I work at is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.
- wink 7y ago
  How deep is your connection to that star professor though? I tend to believe I visited a good university, and we also have some leading researchers. The problem is that you wouldn't know beforehand if they are even giving the lectures you're interested in. The other people in the department can still be bad at their job. Being a researcher doesn't transmit to being a good teacher. Or not a complete idiot. Sorry if this sounds harsh, also I'm not trying to deliberately shit on my uni education, but let's just say I didn't find it great for many reasons. One course by a "leading expert" could have been pretty great, just that it was done in not so stellar English (the prof was German, so am I) and so it wasn't so great to understand. If you just show up to learn and don't plan to stay in academia there (do a PhD, get to know the faculty) I really don't see a point.

N1H1L 7y ago

> which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree. Absolutely false for STEM fields. Except for Stanford/MIT your flagship public school is probably a better tech school than any other private name-brand school. Yale is an ordinary tech school, with several public schools (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UWash, UIUC, UMich, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisc-Mad off the top of my head) being significantly better and cheaper. And all will allow you in from community colleges.