> From what I have read, elite colleges are a place where personal connections are made. Co-founders are often people you met at college and bonded with at coll

> From what I have read, elite colleges are a place where personal connections are made. Co-founders are often people you met at college and bonded with at college. I took a business law class (intellectual property law) during my (nearly complete) engineering PhD. I found the culture in business school to be really odd. The class was a mixture of law students, MBA students, and STEM students. You were required to bring a name plate, which I found really weird as a STEM person. To me a class is about learning the subject, not the specific personalities of each student. Later it all clicked to me: A MBA is partly about making personal connections and the name plates help with that. I had a similar experience in the business school startup class I took until the drop date. The basic lesson of the class seemed to be to not spend a lot of money until you're confident your product will be profitable. (Or at least that's the main thing I remember.) The class had name plates, and was fairly heavy on social gatherings to talk with others. Learning seemed secondary to me. The class had a few days where people pitched different business ideas they had, and I realized that I had little in common with everyone there from the pitches, so the chance of making a genuine connection seemed low. I had no problem dropping the class. Personally, I think I'd network better in other contexts.