6 ms·

Also want to point out: I'm seriously going to college just for the name + network. I can easily learn everything at home via MIT open courseware or the syllabu

by sdan 6y ago

Also want to point out: I'm seriously going to college just for the name + network. I can easily learn everything at home via MIT open courseware or the syllabus many Stanford courses put online nowadays.

juped 6y ago
Be sure to get the 4.0 GPA too - it's very nice to have for surprisingly long. Absolutely don't "challenge yourself". You can do that when you're not being graded on it.
- nostrebored 6y ago
  I think this very much depends on where you're going. I did not have a stellar GPA in school, but I did take the most challenging courses available to me and it's paid dividends for years. I still work on projects where my college exposure allows me to have a deeper understanding. Working with customers operating at scale, my (in retrospect, amazing) exposure to HPC and distributed computing has been so valuable. But these were the most challenging courses at a top 5 CS school, with some of the brightest researchers alive teaching course material. At another school that calculus is probably closer to what you're saying.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  I haven't been asked what my GPA was since I got my first graduate job (which was a follow on from my internship), which is very convenient because I graduated with a shocking GPA.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Ditto. The only people who cared about it were the Grad School applications, and the occasional (and ever-rarer) entry-level job application. After 2 years in the field no one gives a damn. The degree is basically just a box for HR to check off.
- topkai22 6y ago
  Assuming that's remotely feasible. My alma mater only had 7 students graduate with a 4.0 ... In 60 years of existence. I went to a top tier school and struggled with various parts of the curriculum (CHEM52, I'm looking at you). I convinced myself that I wasn't smart/good enough for various futures I'd previously envisioned, like academia or research. My confidence was shot and it affected where I applied for jobs out of college. I ended up taking a contract position at Microsoft. I thrived, got my confidence back, and got hired full-time. Two years after graduation an acquitance from my college reached out to me- he was coming to Microsoft Research for the summer, could I help him find a place to rent? We reconnected and got talking- It turned out his undergrad GPA was lower then mine! I never did find why he was more confident than me, but he had no problem thinking he was still qualified for a PhD program and was clearly doing well enough there to get picked up by prestigious research lab. I'm pretty happy with the way my life has turned out, I have no reason to go back and change any decisions. In fact, many of the most valuable experience I had were unrelated to the classroom- student government, interactions with the board of trustees, putting together funding for various small projects. And I've had a great career since college. The only thing I wish I could change was how I felt about myself- I wish I'd been able to tell 20-year old me "you are doing fine! It'll be awesome in the end!" and have 20-year me believe me. All of the above is a long way of saying- don't worry too much about your grades. Don't blow them off, but in the end they aren't as important as we often make them out to be.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    I wonder what those 4.0 former students are doing now.
    - topkai22 6y ago
      I think one of them ended up teaching at the college :)
- screye 6y ago
  ehh, I don't know about that. I haven't heard of GPA being useful for anything in tech apart from doing a PhD, which require you to have both a high GPA and to challenge yourself.
turbinerneiter 6y ago
University has so much more value than the coursework and the name. The network you mention is a good starting point. You call it network and it evokes the idea of those connections that can help you later. But they are also very beneficial during your studies. Learning alone means you never have the chance to ask for help, give help and discuss what you learned. Universities also do research you can be part of. I helped build a CubeSat during my uni time and was part of a sounding rocket mission. You can't do that in a YouTube video of a lecture and you can't to that as a side project. University is a place to meet like minded people and learn about stuff you are interested in. You get teachers and facilities you wouldn't normally have access to. Use it! And make sure that you go to uni with this mental model of it. Whenever you see uni doing things that don't fit in that model, try to change it. Unis aren't there to make sure you get a better job, get access to hidden networks in society, take loads of money from students, crank out degrees, ... They are there to enable people growing personally and fuel that growth back into growing humanities knowledge. ... and yeah, some local hackerspaces are closer to that idea of an University that many Universities are. That's a problem.
- zenlot 6y ago
  > But they are also very beneficial during your studies. Learning alone means you never have the chance to ask for help, give help and discuss what you learned. Plenty of sites and forums to ask for help, give help and discuss what you learned.
  - cguess 6y ago
    None of which come close to replicating the random occasions of running into a fellow student in the cafeteria and them asking you for a quick question. Or discussing the ideas you're studying over beer at the campus bar for hours. Asynchronous, anonymous, learning has its place but it is absolutely no substitute for the environment a campus provides.
    - zenlot 6y ago
      It depends on a person.

by sdan 6y ago

juped 6y ago

Be sure to get the 4.0 GPA too - it's very nice to have for surprisingly long. Absolutely don't "challenge yourself". You can do that when you're not being graded on it.

nostrebored 6y ago
I think this very much depends on where you're going. I did not have a stellar GPA in school, but I did take the most challenging courses available to me and it's paid dividends for years. I still work on projects where my college exposure allows me to have a deeper understanding. Working with customers operating at scale, my (in retrospect, amazing) exposure to HPC and distributed computing has been so valuable. But these were the most challenging courses at a top 5 CS school, with some of the brightest researchers alive teaching course material. At another school that calculus is probably closer to what you're saying.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
I haven't been asked what my GPA was since I got my first graduate job (which was a follow on from my internship), which is very convenient because I graduated with a shocking GPA.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Ditto. The only people who cared about it were the Grad School applications, and the occasional (and ever-rarer) entry-level job application. After 2 years in the field no one gives a damn. The degree is basically just a box for HR to check off.
topkai22 6y ago
Assuming that's remotely feasible. My alma mater only had 7 students graduate with a 4.0 ... In 60 years of existence. I went to a top tier school and struggled with various parts of the curriculum (CHEM52, I'm looking at you). I convinced myself that I wasn't smart/good enough for various futures I'd previously envisioned, like academia or research. My confidence was shot and it affected where I applied for jobs out of college. I ended up taking a contract position at Microsoft. I thrived, got my confidence back, and got hired full-time. Two years after graduation an acquitance from my college reached out to me- he was coming to Microsoft Research for the summer, could I help him find a place to rent? We reconnected and got talking- It turned out his undergrad GPA was lower then mine! I never did find why he was more confident than me, but he had no problem thinking he was still qualified for a PhD program and was clearly doing well enough there to get picked up by prestigious research lab. I'm pretty happy with the way my life has turned out, I have no reason to go back and change any decisions. In fact, many of the most valuable experience I had were unrelated to the classroom- student government, interactions with the board of trustees, putting together funding for various small projects. And I've had a great career since college. The only thing I wish I could change was how I felt about myself- I wish I'd been able to tell 20-year old me "you are doing fine! It'll be awesome in the end!" and have 20-year me believe me. All of the above is a long way of saying- don't worry too much about your grades. Don't blow them off, but in the end they aren't as important as we often make them out to be.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  I wonder what those 4.0 former students are doing now.
  - topkai22 6y ago
    I think one of them ended up teaching at the college :)
screye 6y ago
ehh, I don't know about that. I haven't heard of GPA being useful for anything in tech apart from doing a PhD, which require you to have both a high GPA and to challenge yourself.

turbinerneiter 6y ago

University has so much more value than the coursework and the name. The network you mention is a good starting point. You call it network and it evokes the idea of those connections that can help you later. But they are also very beneficial during your studies. Learning alone means you never have the chance to ask for help, give help and discuss what you learned. Universities also do research you can be part of. I helped build a CubeSat during my uni time and was part of a sounding rocket mission. You can't do that in a YouTube video of a lecture and you can't to that as a side project. University is a place to meet like minded people and learn about stuff you are interested in. You get teachers and facilities you wouldn't normally have access to. Use it! And make sure that you go to uni with this mental model of it. Whenever you see uni doing things that don't fit in that model, try to change it. Unis aren't there to make sure you get a better job, get access to hidden networks in society, take loads of money from students, crank out degrees, ... They are there to enable people growing personally and fuel that growth back into growing humanities knowledge. ... and yeah, some local hackerspaces are closer to that idea of an University that many Universities are. That's a problem.

zenlot 6y ago
> But they are also very beneficial during your studies. Learning alone means you never have the chance to ask for help, give help and discuss what you learned. Plenty of sites and forums to ask for help, give help and discuss what you learned.
- cguess 6y ago
  None of which come close to replicating the random occasions of running into a fellow student in the cafeteria and them asking you for a quick question. Or discussing the ideas you're studying over beer at the campus bar for hours. Asynchronous, anonymous, learning has its place but it is absolutely no substitute for the environment a campus provides.
  - zenlot 6y ago
    It depends on a person.