3 ms·

And education is free at almost all Ivy’s if you’re below a 100K or so salary family. That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart.

by cwwc 6y ago

bhupy 6y ago
The same is true at the in-state universities. At that salary, your kid can study at University of Alabama (a perfectly fine institution with great campus life) basically for free.
- naturalauction 6y ago
  The University of Alabama also has surprisingly good merit scholarships for students who are from out of state. I was considering going there and they offered me full tuition + 2 years of housing covered + some other grants (and I wasn't even that good of a student, definitely not Ivy caliber).
whimsicalism 6y ago
*and do not have significant assets or college savings
stcredzero 6y ago
That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart. Meh. I went to an Ivy league, as did my sister. My wife was a grad student at Stanford. My classmates were clever, but they weren't that smart! The standardized test scores can be improved with work. As for standing out with your essay and CV, I remember a talk from an admissions officer from Harvard. His take was that it's easy to stand out from 99% of students just by actually doing real, substantive work. He wasn't talking about the stuff that's designed to be a student CV stuffer to impress admissions. Do actual, substantive work. Something like a substantive contribution to a scientific field. Amateurs can still do this. Maybe run a real business. The example this admissions officer gave was someone who dropped out of High School, got a GED, then started repairing motorcycle engines. Then, you also need to make sure your essay is well written, which is another skill which can be learned. Relate your experience back to the academic opportunity, and how this would enable you to benefit society. There is a problem with this way of thinking of admissions: If you do pursue it in earnest, you might well decide to skip university entirely.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  To some extent, I wonder if the perception that your peers aren't that smart is just due to getting adapted to your environment. I went to an Ivy coming from an inner city public school and I found it a big culture shock in terms of both how well behaved people were in classrooms and also how quick/smart people were to grasp what I was saying and build on it. By the time I was a senior, I had lapsed to the "people here actually aren't that smart" line of thought - but I wonder if I just got used to being around more intelligent people.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    I did not go to an Ivy, but I went to the 1-2 ranked public institution in the US (for CS). The baseline is definitely higher, but there is a big gap between people who got there by their own grit and determination and people who got there almost helplessly due to a tidal wave of fortunate circumstances (e.g. parents were in sweng, went to cushy private schools that inflated grades, "did" a bunch of charity work / extracurriculars to pad their resume for college). The "not smart" people are the latter category: they can still pick things up quickly, but they viewed getting into the institution as the last hurdle they'll have to go through in order to be set for life. They just coasted and got Cs and didn't really care about learning new stuff because they knew the university's name on their degree alone would land them some cushy PM job where they wouldn't need that pesky coding ability every again). It was actually infuriating because I really enjoy CS and getting paired up with these folks who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths but didn't care was disappointing. Most of them were uncomfortable with the mental struggle of doing difficult group projects, often just showing up for the "design session" but skipping out on most of the coding. I made a lot of enemies out of them when I told the profs to look at my (GPG-signed) git commits and consider how they want to distribute grading points.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      > I made a lot of enemies out of them when I told the profs to look at my (GPG-signed) git commits and consider how they want to distribute grading points. I laughed. Did it change something in the end?

And education is free at almost all Ivy’s if you’re below a 100K or so salary family. That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart.

by cwwc 6y ago

And education is free at almost all Ivy’s if you’re below a 100K or so salary family. That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart.

bhupy 6y ago

The same is true at the in-state universities. At that salary, your kid can study at University of Alabama (a perfectly fine institution with great campus life) basically for free.

naturalauction 6y ago
The University of Alabama also has surprisingly good merit scholarships for students who are from out of state. I was considering going there and they offered me full tuition + 2 years of housing covered + some other grants (and I wasn't even that good of a student, definitely not Ivy caliber).

whimsicalism 6y ago

*and do not have significant assets or college savings

stcredzero 6y ago

That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart. Meh. I went to an Ivy league, as did my sister. My wife was a grad student at Stanford. My classmates were clever, but they weren't that smart! The standardized test scores can be improved with work. As for standing out with your essay and CV, I remember a talk from an admissions officer from Harvard. His take was that it's easy to stand out from 99% of students just by actually doing real, substantive work. He wasn't talking about the stuff that's designed to be a student CV stuffer to impress admissions. Do actual, substantive work. Something like a substantive contribution to a scientific field. Amateurs can still do this. Maybe run a real business. The example this admissions officer gave was someone who dropped out of High School, got a GED, then started repairing motorcycle engines. Then, you also need to make sure your essay is well written, which is another skill which can be learned. Relate your experience back to the academic opportunity, and how this would enable you to benefit society. There is a problem with this way of thinking of admissions: If you do pursue it in earnest, you might well decide to skip university entirely.

whimsicalism 6y ago
To some extent, I wonder if the perception that your peers aren't that smart is just due to getting adapted to your environment. I went to an Ivy coming from an inner city public school and I found it a big culture shock in terms of both how well behaved people were in classrooms and also how quick/smart people were to grasp what I was saying and build on it. By the time I was a senior, I had lapsed to the "people here actually aren't that smart" line of thought - but I wonder if I just got used to being around more intelligent people.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  I did not go to an Ivy, but I went to the 1-2 ranked public institution in the US (for CS). The baseline is definitely higher, but there is a big gap between people who got there by their own grit and determination and people who got there almost helplessly due to a tidal wave of fortunate circumstances (e.g. parents were in sweng, went to cushy private schools that inflated grades, "did" a bunch of charity work / extracurriculars to pad their resume for college). The "not smart" people are the latter category: they can still pick things up quickly, but they viewed getting into the institution as the last hurdle they'll have to go through in order to be set for life. They just coasted and got Cs and didn't really care about learning new stuff because they knew the university's name on their degree alone would land them some cushy PM job where they wouldn't need that pesky coding ability every again). It was actually infuriating because I really enjoy CS and getting paired up with these folks who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths but didn't care was disappointing. Most of them were uncomfortable with the mental struggle of doing difficult group projects, often just showing up for the "design session" but skipping out on most of the coding. I made a lot of enemies out of them when I told the profs to look at my (GPG-signed) git commits and consider how they want to distribute grading points.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > I made a lot of enemies out of them when I told the profs to look at my (GPG-signed) git commits and consider how they want to distribute grading points. I laughed. Did it change something in the end?