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>I don't think being good at engineering school is an 'achievement' or a sign of superiority, I just think it means you may be wired differently than some other

>I don't think being good at engineering school is an 'achievement' or a sign of superiority, I just think it means you may be wired differently than some other people -- that's it. The school in question I'm referring to is ranked in the top 10 of US engineering programs Bro, I went to a top 10 as well, and it's also not a private school. I'm telling you that it doesn't matter. Doing well in a school that has zero selectivity is not an achievement because you're competing with many people who don't even have the drive to succeed. Of course a huge number will be fodder for you to step on. Sure you're school is hard.. but that's a different kind of hard. At a selective school, every student you're with has drive and has consistently placed number 1 at every previous school they've been at. The classes and challenge are normalized so that just being number one is now average or even below average. This is hard on another level. >Many of the more 'highly selective' private programs are actually easier because they milk you dry in tuition and they want to keep the dollars flowing, so they will coddle you along. Not true at all. Again, Selective programs normalize what is easy among top students. The curve becomes insanely steeper. Schools allow you to change majors to keep milking the dollars but they still fail you out of the class. >Believe it or not there are public schools that will take essentially anyone with a pulse into engineering, and a handful of the more challenging and highly ranked engineering programs are included. These are not 'easy' programs, and attrition rates far exceed other programs at the same university. Personally I approve of this approach because it allows anyone to try their hand rather than depending on BS criteria like standardized testing or high school performance, or other dumb factors like whether your parents had the strings to pull in a non-profit to make you look like mother teresa. The kind of person who succeeds at engineering is often not the kind who has an impressive background coming out of highschool. I never said it's easy. But it certainly is easier. Let's do a quantitative analysis then. Anyone with a pulse and let's say they fail out 75%. That's equivalent to a 25% pass rate. Then take a look at a selective school with a (in my case 20% failure rate and 10% acceptance). That's about 8% pass rate assuming anyone with a pulse applies (of course this is not the case, better performing students tend to apply). By that number alone you know how much harder it is in a selective school. And the 20% failure rate is just a random guess, could be much higher than that as tons of kids switch majors after their first weeder class. Realistically I give it 50% failure rate if you count people who switch. >The number of people who received, or would be able to receive, an ABET accredited engineering degree at the top of their class from any of say the top dozen engineering schools while simply 'studying for a test the night before' is a much rarer trait than you think. Either you're unaware of your exceptional aptitude or you were blind to your surroundings. Let's caveat something here. I passed top of my class and studied the night before in a non-selective school. The other school I transferred to, (a top school) I could not do this. Also ABET is garbage, let's be clear about that. Many top engineering schools have certain programs that are ABET accredited, and many schools with ABET accredited programs are easy.

notch656a 5y ago
>I never said it's easy. But it certainly is easier. Let's do a quantitative analysis then. Anyone with a pulse and let's say they fail out 75%. That's equivalent to a 25% pass rate. Then take a look at a selective school with a (in my case 20% failure rate and 10% acceptance). That's about 8% pass rate assuming anyone with a pulse applies (of course this is not the case, better performing students tend to apply). >By that number alone you know how much harder it is in a selective school. You really don't. All you proved was that 80% (or whatever) of those who the school selected would pass. You know nothing of what percent of those who they didn't select would pass. You can't possibly make the assertion it would be lower than 25% example you gave for the "anyone with a pulse school." I don't doubt you probably went to a more rigorous, challenging, and renowned school than me. I don't doubt you are more intelligent than myself or many who did well at my school. The fallacy comes when you conflate entrance selectivity with difficulty. > I passed top of my class and studied the night before in a non-selective school. Can you help explain to me why you went from a top non-selective public school to a different top selective school? In my experience after the first couple years everyone but the cream was filtered out, so by junior year it was effectively like I was in a 'selective' school. Or are you comparing a lower tier non-selective engineering school to a top selective school? My point of reference here is one of the handful of non-selective top-10 schools. >Many top engineering schools have certain programs that are ABET accredited, and many schools with ABET accredited programs are easy. Agreed. Was just providing some baseline for roughly the curriculum that was covered. You're right that ABET on its own doesn't speak thoroughly to the program, which is why I used a variety of other qualifiers beyond ABET.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  >Can you help explain to me why you went from a top non-selective public school to a different top selective school? Transfer. And change of major. I would say I went to an top 50 school initially, with average selectivity and the same amount of weeder classes in every engineering program. Then went to a top 10 public school with an even more selective engineering program. The weeder classes for your school filtered everyone out but the people remaining are still only 25% of anyone with a pulse. I'd wager this school has an extremely low amount of high achievers joining, so while you're dealing with smart competition, it's nowhere near the level of what you'd be facing at a selective school. At a selective school, you have the top 10% of kids from the entire nation, who again get weeded out by about 50%. Yes that's effectively the smartest kids in the country getting cut in half. Nothing here is statistically rigorous but you can't deny that this back of the napkin estimate says something about how hard these schools are. >You really don't. All you proved was that 80% (or whatever) of those who the school selected would pass. You know nothing of what percent of those who they didn't select would pass. The kids who were selected overall have a higher chance success and higher work ethic and higher intelligence then those not selected. There are definitely scenarios of people who are great at programming but can't do well in school but these are generally in the minority. Google for example doesn't hire people based off of school, but the majority of their hires have degrees from top schools. It correlates with IQ and general programming ability, but I would say google sort of over selects. They don't need people that strong. >I don't doubt you probably went to a more rigorous, challenging, and renowned school than me. I don't doubt you are more intelligent than myself or many who did well at my school. The fallacy comes when you conflate entrance selectivity with difficulty. Never claimed any of these things and who knows? Maybe you went to the better school. I simply stated my credentials to show you that I have anecdotal experience from both types of schools. The difference in hardness is palpable and can only really be truly known by someone who went to both types of schools. In the first school I attended my mindset was like you. I thought I had a talent and that most people were stupid. That changed when I got into a top 10 highly selective school. But we did kind of get side tracked here. My main point is that my experience with schooling is more extensive then yours. And from that experience I derive that anyone can learn programming. It wasn't mentioned before, but programming is much easier than school. I should also mention that this experience is from both extensive experience in school AND work. School experience provides sort of a bubble, a partial picture but not the full thing..

notch656a 5y ago

>I never said it's easy. But it certainly is easier. Let's do a quantitative analysis then. Anyone with a pulse and let's say they fail out 75%. That's equivalent to a 25% pass rate. Then take a look at a selective school with a (in my case 20% failure rate and 10% acceptance). That's about 8% pass rate assuming anyone with a pulse applies (of course this is not the case, better performing students tend to apply). >By that number alone you know how much harder it is in a selective school. You really don't. All you proved was that 80% (or whatever) of those who the school selected would pass. You know nothing of what percent of those who they didn't select would pass. You can't possibly make the assertion it would be lower than 25% example you gave for the "anyone with a pulse school." I don't doubt you probably went to a more rigorous, challenging, and renowned school than me. I don't doubt you are more intelligent than myself or many who did well at my school. The fallacy comes when you conflate entrance selectivity with difficulty. > I passed top of my class and studied the night before in a non-selective school. Can you help explain to me why you went from a top non-selective public school to a different top selective school? In my experience after the first couple years everyone but the cream was filtered out, so by junior year it was effectively like I was in a 'selective' school. Or are you comparing a lower tier non-selective engineering school to a top selective school? My point of reference here is one of the handful of non-selective top-10 schools. >Many top engineering schools have certain programs that are ABET accredited, and many schools with ABET accredited programs are easy. Agreed. Was just providing some baseline for roughly the curriculum that was covered. You're right that ABET on its own doesn't speak thoroughly to the program, which is why I used a variety of other qualifiers beyond ABET.

deltaonefour 5y ago
>Can you help explain to me why you went from a top non-selective public school to a different top selective school? Transfer. And change of major. I would say I went to an top 50 school initially, with average selectivity and the same amount of weeder classes in every engineering program. Then went to a top 10 public school with an even more selective engineering program. The weeder classes for your school filtered everyone out but the people remaining are still only 25% of anyone with a pulse. I'd wager this school has an extremely low amount of high achievers joining, so while you're dealing with smart competition, it's nowhere near the level of what you'd be facing at a selective school. At a selective school, you have the top 10% of kids from the entire nation, who again get weeded out by about 50%. Yes that's effectively the smartest kids in the country getting cut in half. Nothing here is statistically rigorous but you can't deny that this back of the napkin estimate says something about how hard these schools are. >You really don't. All you proved was that 80% (or whatever) of those who the school selected would pass. You know nothing of what percent of those who they didn't select would pass. The kids who were selected overall have a higher chance success and higher work ethic and higher intelligence then those not selected. There are definitely scenarios of people who are great at programming but can't do well in school but these are generally in the minority. Google for example doesn't hire people based off of school, but the majority of their hires have degrees from top schools. It correlates with IQ and general programming ability, but I would say google sort of over selects. They don't need people that strong. >I don't doubt you probably went to a more rigorous, challenging, and renowned school than me. I don't doubt you are more intelligent than myself or many who did well at my school. The fallacy comes when you conflate entrance selectivity with difficulty. Never claimed any of these things and who knows? Maybe you went to the better school. I simply stated my credentials to show you that I have anecdotal experience from both types of schools. The difference in hardness is palpable and can only really be truly known by someone who went to both types of schools. In the first school I attended my mindset was like you. I thought I had a talent and that most people were stupid. That changed when I got into a top 10 highly selective school. But we did kind of get side tracked here. My main point is that my experience with schooling is more extensive then yours. And from that experience I derive that anyone can learn programming. It wasn't mentioned before, but programming is much easier than school. I should also mention that this experience is from both extensive experience in school AND work. School experience provides sort of a bubble, a partial picture but not the full thing..