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>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 equivale

>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
  You compared a top 50 school to a top 10. Of course it was different, and quite possibly more rigorous. I'm comparing a (my non-selective public) top 10 engineering to other top 10s [engineering]. Near peer selective to near peer non-selective. You compared a top 50 to a top 10 ranked engineering, far from peer schools. Starting with 10% says nothing about the difficulty of the program. You don't even know that they were the best 10% of engineering material, just that they were the top 10% of what the school thought were picks as candidates. Selectivity does not confer difficulty. High (50%+)success rate of your selective cohort does not confer low (25%-) success rate of the non-selected group. > My main point is that my experience with schooling is more extensive then yours. It seems we have the same amount of experience with top 10 schools, where N=1 for both. I have been to a 'lower tier' school but not for engineering so I didn't even bother to mention it, and yeah I agree it was a joke comparatively.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    >Starting with 10% says nothing about the difficulty of the program. You don't even know that they were the best 10% of engineering material, just that they were the top 10% of what the school thought were picks as candidates. Selectivity does not confer difficulty. High (50%+)success rate of your selective cohort does not confer low (25%-) success rate of the non-selected group. It does. Like I said the the smarter kids the tougher the courses. Because smarter kids normalize easiness. The difficulty of the program is set by the kids who attend. The school absolutely cannot fail the entire class, they have to set the hardness so that a certain amount pass. It is absolutely a factor especially if most schools grade on a curve. So if any Tom Dick or Jane can join the curve however steep it is, will reflect the quality of those who join. "Best engineering material" is a misnomer. the smartest kids from other schools correlate with best engineering material. I already stated that sure you can have some miracle kid that succeeds at engineering but bombs at school, but this is rare. Kids who do well in school tend to do well in engineering. Any other thing you see is likely to be an anomaly. You're basing your argument off the erroneous notion that engineering talent in school is completely separate from all other subjects and therefore selectivity is completely irrelevant. That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying it's not completely separate at all. There is a strong correlation that if you graduated top of the class in your high school you have a higher likelihood of better performance in engineering at a top school. It's not always the case but the correlation exists. >It seems we have the same amount of experience with top 10 schools, where N=1 for both. I have been to a 'lower tier' school but not for engineering so I didn't even bother to mention it, and yeah I agree it was a joke comparatively. Sure it's N=1. But read my paragraph above. That's a common sense figure. Person A gets all F's in your classes and Person B gets straight As and takes a bunch of AP courses... by probability person B will be the better engineer. Common sense. We can make a good estimate based off of common sense logic without the need for statistically rigorous data. So based off of that logic, my reasoning goes beyond a N=1 sample size as we can use common sense induction to arrive at a broader conclusion.

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
You compared a top 50 school to a top 10. Of course it was different, and quite possibly more rigorous. I'm comparing a (my non-selective public) top 10 engineering to other top 10s [engineering]. Near peer selective to near peer non-selective. You compared a top 50 to a top 10 ranked engineering, far from peer schools. Starting with 10% says nothing about the difficulty of the program. You don't even know that they were the best 10% of engineering material, just that they were the top 10% of what the school thought were picks as candidates. Selectivity does not confer difficulty. High (50%+)success rate of your selective cohort does not confer low (25%-) success rate of the non-selected group. > My main point is that my experience with schooling is more extensive then yours. It seems we have the same amount of experience with top 10 schools, where N=1 for both. I have been to a 'lower tier' school but not for engineering so I didn't even bother to mention it, and yeah I agree it was a joke comparatively.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  >Starting with 10% says nothing about the difficulty of the program. You don't even know that they were the best 10% of engineering material, just that they were the top 10% of what the school thought were picks as candidates. Selectivity does not confer difficulty. High (50%+)success rate of your selective cohort does not confer low (25%-) success rate of the non-selected group. It does. Like I said the the smarter kids the tougher the courses. Because smarter kids normalize easiness. The difficulty of the program is set by the kids who attend. The school absolutely cannot fail the entire class, they have to set the hardness so that a certain amount pass. It is absolutely a factor especially if most schools grade on a curve. So if any Tom Dick or Jane can join the curve however steep it is, will reflect the quality of those who join. "Best engineering material" is a misnomer. the smartest kids from other schools correlate with best engineering material. I already stated that sure you can have some miracle kid that succeeds at engineering but bombs at school, but this is rare. Kids who do well in school tend to do well in engineering. Any other thing you see is likely to be an anomaly. You're basing your argument off the erroneous notion that engineering talent in school is completely separate from all other subjects and therefore selectivity is completely irrelevant. That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying it's not completely separate at all. There is a strong correlation that if you graduated top of the class in your high school you have a higher likelihood of better performance in engineering at a top school. It's not always the case but the correlation exists. >It seems we have the same amount of experience with top 10 schools, where N=1 for both. I have been to a 'lower tier' school but not for engineering so I didn't even bother to mention it, and yeah I agree it was a joke comparatively. Sure it's N=1. But read my paragraph above. That's a common sense figure. Person A gets all F's in your classes and Person B gets straight As and takes a bunch of AP courses... by probability person B will be the better engineer. Common sense. We can make a good estimate based off of common sense logic without the need for statistically rigorous data. So based off of that logic, my reasoning goes beyond a N=1 sample size as we can use common sense induction to arrive at a broader conclusion.