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This is really interesting! I started my Stanford undergrad as an engineer. After my first Calculus class, I switched to American Studies because it was one of

This is really interesting! I started my Stanford undergrad as an engineer. After my first Calculus class, I switched to American Studies because it was one of the least engineering-y majors available. Then I dropped out in my Junior year. That was over 10 years ago. Now, ironically, I work at Google as a software engineer — the only one on my team without an engineering degree, let alone without a degree at all. I never thought of my disillusionment with engineering in the context of other students, but rather just as an absolute: "Engineering is too hard for me." Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result.

908B64B197 4y ago
> Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result. I don't know. Calculus (and a lot of CS nowadays) is pretty standardized across schools. Same textbooks, similar problem sets and curricula. People dropping out of engineering isn't anything new [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJbE-CukPsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJbE-CukPsU
- corner_case2 4y ago
  > People dropping out of engineering isn't anything new [0]. What is new is: students were told all their life that “they’ll make it” in life. Spoiler alert: not everyone does. Most will never make 7 figure compensation as a SWE, for example.
  - kapp_in_life 4y ago
    I think if the average person thinks the goal for making it in life as a 7 figure comp, 99% of people will never be happy.
universityguys 4y ago
I feel like Stanford is a little different. Despite being as selective as Harvardm Harvard has a very unique international reputation as the world's best university (or at least america's best university for the oxbridge lovers)
- robertakarobin 4y ago
  Oooh, I know a lot of Stanford (and Berkeley) students who would be extremely upset to hear you say that. :)
cozzyd 4y ago
anecdote: I took Multivariate calculus and differential equations while in high school at the University of Nevada. I was easily the top student in my classes. I had to retake them at Stanford (figuring out how to transfer the credit was too complicated). Despite having "taken" the "same" material before and the fact that the average grade in the class was probably a B or B+, I was below the median in the class on the exams and got worse grades in the classes at Stanford. Of course this is anecdotal, and the University of Nevada is not that great of a school, but no doubt my GPA would have been much higher at a school like that...
- TrackerFF 4y ago
  Should be mentioned that classes within the same school can vary from year to year, completely depends on the person at charge. The first time I took Calculus 3, I got a D. IIRC, the fail rate was over 50%, and average grade was a weak C. Two years later, I re-took the class to improve my grade. Ended up with a B - and the class average was round B at that time, with only around 15% of class failing the final exam.
- somethoughts 4y ago
  I think that's sort of what he's talking about. Had you not had the experience of calculus and diff eq at a university and your only exposure to it was at Stanford with middling grades - perhaps it'd probably lead to more existential questions of whether you really wanted to do STEM in the first place.
  - cozzyd 4y ago
    Right, I quickly made peace with being a mediocre student at Stanford (and, still ended up getting into MIT for a physics PhD, where I was also a mediocre student but by then I didn't care :) ). I think the people who probably suffer the most at are probably premeds, where it really might be easier to get into med school by going to an "easier" school.
    - strikelaserclaw 4y ago
somethoughts 4y ago
Having watched the Gladwell talk a couple of times now - I think your experience is really the most indicative of what he was trying to say. Many self weed themselves out of Engineering and into generic liberal arts studies - even though they were top of their high school class in STEM and specifically chose the highly selective school for STEM. And perhaps not all have the mental fortitude to stick with it in the background like you did - which is a net loss for society.
hintymad 4y ago
> Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result. I doubt it. As my professor used to say, math is math. Plus, intro-level undergrad math courses are pretty standardized across the US. Similar textbooks, similar problem sets, and similar past exams. There's nothing wrong to feel calculus is hard even if you're the top of your high school class. Most people hit a wall at certain abstraction level. Malcolm wrote in his book about smart people simply not being able to grok organic chemistry. Some of my smart classmates could not really understand the concept of limit intuitively. Some of them dropped out of abstract algebra course. I myself dropped out of model theory as I couldn't get why I should even bother with the course. None of these failures prevent people from finding success in other areas.
- musicale 4y ago
  Unfortunately many ostensibly good schools also have notoriously poorly taught introductory math and science courses. Stanford's introductory CS sequence has a good reputation however. Consider this course (for example) which teaches students bare-metal programming (and real-world interfacing) on a raspberry pi: https://cs107e.github.io/schedule/ https://cs107e.github.io/schedule/
- a-dub 4y ago
  > Some of my smart classmates could not really understand the concept of limit intuitively. that's because the way it's presented is silly. limits aren't the key idea, the continuity of the reals is.
  - strikelaserclaw 4y ago
    but limits are a key idea, their invention allowed a whole class of mathematical problems to be solved
    - a-dub 4y ago
      sure. and despite all the trouble people have, their definition is quite simple. the crux of the problem is understanding continuity. if you truly understand the continuity of the reals (which is the "real" invention), limits can be derived almost effortlessly. in most calculus teaching, continuity is quickly stated and then there's a bunch of rules and these seemingly contradictory discussions involving delta and epsilon. they're not contradictory if continuity is understood and internalized.
a9h74j 4y ago
> Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result. Thomas Sowell, in Inside American Education, argues that promoting students to more difficult colleges while ignoring SATs is not doing those students any favor. A firehose-pedagogy accepted by those with SAT scores 200-300 points higher can completely demoralize someone who could have done perfectly well at a moderately-paced school. However, the competition to practice AA leads, he argues, those more advanced schools to ignore SAT scores in admission for the schools' benefits, but not the benefit of the students so admitted.

908B64B197 4y ago

> Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result. I don't know. Calculus (and a lot of CS nowadays) is pretty standardized across schools. Same textbooks, similar problem sets and curricula. People dropping out of engineering isn't anything new [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJbE-CukPsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJbE-CukPsU

corner_case2 4y ago
> People dropping out of engineering isn't anything new [0]. What is new is: students were told all their life that “they’ll make it” in life. Spoiler alert: not everyone does. Most will never make 7 figure compensation as a SWE, for example.
- kapp_in_life 4y ago
  I think if the average person thinks the goal for making it in life as a 7 figure comp, 99% of people will never be happy.

universityguys 4y ago

I feel like Stanford is a little different. Despite being as selective as Harvardm Harvard has a very unique international reputation as the world's best university (or at least america's best university for the oxbridge lovers)

robertakarobin 4y ago
Oooh, I know a lot of Stanford (and Berkeley) students who would be extremely upset to hear you say that. :)

cozzyd 4y ago

anecdote: I took Multivariate calculus and differential equations while in high school at the University of Nevada. I was easily the top student in my classes. I had to retake them at Stanford (figuring out how to transfer the credit was too complicated). Despite having "taken" the "same" material before and the fact that the average grade in the class was probably a B or B+, I was below the median in the class on the exams and got worse grades in the classes at Stanford. Of course this is anecdotal, and the University of Nevada is not that great of a school, but no doubt my GPA would have been much higher at a school like that...

TrackerFF 4y ago
Should be mentioned that classes within the same school can vary from year to year, completely depends on the person at charge. The first time I took Calculus 3, I got a D. IIRC, the fail rate was over 50%, and average grade was a weak C. Two years later, I re-took the class to improve my grade. Ended up with a B - and the class average was round B at that time, with only around 15% of class failing the final exam.
somethoughts 4y ago
I think that's sort of what he's talking about. Had you not had the experience of calculus and diff eq at a university and your only exposure to it was at Stanford with middling grades - perhaps it'd probably lead to more existential questions of whether you really wanted to do STEM in the first place.
- cozzyd 4y ago
  Right, I quickly made peace with being a mediocre student at Stanford (and, still ended up getting into MIT for a physics PhD, where I was also a mediocre student but by then I didn't care :) ). I think the people who probably suffer the most at are probably premeds, where it really might be easier to get into med school by going to an "easier" school.
  - strikelaserclaw 4y ago

somethoughts 4y ago

Having watched the Gladwell talk a couple of times now - I think your experience is really the most indicative of what he was trying to say. Many self weed themselves out of Engineering and into generic liberal arts studies - even though they were top of their high school class in STEM and specifically chose the highly selective school for STEM. And perhaps not all have the mental fortitude to stick with it in the background like you did - which is a net loss for society.

hintymad 4y ago

> Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result. I doubt it. As my professor used to say, math is math. Plus, intro-level undergrad math courses are pretty standardized across the US. Similar textbooks, similar problem sets, and similar past exams. There's nothing wrong to feel calculus is hard even if you're the top of your high school class. Most people hit a wall at certain abstraction level. Malcolm wrote in his book about smart people simply not being able to grok organic chemistry. Some of my smart classmates could not really understand the concept of limit intuitively. Some of them dropped out of abstract algebra course. I myself dropped out of model theory as I couldn't get why I should even bother with the course. None of these failures prevent people from finding success in other areas.

musicale 4y ago
Unfortunately many ostensibly good schools also have notoriously poorly taught introductory math and science courses. Stanford's introductory CS sequence has a good reputation however. Consider this course (for example) which teaches students bare-metal programming (and real-world interfacing) on a raspberry pi: https://cs107e.github.io/schedule/ https://cs107e.github.io/schedule/
a-dub 4y ago
> Some of my smart classmates could not really understand the concept of limit intuitively. that's because the way it's presented is silly. limits aren't the key idea, the continuity of the reals is.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  but limits are a key idea, their invention allowed a whole class of mathematical problems to be solved
  - a-dub 4y ago
    sure. and despite all the trouble people have, their definition is quite simple. the crux of the problem is understanding continuity. if you truly understand the continuity of the reals (which is the "real" invention), limits can be derived almost effortlessly. in most calculus teaching, continuity is quickly stated and then there's a bunch of rules and these seemingly contradictory discussions involving delta and epsilon. they're not contradictory if continuity is understood and internalized.

a9h74j 4y ago

> Taking Calculus at not-Stanford may have led to a very different result. Thomas Sowell, in Inside American Education, argues that promoting students to more difficult colleges while ignoring SATs is not doing those students any favor. A firehose-pedagogy accepted by those with SAT scores 200-300 points higher can completely demoralize someone who could have done perfectly well at a moderately-paced school. However, the competition to practice AA leads, he argues, those more advanced schools to ignore SAT scores in admission for the schools' benefits, but not the benefit of the students so admitted.