4 ms·

What makes you think he’s only going to get a great CS education at the Ivies, Cal, Caltech, Stanford, etc.? Very few of the best graduates I’ve worked with in

by pmonks 4y ago

What makes you think he’s only going to get a great CS education at the Ivies, Cal, Caltech, Stanford, etc.? Very few of the best graduates I’ve worked with in my ~30 year career studied at those schools - it was places like UW, UBC and Waterloo that stood out to me as producing a high number of high quality, socially adapted graduates. [edit] and before anyone asks, no I’m not Canadian

ams92 4y ago
The top ranked schools only help with getting your first job, and that's only if you want to work in big tech. Unlike some other industries, you can over compensate by networking or doing side projects if you don't have a high pedigree degree.
RigelKentaurus 4y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I know he will get a fantastic education at most schools. But he truly is a special kid who gets inspired by super smart people and thrives on challenges, and will do better at Cal, Caltech, Harvey Mudd etc. We're not looking at non-STEM schools and Ivies -- I guess they don't want us and we don't want them.
- pmonks 4y ago
  My point is that he’ll be surrounded by super smart people giving him real challenges at many schools beyond the ones you’ve listed.
  - light_hue_1 4y ago
    There is a massive gap between top schools and middle schools in terms of the quality of education, the connections you make, and the opportunities you get. The density of smart people is far higher at those top schools he mentioned. Downplaying that doesn't do anything for anyone.
    - JamesianP 4y ago
      Connections sure, but what advantage is there in quality of education? It's not like winning a nobel prize makes someone better at teaching organic chemistry, during the one class they teach (aided by a team of assistants who actually deal with the students). If anything I'd say the places with the worst students have the best teachers by both necessity and by experience level. What are you defining as "middle schools"?
    - pmonks 4y ago
      Sure, but he’s fixated on ~1% of the “top schools”, and seems closed to the possibility that the other 99% will be just as good (and in some cases better) for his son than that list. That’s before we even unpack your claim that there’s a clear line between “top” and “middle” schools. I see it as more of a spectrum myself, ignoring “brand recognition” (which is a mostly meaningless metric).
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  Just one anecdote but, FWIW, I found that my peers at UBC were significantly smarter and harder-working than my peers at MIT. Many schools have honours programs or especially challenging degree programs, which will be filled with excellent and ambitious students, even if that school is not an ivy league.
  - pmonks 4y ago
    A (perhaps funny) anecdote of my own: I had just started as product manager for a remote engineering team, and it had been briefly mentioned in passing that one member of the team was an intern from UBC. I quickly got a feel for the work ethic and output of the team members (and they were generally great), and just jumped to the conclusion of who the intern was. Fast forward to the first time I meet them all in person, and I say to who I thought was the intern something like “how have you enjoyed your internship?”. Cue horrified looks, and my engineering manager counterpart swiftly moving in to smooth things over. Turns out the worst performing, least engaged engineer on the team was an FTE, and the UBC intern wasn’t even remotely who I thought it was (they were awesome)!
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  >> Very few of the best graduates I’ve worked with in my ~30 year career studied at those schools - it was places like UW, UBC and Waterloo that stood out to me as producing a high number of high quality, socially adapted graduates. > But he truly is a special kid who gets inspired by super smart people and thrives on challenges, and will do better at Cal, Caltech, Harvey Mudd etc. As opposed to UW, UBC and Waterloo, which are filled with less intelligent people? It is laughable. My theory - you have precisely zero idea what those schools even are.
RigelKentaurus 4y ago
BTW, I've worked with a number of people from UBC and UToronto, and they were all awesome!
bushbaba 4y ago
For engineering degrees for working within industry, the IVYs don’t get you much. There’s lots of highly ranked STEM universities that’ll open the same number of doors. Where IVY undergrad matters is if they plan to pursue a PHD. And even that is debatable.
- willhslade 4y ago
  You might find this previous discussion informative. The Ivies matter but not as much as you'd think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30448083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30448083 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x Most relevant: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x/tables/3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x/tables/3
kazinator 4y ago
Hi, UBC guy here.
onetimeusename 4y ago
It's not really about the education. If it were, there wouldn't be a lawsuit about this. This is a pretty simple thing to solve if the goal were just about education. The Jewish Quota that the Ivies did probably led to the rise of MIT and NYU, etc. The reality is that the most elite universities create kind of a petite noblesse (necessary for moving into the upper nobility) that is very appealing to the middle class. I think the context here is that each race wants to keep the prestigious aspect of these schools in place but have it benefit their own group. We would probably all benefit if we got rid of this bottleneck by creating more stellar universities so that four or five universities don't have a monopoly on cachet but no one is interested in doing that.
- jlkuester7 4y ago
  I don't see how you could eliminate the bottleneck in prestigious universities since if they are widely accessible, by definition they would no longer be prestigious. IMHO, the best way forwards is for folks to push for the expansion of the size and power of the middle class by any means possible (government policies as well as simply patronizing small businesses with our money). We don't need a ruling elite that holds power partially by their common participation in 'prestigious' educational institutions. Those institutions demonstrably do not provide the best education, they should not serve as gatekeepers to power.
  - onetimeusename 4y ago
    ya I agree that they shouldn't be the gatekeepers to power. My thought was to make elite universities more competitive against each other. That way maybe the distinction between the top 0.001% and the top 1% matters a lot less because there are lots of elite schools that are all roughly equal. Maybe making more universities or encouraging other schools to step up to compete so that the bottle neck is less so would work. But it's still an education bottleneck. I am kind of disgusted with the whole thing though. I don't like all this zero sum competition over a name on a piece of paper. I think in some other countries they have a system where if you make it past a threshold you have a guaranteed spot in their top tier school system. We should do that. We should educate people who have the talent and want to be educated, the specific name should be less important. I think this would ease a lot of tension, make things more fair, and provide the best outcome. But I don't even know if people would want this because the appeal of a super elite degree seems to be pretty enticing. I have to think about the expansion of power of the middle class. Buying from small businesses would lessen the incentives to have these degrees to some extent. But I have to think about how to apply that to tech. The exact pedigree of a CS degree seems to be extremely important for example even if this is probably meaningless.
mam2 4y ago
throwaway292939 4y ago
I agree but this is besides the point. Race based affirmative action is still unfair.

by pmonks 4y ago

ams92 4y ago

The top ranked schools only help with getting your first job, and that's only if you want to work in big tech. Unlike some other industries, you can over compensate by networking or doing side projects if you don't have a high pedigree degree.

RigelKentaurus 4y ago

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I know he will get a fantastic education at most schools. But he truly is a special kid who gets inspired by super smart people and thrives on challenges, and will do better at Cal, Caltech, Harvey Mudd etc. We're not looking at non-STEM schools and Ivies -- I guess they don't want us and we don't want them.

pmonks 4y ago
My point is that he’ll be surrounded by super smart people giving him real challenges at many schools beyond the ones you’ve listed.
- light_hue_1 4y ago
  There is a massive gap between top schools and middle schools in terms of the quality of education, the connections you make, and the opportunities you get. The density of smart people is far higher at those top schools he mentioned. Downplaying that doesn't do anything for anyone.
  - JamesianP 4y ago
    Connections sure, but what advantage is there in quality of education? It's not like winning a nobel prize makes someone better at teaching organic chemistry, during the one class they teach (aided by a team of assistants who actually deal with the students). If anything I'd say the places with the worst students have the best teachers by both necessity and by experience level. What are you defining as "middle schools"?
  - pmonks 4y ago
    Sure, but he’s fixated on ~1% of the “top schools”, and seems closed to the possibility that the other 99% will be just as good (and in some cases better) for his son than that list. That’s before we even unpack your claim that there’s a clear line between “top” and “middle” schools. I see it as more of a spectrum myself, ignoring “brand recognition” (which is a mostly meaningless metric).
mitthrowaway2 4y ago
Just one anecdote but, FWIW, I found that my peers at UBC were significantly smarter and harder-working than my peers at MIT. Many schools have honours programs or especially challenging degree programs, which will be filled with excellent and ambitious students, even if that school is not an ivy league.
- pmonks 4y ago
  A (perhaps funny) anecdote of my own: I had just started as product manager for a remote engineering team, and it had been briefly mentioned in passing that one member of the team was an intern from UBC. I quickly got a feel for the work ethic and output of the team members (and they were generally great), and just jumped to the conclusion of who the intern was. Fast forward to the first time I meet them all in person, and I say to who I thought was the intern something like “how have you enjoyed your internship?”. Cue horrified looks, and my engineering manager counterpart swiftly moving in to smooth things over. Turns out the worst performing, least engaged engineer on the team was an FTE, and the UBC intern wasn’t even remotely who I thought it was (they were awesome)!
TomSwirly 4y ago
>> Very few of the best graduates I’ve worked with in my ~30 year career studied at those schools - it was places like UW, UBC and Waterloo that stood out to me as producing a high number of high quality, socially adapted graduates. > But he truly is a special kid who gets inspired by super smart people and thrives on challenges, and will do better at Cal, Caltech, Harvey Mudd etc. As opposed to UW, UBC and Waterloo, which are filled with less intelligent people? It is laughable. My theory - you have precisely zero idea what those schools even are.

RigelKentaurus 4y ago

BTW, I've worked with a number of people from UBC and UToronto, and they were all awesome!

bushbaba 4y ago

For engineering degrees for working within industry, the IVYs don’t get you much. There’s lots of highly ranked STEM universities that’ll open the same number of doors. Where IVY undergrad matters is if they plan to pursue a PHD. And even that is debatable.

willhslade 4y ago
You might find this previous discussion informative. The Ivies matter but not as much as you'd think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30448083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30448083 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x Most relevant: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x/tables/3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x/tables/3

kazinator 4y ago

Hi, UBC guy here.

onetimeusename 4y ago

It's not really about the education. If it were, there wouldn't be a lawsuit about this. This is a pretty simple thing to solve if the goal were just about education. The Jewish Quota that the Ivies did probably led to the rise of MIT and NYU, etc. The reality is that the most elite universities create kind of a petite noblesse (necessary for moving into the upper nobility) that is very appealing to the middle class. I think the context here is that each race wants to keep the prestigious aspect of these schools in place but have it benefit their own group. We would probably all benefit if we got rid of this bottleneck by creating more stellar universities so that four or five universities don't have a monopoly on cachet but no one is interested in doing that.

jlkuester7 4y ago
I don't see how you could eliminate the bottleneck in prestigious universities since if they are widely accessible, by definition they would no longer be prestigious. IMHO, the best way forwards is for folks to push for the expansion of the size and power of the middle class by any means possible (government policies as well as simply patronizing small businesses with our money). We don't need a ruling elite that holds power partially by their common participation in 'prestigious' educational institutions. Those institutions demonstrably do not provide the best education, they should not serve as gatekeepers to power.
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  ya I agree that they shouldn't be the gatekeepers to power. My thought was to make elite universities more competitive against each other. That way maybe the distinction between the top 0.001% and the top 1% matters a lot less because there are lots of elite schools that are all roughly equal. Maybe making more universities or encouraging other schools to step up to compete so that the bottle neck is less so would work. But it's still an education bottleneck. I am kind of disgusted with the whole thing though. I don't like all this zero sum competition over a name on a piece of paper. I think in some other countries they have a system where if you make it past a threshold you have a guaranteed spot in their top tier school system. We should do that. We should educate people who have the talent and want to be educated, the specific name should be less important. I think this would ease a lot of tension, make things more fair, and provide the best outcome. But I don't even know if people would want this because the appeal of a super elite degree seems to be pretty enticing. I have to think about the expansion of power of the middle class. Buying from small businesses would lessen the incentives to have these degrees to some extent. But I have to think about how to apply that to tech. The exact pedigree of a CS degree seems to be extremely important for example even if this is probably meaningless.

mam2 4y ago

throwaway292939 4y ago

I agree but this is besides the point. Race based affirmative action is still unfair.