3 ms·

> Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges You have 100 places on the course next year. You have 10,000 applications with st

by blitzar 2mo ago

> Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges You have 100 places on the course next year. You have 10,000 applications with straight A's. You need to put ~9,000 in the bin.

BeetleB 2mo ago
> You have 100 places on the course next year. You have 10,000 applications with straight A's. You need to put ~9,000 in the bin. This is the situation for less than 10% of universities in the US. Likely a lot less than 5%. I wish I could find the source (a university president), but over 70% of public universities simply set a bar, and whoever meets the bar is admitted. There's no notion of "limited seats". I just checked 3 decent state universities near me. Admission rates are 76, 77 and 87%. One of them has a 75th percentile SAT score of 1230. 25th percentile is in the 900's. Another's range is from mid 1100's to 1400. I've worked in multiple top tech companies. I know plenty of alumni from these 3 universities working there - with several doing quite well (and very technically competent). Most of them did not even go to grad school, so it's not as if an advanced degree from a good name place helped them. This idea that you need to go to a top school to get good salaries and careers is something only people who live in a bubble believe. It's true for law school, and not that true for business school, and really not true for engineering. If I had to summarize my experience: Motivated students going to very average schools for engineering do quite well. Average students who go to top engineering schools almost always change their career path at some point because they don't grow well in a technical career. Top schools don't provide a magical recipe. (OK, as a footnote, having gone to both a low ranked and a top 10 school, the one thing I will admit is better in a top 10 school is that networking is easier - which I'm sure does help in one's career).

by blitzar 2mo ago

BeetleB 2mo ago

> You have 100 places on the course next year. You have 10,000 applications with straight A's. You need to put ~9,000 in the bin. This is the situation for less than 10% of universities in the US. Likely a lot less than 5%. I wish I could find the source (a university president), but over 70% of public universities simply set a bar, and whoever meets the bar is admitted. There's no notion of "limited seats". I just checked 3 decent state universities near me. Admission rates are 76, 77 and 87%. One of them has a 75th percentile SAT score of 1230. 25th percentile is in the 900's. Another's range is from mid 1100's to 1400. I've worked in multiple top tech companies. I know plenty of alumni from these 3 universities working there - with several doing quite well (and very technically competent). Most of them did not even go to grad school, so it's not as if an advanced degree from a good name place helped them. This idea that you need to go to a top school to get good salaries and careers is something only people who live in a bubble believe. It's true for law school, and not that true for business school, and really not true for engineering. If I had to summarize my experience: Motivated students going to very average schools for engineering do quite well. Average students who go to top engineering schools almost always change their career path at some point because they don't grow well in a technical career. Top schools don't provide a magical recipe. (OK, as a footnote, having gone to both a low ranked and a top 10 school, the one thing I will admit is better in a top 10 school is that networking is easier - which I'm sure does help in one's career).