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Ask HN: What big discoveries can be attributed to Elite schools?

• noodle 17y ago
  collateralized debt obligations
• abossy 17y ago
  Which field?
• russell 17y ago
  If you broaden it a bit to include other elite schools like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, etc. the impact is enormous. Their innovations won WWII. Their students and alumni founded HP, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Intel, and on and on. These schools tend to have alumni networks all over the place. There are Harvard Clubs coast to coast. Take a look at Nobel Prizes; these schools dominate. Take a look at the diploma on your doctor's or lawyer's wall. "Do they just attract smart people, and smart people tend to have good ideas and execute them well?" Not necessarily that they think better or execute better than everyone else. It's just that in the aggregate there are so many of them that there are bound to be ones around anything significant. As a counterpoint, I live near Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. It's not a top tier school, but it's surprising the number of successful startups that have come out of it. Jamba Juice come to mind.
  • physcab 17y ago
    Thanks for the response. I broadened it a bit. What I'm more interested in is what these schools may offer specifically that helps cultivate disruptive technologies.
    • stcredzero 17y ago
      Smart people. Lots of them in a safe, enjoyable, yet competitive environment.
    • russell 17y ago
      I think it's the culture. Stanford has long had culture of fostering entrepreneurship. The concentration of smart people helps. You can spout off about your latest harebrained scheme and there is better chance of good criticism or even an eager partner. And as I said the alumni networks are significant. Name recognition helps a lot. Harvard has opened door for me, especially in other countries where people haven't even heard of the lower tier universities.
  • menloparkbum 17y ago
    Tons of good engineers come out of Cal Poly. I think it has been ranked "best value in engineering education" for 20 years. It seems to have a very practical engineering oriented bent. I.e. people go there to actually become engineers. When I was a TA at MIT all the engineering majors planned to work in finance or IP law.
    • sanj 17y ago
      When were you there? All my cohorts from MIT are building stuff: robots, companies, cars, batteries...
      • menloparkbum 17y ago
        2000. There were tons of people building stuff but still something like 40% of them went into Finance. I was TAing in EECS and almost everyone wanted to work on wall street. It looks like it's trended down a bit but still 29% of MIT grads go into finance. Also 13% go into "consulting" and 3 of the top 5 employers are McKinsey, BCG and Booz-Allen. http://web.mit.edu/facts/graduation.html http://web.mit.edu/facts/graduation.html
• spoondan 17y ago
  Elite schools have renowned faculty, great facilities, lots of money, and a focus on research. Consequently, the curricula are better; the research opportunities more numerous and varied; the expectations greater. These institutions have the capacity to engage and challenge their best students. And they have the reputations to attract the top students from around the world, where they meet, compete, and collaborate. I think this environment enhances the likelihood of innovation through sudden insight. Another possible mechanism for innovation is through gradual refinement leading to a breakthrough. Well-funded, research-oriented institutions are in the best position to fund this kind of incremental research.