5 ms·

While I was in college, I was put on a committee to choose a new Director of Admissions. One of the internal candidates said during his interview: "There is a g

by zt 13y ago

While I was in college, I was put on a committee to choose a new Director of Admissions. One of the internal candidates said during his interview: "There is a good reason that everyone who is accepted gets in, but there is not a good reason why people are rejected." It many ways that seems obvious. To get in you have to have something going for you. To not get in you don't have to do anything wrong, you just have to not have a thing that does get you in. It would be just as hard for my college to write high school seniors a letter saying, well, you were 2nd in your class and had a 1500 but noting stood out as would be for YC to write people direct feedback at scale. What would it really mean? How do you action that? No special sauce isn't really feedback. You can't point to anything wrong other than you can't point to anything great. This has proven true for me in the admissions processes I've gone through on the other side: whether at a consulting firm, or Stripe, or Standard Treasury, or Echoing Green (I read semi-finalist apps). Most people self-select to apply for good and just reasons but some people really excite you and some people don't. Some people just have that something special, and the people who don't don't really have anything wrong with them. So to me this commentary rings true and is honestly put.

adamzerner 13y ago
> "There is a good reason that everyone who is accepted gets in, but there is not a good reasons why people are rejected." Yes there is - because they aren't the best of the best. I don't see a reason to sugar-coat it. Being rejected means that YC doesn't think that you're one of the 50 or so best startups who applied. Nothing more, and nothing less.
- zt 13y ago
  Sure. I'd agree with that I guess. The counterfactual theory is that YC has something to tell you -- but that suggests there is something to improve per se. But that's not quite right. It's not that you did something wrong it's that you didn't have quite the elements to be right.
- ewoodrich 13y ago
  > I don't see a reason to sugar-coat it. Being rejected means that YC doesn't think that you're one of the 50 or so best startups who applied. Nothing more, and nothing less. True, but that's sort of ex post facto justification. Theoretically, ten startups could apply and objectively be equally qualified, but YC may still pick only one. The key is that without completely exhaustive criteria for admission (which would not be practical), it's impossible to determine what defines "best" and how to become one of the "best".
- dhaivatpandya 13y ago
  That's not necessarily the case. That's assuming that the admissions process is perfect, which I do not think anyone at YC or any university would even propose.
  - adamzerner 13y ago
    I wasn't assuming that. I was saying that it means that they don't think that you're one of the top 50 or so startups that applied. All of the information you need is contained in that above statement. All of this advice is basically just saying, "interpret that above statement literally, and don't make any false inferences from it".
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - kenjackson 13y ago
      Not necessarily. I could imagine that YC may fill slots. They have two enterprise security companies and the third best may rank really high, but they don't want to spread themselves thin in this space. Likewise they may pick an augmented reality company that ranks at 100, but they are interested in diversifying to this address.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  No, it might as well mean (and I believe it does) that the difference between the 50th and 51st place is so small that it's either below sampling error or just plain not worth spending time on. It's the "I'm sorry, you're both equally good, but we had to pick one" situation. I'm pretty sure pg wrote about it at least twice (once wrt. college admissions, and once wrt. startups applying to YC). EDIT: This [0] explains it nicely. Put yourself in the position of someone selecting players for a national team. Suppose for the sake of simplicity that this is a game with no positions, and that you have to select 20 players. There will be a few stars who clearly should make the team, and many players who clearly shouldn't. The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the borderline cases. Suppose you screw up and underestimate the 20th best player, causing him not to make the team, and his place to be taken by the 21st best. You've still picked a good team. If the players have the usual distribution of ability, the 21st best player will be only slightly worse than the 20th best. Probably the difference between them will be less than the measurement error. The 20th best player may feel he has been misjudged. But your goal here wasn't to provide a service estimating people's ability. It was to pick a team, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the measurement error, you've still done that optimally. [0] - http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html
  - adamzerner 13y ago
    I guess that for those couple of border cases, it's true that there wasn't a "good reason" why they were denied. But for the majority of applicants, there is a good reason - because YC didn't think that you were one of the 50 or so best startups. This doesn't mean that being denied means that you're not smart or dedicated or that your startup is bad. It just means that they didn't think it was one of the 50 best they received.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  You're assuming (or implying) that there's some canonical scale of quality, that it's absolute, and that it can be perfectly determined. None of these are true. There is, frequently, a probabilistic scale of quality -- there are works or instances which will, generally, be considered "good" and some which are considered "bad", and, say in an iterated experiment model you'll generally come to at least some level of agreement as to what's what. Sometimes there are even very clear winners and losers. But there's a hell of a lot of variance. There are things which people, often many people, like, often a lot, which others simply despise. I am, for example, not a fan of rap, hip-hop, house, and similar music. I really like Beethoven's late string quartets. I'm aware that by popular vote my preferences are likely unpopular. And even where there is widespread agreement after the fact on something, experts in the field may not come to agreement. The Beatles were panned by several early music critics and record labels. Rob Malda's initial review of a new cellphone was less than whelmed. Oh yeah, it was called the "iPhone", you may have heard of it. Tests for categories as seemingly refined as classical music performance -- both auditions of performers, and trials of classic vs. modern instruments, and fine wines, show that there are huge differences in non-blinded vs. blind trials (for music), and that wine experts are incredibly unreliable in how they grade, or even describe the qualities of, wines. Though this does make for an entertaining way to spend an afternoon or evening with friends. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Blind-Auditions-Putting-Discrimination-on-2855410.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Blind-Auditions-Putti... http://freakonomics.com/2010/12/16/freakonomics-radio-do-more-expensive-wines-taste-better/ http://freakonomics.com/2010/12/16/freakonomics-radio-do-mor... In another interesting study, unreleased music was introduced to several different "worlds" of test subjects -- within a world the experiences were shared, but not between them. The result was that, from the same starting selection, different "hits" were selected by each. http://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-because-its-good-right http://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-... And that's the whole point. In any competitive selections process, especially where there are far more qualified applicants than there are positions, there will be many qualified applicants who aren't admitted. The reasons for denial will vary, but ultimately the selectors must adopt some arbitrary mechanism. Lottery would probably be the fairest, say, by assigning a rough percentile ranking to each candidate (perhaps by decile), selecting all within the top category (the clear winners), none below some cutoff, and a random selection within the grey range. More often culture, bias, hubris, or other factors will lead to other bases for decision. But thinking you can, perfectly and without error, assess the quality of something as both nuanced and capricious as the possible value of a technology start-up concept based on a few brief exposures is really pretty arrogant. And all but certainly wrong.
- chc 13y ago
  Which is it: Are they not the best of the best, or has YC's pseudorandom "probability the X is the in the top 50" function just not worked out in their favor this time?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yuhong 13y ago
This is part of the reason why I don't really like anti-discrimination laws.
- durbin 13y ago
  Whether there are laws in place or not, at times it is much smarter to pick the candidate with lesser credentials that has higher upside potential. In sports the intelligent teams don't draft the guys that have the best statistics right now. They draft the people that they can train to be the best. Its the same with schools. If someone went to a nice school and had better credentials than someone that went to a bad school with bad teachers, the latter student is the one that the schools very well should take because with the proper training they will be superior in the long run, even if they aren't currently.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Doesn't make these laws any less flawed, of course.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I'm not following your reasoning here. Care to explain?
- normloman 13y ago
  Being forbidden from discriminating based on people's race, gender, sexual orientation, etc does not restrict you from rejecting candidates with poor credentials. I really don't see your point here.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - yuhong 13y ago
    The problem is related to proving whether discrimination exists or not.
  - lexcorvus 13y ago
pdenya 13y ago
It's interesting that you've always found yourself having too many good candidates, it doesn't seem like a common problem.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
For a few years I worked as programming director for a local film festival, selecting and scheduling all the films. And I've helped a friend who selects films for a very large film festival, serving as a sort of first-line screener for him, pulling out the worst so he didn't waste time on them. Even with our local (L.A.) film festival, we had a ton of submissions. I could cut 80-90% of them very easily. They just weren't very good. We got a lot of submissions that simply weren't competent, they had multiple fundamental flaws. There's always a few that are easy calls. Very good work, and you know you can build a night around them. Then there's some that are obviously good enough to screen, if not to be the keystones. Then there's the borderliners, and that's where you spend all your time. Trying to make those choices. Sometimes it literally comes down to how long a movie is and if it will fit in the slot you have to fill. Sometimes it's how a given movie will play off the others you've decided on already. It's not completely "fair", but it's how it is sometimes. But you know, even those awful films (and some of them are really awful, worse than you've ever seen)... They represent a massive amount of work. And perseverance. And dreaming. And I always respected that, and it sucked to reject even the worst. These were people who DID something with their time, and I hated hated hated sending the rejection emails. Even the worst filmmakers deserved some respect for having actually done it. It's important to separate the work from the person who did it. The person who did it almost always deserves respect and admiration.
- triplesec 13y ago
  Sorry, stupid mobile accidental down vote
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
    At least you gave a specific reason.
- LanceH 13y ago
  I feel this way when I walk past a store that I know is going to fail. Someone threw all their savings and hard work into setting up a place on something they find fashionable, but I can just tell that it's only their personal preference. Very rarely I've been wrong and this makes me happy even if I think the store is ridiculous.
theorique 13y ago
"There is a good reason that everyone who is accepted gets in, but there is not a good reason why people are rejected." It could simply be something like: "we already reached our capacity with 'definite yes' and 'yes', and there wasn't room". Nothing specifically wrong with the application, just not as obviously strong as the ones accepted.

by zt 13y ago

adamzerner 13y ago

> "There is a good reason that everyone who is accepted gets in, but there is not a good reasons why people are rejected." Yes there is - because they aren't the best of the best. I don't see a reason to sugar-coat it. Being rejected means that YC doesn't think that you're one of the 50 or so best startups who applied. Nothing more, and nothing less.

zt 13y ago
Sure. I'd agree with that I guess. The counterfactual theory is that YC has something to tell you -- but that suggests there is something to improve per se. But that's not quite right. It's not that you did something wrong it's that you didn't have quite the elements to be right.
ewoodrich 13y ago
> I don't see a reason to sugar-coat it. Being rejected means that YC doesn't think that you're one of the 50 or so best startups who applied. Nothing more, and nothing less. True, but that's sort of ex post facto justification. Theoretically, ten startups could apply and objectively be equally qualified, but YC may still pick only one. The key is that without completely exhaustive criteria for admission (which would not be practical), it's impossible to determine what defines "best" and how to become one of the "best".
dhaivatpandya 13y ago
That's not necessarily the case. That's assuming that the admissions process is perfect, which I do not think anyone at YC or any university would even propose.
- adamzerner 13y ago
  I wasn't assuming that. I was saying that it means that they don't think that you're one of the top 50 or so startups that applied. All of the information you need is contained in that above statement. All of this advice is basically just saying, "interpret that above statement literally, and don't make any false inferences from it".
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - kenjackson 13y ago
    Not necessarily. I could imagine that YC may fill slots. They have two enterprise security companies and the third best may rank really high, but they don't want to spread themselves thin in this space. Likewise they may pick an augmented reality company that ranks at 100, but they are interested in diversifying to this address.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
No, it might as well mean (and I believe it does) that the difference between the 50th and 51st place is so small that it's either below sampling error or just plain not worth spending time on. It's the "I'm sorry, you're both equally good, but we had to pick one" situation. I'm pretty sure pg wrote about it at least twice (once wrt. college admissions, and once wrt. startups applying to YC). EDIT: This [0] explains it nicely. Put yourself in the position of someone selecting players for a national team. Suppose for the sake of simplicity that this is a game with no positions, and that you have to select 20 players. There will be a few stars who clearly should make the team, and many players who clearly shouldn't. The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the borderline cases. Suppose you screw up and underestimate the 20th best player, causing him not to make the team, and his place to be taken by the 21st best. You've still picked a good team. If the players have the usual distribution of ability, the 21st best player will be only slightly worse than the 20th best. Probably the difference between them will be less than the measurement error. The 20th best player may feel he has been misjudged. But your goal here wasn't to provide a service estimating people's ability. It was to pick a team, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the measurement error, you've still done that optimally. [0] - http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html
- adamzerner 13y ago
  I guess that for those couple of border cases, it's true that there wasn't a "good reason" why they were denied. But for the majority of applicants, there is a good reason - because YC didn't think that you were one of the 50 or so best startups. This doesn't mean that being denied means that you're not smart or dedicated or that your startup is bad. It just means that they didn't think it was one of the 50 best they received.
dredmorbius 13y ago
You're assuming (or implying) that there's some canonical scale of quality, that it's absolute, and that it can be perfectly determined. None of these are true. There is, frequently, a probabilistic scale of quality -- there are works or instances which will, generally, be considered "good" and some which are considered "bad", and, say in an iterated experiment model you'll generally come to at least some level of agreement as to what's what. Sometimes there are even very clear winners and losers. But there's a hell of a lot of variance. There are things which people, often many people, like, often a lot, which others simply despise. I am, for example, not a fan of rap, hip-hop, house, and similar music. I really like Beethoven's late string quartets. I'm aware that by popular vote my preferences are likely unpopular. And even where there is widespread agreement after the fact on something, experts in the field may not come to agreement. The Beatles were panned by several early music critics and record labels. Rob Malda's initial review of a new cellphone was less than whelmed. Oh yeah, it was called the "iPhone", you may have heard of it. Tests for categories as seemingly refined as classical music performance -- both auditions of performers, and trials of classic vs. modern instruments, and fine wines, show that there are huge differences in non-blinded vs. blind trials (for music), and that wine experts are incredibly unreliable in how they grade, or even describe the qualities of, wines. Though this does make for an entertaining way to spend an afternoon or evening with friends. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Blind-Auditions-Putting-Discrimination-on-2855410.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Blind-Auditions-Putti... http://freakonomics.com/2010/12/16/freakonomics-radio-do-more-expensive-wines-taste-better/ http://freakonomics.com/2010/12/16/freakonomics-radio-do-mor... In another interesting study, unreleased music was introduced to several different "worlds" of test subjects -- within a world the experiences were shared, but not between them. The result was that, from the same starting selection, different "hits" were selected by each. http://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-because-its-good-right http://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-... And that's the whole point. In any competitive selections process, especially where there are far more qualified applicants than there are positions, there will be many qualified applicants who aren't admitted. The reasons for denial will vary, but ultimately the selectors must adopt some arbitrary mechanism. Lottery would probably be the fairest, say, by assigning a rough percentile ranking to each candidate (perhaps by decile), selecting all within the top category (the clear winners), none below some cutoff, and a random selection within the grey range. More often culture, bias, hubris, or other factors will lead to other bases for decision. But thinking you can, perfectly and without error, assess the quality of something as both nuanced and capricious as the possible value of a technology start-up concept based on a few brief exposures is really pretty arrogant. And all but certainly wrong.
chc 13y ago
Which is it: Are they not the best of the best, or has YC's pseudorandom "probability the X is the in the top 50" function just not worked out in their favor this time?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yuhong 13y ago

This is part of the reason why I don't really like anti-discrimination laws.

durbin 13y ago
Whether there are laws in place or not, at times it is much smarter to pick the candidate with lesser credentials that has higher upside potential. In sports the intelligent teams don't draft the guys that have the best statistics right now. They draft the people that they can train to be the best. Its the same with schools. If someone went to a nice school and had better credentials than someone that went to a bad school with bad teachers, the latter student is the one that the schools very well should take because with the proper training they will be superior in the long run, even if they aren't currently.
- yuhong 13y ago
  Doesn't make these laws any less flawed, of course.
dredmorbius 13y ago
I'm not following your reasoning here. Care to explain?
normloman 13y ago
Being forbidden from discriminating based on people's race, gender, sexual orientation, etc does not restrict you from rejecting candidates with poor credentials. I really don't see your point here.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- yuhong 13y ago
  The problem is related to proving whether discrimination exists or not.
- lexcorvus 13y ago

pdenya 13y ago

It's interesting that you've always found yourself having too many good candidates, it doesn't seem like a common problem.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

For a few years I worked as programming director for a local film festival, selecting and scheduling all the films. And I've helped a friend who selects films for a very large film festival, serving as a sort of first-line screener for him, pulling out the worst so he didn't waste time on them. Even with our local (L.A.) film festival, we had a ton of submissions. I could cut 80-90% of them very easily. They just weren't very good. We got a lot of submissions that simply weren't competent, they had multiple fundamental flaws. There's always a few that are easy calls. Very good work, and you know you can build a night around them. Then there's some that are obviously good enough to screen, if not to be the keystones. Then there's the borderliners, and that's where you spend all your time. Trying to make those choices. Sometimes it literally comes down to how long a movie is and if it will fit in the slot you have to fill. Sometimes it's how a given movie will play off the others you've decided on already. It's not completely "fair", but it's how it is sometimes. But you know, even those awful films (and some of them are really awful, worse than you've ever seen)... They represent a massive amount of work. And perseverance. And dreaming. And I always respected that, and it sucked to reject even the worst. These were people who DID something with their time, and I hated hated hated sending the rejection emails. Even the worst filmmakers deserved some respect for having actually done it. It's important to separate the work from the person who did it. The person who did it almost always deserves respect and admiration.

triplesec 13y ago
Sorry, stupid mobile accidental down vote
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
  At least you gave a specific reason.
LanceH 13y ago
I feel this way when I walk past a store that I know is going to fail. Someone threw all their savings and hard work into setting up a place on something they find fashionable, but I can just tell that it's only their personal preference. Very rarely I've been wrong and this makes me happy even if I think the store is ridiculous.

theorique 13y ago

"There is a good reason that everyone who is accepted gets in, but there is not a good reason why people are rejected." It could simply be something like: "we already reached our capacity with 'definite yes' and 'yes', and there wasn't room". Nothing specifically wrong with the application, just not as obviously strong as the ones accepted.