DISQUS

Mitchell Silverman · 2 years ago

I'll echo some of the thoughts already posted and your own words back at you by paraphrasing one of the best things you ever wrote. 1. Learn how to work on something hard. 2. Do something you love. 3. Find the smartest people you can who already do 1 and 2 hang out with them - they will drag you along in their wake.
In elite schools it may be marginally easier to find those people - if you look for it. But having gone to a 3rd tier school and finding it hasn't had much impact on my career after the first job out of school, and sending my daughter to a private collage I can only hope there is a reason I'm paying all that money.

For the record, I constantly use that advice as a mantra, as I watch my daughter study ancient Greek for the sheer love of the poetry of the language. I know learning a language made your list of easy - not hard. But I'll amend that - learning a language - easy - learning it well enough to truly appreciate and understand the poetry of the language - hard.

Dan · 2 years ago

Finally! I've been suspecting this since I started college, and it's great to hear that someone agree with me.

I worked as an intern at a big tech company this summer, and I met a lot of really competent interns from a lot of not-so-big-name schools. And the ones that are from the big name schools, aren't any better at their jobs. In fact, the ones I met from MIT seemed to be really good at the type of stuff that would get you into MIT, but no better at real world work.

One thing that you didn't quite hit on, though, is that not only are the professors at the lower ranked schools just as good (or really close to just as good), but also that they're more accessible. Everyone and their brother does a UROP at MIT, but at the school I go to, it seems to be more like 1 in 20 that's interested in undergraduate research. As a result, every time I looked for someone to sponsor me, I found almost every professor I talked to willing, including the ones that are at the front of their fields.

anon · 2 years ago

A friend at McKinsey Consulting said they hire Ivy Leaguers and other academic overachievers because they are more docile.

simon · 2 years ago

footnote #2 is exactly the same problem google faces.. and microsoft took that ball and ran head first into a wall.. now we pay for it with vista.. the worst thing about microsoft is its inability to get stuff done without billg at the helm..

case in point.. the founders of google even brag about not being qualified to get in today..

jt · 2 years ago

What I love the most about you, Paul: it's not On Lisp (which I love). It's when you use that analytical mind of yours to discover the hidden patterns in society. And, somehow, you always seem to touch a deep humane chord. You are one no-nonsense guy. And what's better: what you write comes from experience and facts.

The stuff you write is very intelectual stimulating and nurturing.

Kirby · 2 years ago

Yes, this is very much true. I got a CS degree from Oregon State, and later worked alongside recent Berkeley and Cal Tech graduates, and there was virtually no discernible difference in curriculum. And no real difference in ability. I was at the top of my class at OSU, and maybe I'd have been more typical at Berkeley, but that's precisely Graham's point anyway - Berkeley kids are more likely to be awesome, ie, a safer bet, but the smart kids at OSU are no different than the smart kids at Berkeley.

I'm not sure my advice would go both ways, though. While _employers_ are wise to mostly ignore school prestige, my friends who went to tech havens came out with much broader networks of people who were smart and respected them. This is valuable. In Graham's world, I'd say you're more likely to find your startup partner at Stanford than at Washington State. But that's a very different value than thinking you're getting a better education.

johnsonmx · 2 years ago

The most important part of getting into a top-tier school is that it implies that you can get into a top-tier school.

vipul · 2 years ago

Paul i am from india, and the story is same here too. However i do agree that guys at good colleges get great labs, great teachers and tonnes of books and a security that they will always earn, so they are definitely bound to succeed, so they are not to blame. But that does not mean that "He is the one". The problem is that everyone wants to play safe, so recruiters always put their money on a horse from a known stable... and that makes it more easy for these guys to get jobs and earn much more... and maintain a better success score, but there will always be a Microsoft after IBM... Its the same divide... rich and poor, black and white... but the web is bridging it.
Deregulation in power led to governments, Deregulation in finance led to bourses and securities, Deregulation in business led to globalization, deregulation in VC funding will lead to ... you guys decide.

Aaaksh · 2 years ago

I am aakash bansal from India , recently joined a start up in gurgaon . WWW.IXIGO.COM . I am a B.Tech. from IIT Delhi in chemical engg. 2005 . Vipul I agree with you . Success is not a matter of good college or good academics. I believe that two success stroy are not necessarily similar although they can share few commonalities. and good college is not one among those

Aristotle Pagaltzis · 2 years ago

This is old news indeed. It goes back at least to the middle of the 18th century, when Edward Gibbon said:

“The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.”

It was true then, and it’s true now. I’m not sure what makes people cling to the idea of silver bullets in any form. They don’t exist.

paulgraham · 2 years ago

That is a great quote; thanks.

Anonymous · 2 years ago

At Google HR, schools are ranked into several tiers. Tier 1 is Harvard, Stanford, the Ivy Leagues, ETH, Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, and it goes downhill from there.

The tiers of the school(s) you went to is a significant influence on the hiring decision. I've seen quite a few candidates with good interview scores get turned down. This is also the reason why the average PR or Marketing girl or guy at Google has an American History degree from Harvard.

I believe this metric is flawed and hope this will one day bite them in the ass. Thanks, Paul, for supplying the evidence.

paulgraham · 2 years ago

That's actually very encouraging to hear. Google is one of YC's biggest competitors for people.

Anonymous · 2 years ago

That can vary by position at Google. I'm on an Engineering hiring council and what school a candidate went to is close to irrelevant for us.

Art Swanson · 2 years ago

Paul,

If they choose working for somebody as a cube drone, however pampered, over doing a startup, you don't want them anyway. GOOG is doing you a favor.

Breck · 2 years ago

-- Thanks, Paul, for supplying the evidence.

I may feel like an idiot if someone points this out to me, but I didn't see any evidence?

Paul, would you be willing to provide some real numbers? I think this could make for a very interesting news story if this trend were more than anecdotal. I could see how this information could be sensitive or proprietary though, so if you don't want to publish no problem.

If you wanted someone who could spend the time running a few tests on your dataset I'd be happy to volunteer.

With or without numbers, it's obviously a topic that has created a lot of discussion.

Ron Lovejoy · 2 years ago

Robert A. Heinlein wrote about much the same thing some 25 years ago; the essay appears in his collection "Expanded Universe".

Essentially, Mr. Heinlein said that it is possible to get a fine liberal arts education at virtually any college in the United States, regardless of size, tuition cost, or eminence of faculty, so long as the student is motivated to learn. Every college is going to have at least a few committed scholars that an ambitious student should seek out. I am certain that this is as true today as it was in 1979, when he wrote the essay.

Jay81 · 2 years ago

I just wanted to tell everyone that this is true even in the developing world.

My college in India is supposed to be in the cadre of just less than the haloed 'IIT's. To give the credentials, both Microsoft India and Google India consistently hire from the campus.

I managed to sleep walk through four years of my engg with the only great thing being the less than five great friends I have made. I admire them and they always keep a very healthy pressure on me to not fall much behind them in my career or life. Sort of gives me a baseline.

But I should admit that the chances of meeting guys like this would have been much higher in the IITs and would be close to non-existent in some neighborhood colleges.

So, I think, it boils down to the fact that it is still good to go to a 'higher rated' college but just that you should remember that it really has a minuscule impact on the larger scheme of things.

ken · 2 years ago

Another way to derive the same result: ask somebody who went to an elite college if they would hire all of their classmates. Answer: hell no, most of them are morons.

Andrew · 1 year ago

It's not just that it's hard to judge people when they're 17 - private schools give a huge advantage to children of alumni in admissions, so really as an employer you want people who went to Harvard but whose parents did not.

Paul · 2 years ago

The one common trait of highly successful people I know is that they have extraordinary people skills. They also tend to be strong-willed. The have the self-confidence to take significant risks when an opportunity presents itself. These traits are unrelated to the ability to succeed in an academic setting.

Vivek · 2 years ago

Hi Paul,

I have been an avid reader of your essays. This is the first time I feel like there is a definite response required to something understated in this essay.

You did touch on the subject which I want to talk about - peer learning. In my humble opinion, it wouldn't be just a handful of "smart" friends, but a whole lot of smart people around who provide an environment conducive for growth. Growth - in terms of knowledge or aspirations or ambitions. It just seems to open up new horizons for an individual - just being at the correct place. I am not saying that they are definitely better than others. However, a median or average guy could be termed better. Plus these people have worked hard to get through a good college - shows their grit and determination. So, in all fairness, why not give them a preference over regular people?

Another factor I feel missing, though not very important to this argument is "Network". Most of the Ivy leaguers get higher up in the management of large organizations a few years later. Although he/she may not be the greatest bet, what is brought to the table is the value of the peer network whose members are again at the higher levels in other organizations hierarchy. This may/can definitely convert to something for an organization who hires such a person.

Regards,
Vivek
Mumbai (India)

admin · 2 years ago

Not only do I agree, but here is a blog post from a financially-independent woman who goes even further in this discussion:
http://www.violentacres.com/archives/235/

Keck · 2 years ago

Is this really equally true of all schools, though? On opening day at CMU, the freshman Computer Science class sits down in a lecture hall, and is given this message:

"Look at the person on you left. Look at the person on your right. Look at yourself. Odds are, one of the three of you will not graduate from this program."

That's right, they have a roughly 70% graduation rate, in the CS program. For which they are perpetually dinged in the US News rankings, which favors schools with 100% graduation rates. You're right that admissions is not a very good screening process, but at some schools getting in does not almost automatically entitle you to a diploma after four years. It would be very interesting to see whether you could find more of a correlation of competence to low graduation rates, than to US News ranking, of your entrepreneurs' alma maters.

Ben · 2 years ago

I've always been amazed at the significant difference in quality, attitute, and performance of students from "elite" schools versus those who are naturally high performers regardless of their university. I have family who have gone to every one of the elites, either up to an MBA or in post-doc in engineering/science, and all have commented about the lack of academic quality of these institutions.

Having interviewed and worked along side people from these schools, most have worked fewer hours than their peers, get less done at lower quality, and have attitude problems. On the other hand, I have had very good expierence with people who went to pure engineering schools, whether in the United States, Russia, or India.

I never quite understood why the elites had such poor quality graduates until a colleage told me about the "Harvard Jew Crisis".

Keith · 2 years ago

umm... What's the "Harvard Jew Crisis"?

Andrew · 2 years ago

Paul, I think you did measure something mostly specific to your business. The problem is that most jobs NEVER measure your performance or capability really well.

Most corporations use the same kind of judgements that the colleges originally did.

I do agree that the education you get will be about the same regardless of which univeristy you go to, but that is NOT why you go to College.

Most people go to college to get CERTIFIED and to meet people. The better a certification leads to a better first job, and then your alumni network is also better, because most of the alumni got better first jobs, etc. etc.

End result, if you work in the coporate world, as opposed to for yourself, at all times you end up being better equiped to find a better job.

Better jobs give more opportunity to advance and more oppotunity to learn.

I would say that for any corporate job, Yale/Harvard/Stanford/MIT are all a huge help.

But I do agree that the education is basically the same.

E.C. Hanson · 2 years ago

Speaking out of complete ignorance here, but might some benefit come from attending a school with an impressive reputation? Just the fact that a school "doesn't take just anybody" can be pretty intimidating. Especially considering the insecurity of most high schoolers, I would imagine that a common thought would be "everybody else here at [reputable school] got here on merit while I BS'd my way in." Add that to the expectations that everyone has set for you based on the fact that you were accepted, and it can really start taking an emotional toll.

My point is that it might say something to an employer that a person got good grades at a school where they were conceivably under a lot more emotional pressure than someone from a less reputable institution.

I realize this is grasping at straws -- and I know it's full of exceptions -- but I think it's worth acknowledging.

ptn · 2 years ago

I think that the college you attended shouldn't matter to the rest of
the world, but it matters to you up to some point. That's because just
like people who are too lazy get expelled halfway through the degree,
people who are lucky enough get away with it without putting in an ounce
of effort.

However, it may be important for yourself what college you choose because, no
matter how poorly handled admissons are, first-class schools are still
pretty selective. Think of it as a pretty high mean with a high standard
deviation too (although in this case the mean is less important). This means
that there's someone that's not as smart as he
he wrote in his papers, but a) he's definately not a dumbass; b) you'll
be able to tell the smart guys apart from this liars because, if you got
in, you're not a dumbass either; and c) there's way more smart guys in
there than this lucky fools.

So, my point is that in first-class colleges you have a not-so-tough
time finding really smart guys to hang with. You are going to find some
at other colleges, but it's going to be harder for sure.

Bob · 2 years ago

This sort of discussion always (without exception) generates a few "college is critical, I went to college and it made me the man I am today" comments, and a few "I didn't learn anything in college - or didn't go at all - and I'ld always employ someone who was self-taught rather than a sheep who went to college."

This only confirms one thing - if you want a job, your best chance of success comes from having the same background as the person who decides who to hire.

And for all the cry-baby whinging in the comments about "corporate sheep", we all seem happy enough to enjoy using computers that are designed and built by those people and are available at a low price (when compared, for example, to a 1980-era mainframe with all the computing power of a 2007-era wristwatch) due to the fact that large companies have economies of scale. If computers were only manufacturered by two guys in a garage who didn't want a big company with sheep doing the work then we wouldn't be here. Entrepreneurs with their startups are often vlaubale and useful, but it's incredibly arrogant to assume that noone else contributes anythign of value to society.

There are a lot of different career paths and what matters for one path is irrelevant for another. Apparantly the noble free-spirited entrepreneurs here are just as capable as the corporate 9-5 office workers when it comes to insulting people for their career choice.

chrisff · 2 years ago

What's so important about college? I got a BS at a top 5 Electrical Eng school, then went into software for the past 15 years (including silicon valley startups). I learned more applicable knowledge in the first 3 months on my first job than I did in all my engineering and CS classes.

When I'm hiring software people, I choose someone that is self-taught or employer taught over college educated (assuming all other traits being equal). Success in school (just like IQ) is no indicator for how effective someone will be in a startup (or any job). Being a self-starter and overcoming the prejudice of the incestuous education cartel are traits that are directly applicable in the startup world.

alfred bythonsonf · 2 years ago

Perhaps Y Combinator wish to make us believe that
it is the new way to success. In order to do so, first step
is to claim Universities are no use.

Another idea: Success in Y Combinator is not an indicator of
anything else. Why you give all the credit to such success and
not to a good University education?

P · 2 years ago

Paul,
I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. The opening statement is that "It may not matter all that much where you go to college." In the essay, you make a different point, that where you went to college is not strongly correlated with aptitude. While I couldnt agree more with the latter statement (being a harvard grad myself, I can say with certainty that many of my current colleagues from lesser known schools have greater aptitude than most of the harvard population), I grudgingly have to take the stance that where you go to college does matter. Not if you're going to start your own company (the sample set relevant to you), but if you were to look at a long term career that did not involve starting one's own company, I think you would find that where you went to college has an inordinate impact on where you get hired and in what positions. Recruiters unfortunately use college as a criterion for selecting who gets interviewed (as you acknowledge). Some top firms in various fields (including software firms) recruit actively only at a select number of schools. That being the case, where you go to college _does_ matter, not because it means you have a greater aptitude, but because it greatly improves your chance of getting to interview for the most interesting jobs.

john · 2 years ago

So many hidden assumptions. You say very early in this essay, "a startup succeeds or fails depending almost entirely on the efforts of the founders." If this is so true, why are you wasting your breath on the rest of the article? This one statement pretty much renders uninteresting hypotheticals like "success depends on quality of school" or "success depends on smartness of the entrepreneur," or "there is a relationship between the quality of the school and the smartness of the entrepreneur."

If you framed your article positively instead of negatively, you'd ask: "How can I detect people who will exercise a great effort," or, "how can I grade schools based on the likelihood that their graduates will exert a great amount of effort?" Indeed, this latter question might be a better index of college quality in the first place, and then it would turn out that the criteria for startup success match the criteria for college quality.

Greg · 2 years ago

This is all fine and dandy, but I cannot think of a downside of going to an elite college like Harvard or MIT. Although I know many tools who walk around dropping their H-bomb, I've never once regretted it. If your high school efforts to get accepted to a top school are going to scar you for life, then relax a bit. Otherwise, work your hardest and get there.

spqr · 2 years ago

"If your high school efforts to get accepted to a top school are going to scar you for life, then relax a bit."

It's the truth. Getting into these places can be scarring.

At one point I had to choose between boxing, for personal defense against fellow students, and avoiding B's. I chose to avoid B's.

mtraven · 2 years ago

MIT Tuition: $33,600
UC Berkeley Tuition: $4200 (in-state) $14,000 (out-of-state)

I'm guessing your parents financed your education.

simon · 2 years ago

I was at breakfast in LA and some people were talking about their kid and how the kindergarten they send them to costs $26k a year.

Unrelated... I also saw Gov. Schwartzneggar there too drinking espresso.

Jim Lippard · 2 years ago

Tom W. Bell has reverse-engineered the U.S. News & World Report rankings for law schools, including hypothesizing ways that law schools could hack their ranking under its new measure of "employed at 9 months after graduation":

http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/07/model-o...
http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/08/ranking...
http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/08/hacking...

tywhite · 2 years ago

I am a recent graduate of Davidson College (#9 in US News Liberal Arts rankings) and I have to say I agree with at least 90% of what you've said here. While on a whole the student body was "smart," in that they did well on standardized tests and worked very hard, few of them were critical or creative enough thinkers to make it in an entrepreneurial environment. But, man, would they ever make great sheep in a corporate flock! I think there is much more to be said for independent evaluations of creative thinking and work-ethic, culminating in an overall "drive" than can be derived from college applications.
My two points of contention:
-I think there is some merit in the US News rankings--perhaps not exactly as they are, but I think there are definitely differentiators (among students, facilities, and alumni) that allow some colleges to be ranked "above" others.
-I also disagree with your statement that going to an elite institution automatically makes you feel more confident. Perhaps Harvard does, but go half a step down to some of the "New Ivies" like Davidson and you'll find evidence of grade deflation and aggregious workloads--certainly not confidence-inspiring. I came out of school having walked-on and played four years of Division I athletics, while maintaining above a 3.0 gpa, and yet my tail was between my legs. Why? Because I knew I had no immediately marketable skills (an argument for the rethinking of liberal arts education) and I knew I didn't want to be a corporate sheep. After applying for over 200 jobs (I posted the rejection letters on my apartment wall as motivation), I was jobless. I've since been lucky enough to be a part of a start-up, but that's neither here nor there.
At any rate, my question back to you is: what do you want done about this? Is this written merely as a warning to other hiring managers to look deeper than the institution name? Or is this actually a call for change somehow?

Skevimc · 2 years ago

@ TyWhite

I think you are proving his point concerning the college rankings. As you point out, Davidson is ranked 9th for Liberal Arts. I went to Western Carolina, and also played Division I sports all four years, as did my wife. I got a job almost immediately after school, and my wife had several offers to graduate school. We then both got our PhD's and now have very good post-doc positions. So in this instance, you going a #9 school and me going to a lesser ranked school, was no indication of future success.

I also think it's hysterical that you are calling Davidson a "New Ivies". I have yet to meet (in person or online like this) a Davidson alum that did not come across as arrogant and elitist. Thanks for continuing the Davidson tradition.

Stomper · 2 years ago

But your investment model sounds pretty rare. Most people ARE impressed (or, as you suggest, comfortable) with the big name schools. A fancy school on the resume opens more doors and functions as a marketing tool for your employer.

It's like knowing how to dress for success. That only matters because the conventional wisdom SAYS it matters. But because the conventional wisdom is so widespread, it really, truly DOES matter.

Don't forget, most people aren't entrepreneurs. Large law firms or corporations are still looking for someone who will be a good cog in the machine, and look good in the marketing materials. For the people following this route, "good" schools are still important.

--Stomper

paulgraham · 2 years ago

Rare now, but the vector is clearly pointing to a world where people are rewarded based mostly on measured performance.

Alexei Andreev · 2 years ago

I'll agree that to you and to Y Combinator it shouldn't matter where the applicants are from. As long as they are "smart and get things done", you've got a good deal.
However, to students in universities it matters a great deal where they go. I went to Western Illinois University for two years. It's a good university, but it's for...normal people. I wasn't challenged, I was barely educated. (I had kept myself busy on my own.) The students there just weren't up to par with me on any level. The things I wanted to do, they couldn't even imagine.
This year I transfered to University of Illinois and there is a huge difference. There are a lot more students and their average intelligence is a lot higher than at WIU. There are a lot more clubs with people who are interested in what I am interested, people who can actually do some of the things I can do. If I choose to create a startup, my chances of finding partners here are a huge deal greater than they would have been at WIU.
So, while to you it may not matter where I went, it matters to me.

Che C · 2 years ago

Its amazing. Neither my grandfather (who never graduated 8th grade), my father, or myself went to college. We all had a bit of a complex about it. My grandfather retired as a nasa engineer in the 70's. My father retired in his early 40's after making a LOT of money via franchise. I am a web software developer, and am well along the way to being quite wealthy...

My dad and I often speculate that because the 3 of us didn't get the willingness to fail beat out of us, we have an easier time being successful.

facultywife · 2 years ago

As the wife of a professor in a third tier college, who went to a top tier college, my experience is that even if the professor is plenty smart, and the topics discussed in class are the same, the depth of questions and expectations of independence are different - not because of the professors or your friends, but because of the average level of ability among the students in the class. Professors have to teach to the middle to be effective.

spike · 2 years ago

There are many possible benefits from going to college, and making lots of money is only one of them. People apply their intelligence differently. For your chosen goal, you have a pretty fair experiment. For the world at large, well, it's only one of many possible outcomes. That said, I'm quite pleased to see someone tackling this subject; I've long suspected that the conventional ranking of colleges are somewhat irrelevant. I keep thinking of my father, who was a successful businessman and had only an 8th-grade education. There's another experiment: college vs. no college.

Peter · 2 years ago

The problem you're running into is observation error. If you read Joel on Software, he talks about Ph.Ds from top schools being idiots. That is because he only see the Ph.Ds who go work for Microsoft, who are the least competent Ph.Ds (the best ones go into acadamia, and the typical ones will do a startup, go to a industrial research lab, do consulting, or something else). The dumbest MIT Ph.Ds are, indeed, quite dumb. Joel only sees those, and hence his attitude towards dumb Ph.Ds.

You, in contrast, only see graduates who want to do startups. That's people who expect to make more money and have more fun doing a startup (where your pay is based on the value you contribute) than in industry (where your pay is clipped between 50k and 200k, no matter how good you are). That's the top 10% of MIT grads, top 1% of UT/Austin grads, top 0.1% of A&M grads, and top 0.001% of community college grads. Once they've made it past that filter, they're all pretty similar. Indeed, since MIT has a very entrepreneurial environment, there are many role models. At Texas A&M, the barriers to entry to doing a startup are adequately higher that it is likely that the people at A&M who overcome those barriers are, indeed, better than the typical MIT founder.

College admissions, at least at MIT, to a very good job. They look at people in a great amount of depth -- more than most recruiting processes at big companies -- and use things to select people that would be illegal for big companies (such as SAT scores). The average MIT grad is a hell of a lot better than the average UT/Austin grad, who is a hell of a lot better than the average Texas A&M grad, who in turn is a hell of a lot better than the average Austin Community College grad. Nevertheless, all of the above schools have a very high standard deviation. You'll find completely incompetent people at MIT (indeed, MIT likes to take risks on admissions, since graduating a Feynman outweighs graduating a dozen idiots), and brilliant people at community colleges. Once you post-filter those people into bins (Harvard professors, startup founders, etc.), the quality of people in each bin is similar. It's just a question of how many people are in each bin. Indeed, I bet you'll get 10x more applicants from MIT and Stanford than from UT/Austin, even though UT/Austin has many times as many people.

The schools do impact how well a person does, but not to nearly the same extent as the initial admissions process.

paulgraham · 2 years ago

I believe this is true for Microsoft, but I'm pretty sure it's not true on either end for YC. I know we're getting applications from the best hackers at elite schools. And on the other end, I can tell from some of the applications we get that we're not only getting the top fraction from the ones lower down the list.

mikecheponis · 2 years ago

I think you're implying there may be some correlation between being a hacker entrepreneur and attending a specific college. Wanting to change the world and wanting to be a corporate drone are orthogonal desires.

I'm saying that the dot product of kick-ass hacker entrepreneurs and top-college attendees is tiny indeed.
-----
About MIT admissions: yes, they try very hard to select people who will "fit" the MIT experience. I'm an MIT Education Counselor (the "random alum" to which you refer) and we're told to look for qualities that match what MIT wants, like individual initiative and enthusiasm. Based on my own experience of last year, my two admits were not the strongest academically, but they were a better fit for the 'tute.

-----
Mostly, tho, Paul, I think you are reading my mind and then writing fantastic essays like this. How do you do that? ;-)

illuminatedwax · 2 years ago

I did my undergraduate work at University of Chicago and my Master's Degree at University of Illinois at Chicago -- two very different schools. U of C is a classic university, and for them this essay would be quite heretical indeed. UIC, on the other hand, is a commuter school, and offshoot of the University of Illinois. Their job is to graduate kids.

Looking back on my experiences, I believe that going to Harvard or MIT or U of C is actually better for you than going to State U. The reason I believe this is for the same reason that you think startups need to form in places like Silicon Valley: the concentration of bright individuals.

There are two basic advantages that Ivy League campuses have over other schools. First, the atmosphere is more geared toward learning. Everyone there is there to study, not get drunk or play football. At U of C, we had Division III sports and only a very tiny 10% of the campus population were in fraternities/sororities. The culture of the campus is a study culture, and I think this allows you to get more out of your education. Intelligent students flourish in this kind of environment.

Secondly, the connections you make at these universities are huge. Already two of my friends have formed a startup, and another has made some really good connections in the software industry. Even if you are a C student at Yale, the people you know from Yale will offer you more opportunity than at a state school.

It probably does matter less where you go to grad school, as long as the department is rigorous and you aren't trying to become a professor. I got my Master's at UIC, and it was very beneficial for me because as a commuter school, I was focused on my studies, the courses were rigorous enough, and I was able to pick out the one or two professors that would really help me through.

I will say this, though: if your career choice requires it, going to college is absolutely required. If you are intelligent, going to college is essential. I was a very bright kid, but I believe that had I not attended the U of C and grad school after that, I would not have been able to utilize my potential.

justin · 2 years ago

I agree with this. Universities that do active research and have alums in positions of power in the industry will draw people who want to do something. I go to the University of Illinois (Urbana, not Chicago), and the number of people who want to make a real difference in technology is astounding. I can find somebody willing to sit down and hack out a solution to a problem within minutes of identifying the problem. People come here because they can find people who identify, enjoy, and challenge them.

At my summer internships, I've found that people from universities that aren't as active tend to produce students who aren't as active. With a U of I education, you believe you can do the things that blow people away because everybody else believes it. At another university, that might not be true. As with most things, the hardest part of getting something done is starting; a culture of success makes that hurdle a whole lot smaller.

josh weissman · 2 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell has a very interesting essay that parallels yours on college admission.

http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admis...

Nathaniel Manista · 2 years ago

I don't think Gladwell's essay parallels Graham's at all - they are deliciously orthogonal, but for one contradiction: since the Ivy League admissions process nakedly seeks to accept future superstars (based on intangible "force of personality", no matter their academic credentials) and the realm of commercial startups seems to be my generation's most prolific producer of superstars (and one principal reason for this, so frequently cited by Graham and others, is founders' force of personality), why isn't admission to an Ivy League or other elite institution and indicator of increased likelihood to succeed with a startup?

simon · 2 years ago

because it is not true... the argument is that they maintain a brand and mystique... which has a perceived (high) payoff for the admitted that is greater than the cost of admission.
See: http://www.usatoday.com/money/2005-06-06-harvar...

dripfeed · 2 years ago

> It may not matter all that much where you go to college.
The book 'Freakonomics' (Levitt and Dubner) asserts just such a claim, albeit for US schools rather than colleges, a claim supposedly drawn from raw data analysis. The book seeks to overturn conventional wisdoms, academic advantage being one such.

mudge · 2 years ago

Paul, you make a good point about students' job is not to get good grades, but to learn and do. If the real important thing is to learn and do, does it really even matter if a person has gone to college at all? Seems to me like a non-college, self-learned individual might be someone good at start-ups.

paulgraham · 2 years ago

I'd advise anyone who can to at least try college, because you get exposed to such a variety of ideas there.

Justin · 2 years ago

Paul - since you've been through the ranks of higher education, what is your opinion of graduate degrees? Would you get your PhD again, or do you think your time would have been better spent doing something else?

paulgraham · 2 years ago

It varies enormously, not just by university and department, but by advisor. Grad school is heaven for some people and hell for others. It was a mix for me. Hard to say what I would do if I could redo those years.

bouncingsoul · 2 years ago

> I'd advise anyone who can to at least try college, because you get exposed to such a variety of ideas there.

Would any adult advise a young person not to go to college? Probably you're sincere about the exposure to ideas, but is that possibly just a cover for the corporate recruiter's attitude: that it's a safe bet.

If someone goes to college and derives little from it, then it's arguably not a huge loss. But if he skips out and it screws up his life then the person who told him it'd be okay will feel kinda bad.

Does any of that reasoning play into your advice?

simon · 2 years ago

You can't really advise people on such topics beyond the "do what others do".. College is a proven method of success for the majority! It helps and is worth at least $1 million USD more than a high school degree. Plus if you don't know what you want to do it is perfect.. gain valuable skills and also figure yourself out.

The debate to go or not, or to do a startup, has to be a personal decision even though hindsight is 20:20 ..

I know that my ideas have changed significantly since I was in high school. I probably could have started a business then, but it would have been at a different level... examples abound in high technology.. typically the nascent stage beginnings of these things gestate out of universities.
One thing college and grad school provide is access to "problems" .. these are ideas and topics that need to be solved... and if you can solve people's problems you get paid.

If you really want to get involved in a startup go to a university with a TOP rate tech transfer program... and get involved in research.. you don't know how many people need programmers.. EVERYONE does.. you can basically pay your way through college just programming for a professor... even undergrad.. and most definitely at the PhD level.
Not saying it will happen, but these guys are typically golden. These are people that get stuff done.

allrite · 2 years ago

I will assume that you are talking about a person's undergrad school. What are your views about Grad school? Do they matter?

paulgraham · 2 years ago

PhD program admissions are a better indicator, because they're decided by smarter people (professors, not admissions officers), who are highly motivated to choose well (because they'll be stuck with them as grad students) and have more data to choose based on. But even grad school admissions are far from perfect.

David Mercer · 2 years ago

I can neither agree nor disagree with your conclusions, since I am not privy to the data. Are you willing to share your data with us regarding the schools of applicants and their success rates?

nevinera · 2 years ago

It seems true as far as it goes. But your statistics are only about a very select group - people willing to create a startup. Those people are universally *motivated*.

Doing well at an 'elite' school really does take more motivation than doing well at a mediocre school, as a minimum, so using what college a prospect attended to tell whether they meet some minimal standard of applied effort isn't unreasonable.

Evan · 2 years ago

His statistics would seem to consider an even more select group than that.

His sample space is restricted to YC portfolio companies, so even if YC's deal volume is greater than a typical VC, he can only evaluate founders from elite colleges _who opted to let YC invest in them_

Why is this significant?

How do you know, for example, that founders hailing from elite colleges are less likely to take YC money because a) they tend to succeed without venture capital or b) they tend to succeed, but only with bigger seed or series A investment?

Fematronik · 2 years ago

Mr. Graham, your words are always a good start for thinking about how this world turns, and I want to say thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

Bond · 2 years ago

That's Dr. Graham, actually.

Matt · 2 years ago

If you think America is bad for wanting to get into good colleges, you should talk to someone from Hong Kong. There the cycle starts by parents being worried if their child is getting into a good enough pre-school!

Nick · 2 years ago

I think you are absolutely right. But maybe there is a greater potential for learning at Ivy League schools. The typical student might float through a state school and an Ivy League school with similar outcomes, but the particularly interested student has greater access to resources and learning at an Ivy League school (granted this thought is not based on experience).

Cameron Watters · 2 years ago

How about going ahead and making the next logical leap and recognizing that whether or not someone has a degree from ANY college is generally of minimal relevance for many/most of the "smart kids".

While the opportunity to spend 4-5 years and thousands of dollars learning may be optimal for some, capable and motivated "smart kids" sans degree are probably just as productive and effective as those with degrees.

As you said in your last essay, startup success is mostly about not failing. That seems (to me) to be to be as much a function of tenacity and determination as any particular education level.

Granted, there are those who can trot out statistics that will show that those who graduated from college are "better" (for some definition of the word relevant to this discussion) than those who didn't. However, those statistics are usually computed against the entire population, and not the population that I'm addressing. There aren't statistics (that I'm aware of) that measure the "success" of people who fit the profile of a college high-achiever but either left before graduation or skipped college all together.

There are plenty of people who fit this paradigm in the business world today, and are fairly successful. I wonder if they didn't have to waste so much energy convincing hiring managers and recruiters that it really doesn't matter as much as they think it does (particularly for folks with 5+ yrs of experience in the field).

Cameron Watters · 2 years ago

The sentence beginning "I wonder if they didn't have to waste so much energy" should have read:

"I wonder if there wouldn't be more of them if they didn't have to waste so much energy..."

dp · 2 years ago

Yeah, but what about the potential to make connections? Won't that be higher at a more prestigious school? How many violinists in the NYC Philharmonic went to Julliard vs. how many went to some State U?

paulgraham · 2 years ago

See [4].

shiro · 2 years ago

dp's point may lead to a question about the difference of fields; classical music seems to have rather steep curve that a few prestige schools have large influence. It's also the field where they say it really matters whom you've been taught by. In CS, OTOH, you can teach yoursef.

Brian · 2 years ago

Several economists have looked at this question. At both high school and college levels, they have seen no effect of going to a better school on future success (as measured by income, which may not be a good measuring stick, but what have you got). What mattered was being able to *get in*. Students who were able to be accepted to Ivy league schools had higher future incomes than people who were not, but it did not matter whether or not they actually went.

And personally, I went to a fancy liberal arts college as an undergrad, and two state universities later. The 'average' performance of both teachers and students was higher at the undergraduate college, but the 'best' performance of any place was about the same.

Result? Pick your classes, and decide on your priorities.

paulgraham · 2 years ago

Sounds like you mean the 1999 NBER study. They found no advantage of going to a more selective school as measured by SAT scores, but there was an advantage of going to a school rated more selective by Barron's.

henry · 2 years ago

i would argue that people who are in good schools tend to get good stable jobs coming out of school. many of these people may be very well capable or running a start up but why would they? their jobs are well-paying and full of prestige, they have much further to risk by trying to start a new company. a bright capable person who goes to a lesser reputable school may have trouble getting his/her foot in the door and has a lot less to risk starting their own company. let's face it, the person matters more than school, but the school can provide better opportunity, that's why people want to go to these schools.

joeljordan · 2 years ago

It's hard to read all the big-organization conventional wisdom bashing and not wonder if there isn't more to it than general incompetence. The assumption you seem to make about big companies here is that they would be better off if they could hire the smartest go-getters around instead of generally competent, but not exceptionally smart, conformists. In a small company, having a few phenomenal technical wizards on staff will matter a lot, but at a large company, these people will proportionally contribute much less to the end products.
While it seems likely that conservative hiring strategies (industry best practices) will reduce innovation, I don't think large companies are well suited to innovation anyway, preferring short-term profits to long-term growth.
If going to a highly ranked university is at least well-correlated with what companies actually want in employees, then they're right to prefer these schools for hiring.

Wesley · 2 years ago

Your sample set is very small. I don't think I agree with you.

As for myself, I went to undergrad at a crappy state university and then subsequently attended a tier 1 law school (lucked in it seems).

The environment is HUGELY different. It's not subtle at all. Good schools have more determined students. The competition is fierce to the point of absurdity. People are more driven to succeed. Overall, the quality of education is significantly better and elite schools. And overall, your odds of success are much higher.

dipankar · 2 years ago

So many comments, yet no one points out the obvious: your study is at best restricted to measuring the correlation between "effective start-up founder" and "rank of associated university". Are you sure that the qualities that make for a good start-up founder are distributed in the same way as, say, the qualities that make for a good math researcher?

BTW, my biases are in the same direction as your thesis, I just think we should be a tad more careful, no?

It's a somewhat facile observation to note that you "see smart people everywhere" (check out Carole Dweck's work, for just one data point). Interesting that you're confirming this well-known (even if heretical to the US News & World Report crowd) fact in the context of software start-up founders (or maybe just those would-be founders who think that your particular brand of VC company is the one to go after).

For example, maybe the best MIT kids don't actually bother with your thing, because they're after something other than $40 million (perish the thought), or maybe they're too busy writing a thesis in Cog Sci, writing their SW in haskell (not sure if that'd be ok with you - Cog Sci might be too close to lit crit for you; ah well, sorry).

Remember that Bill Gates is who he is partly because he got suckered into thinking, as a Harvard freshman, that he didn't "have it" as a mathematician (one can presume that he probably did, but we never got to do that study). It's probably too bold to conclude that being the richest man on the planet came second to being a top-tier mathematician to him, but I know several people who definitely chose math research and a salary cap of ~$200K/year (and typically far less than that), over a more lucrative career in field X.

Is it too grumpy of me to point out such things? Surely, there are better things I should be doing...

Cos · 2 years ago

You're conflating "don't judge people based on knowing where they went to college" (good advice) with "it doesn't matter where you go to college" - a very different and much broader statement. People pick colleges for many different reasons, and get a lot of different things out of them, and the statement you're making covers much more ground than your essay here addresses. I could easily say "it matters very much where you go to college" and not contradict any of your other points here.

paulgraham · 2 years ago

Keep reading. About halfway through I explicitly talk about the difference between those two ideas.

Anonyman · 2 years ago

Paul, if you're just realizing this now, I would guess that you attended to one of those big name schools. I only wish more people would realize this.

D Ashcart · 2 years ago

Pasteur noted that "Chance favors the prepared mind". From a logistical perspective, higher-ranking colleges offer more chances for success (or opportunities or resources such as professors, internships, equipment). These are paid for with higher fees. The prepared mind is more efficient at exploring the environment and unearthing opportunities.

The opportunity curve mirrors the resource curve in that it is much flatter than the ranking slope.

Smart kids will seek out and embrace opportunities, build character and competence, and step out into the world. These are the kids who will constitute the intellectual and cultural backbone of the future, and they will come from every college, and then some. Some may end up at YCombinator and augment your stats. Others will join the Peace Corps and escape your analysis. Fewer and fewer will go to Google.

Meanwhile the "top" colleges will churn out well-dressed, well-mannered young men and women who carry themselves with poise, sport well-cropped hair, shapely jaw lines, and confident handshakes. Evolution will weed them out, but not soon enough.

brk · 2 years ago

As a guy who went to college for about a year and then dropped out due to boredom, I agree with the spirit of this article.

My friends spent 4-6 years (and a lot of money) going through various colleges. I got a job at IBM when I was 19, making about $35K/year. In case that number seems low, that was well over a decade ago, long before the dot-com Internet boom, and I was living at home, MAKING money, not incurring debt. Cash flow-wise, I was making HUGE dollars over anyone else I knew. Extrapolate that out a few years. I bought my first house when I was barely past drinking age, while my friends rented crummy apartments and paid of student loans.

My career progressed "up and to the right" from there. At some points, my lack of college education was a hindrance in certain jobs I applied for. I soon realized that companies that couldn't see the value in someone with hard-earned, directly-applicable experience weren't the sorts of places I wanted to work for anyway.

Granted, I've worked in a technology-related field (where you can be self-taught) for quite a while. I wouldn't recommend that someone who wants to be a CFO try to get there via a pressurized one the job training path. However, for people that want to be engrossed in technology and actually DO something (vs die a slow cubicle death), I often say that you can't start your career too soon, and taking time off for college may very well just end up giving someone else a 4 year head start on you.

m · 2 years ago

"they must be smarter than they seem" -- sums it up for me. I went to a pretty elite school myself (though not an Ivy league), but working with the so called cream at some of the elite firms has me pulling my hair out at the sheer dumbness of some of the 'smarties'. There is a big difference between intellect and education.

spqr · 2 years ago

Note number 4 seems out of place.

RedditUser · 2 years ago

Great article! College is not what it used to be.

Calamitous · 2 years ago

I'm curious if the Y-combinator folks have gathered any data about students who attend (reputable) on-line universities. By all accounts, it's a fast-growing market, but how does the end product (the graduate) compare with the end-product of the brick-and-mortars?

Rob · 2 years ago

<down in it>
If you think about it, this indicates part of the genius of the emerging trend by companies like Wal-Mart to promote from within. They can best measure the person's track record of effort, innovation and success. Indeed, it also explains why "shaking the tree" in a startup is often the best way to find employees (assuming your existing employees exemplify 'Smart and gets things done' (to quote Joel Spolsky).

</down in it>

Nick · 2 years ago

Agree with everything, as far as it goes. Since my business involves doing a lot of tech things that haven't been done, I drop Big 10 resumes in the trash -- the kid I want went to Liberty College in W. Va (or no college), got up at 4am to milk cows, and will kill to get out of the boonies. The rich suburban kids (like I was :-) think they can coast, don't learn on their own, and expect to be paid more than the farm kid, which is bad for morale. Plus they won't get up at 4am and take care of business. I can teach them tech. I can't teach them character.

mtraven is also correct, and if my business were more based on networking, brown-nosing, and sucking up, I'd certainly consider hiring a few Ivy League kids, as they are usually more talented in those regards. (Those *are* real talents, btw -- not everyone can suck up well, and a great deal of business turns on those talents.)

I particularly enjoyed this part:
"Colleges are a bit like exclusive clubs in this respect. There is only one real advantage to being a member of most exclusive clubs: you know you wouldn't be missing much if you weren't. When you're excluded, you can only imagine the advantages of being an insider. But invariably they're larger in your imagination than in real life."

Very true. Years after leaving my preppie high school I learned that we were famous for our incredible parties. Had I but known, I'm sure I would have enjoyed them more. Or would I?

lachee · 2 years ago

one thing: it might be easier to find "smart" friends at elite schools than at a crappy college though...

but i agree with the article that no matter where you go to college, it all depends on YOU. same still goes to those who go to elite colleges/Ivies.

bill wesley · 2 years ago

the fact is the more prestigiouse the institution the more only rich people are found there. People don't care about knowledge but they do know about status and money.Its sad. So little progress is possible because all of human attention is on social politics and so little is on creative understanding. Most people are hamstrung by the assumptions they fail to question.

chris eidhof · 2 years ago

Here in Europe (or at least in The Netherlands), you are hardly judged by what college you went to. It's because all colleges are state-owned, and everyone can go to any college (providing you have done the right type of high school). I think it's a much better way, because it's not about the money. There's only one fixed tuition for *every* university. I think it's the same in Germany.

jj · 2 years ago

In France the situation is much more extreme than in the US. Graduates of a few Grandes Écoles monopolize the top jobs in government, industry, academy and politics.

As for Germany, there the selection is complete already by age ten: the secondary school system is three tiered: Gymnasium, Realschule, and Hauptschule. Only the graduates of the first normally get into university.

I believe other European countries have similar systems, so The Netherlands might be an exception.

Simon Farnsworth · 2 years ago

As far as I can tell, there is one advantage to going to a "high-tier" college: since they tend to get smarter students, they'll offer a more challenging route through the course (as well as a less challenging route).

If you're smart, you can take the more challenging route, and learn about the existence of fields you wouldn't encounter otherwise (in my case, formal type theory). Of course, this rather backs Paul's point up; it's not the college that counts, but the student. I chose to stretch myself on a difficult course, and landed a decent degree from a high-tier university. Had I chose a different route through the course, I'd have an even more impressive degree, still from a high-tier place, and I'd be a worse choice of employee for it.

Richi · 2 years ago

THE ULTIMATE QUESTION:
If your children could go to either boston college or harvard, would anyone here seriously persuade their children not to go to harvard?

Harvard is the ultimate brand...and branding is important in many fields where measurement is difficult.

It's a much better position to be a harvard graduate and arguing harvard is crap than to be a graduate of a 3rd tier college arguing that where you go to college doesn't matter.

Steve Jobs' daughter went to Harvard right?

Doing something extraordinary is orthogonal to education, but if one has a choice of getting the harvard brand/experience, why not?

paulgraham · 2 years ago

That's not the real test. If the kid was already admitted to both, sure, go to Harvard. The real test is if the kid had a choice in HS of doing a) something that would get them into a better college, or b) learn more, which would you advise? E.g. SAT tutoring, or learn how to draw? I'd always advise b.

Richi · 2 years ago

I agree with you though there is significant overlap between a) and b) that i would advise doing both. e.g. doing science projects.

Also, i would have thought someone who have the courage to focus exclusively on b) will probably have a better chance of getting into harvard than someone who follow the crowd and focus on SAT tutoring.

Gavin · 2 years ago

Some schools have lucked into, or evolved, a curriculum that has demonstrably better success in training people in a particular field. For example, at USC film school, you make a *lot* of films (at least half a dozen, sometimes more). Go to a student film festival sometime and compare those films with the output of colleges where the students might make only one. I would guess the same is true of any school that trains "makers" -- if you spend a significant amount of time actually doing the thing, you'll learn the thing. I write software for a Famous Tech Company not because I went to film school, but because I've spent the last many years striving to become better at writing software.

M. Grégoire · 2 years ago

There are two distinct questions: 1. Is it better for an employer to hire the graduate of an elite school? 2. Am I going to be more successful (that is, more opportunities and more money; not the only definition of success) in life if I attend an elite school? The essay answers the former with a convincing "No", based upon the experience from Y-Combinator and Mr. Graham's analysis; the second question is not really addressed.

It is perfectly possible that an "elite" school will be full of rich students rather than smart ones, docile rather than independent, or that its teaching will be mediocre. Even so, it may still be a rewarding place for a student to attend based upon the connections that are made there or the value of the brand name. So long as people believe (perhaps incorrectly) that Harvard grads are the best, then a recent graduate from Harvard will command a higher salary than if she graduated from State U.

If Mr. Graham's answer to the first question eventually becomes the accepted wisdom, then the answer to the second question will also be No. But the interest in this essay indicates that it is still a counter-intuitive opinion.

Breck · 2 years ago

Another very well written and wise article. Thanks Paul!

I'll try to add something unique. If I missed this, I apologize, but I didn't see any evidence presented in this essay. Where's the data?

A visual would be nice. Maybe US News Rank on the X with startup success on the Y?

Thanks,
Breck

Connelly Barnes · 2 years ago

It would be much more interesting if you showed the data (success vs school rank). Also it would be very interesting to make a priori subjective assessments of how motivated and addicted to creating projects you believed each founder to be, and then plot against the success rate afterwards. Which variable correlates best against success?

Though, maybe you don't want to give out this information, for obvious reasons.

bennett · 2 years ago

I'm a huge fan of your essays, Paul - they've been a source of inspiration.

I went to an Ivy for undergrad - Brown - and it didn't do anything for my employability, even in the fields that I concentrated in - Arabic and Spanish. In retrospect, I think it was a deeply unwise move to go for a strictly Liberal Arts degree which did not teach me any real skills. Language does not count, since it is something that a native speaker - who will always be available in a multi-ethnic society such as the U.S. or Canada - can do infinitely better. The only place where these skills could have been the sole basis for a job was in the government and defense contracting, but I was rendered ineligible for a security clearance because I had used marijuana earlier in my life.

Eventually I did my Masters in linguistics and computational linguistics at an elite-but-not-quite Ivy, Georgetown, and that opened up a lot of doors professionally - but this had to do with the fact that I had taught myself enough software development and compling to work on interesting language-related problems in information retrieval, spam filtering, multi-lingual OCR. I was even able to start up my own consulting practice handling these matters. Now I'm going for my PhD at MIT.

I guess one of the things I loved about my undergrad was the initiative of so many of the students, and I think that really helps further down the line. One of the major differences between Brown and Georgetown was the expectation, on the part of students and faculty, to do just a little more, to learn just a little more, and to ensure that you at least had a working knowledge of fields adjacent to your own. Moreover, you were expected to solve problems creatively, to argue with your professors, to constantly try and push the envelope. At Georgetown, the mentality was very, very different: faculty and students tended to limit their interests solely to their field, and learn and teach a finite body of knowledge. Arguing with professors was a definite no-no. Needless to say, I was miserable there. But I left with a much clearer sense of what I wanted to do with my life and career. MIT seems culturally much more in line with Brown, with a little less granola friendliness. I get the impression that MITians are not affraid to get into a serious discussion, ask you what you think, argue with you, and not be put off by you arguing with them.

In certain fields, such as law or certain sectors of finance, you are your degree. I think in most of the world, however, a degree by itself doesn't really mean much. Some employers like to brag that they've hired a graudate of wherever (as mine did when I got into MIT), but this is largely a luxury for larger companies. Most seem to care more about getting things done. I think that the real benefit in an elite school lies in being surrounded by bright, ambitious, creative people. If they are the mean, it puts an unconscious pressure on you to improve yourself, a sort of divine discontent. If a school has a reputation and does not have such an environment, it is not worth attending. Not for me, at least.

Mike Levenhagen · 2 years ago

Paul:

Someone sent me the URL to your essay. It's a good piece of writing. As a universary professor who's taught at 5 business schools in three countries, you may be right by my casual observations.

However, it's probably irrelevant.

Just to set the record straight, the purpose of an undergraduate or graduate degree in universary is not supposed to be about qualifying or training people to make a lot of money or to be "a success." What you're describing is what would come from a vocational school (teaching people a trade). The purpose of a universary is to break young people from their provincial ways and make them into more developed human beings--yes, even at business schools.

Perhaps that noble objective has fallen by the wayside. If you're interested in some serious thinking about the subject, you could look at Allan Bloom's, The Closing of the American Mind.

Sincerely,

Mike

Brian Frank · 2 years ago

I'm really glad I stumbled upon this. I was just putting together my own thoughts concerning this today.

An insight that has guided my own 'personal education,' is that we are all born with the ability (and the desire) to learn. Almost immediately, we begin to learn how to be taught -- which is different. The ability to ingest what's given to us, "to do as we're told," involves forgeting how to learn and think for ourselves.

It's a trade-off, that while the opportunites to get the right education have increased (over the past, say, hundred years), the processes of organization and assessment have become more cumbersome, mechanized, and mindless. (A good discussion on this is given by Jacques Barzun in The American University.) While this may generate productive efficiencies, it also generates creative deficiencies -- it compels us to think like machines, which is to say, it compels us to forget how to think.

I especially like your last sentance: "[What you make of yourself] will increasingly be the route to worldly success." It's ironic that the organizational processes which reward non-thinking, are meanwhile laying the foundation for a radical change of attitude.

Thanks Paul,
Brian Frank

pdxguy · 2 years ago

And how about those companies that use SAT/GRE scores as
a hiring criterion, such as D.E. Shaw and McKinsey & Co.?

That's also intellectually dishonest. The College Board has disclaimers on their Web site, saying that such tests should
be used only for academic admissions -- they haven't been
validated for anything else. So if a high SAT is what gets you
into Harvard, and it doesn't matter much that you went to Harvard,
the SAT doesn't matter much, right?

avdhesh · 2 years ago

Paul,
i liked this article very much.What matters is individual and not the school or college from he got the degree.A curious person can learn anywhere.its hidden something in individual's brain ,and not in the college.
Great article

Sumit Jain · 2 years ago

I agree with you Paul. I saw some people from elite colleges suffering from over confidence. Scholars should understand that getting into a good college is not the end of learning, it is just the beginning.

Greg · 2 years ago

Perhaps where you go to college matters less (or should) than it once did. But to suggest that it doesn't matter at all is absurd. You're displaying experience bias. You talk about the "volume" of applicants you see, but this is a tiny, self-selecting sample of people, in one field. Saying it doesn't matter where people go to college is a big conclusion to draw from such narrow experience. Maybe it doesn't matter for people who want to launch Web startups. But that's a much more narrow claim. Also, surely it's not a coincidence that Y Combinator is based in Silicon Valley and Boston, places that are what they are in large part due to Stanford and Harvard/MIT.

Christiaan · 2 years ago

Paul

As usual an excellent article. Your analogy is spot on as it comes down to the person and comparing it to myself I would now have loved to study under a great professor such as Benjamin Graham. The only problem is that I would have been out partying the whole time, as I did in college, and not realize what a wonderful educator he is until afterwards. Fortunately there are many resources covering his teachings available on the internet.

Anonymous · 2 years ago

Not everybody can found a startup.

You and the people who agree with you must have been born with better-than-average intelligence. For the people who are simply less-than-brilliant but are capable of following orders well, getting into a good college might be everything.

A coworker told me, "I want to send my daughter to Harvard/Stanford so she can marry a good husband." I think that pretty much sums up why it's important for the less-than-genius people to get into a good college. The boys at Harvard/Stanford might not be more successful or more intelligent, but their parents are still likely to provide well for their future wives. And this isn't limited to just females. A generic humanities major at an elite school stands a better chance of making friends with a brilliant startup founder who will find the person a job at their startup.

Some people just weren't born as smart, so getting into an elite college may be their best chance of doing well.

Steve Kane · 2 years ago

great stuff paul, thank you

there's an interesting problem in the "startup" ecosystem though - the vast majority of venture capital people either went to super elite collefges or wish they had and worship those who did (e.g. their bosses)

this idol worship seeps down into the way they view startups and founders. they'd rather fund a brilliant-looking team from harvard or stanford or MIT than a truly brilliant gang from UMass or Antioch

Guest · 2 years ago

Personal experience on this topic.
I dropped out of school at 17 with absolutely NO diploma, and rocked and rolled from jobs to smart deals for a few years in Paris, France until 25 years old when I finally bluffed and payed my way into an MBA program in San Francisco. I was looking up to these other world of the 'educated people' and wanted to be like them. The school was a hack, an international program designed by a crook, but the teachers were devoted and the student panel very international. And ALL of them had 'real' diploma. What should have been heaven for me, all these P.H.d s, and other undergrad students, coming from all over the world, turned out to be disappointing. They were classically trained, good students, but rare were those with the spark. This was 1996, the dot com craze was starting. Out of 300 or so students, 3 stayed in the US, and created their business. I am one of them. As I was not allowed to earn money in the united states, I financed my studies into this school by creating a porn (Referal) site that I later sold for $75,000, created my 10 people design/programming startup, funded my $100,000 investor visa to stay in the US, died like anybody else in 2001, and rebounded onto some other ventures later on. But all along, I was never judged on my education, but on my potential and achievements, and arranged to always acquaint with those with the 'spark' the people with the eyes of intelligence, business owners, startup founders, some of them from MIT and Harvard by the way. I still have NO diploma (The school got banned from California 3 month before i could finish the program), but a few ventures later, I am writing from Ukraine where I just spent the past 5 month gathering smart programmers to work on 2 of my startups, and on some work for my devoted clients. It takes the spark, not the school.

Rob Harrap · 2 years ago

I have a pretty major objection to this. You say that a student at a not-so-famous school can find someone to learn from. Really. I'd argue from personal experience that it is easier to find someone to learn from at a not-so-famous school. Because they aren't so busy being famous researchers, or trying to be.

Liberal arts colleges offer great programs _because_ the professors have time for their students. Sure, a few students get great jobs working with the super powered great profs at 'great' schools. Or should I say, 'great research institutions.' But that's not the point. What about the other 98%? They are FAR better off with a school where the professor is available 5 times as much.

Sure, you may be one of the ones with the great research summer jobs. I was two out of four summers (yes, I did the 5 year plan!). But what about everyone else?

Great teaching university != great research university. The great research universities have sold us on the equivalence for many many years. I for one would recommend students (like my kids, for example) go to a school with small class sizes and accessible staff...

(for the record, I teach at an elite research university - one of Canada's 'Ivy League' schools... and I argue constantly against the research bias and teaching lack-of-focus of our programs).

Michael Montague · 2 years ago

I agree with one of your intermediate conclusions: that the student is the most important part of the college-student relationship. However, I suspect that your over-all conclusion: that which college one attends does not matter is incorrect. This is due to the highly skewed nature of your Y-Combinator data set... almost exclusively software startups. Software development is not a good model for almost any other kind of human endeavor (being largely non-social, yet also highly abstract). Further, it does not represent the majority of the economic success strategies. As is often the case with your otherwise excellent essays, your analysis is biased towards a Computer-Science frame of reference to the detriment of it's applicability to other fields.

To understand how this is true in this case, we need to briefly look at the nature of Computer-Science college department. Computer access is no longer a limiting factor for all but the absolute poorest of students or colleges. With that extreme minority removed, the only other difference between CS departments at different colleges are the teachers and the students. Neither of these components needs to be a limiting factor as you correctly derive above in your "News from the Front" essay. Consequently, as you say, the only limiting factor of what a student gets out of a Computer-Science degree is the student himself.

Now think about a Biochemistry student, an Astrophysics student, or even a Medieval Greek Literature student... The laboratories, telescopes, and libraries respectively that are required for more than a cursory survey of these fields do not exist at all colleges! School reputation is largely derived from the scholarship enabled or disabled by the presence or absence of these resources. The school reputation in turn influences the amount of funding available to build these resources up. This causes a feed-back loop of reputation and resources.

There are only about 6 fields that I can think of that are not significantly enabled or disabled, beyond the introductory level, by the presence or absence of such resources: The Fine Arts, Philosophy, Math, Economics, Politics, and Computer-Science. Any other field requires vast and SPECIALIZED libraries that are almost universally not online (Examples of such fields include History, Literature, and their various sub-fields). Or, they require expensive, and constantly updated, laboratory facilities (Examples of such fields include Biology, Physics, Chemistry and their various interdisciplinary fields and subfields). Or, they require limited/unique access to data (Examples of such fields include Archeology, Sociology, Astronomy, Psychology).

Thus, although Computer-Science IS a field that is largely unaffected by the differences between colleges, it is, in that regard, the exception rather than the rule.

David Kane · 2 years ago

This would be more persuasive if you showed the data. List the schools attended by the successes and the failures in your N = 40 sample.

Paahee · 2 years ago

It is not one single factor that contributes to financial success.There are several combined factors.For some it is the combination of a few factors that does the trick.For others,other factors play a role.One never knows which factor would play a part in their success story.But every success story has certain common ingredients such as initiative,drive,attitude,motivation,luck,shrewdness and several other skills which one has picked up either at school or at home.Formal higher education may or may not contribute in any significant manner but the experiences you have gained through one college or the other does enrich you and could be of some help maybe in your future success.So go ahead and grasp whatever you can.The choice is yours.Right or wrong-you only have yourself to blame or praise.

Stuart Glendinning Hall · 2 years ago

I went to an elite university in the UK (Cambridge) and scored a 1st, but it took me another 20 years to realise I needed to get a degree from the University of Life to make it happen in this world and get involved with startup Medicexchange.com -- how dumb is that?

John Fitzpatrick · 2 years ago

I think that there are three things you get out of college (at the undergraduate level):

1) The things that they try to teach you in class

2) The things you learn outside of class (such as how to deal with a room-mate, how to deal with the registrar, and how to pick classes)

3) A network of friends who will last the rest of your life

I think you can get these from any college. As you say, it is up to the student.

Martin Kupferman · 2 years ago

Paul--Your comments about college choices summarizes the "Educational Materialism" so prevelant in Marin County, California and other communities of super-strivers. I liked it so much I shared it with my 16 year old daughter. We'll see if she likes it as well as I. Thanks!

Kim du Toit · 2 years ago

As a consultant, I learned very quickly that there is a direct relationship between a startup CEO's "school + current company" background and "chances of failure". In fact, there is a callous comment among consultants: "Never accept a client who has a Harvard MBA and worked for P&G" ("P&G" being the generic term for a large corporation).

A freshly-minted Harvard MBA as CEO means almost certain doom. A startup CEO who had come from a giant company (eg. AmEx, P&G, IBM, GM, whatever) likewise had little chance of success.

Someone working for a giant company who had just finished their MBA and was running a startup: absolutely certain, take-it-to-the-bank failure.

Kim du Toit · 2 years ago

"Finishing an Ivy league grad school can add $60k to $80k to your starting salary"

...which you'll need to pay off those Ivy League tuition loans.

BL · 2 years ago

What you are saying: College prestige is not a perfect predictor of success.
What you are not saying: College prestige does not predict success at all.
What you are not saying: College prestige is a negative predictor of success.
The difference is one of market valuation. I think your article is just saying that college prestige is overvalued or overrated, not that it has no value, or even negative value.
I think college prestige is an imperfect predictor, but from a company viewpoint, it's the safe way to bet, and you'll get safe returns. Non-volatility of outcomes has value too.

To get homeruns, you might bet on that someone who seems just as brilliant as the Harvard grad, but who who worked two jobs in school, learned english as a foreign language, grew up in the projects, was an orphan, AND got accepted to Harvard, and had to overcome other handicaps, etc., yet emerged just as capable. That's who I'd bet on for a homerun.

sandeep kumar · 2 years ago

Great essay Sir. I,m a regular reader of your essays. I,m from India , where there is such great obsession about getting into the IIT (indian counterpart of MIT or Stanford), that parents start to groom their kids for the entrance test as earlier as 4 years before the test, making them attend private coaching etc. I still wonder how does a test of few hours tests the ability of the applicant? Most corporate companies in India too think that students passing out of the IIT are among the smartest people in the world. i,m still wondering what the parameters are for such a judgment ?

jay r · 2 years ago

What I believe is the factor important: Socialization. Working with people who won't accept anything less then the best has an impact. Working with people who have the thirst for knowledge you mentioned, has an impact. Whether you are in an Ivy League institution or not, its more a matter of what standard you hold your self to, and what mechanisms you set in place for your future development.

Scott Alan Miller · 2 years ago

Paul, doesn't this essay lead to the logical conclusion that since colleges cannot differentiate between themselves in any significant way that it would follow that colleges are not offering any significant service and that even using college completion as a guideline for measuring candidates is also worthless?

For example, if colleges are not providing intrinsic value then a potential student who seeks out other smart people and is self motivated and educates themselves has every opportunity to excel with the best college graduates.

I do a lot of hiring for a major US Financial house and one of the first things that I do is attempt cover up any college experience from a potential candidate. I don't want to be influenced by the educational background as I don't trust myself to not be predujiced in favour of an MIT degree over a high school dropout. But if I can't tell the difference between those two when talking to them then chances are the high school dropout was more self motivated and self confident earlier.

I think that the real question is - Is college adding any value? I believe that those students who were going to excel didn't need college to do it. And those that were going to be party animals and learn nothing certainly didn't need college to do it. Where is the value add?

Wesley Tanaka · 2 years ago

I find it easy to believe that my chance of success at starting up a web startup when I'm also the kind of person that knows about Y Combinator and also a person that makes the decision to approach you for help might not be strongly correlated with the prestige of the university I attended.

But I find it much harder to believe that university prestige is weakly or non-correlated with other measures of success in less self-selected samples of people.

I agree with the earlier commenter that numbers (or at least discussion of the numbers) would be interesting and potentially much more compelling.

Mike · 2 years ago

In college, you typically do not work on real unsolved problems. While there will always be a market for people who can solve problems that have already been solved, the value of such a talent is low because the supply is high. On the flip side, someone who can solve real unsolved problems has a more rare and hence valuable talent.

In college you learn how to solve problems that have already been solved. It might seem that someone who is good at solving solved problems would be better at solving unsolved problems, but I don't think this is the case. Solving real unsolved problems is a skill that requires a certain lifestyle and mindset to obtain. It takes courage too.

seapixy · 2 years ago

hi paul, great observations. i agree with you. it depends more on you than the university. the whole "ivy league" and "top" universities - lots of hype. it basically works like branding. top "name brand" universities = "safe bets" to many. but education is what you make of it. even if your crappy no-name university doesn't have the "specialized" library, these days you can get it online, or if you live in a metropolitan area, visit the name brand university library and use their photocopier and computer stations. that's what i did. there is one other variable i think should count for being able to go to a 'brand name' school - luck. there are more bright people than are brand name universities, and not all bright people are blessed with the sort of family situation that encourages education, especially at the name brand level. these bright people end up at the state and no name universities, but make the best of it, learning as much as possible. they may not have the ready-made, or "purchased" confidence a name brand will buy, but then again a good education instills confidence no matter what package it comes in. its just sad that our culture's education is bought and sold on name brands. most times the store brand is better than the pricey name brand anyway., and you save money too.

Eric · 2 years ago

Hi Paul:
Excellent observations. It seems college is the default career path for most of us If you REALLY know what you want to do in life, you probably don't need it. If you have no idea what you want to do in life, you probably can't afford it.
I suppose the medical arts are one of the few places that really require a degree....inasmuch as most of society takes a dim view of amateur medicine.
I learned everything I ever needed to know about electronics in high school....however we had an exceptional high school electronics class...and a world class amateur radio station to play with and learn.

My greatest life skills actually came before that time, however. We spent most of eighth grade diagramming sentences...a skill I don't believe they even teach any more. Being able to throw together a coherent sentence pretty much sets you on course for a successful life, I've found.

suranah · 2 years ago

Faculty Curve in India
Well, my observations are that it is extremely steeped in India. Barring a handful few (6-8) it gets really bad even for remaining institutes in range 10-20. The lesser said about 30+ univs, the better. As for peer experience, it can also be difficult to get smart enough (or determined enough) peers even in 10-20 places.

Education Perception
Much could be said about the overall Indian education system to start with. People do not join universities, because they are curious or even because they want to make it really big. People go to college - because that's what everybody else does. Nobody even select majors by choice - its solely determined by what is the 'Job Value' of a specific stream. Leave liberal arts, you should see the way society perceives even somebody who peruses math or physics or even law. They are still only legible two professions in India - engineer or doctor.

Corporate Jobs
If people talk about corporate monotony in US. Dude, you can't imagine things in India, especially the IT. Employees are sheep - or rather the Indian street cow. Thinking is not allowed. Follow, conform and don't be too smart or too fast (even in work).

I went for undergrad in a 10-20 university and majored in CS/Engg. Thankfully bunked all corporate IT offers for an AI research lab. All information is either first hand account or ramblings from close friends who chose IT jobs.

Trust me, I really find most opinions about India being the next Silicon Valley absurd. It sure is/ will be a great outsourcing hub. The Indians you see in CA are not the same as those who populate the peninsula.

Dan · 2 years ago

Even in the startup world, founders tend to have met at prestigious universities. Google - Stanford. Facebook - Harvard. Microsoft - Harvard, Stanford. I think universities provide students with a grounds at which to make friends. These friends then push them throughout life to live up to your potential.

I therefore think that the school that you go to does matter since it serves as a meeting ground to meet similarly intelligent, ambitious people. One could similarly meet such people in another environment (like a job) so long as the environment draws in the intelligent people.

J · 2 years ago

Paul,
You might get a kick out of a paper by Dale and Krueger, called "Estimating The Payoff Of Attending A More Selective College: An Application Of Selection On Observables And Unobservables." See http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322

Apparently disadvantaged students benefit more from attending selective colleges, perhaps because of the access to the exclusive networks these schools provide.

tree44 · 2 years ago

so it doesnt answer my question

L · 2 years ago

I have to say I agree with you and I even had a sociology professor that discussed this with the class. There isn't really much difference between colleges other than some have smaller classes so its easy to get more one on one time with the professor, the more 'prestigious' colleges do have people that are currently powerful in their alumni so it's easier for the students to meet them and possibly use this type of thing as a jumping off point. However, if you are an ingenious self starter you can do the same thing without paying a fortune to the brand name college.

RE · 2 years ago

I thought this was a very well written article that raises a point worth discussing, but I can't really agree with it. It's most likely due to a slight (well, more than slight) bias on my part as a young Ivy League alum, but my biggest object to this is something that you mention not only in this essay but several of your previous writings. It's also been brought up by numerous people who've already commented, and the point of which I speak is that more "elite" schools have larger numbers of smart people, which is a huge influence on your own development.

Yes, if you're a genius with strong will, then nothing will stop you. Geniuses don't need the extra boost of sort that college education gives people. But for people who are just smart, then I think the increased exposure to smart peers, as well as potentially better facilities, really does mean a lot. Especially when you go back to your thesis statement of sorts; does college mean your life will be better? You ask that, then mostly prove that it doesn't mean much if you want to go into making a startup, which doesn't really disprove the importance of college and is too limited a subset of people (who have very much been self-selected as people have said) for it to be proof of anything.

Put another way, I feel like using college as an indicator of a person's talent and ability is much the same as trusting Wikipedia. At any point in time when you look at a popular Wikipedia article, it's not guaranteed that the information is factually correct. But for various reasons, I think it's a very useful way to get basic knowledge on a subject as well as give you a few leads on ways to find more detailed and accurate information. Similarly, a good college degree gives recruiters at least a place to start and some probabilistic (not definite) guarantee of quality.

Moreover, if you were a recruiter for a large company (I know you hate those, but they still exist and really, there aren't enough super genius hackers to write ALL the world's code) that needs to hire 100 people who, on average, will be a little bit smarter than the average developer in industry. You don't have infinite time or money, and lets say hypothetically you just have school names and GPAs of the candidates. If you weighted the developers by school prestige and GPA, do you honestly think you'd get the same average quality as if you chose randomly?

anon · 1 year ago

wow, that whole article sounds like massive self-justification from where i'm sitting. If that's what floats your boat (and to be fair, you're absolutely right about talent not being the most important thing when colleges assess your application) then fine, but the simple fact is that most companies value where you got your degree over what you studied. All I know is that when I had 4 years' experience of studying Japanese and 2 years of translation under my belt, no-one wanted to give me a job. As soon as I got an offer from Oxford (as a mature student), the civil service invited me for the easiest interview i have ever had, and then gave me a job based purely on that.

Your points are entirely valid and true, but unfortunately the prestige of the university you went to still counts for a lot in our sadly class-based society.

Nick · 1 year ago

The essay makes the point that a large number of companies hire based on university affiliation. His point is that these prestigious universities aren't actually indicators of intelligence or ability. It seems that you had bothe the intelligence and ability to do what you wanted. It took a prestigious degree to prove that to a close minded organization which is the exact point made by the essay.

AF · 1 year ago

I think PG recently essayed on people who leave comments, like here. I take this particular essay as saying, as a prelude to a more rigorous and boring (for PG) study, that the schools that his kids came from doesn't seem to matter in their performance at startups. So asserting that you believe that "being surrounded by geniuses is important" and stopping there is not relevant, since PG has just said that empirically, it isn't. I wonder if commenters here do even a fraction of the original thoughts that PG has documented through his essays.

montaa · 1 year ago

I think this is a bit of a logical deviation from some of Paul's other articles, specifically the one about Startup Hubs. Part of the point of that article was to show that the hubs have lots of useful people for those that are starting their own businesses.

These useful people include local angels and VCs from the financial side. From the empirical side, the local community is used to dealing with start ups. The lawyers, the consumers and the government employees are all more likely to have knowledge pertaining to start ups and how to help them, even if it is not intentional.

I would argue that colleges offer the same thing to freshmen, whether they are 17 or 31. If a person picks a college that has a reputation for something of profound interest to the student, they are more likely to find people that can guide them in the direction of bright and capable mentors and peers. The remaining student body is also likely to have a higher number of people to engage in debate with over the appropriate subject.

The "It may not matter all that much where you go to college" argument is a distinct possibility, but is not qualified enough for my liking. This statement seems to have a great deal of ambiguity to it. The social stigma attached to certain colleges can be just as important or damming as the going or not going piece.

From Paul's business perspective this article makes a lot of sense. The startups are just as likely to be started by college dropouts, graduates or post doc students as any of the other groups. My guess would be the largest group is college graduates, but I bet they do not make up a majority.

The college they went to may have a great deal of importance to the person themselves. Each individual is shaped by a combination of how they were born and what they experience in life. The colleges and the life lived while at them can make dramatic changes in a person.

The point of this ramble is to point out that Paul's logic in this essay seems to deviate a bit from his primary point about location being useful. The college experience shapes and changes a person dramatically. I think the reason a huge number of them are successful/unsuccessful in business can be attributed to their college years and what they made of them and what the college made them into.

Frank · 1 year ago

Can you talk more about the criteria you use to judge candidates to fund?

Les · 1 year ago

I could not agree with you more. I recently graduated from Bellevue University (an online school in Nebraska). I think I got a better education than that I was getting at Old Dominion University.

I had a manager tell me that Bellevue was not a respected institution, and that I needed to go to a recognized school. Bellevue is accedited, as is ODU, Harvard, Norwich U., etc. He went to Carnegie Mellon U., and would disagree with this article. My only question is this... Is one accreditation better than the other? For instance business schools are mostly accredited by AACSB. Bellevue happens to be accredited by IACBE. I do not see the difference at all. Bellevue was a wonderful school, and the staff were equally knowledgable and helpful, not to mention available to help anytime.

L. B. · 1 year ago

Paul Graham's essays are awesome.

John · 1 year ago

This is not really news to those of us outside the small world of brand name colleges selling designer label degrees. We have never suffered from the delusions of grandeur under which the attendees of the most expensive schools have labored, and which is sustained by their continuous reassurance among one another. As such, we are fortunate enough to avoid the process of disillusionment that Graham is undergoing.

Paul, I'm glad you're trying to rid yourself of one type of elitism. But could elitism be a character flaw which goes beyond the price of a degree? Will a person who engages in elitism in one arena be doomed to be an elitist in other arenas as well? Perhaps, the arena of programming languages or business advising? :)

Is there a meta-flaw behind all this which blinds a person to what is obvious to many others -- that character can not be purchased, inherited or conferred?

Alexandre · 1 year ago

Another note: I am currently studying at McGill in Canada, a university which very often ranks top of the country. A huge problem with brand name college (especially concerning undergrad degrees) is that they hire professors depending on the quality and relevance of their research rather than their teaching skills. So you often end up having teacher just unable to convey information (to teach) while your friends from an easy-to-get-in, bad reputation college get teachers who perhaps don't do any research but excel at teaching the material.

However, brand name colleges attract wannabe achievers like magnets, hence the networking opportunities are I think much better than elsewhere.

Alexandre · 1 year ago

http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/05/29/the-purpos...

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Roger · 1 year ago

I think you're not sampling identically from different schools. The money you offer is paltry and probably unappealing for any but the least talented MIT/Stanford/MiscEliteSchool student.

mtraven · 2 years ago

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned a very standard argument for going to an elite school, namely, getting to meet other people who will make up the future elite level of society.

This may not have much relevance for tech startups, but matters a whole hell of a lot for the future investment bankers, MBAs, lawyers that make up a typical Harvard undergraduate cohort.

And even if you want to do a tech startup, having classmates whose parents belong to the upper echelons of society can be very useful.

Thierry Schellenbach · 2 years ago

Another great post!
Recently bought 'Founders at work' was pleasantly surprised to find your story in it.

HCD · 2 years ago

Finishing an Ivy league grad school can add $60k to $80k to your starting salary, (and potentially over $5mill to your retirement), compared to a 1tier college

DaveP · 2 years ago

Not heretical Paul, just cynical IMHO.
Some people are good, some less so, at some things.
Where they come from? Who cares.
Stop being a snob.

SM · 2 years ago

What a great essay. I am writing as not only a non-college educated individual, but also a high school dropout...only I left HS for the right reasons. I was bored. I was sick of the social BS (even though I was 'popular') and wanted to get cracking on real life stuff.

I am now pulling a six figure income living in Hawaii in a career field I am in love with.

It all boils down to how much you apply yourself.

Phillip · 2 years ago

A minor revision: It may not matter [to the success of your startup] all that much where you go to college.

We're talking about startups, people. We're talking about strapping a video camera to an ament and broadcasting it on the internet. We're talking about a website that allows the public to rank conspiracy theories du jour and comment on them.

I'll remain proud of my prestigious degrees, for they have helped me greatly in the non-startup world.