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Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

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Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#21
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'd rather keep discussions mature. It "feels good" to devolve into diatribes, and trust me, if you know me, I HAVE ... but the question here is "what undergrad schools should I consider." Back on topic, empirically, I know many people involved in startups with _some_ connection to Stanford, probably more so than any other single school. I know many people from UC Santa Cruz, too. Both may be because these are th…

Gordon Moore (Intel) and Ed Oates (Oracle) both attended SJSU at some point in their careers. I think they turned out ok...

How could I say that attending SJSU precludes one from success? I'm saying if one could attend either SJSU or UCSC that SJSU may not be the best choice generally even though SJSU is closer to silicon valley.

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#22
As a Berkeley grad, it pains me to say this, but Stanford is almost certainly your best bet. It's great academically, and it seems to understand how to encourage students to get involved in startups. In the startup world, it's Stanford and everyone else.

That said, "everyone else" still has some excellent options. MIT, Harvard,... yeah, all good options. But don't rule out the big public research universities. Berkeley and Illinois grads (among many others) have produced a lot of great startups - great by almost any measure (except that damn university to the south ;) )

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#23
Stanford by far. Then MIT/Harvard. Everywhere else is roughly in the same magnitude.

For undergrad, getting a business degree is pretty irrelevant to start ups. Get a technical degree, such as CS. Learn about start ups by evaluating different opportunities, reading case studies and books like "founders at work."

You can test out ideas in your free time during the semester and winter break. It is important to get relevant internships during the summer.

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#24
post #2

Stanford. Computer Science. Good luck.

Stanford / Harvard / MIT. I'd give the edge to Stanford because it's in the middle of entrepreneur heaven. You could also major in Symbolic Systems instead of CS.

Location is important, as well as talented faculty and networking opportunities, which gives these three schools an edge.

But it's a mistake to think that these places have a monopoly on ideas or are stepping stones to great things in this business. A lot of Ivy Plus types get admitted to Harvard or Stanford on the basis of strong standardized test scores, which are not a good indicator of creativity. I know of a late '90s Harvard College CS grad who hasn't done anything remarkable with software development or Web technologies. An MIT grad I briefly worked with had some interesting insights, but many of her ideas came from other people.

It's also important to recognize that someone with skills and a great idea can develop very special technologies no matter where they are studying CS -- or even if they are not formally studying anything. Shaun Fanning didn't come up with Napster at Harvard, he developed it at his dorm room at Northeastern. Jaron Lanier (the guy who coined the term "virtual reality" and developed many early applications) was a student researcher at New Mexico State University before heading off to the Valley.

Bottom line: Seek out those schools with great faculty and programs that interest you, but remembver that success depends on the ideas bouncing around your head, not the name of the university on your resume.

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#27
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I recall, Stanford accepts roughly 1% of applicants to the Computer Science program, compared with just over 10% for the University as a whole, making it one of the most competitive programs in the nation. That may be true for Ph.D. students, but not for undergraduates. Undergraduate applications are reviewed without regards to major. You'll have an equal chance of getting in whether you express interest in…

You're right, in that I cannot find anyone claiming the significantly lower figure for CS admissions in particular. Even at 10%, it is among the most competitive programs in the country. Both Williams and Amherst, the top two liberal arts colleges in the US, have over 15% admissions, while Yale and Harvard come in usually between 8% and 10%. On a side note, I have some doubt that the admissions process is truly blind…

They're not blind, but you can also put down anything you want, including "undecided". I was certain I wanted to be a physics major when I applied to college. Things change.

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#28
post #19
post #3

Harvard. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg.

Ballmer is not an entrepreneur. He was an employee and never founded a startup.

Ballmer went to Stanford Business School as well (for a little bit).

To the original question: Stanford, by a very wide margin.

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#29
post #4

Whichever college allows YOU to grow creatively, socially, and intellectually. This college is not necessarily Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, or Somestate University. As far as a degree, whichever you enjoy the most. Don't focus on the product; rather, HOW you reach it.

I think this needs some context. I felt much the same way when I decided on a college, and made my decision based on that. I won't exactly say I was wrong, but 7 years later I've got a better perspective on the tradeoffs involved.

Understand that your raw intellectual prowess is a depreciating asset. I'd guess that I peaked in programming ability at about 19, and 18-20 seems a pretty common age range based on famous programmers. I'm certainly not as productive a programmer as I was at my first professional job at 19, and my 35 year old coworkers have said that there's no way they can keep up with what I do now at 26.

You continue gaining experience for a while after that, so it's not like you're over the hill at 20. The mid/late 20s seems to be the "sweet spot" where you still have decent technical prowess and yet enough experience to avoid blind alleys. But if you fritter away your early 20s, you lose the benefits of high ability and don't have the experience to show for it. You're starting behind and have to play catch-up to more youthful and more energetic competitors, which is possible but can be kinda discouraging.

OTOH, trying out a variety of things gives you a lot of perspective on what you do or don't want to pursue. I was certain I wanted to be a physics major and then a theoretical physicist when I entered college. I flirted briefly with majoring in philosophy or sociology when it turned out physics was much harder than I bargained for. I tried out fiction writing and found I wasn't any good at it. I made all-state violin in high school, but again realized that I didn't have the passion for it needed to be a professional.

The one downside of having all those options open is that I never finished anything. There was always some other avenue that looked more attractive. It was only in my senior year, when I was practically flunking out of physics and had a bunch of hobbies that weren't all that useful, that I decided I was gonna close off all the other avenues and focus on computers. And it was only then that I started actually producing stuff that was useful.

So, I'll agree with the parent post that it's important to grow creatively, socially, and intellectually in college. But understand that there are doors that going to Stanford/Harvard/MIT opens, and those doors tend to slam shut afterwards. It's possible to prop them back open, but it takes a lot more effort, because you're working against people's expectations. Similarly, there're doors that open from focusing deeply on one field, and it's much harder to achieve mastery in a subject than it seems in high school.

I remember thinking in high school "I've got 70 years left in my life, that's plenty of time to accomplish everything." But you don't - you've got maybe 10-15 years (between the ages of 20 and 35) to really make a mark on the world, and then the rest is for raising kids, writing books, passing on your wisdom, and generally enjoying the fruits of those 10-15 years.

(I do reserve the right to change my mind in 10 years and say "Pish-posh. Life's not over at 35 - keep an open mind and you can keep doing cool stuff until the day you die." But this is how it looks from the mid-20s.)

Re: Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs

#30
Also is a computer science or business degree recommended?

Computer science. Hands down.

am wondering which college would be the best for an aspiring start up entrepreneur.

I think that Stanford is obviously the best choice, they push entrepreneurship pretty hard. But at the same time, I don't really think that it's the school, it's the student. And, Stanford is really expensive. If you get in to Stanford and can get funded, great. If you can't get funded, I'd really try and balance the really high costs, how much work it's going to require to get in to Stanford and how much competition you'll have while you're there, with the benefits that Stanford will give you.

You might be better off going to your local University of Foo state school, and working hard on your own to learn the types of technologies that you're going to use in your startup. Nothing can stop you from learning what you need to learn to start a business. The school I'm finishing up at-- University of Maryland--isn't a tech powerhouse. And, most of the CS education tends to have a slant towards Defense contracting, which means Java and Oracle (Ada for the advanced stuff. :) ). But, I've managed to squeeze out a decent education in web development since I've been there, I think.

Another key factor in school selection is to keep expenses low. You're going to have a hard time starting a business after college if you're $125k in debt to school, and $25k in debt to credit cards because you went to a school that you couldn't afford.

Your risk of failure is a lot lower if you have minimal expenses when you're done with college. If you can finish college with zero debt, your can take all the time you want to start a business as long as you have money for rent, ramen and bandwidth. I really think that people underestimate this aspect of being an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, it's in your best interest to run financially lean and mean: low cost, low debt.

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