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Text Your Way to College

nytimes.com

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Re: Text Your Way to College

#31

Post by macobo »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #26
sremani wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert, but #1. You are average of 5 peers you hang out with (a good thumb rule). #2. There is a huge valley between Software Engineering vs Computer Science (what is your goal here.) For #1. meet-ups and getting programmer mentor is good idea. If you really want to do pure CS, there is no alternative to college, but for Software Gig, a good programmer mentor gives better direction than College/University…

Yet none of that matters if top companies don't interview at your school for internships...which they don't for the most part.

You can always reach out to companies yourself.

I graduated from a second-tier university in a small eastern-european university and did find internship opportunities in SV so I can assert with confidence: your options are what you make of them with your own skills, aptitude and attitude.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#32

Post by blooooo »

hrehhf wrote: post #25

Going to an Ivy League school does not help the student earn more money compared to going to a non-Ivy, except for students from certain disadvantaged backgrounds. "students, who were accepted into elite schools, but went to less selective institutions, earned salaries just as high as Ivy League grads." http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/the-college-solution/2...

The exceptions are students who are black, Latino, low-income, or first-generation college attendees. I understand that these populations are a minority in the Ivy League, but they easily combine to be a majority of the country.

So we could more accurately say that Ivies help students earn higher salaries, except for students from certain privileged backgrounds.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#33

Post by ForrestN »

OJFord wrote: post #10

I realise in a sense this is not a particularly nice thought, but: > Colleges and universities need to join forces to encourage poor, high-achieving students to attend top-flight schools and nudge accepted students to enroll. Doing the right thing for students has never been so cheap. Do they? Competition is so high, however cheap it is, I can't see any upside for the university other than image. And that image is un…

Universities are non-profit organizations that have a responsibility to maximize the social benefits of their work. Helping rich people does not merit public subsidy.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#34

Post by ForrestN »

OJFord wrote: post #10

I realise in a sense this is not a particularly nice thought, but: > Colleges and universities need to join forces to encourage poor, high-achieving students to attend top-flight schools and nudge accepted students to enroll. Doing the right thing for students has never been so cheap. Do they? Competition is so high, however cheap it is, I can't see any upside for the university other than image. And that image is un…

Universities are non-profit organizations that have a responsibility to maximize the social benefits of their work. Helping rich people does not merit public subsidy.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#35

Post by ronnier »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #20

On one hand, I hear breathless reassurances from people like Frank Bruni (also at the Times) that "school doesn't matter" and "college is what you make it". At the same time, we get articles like these. Now, as someone pursuing CS at a second or maybe even third tier institution - which is it?

I don't really think it matters. I grew up in government housing as a child, lived in a very violent city all the way through high school, in an area ranked the least educated in the US. I just worked hard, made the right choices, didn't do anything too stupid (or didn't get caught ;-)), and kept at it, studied, building skills. Got an undergraduate and graduate degree from UT Dallas. Started at Amazon shortly after, went from a junior dev to a senior dev in 3 years. Nobody ever cared which school I went to. Mostly I feel like I got lucky, but hard work, ritual, and repetition matter more than which particular school ones goes to, I think.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#36

Post by rifung »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #26
sremani wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert, but #1. You are average of 5 peers you hang out with (a good thumb rule). #2. There is a huge valley between Software Engineering vs Computer Science (what is your goal here.) For #1. meet-ups and getting programmer mentor is good idea. If you really want to do pure CS, there is no alternative to college, but for Software Gig, a good programmer mentor gives better direction than College/University…

Yet none of that matters if top companies don't interview at your school for internships...which they don't for the most part.

I didn't manage to land any interviews at "top" companies when I was in college, but I think that was largely because I applied way too late (apparently for companies like Google,FB, etc, you need to apply by like November of the year before for internships). However, I do know other people who managed to get Amazon, Microsoft, and Google internships even though they didn't interview at our school, so there seems to be some way to get in by applying yourself.

I've heard from one person that they managed to get an interview at FB by first getting an internship at Amazon so you can try that. I suspect this is how I got my interviews (for full time positions though) at Google/FB as well.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#37

Post by akhilcacharya »

macobo wrote: post #31
akhilcacharya wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet none of that matters if top companies don't interview at your school for internships...which they don't for the most part.

You can always reach out to companies yourself. I graduated from a second-tier university in a small eastern-european university and did find internship opportunities in SV so I can assert with confidence: your options are what you make of them with your own skills, aptitude and attitude.

I accepted an offer for the summer from a company that doesn't recruit at my school anymore.

But my options still pale in comparison to what people at top tier schools have. Sad to say my overall salary trajectory is probably going to suffer because of it when I look fulltime.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#38

Post by da02 »

ronnier wrote: post #35
akhilcacharya wrote: post #20

On one hand, I hear breathless reassurances from people like Frank Bruni (also at the Times) that "school doesn't matter" and "college is what you make it". At the same time, we get articles like these. Now, as someone pursuing CS at a second or maybe even third tier institution - which is it?

I don't really think it matters. I grew up in government housing as a child, lived in a very violent city all the way through high school, in an area ranked the least educated in the US. I just worked hard, made the right choices, didn't do anything too stupid (or didn't get caught ;-)), and kept at it, studied, building skills. Got an undergraduate and graduate degree from UT Dallas. Started at Amazon shortly after,…

during those 3 years, did you continue learning mostly at work? Or outside? (ie programming languages, systems design, etc.)? Or was it basically "I never brought work to home."?

Re: Text Your Way to College

#39

Post by pgbovine »

applecore wrote: post #11

What makes a top-ranked institution better than a "second-tier" school? The kind of applicant who would do well in the former will certainly do well in the latter.

the 'crossover point' is different for everyone. e.g., would you rather be a 60th percentile student at a top-tier, or 90th percentile at a second-tier? (for some fuzzy, ill-defined definition of 'percentile') everyone needs to decide for themselves. as one oversimplified caricature, maybe it's still really hard to get an interview at your top-choice company even if you're 90th percentile at a second-tier school, but even the slackers who barely crawled to graduation at a top-tier school gets that same job interview.

Re: Text Your Way to College

#40

Post by nsp »

IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #28
gumby wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest reading Hillbilly Elegy (J.D. Vance) which offers a counterexample. It was cheaper for him to go to Yale law school than to Ohio State.

Law is a different story altogether though. I was talking about undergrad.

It was cheaper for me to attend both Columbia and Vanderbilt (transferred from latter to former) as undergrad than it would have been to attend any state school. No merit scholarships, purely needbased financial aid based on family income of ~$70k, and total cost for 4 years was about $20k in federal student loans.

I believe the situation for law school is substantially different but am not an export.

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