This goes to show that what you buy at an elite college is the degree, not education. At most of these colleges, you can take as many classes as you want, but you won't get the degree unless you fulfill their admission criteria.
How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
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Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#22Columbia has lots of ways to enroll. I did the 3+2 engineering program, and I was far from Ivy League material when I left high school.
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#23This sort of sneaking in is pretty pointless though. The only really good reason to go to one of these schools is that everyone knows how hard is is to get in. If you go to a different part of the school that isn't as hard to get into (this is what GS is at Columbia) then you throw away that advantage and you're left paying three times what you should be for an education that, as was alluded to elsewhere in the comme…
Harvard has a similar option called Harvard Extension, its also where Hillary Duff attended.
I finished my bachelors at Harvard Extension. As far as I'm concerned, it's been a worthwhile investment. As a guy in his late 30's, I didn't want to deal with the traditional college experience. I also didn't want some sham degree from a for-profit degree mill. HES was a perfect option for me.
What isn't often mentioned is that the courses at HES are often live streamed from actual Harvard College courses. Same course, same grading. I've directly questioned my profs about this and they say that they don't differentiate between students in either population even if Harvard sometimes lets people believe they do.
The CS courses are the bomb, BTW. The CS faculty at Harvard are very supportive of nontraditional students.
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#24Let me just say that as the PHP developer at B5Media, which owns Crushable and other blogs, this is the last place I expected to see one of our articles. Please let me know if you have thoughts or feedback on the design or site itself.
Like the design, but I absolutely hate the brand name. You will forever be a Mashable-ripoff because of it. Nothing you can do now but ick, that was not a good decision.
I'm not sure I follow. Just because they end in the same 4 letters doesn't mean they have anything to do with one another. They are completely separate target audiences and demographics (technology aficionados/18 - 30 males compared to women's fashion and entertainment news/18 - 24 women). We've much more copied some other sites in our space like Gawker, Lemondrop, etc.
Glad you like the design though :)
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#25If only Indian colleges worked that way. They have only one way to get it (I mean the finest one's IITs/NITs/BITS/IIIT/Best state colleges), give there entrance exam after 12th class. Crack it, your in, don't crack it, your out. Also I like how the American colleges allow you to take several classes which are not related to my branch. I could tailor my degree to my requirements. If I had the chance I would have taken…
If only Indian colleges worked that way. They have only one way to get it (I mean the finest one's IITs/NITs/BITS/IIIT/Best state colleges), give there entrance exam after 12th class. Crack it, your in, don't crack it, your out.
This is pretty much the way it is in any country with a non-dysfunctional school system. Germany, Japan, etc.
In the U.S. we have been hypnotized by the notion of everybody is special" and "anybody can make it". (Also, "everybody has to go to college if they want a good job".) This sort of milquetoast egalitarianism has had the expected result: diminished educational standards, even the Ivies. If you flunk the university admissions exam in Germany, you can still go to trade school and end up with an education at least as good as a U.S. undergraduate degree.
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#26There's a more general lesson here: personal interactions are the quickest way to bend the rules. You may have a stellar application/resume, but so do many other candidates. If you want to get an unconventional outcome, do it in person.
Related: I was a terrible student as an undergrad and when I later applied to grad schools I got rejected by every university with half a shred of self-respect. So, I enrolled as a non-degree student, took mostly Ph.D.-level courses and befriended my professors. That's how I "snuck" into grad school.
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#27Or you could just start "dropping in" on classes.. That's the first thing that came to mind when I read the title.
However, you don't get any credit, or a degree. So it doesn't really matter whether the classes you drop in on are Ivy League or not, just that you are learning enough to make it worth your time. You won't be able to validate your knowledge of the course material later with anything but a personal demonstration.
Fair point.
Most of the classes I drop in on are large, lecture based classes, where I'm going more for the lecturer than for the validation.
In some cases (CS courses), it's really the peers/TAs that matter more than the lecturers. Of course, gaining trust and access with them is trickier than just showing up to a lecture, but it's definitely not impossible :)
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#28If only Indian colleges worked that way. They have only one way to get it (I mean the finest one's IITs/NITs/BITS/IIIT/Best state colleges), give there entrance exam after 12th class. Crack it, your in, don't crack it, your out. Also I like how the American colleges allow you to take several classes which are not related to my branch. I could tailor my degree to my requirements. If I had the chance I would have taken…
If only Indian colleges worked that way. They have only one way to get it (I mean the finest one's IITs/NITs/BITS/IIIT/Best state colleges), give there entrance exam after 12th class. Crack it, your in, don't crack it, your out. This is pretty much the way it is in any country with a non-dysfunctional school system. Germany, Japan, etc. In the U.S. we have been hypnotized by the notion of everybody is special" and "a…
For a country with a dysfunctional university system, the US certainly seems to create a disproportionate share of the good research.
Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#29If only Indian colleges worked that way. They have only one way to get it (I mean the finest one's IITs/NITs/BITS/IIIT/Best state colleges), give there entrance exam after 12th class. Crack it, your in, don't crack it, your out. Also I like how the American colleges allow you to take several classes which are not related to my branch. I could tailor my degree to my requirements. If I had the chance I would have taken…
If only Indian colleges worked that way. They have only one way to get it (I mean the finest one's IITs/NITs/BITS/IIIT/Best state colleges), give there entrance exam after 12th class. Crack it, your in, don't crack it, your out. This is pretty much the way it is in any country with a non-dysfunctional school system. Germany, Japan, etc. In the U.S. we have been hypnotized by the notion of everybody is special" and "a…
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Re: How I Snuck Into The Ivy League. And You Can Too.
#30This sort of sneaking in is pretty pointless though. The only really good reason to go to one of these schools is that everyone knows how hard is is to get in. If you go to a different part of the school that isn't as hard to get into (this is what GS is at Columbia) then you throw away that advantage and you're left paying three times what you should be for an education that, as was alluded to elsewhere in the comme…
But you get to put Columbia on your resume either way. That's all most companies care about.
That's true for most employers, but the extra value of the Ivy League degree isn't that it's slightly more impressive to employers that would have employed you anyways, it's that it's pretty much essential to impress the standard gatekeepers to American high society: investment banks, law firms, and - to a lesser extent - medical schools, all of whom definitely make the distinction.