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Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

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Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#61

Post by Alex3917 »

pg wrote: post #53

It can't hurt to try for some top schools. There must be some admissions officers who can distinguish between people who are smart and those who merely get good grades. If you're smart, spots at top schools rightfully belong to you, so at least take a shot at claiming what's yours. Write your application essay about what you worked on instead of classwork and standardized tests.

The problem is that in the real world if the admissions officers admit people who are smart and didn't merely get good grades, the school's US News & World Report rank drops and the university president has all the admissions officers fired so that the board doesn't fire him.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#63

Post by gm »

fdschoeneman wrote: post #46
gm wrote: post #20

Option #1) Go to a junior college, do your best and transfer to a real school. (EDIT: In Cali, your grades will count as full "university" grades, so a 3.5 GPA will be taken as a true 3.5 university GPA when transferring) Option #2) Simply try to get it the best school possible, top tier or not. If you aim low, guess what? You're gonna have low results. There are universities that exist to privide workers for the eco…

The junior college route can work well. I went to Orange Coast College for 1.5 years and then transferred to Stanford. Many of my friends transferred to Berkeley. There are some really good instructors at junior colleges here in California. You'll have to do your research to find out which ones they are, but when you do, they will often take a personal interest in your success. You'll save a ton of money, get the edu…

No kiddin'? I wen to OCC as well! It's a good school... I was pre-med and comp sci back then, the quality of the courses was very high at OCC, it prepared me well for later opportunities.

There is a theory that community/junior colleges offer higher quality of education for the first two years because that is all they do. Certainly at OCC that seemed to hold true.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#64

Post by Retric »

bluelu wrote: post #47
drewcrawford wrote: post #30

All I can say is, make a list of places and go visit. I ended up at a (very) small private school about 400mi away. When I visited, the head of the CS department talked with me in his office for over an hour. From that conversation, I learned: A) He is completely brilliant and extremely competent B) He teaches about half of the upper-level CS courses C) His dissertation was in an area that strongly interested me Afte…

He must be a genious if he is an expert in half of all the available CS topics!

Undergraduate CS is like high school, after you pick up a masters you should be able to teach most of the classes.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#65

Post by cmos »

My grades were rather bad in highschool as well (B minus average). I had great experience with science fairs. (state level science fairs can be a great way to earn money for college) and building robots and such. If your going to not have the best grades, you had better have some pretty amazing results with the free time spent not studying.

I (somehow) got into Rensselear Polytechnic (www.rpi.edu) and loved every second of it. I have always been impressed that they looked beyond my grades.

I had far more hands on experience as an undergrad than my friends who went to MIT, and met like minded people who also wanted to start a company after graduating college. RPI created the first 'incubator' in the US, and are very involved in getting technology from the labs into growing businesses.

When I graduated (1997) I won RPI's $20k business plan contest with a friend of mine, giving RPI a small stake in our company. We then raised more money from small upstate NY VC firms who got their funding from insurance companies who received major tax breaks from New York State to help stimulate the upstate NY economy.

While startups were begging to blow their investment money on crazy rents in SF and San Jose we were in Troy, NY surviving by having an incredibly low run rate. And I can safely say that all of this stemmed from the support we got from RPI.

Find the school that promotes all the companies started by their alumni. Contact some of these graduates who have started companies. Ask them how their experience was. (i.e. if you were looking to get a job, you would ask alumni who graduated how their career service department was)

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#66

Post by unexpected »

robg wrote: post #25

I was very impressed by UT-Austin and the community there. They also have a honor's program for CS majors (Turing) that you may be able to get into with okay grades but good experience. But even if you don't get into that program, you'll still be taking classes with those folks. Also think of the relationships between schools to get in the "back" door at places where the competition might be higher. For instance, at…

UT-Austin is impossible to get into if you're out-of-state. The acceptance rate for out-of-state kids is lower than Harvard's overall acceptance rate.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#67

Post by Alex3917 »

maximilian wrote: post #45
Alex3917 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always apply to another easier-to-get-into program within Cornell and then transfer into the engineering school. You just need a 3.0 your freshman year. You can even take all engineering courses before you transfer if you want to, not that I'd recommend it if you're trying to get a good GPA. (Also a Cornell grad.)

I'd recommend against that. A friend of mine did that, and its a huge pain in the ass. Just apply to the engineering school directly. They hold you to a pretty tough requirement to switch colleges, which puts a lot of stress on your first couple semesters.

I would recommend it only if you commit to taking the hard classes over the summer before your frosh year. Otherwise I agree with your analysis.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#68

Post by aleclair »

Northeastern. The CS department is good, but co-op is better. I'm just finishing my first co-op and my marketable skills (the kind of things I'd put on a CV) have exploded. I don't have the time to go into full detail about the virtues of co-op, but I'll say this: it is the single best thing I have EVER done for myself, followed closely by quitting smoking and re-discovering exercising.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#69

Post by chollida1 »

drewcrawford wrote: post #30

All I can say is, make a list of places and go visit. I ended up at a (very) small private school about 400mi away. When I visited, the head of the CS department talked with me in his office for over an hour. From that conversation, I learned: A) He is completely brilliant and extremely competent B) He teaches about half of the upper-level CS courses C) His dissertation was in an area that strongly interested me Afte…

> He teaches about half of the upper-level CS courses

Wow, how many upper-level courses were there? Even teaching 2 courses in a semester is considered a lot for most professors'.

Re: Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?

#70

Post by hunterjrj »

markm wrote: post #56
hunterjrj wrote: post #2

Have you considered the University of Waterloo? Its in Canada, but its highly regarded by companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. Tuition may be cheaper as well.

Voted you up. Something else to consider when applying to Waterloo is the ridiculously high male to female ratio. If applying to Waterloo I'd recommend trying to take some shared credit courses with Wilfred Laurier students across the street. (Not sure if CS and Eng allow that, you might have to complain a bit)

Not to mention the fact that the legal drinking age in Ontario is 19.
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