Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who cares about the Ivy League?

noahpinion.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 178 posts

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#131

Post by adamsmith143 »

trgn wrote: post #109
fullshark wrote: post #42

People who understand that higher education quality is basically at parity and what matters is your peers/connections fostered in college + the doors that open for you based on what school you went to. The perceived elite schools give you a leg up in life, this is true for every country on the planet, and a lot of parents/kids work extremely hard to try and get into them for a reason.

> this is true for every country on the planet No, it's a cultural thing. There's really two points in that article: - (1) people are overestimating the actual lifetime effects of attending an elite school. - (2) people are obsessing over attending (or their children attending) elite schools. That second one is a spiritual failure, not just one of ignorance. That upper middle-class obsession with the brand of educati…

>No, it's a cultural thing.

IIT's, Peking/Tsinghua, SNU(Korea), University of Tokyo, Oxbridge, etc. etc. Cultural thing that happens across the entire world?

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#132

Post by uneekname »

majesticglue wrote: post #126
nearbuy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without randomized controlled trials, there's no easy way to separate the effects of increased educational spending and tutoring from hundreds of other factors that might affect someone's admission rate. Clearly we expect it helps or we wouldn't spend money on it. But it's not clear if educational spending is the dominant factor in academic success or a small factor among many. In at least one study I've seen, smalle…

As someone who has privately tutored many rich kids vs poor kids for nearly a decade, I don't think I need to see a study to see how much more advantages they have. It's pretty apparent the advantages. Yes a really "dumb" kid will still be "dumb" academically, but people here are severely underestimating what money can buy in education. I've seen really "dumb" kids be brought up to the level of "passably smart" simpl…

Anecdotally, I heard a story from a teacher I worked with who spent a lot of time with a student who was lagging behind their peers in school and was given extra support through the special education program. Their family decided to move away, so the school put together a file about how the student's progress. They later heard that the receiving school system found that student to be far ahead of their peers and put them into a gifted program.

There is such a difference in environments in this country's education system. I was doing math in my sophomore year of high school that some don't see until college (or ever). Was I inherently smarter? Of course not. I had good teachers and books, I didn't have to work a job at night, etc.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#133

Post by photochemsyn »

Ivy League schools may not have the best research facilities or opportunities in terms of being on the cusp of the latest cutting-edge technological and scientific developments. Their facilities are often a bit old and funky, with some notable exceptions. In terms of cost to value ratio, ($80K - $90K per year seems to be the media-reported range) there are likely equivalent learning opportunities elsewhere for much less.

However, I think most people know undergrads go to Ivy League schools simply to make connections with wealthy people that will lead to lucrative post-college appointments, that's why legacy admissions are not going away. It's become like the British public school system of 100 years ago in that respect - a social club for aristocrats.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#134

Post by alephnerd »

ericmay wrote: post #129
jmchuster wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New grad talent is a huge pipeline for Google or any other FAANG, and they'll recruit at every well-rated and large engineering program they can find, the large majority of which aren't just MIT. And tons of engineering programs that aren't those, though they may just do all their recruiting through the colleges' online resources, since they have a limited number of humans to physically travel.

Online recruiting isn't the same as in-person recruiting though. Note that Google (just using them as a stand-in) recruits in-person at MIT but doesn't at other places where they "recruit online" from.

I gave a non-exhaustive list of universities Google does on-site recruiting at.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#135

Post by piuantiderp »

user_named wrote: post #115

The author doesn't get the first thing about the education system, and complains that the elite schools are too small. That's exactly the point. They are small in order to keep them elite. If everyone got into Harvard, many would decline. They'd go to a new, more selective school instead. Because universities are not in the business of education but the business of credentialing. It's about being different, more elit…

The top students across a population are hurt more from interacting with below average students than the below average is helped by interacting with them.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#136

Post by bluepod4 »

nearbuy wrote: post #113
dralley wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einsteins brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould.

Srinivasa Ramanujan would be a counterexample. He grew up poor with no formal training in mathematics but was nonetheless one of the world's greatest math geniuses.

I think you mean “exception to the rule” and not “counterexample”. Different meanings.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#137

Post by zehaeva »

nearbuy wrote: post #113
dralley wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einsteins brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould.

Srinivasa Ramanujan would be a counterexample. He grew up poor with no formal training in mathematics but was nonetheless one of the world's greatest math geniuses.

He certainly was brilliant. But compared to his contemporaries he died really young, at age 32.

He did also go to school and even tried to go to college, he even got a scholarship! He had a lot of issues with the non math coursework however and did not finish any degree that I am aware of.

The reality of his life is a bit more complex than "oh a poor boy found a basic math text book and taught himself to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history"

What is more interesting here is to imagine if he grew up with wealth and formal training, would he have died at 32? Would he been given the time and resources to actually become one of the greatest math geniuses out there?

Ramanujan had a lot of raw talent, but it wasn't honed, and ultimately it was cut extremely short and wasted.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#138

Post by michaelt »

w0m wrote: post #90
ascar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Ivy League students weren't born smart. They're exceptional because they were given access to what they needed to succeed. The most ironic part here it isn't the school and education there that makes them exceptional. The schools filter so harshly that just getting admitted already means you are exceptional. And they can do that because of their good reputation, which is mostly based on tradition and perceptio…

> And they can do that because of their good reputation, which is mostly based on tradition and perception. And possibly based somewhat on quality of education

I believe that ascar is arguing that when you're Harvard you don't actually need particularly good teaching, because you've already recruited students who are good at studying, taking tests, motivating themselves and suchlike. Don't you need to be a straight A student just to get in?

After all, if someone came in a straight A student, and graduated a straight A student - can the school really claim credit for that?

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#139

Post by ericmay »

alephnerd wrote: post #64
ericmay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall it does work like that though. Google (or other tech companies/elite institutions) attends MIT engineering career fairs, it doesn't attend others. Corporations are not good at identifying promising talent outside of their traditional (Ivy League, etc.) recruiting grounds so they stick with their traditional recruiting grounds and then they'll favor "diverse" students from their traditional recruiting grounds.…

I'm not denying that, but you are ignoring the fact that Google would open that booth at a LOT of public schools as well. Just off the top of my head - UC Berkeley, UCLA, Mich, Iowa State, UIUC, UW, UW Madison, UCSB, Oregon State, UMass Amherst, etc. And honestly, I really don't think you understand how hiring whas changed at a traditional corporation. For management track roles, these companies (eg. Danaher, Abbvie,…

Berkely, UCLA, Michigan, Washington, are some of the best universities in the country. They exceed Ivy League schools in some fields and compete across the board. These aren't great examples in this context.

UIUC, Wisconsin (CMU as well for example) have really strong engineering programs and "fit the mold".

UCSB (UCI too for example) and Oregon State are based on the west coast. You can get the kids who didn't get in to Stanford or Cal for one reason or another here. I'm guessing UMass fits this profile as well but for MIT/Harvard/etc.

Iowa State is the only one here that's surprising and I'd be curious to find any sort of info online about Google attending their career fairs. It's probably an experiment on Google's part. They typically do not recruit at these types of universities or the footprint is minimal.

Overall the point isn't "has Google ever sat foot on this campus? I guess they recruit there!!" it is "Google primarily recruits at Ivy League Universities (and of course the top 10 or 20 or so universities including public) and that is their bread and butter so to speak. Are you suggesting that Google recruits Harvard the same way it recruits Iowa State?

You initially said "Google didn't recruit my four friends", but Google still goes to campus in-person and recruits there. Google didn't show up at any of the career fairs for my big public universities in Ohio, though I've interviewed a few times based on my own sheer will and luck.

(just to be clear, I'm not picking on Google specifically and these comments can be applied generally to all the top hedge funds, tech companies, non-profits, etc.)

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#140

Post by uneekname »

nearbuy wrote: post #125
uneekname wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But does it matter? Yes, it does. It matters a lot. "The Word Gap ... has important consequences for children’s later vocabulary, literacy and school performance" [0] Even if this whole line of research gets debunked, reading to your kids won't hurt! > eventually converge to something approximating their parents' IQs I haven't read much about this research, maybe it holds more water than I think. But does it matter…

If we're trying to help our kids, it would be nice to know which interventions actually affect adult intelligence. The word gap research isn't a randomized trial. It mostly shows that children from poorer families in the US hear fewer words. It's difficult to study because interventions often produce positive effects in the short term that disappear by the time the child reaches adulthood.

> it would be nice to know which interventions actually affect adult intelligence

sure, that would be nice. it does seem pretty clear that as a general rule, well-resourced students are more likely to get accepted into, and graduate from, elite schools. Happy to back that claim up with some research if you like.

> The word gap research isn't a randomized trial

No, its a growing body of research including many studies. [0] And it was an example I used to illustrate how well-resourced students achieve more in school, even from a young age.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2010.495638

Post reply on HN