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Who cares about the Ivy League?

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Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#161

Post by filoleg »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #158
randomdata wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs all recognized that the value proposition was not there and moved on. They did not stick it out to receive the graduate/dunce cap just to sooth their sunk cost pangs. Indeed, had they continued with it just because they started, that would be dunce-worthy. Thiel suggests that the "colleges that matter" offer more, e.g. research labs, that bring more to the table. That may justify greater i…

OK on Steve Jobs, but Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were at Harvard. And they decided the value still wasn't there - even with Harvard's "ground breaking things" and "college that matters".

> Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were at Harvard. And they decided the value still wasn't there.

No, they realized that they had a limited time-window opportunity on their hands that has a potential for a lot more value than the degree, as long as they executed on that opportunity well and had a bit of luck.

Neither Gates nor Zuck just dropped out with nothing going on for them, and only then started their respective companies. IIRC Zuck quit because he was busy running Facebook during its explosive growth phase, and he had to make a choice between allocating his time to running FB and school.

Most people who decide to drop out don't have an explosively-growing business on their hands that they have a limited time-window to execute on. And while this is a pure guess, but I don't think Zuck would drop out just because, without something like FB fighting for his time and attention.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#162

Post by davemp »

armitron wrote: post #48
uneekname wrote: post #30

I think the point about college mobility rates was an interesting one. But then the author lost me a bit: > what is the economic rationale for having a bunch of educational resources and top students concentrated in a few small elite schools? ... the country’s most talented people into the country’s most important jobs I don't think that's it at all. I believe nearly anyone could be among "the country's most talented…

> Most Ivy League students weren't born smart. This seems like a wild assertion to make, and here's something by Scott Alexander that points in the other direction: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-f...

That article seems incredibly hand wavy and useless.

> Suppose Erasmus Darwin had a genius-level IQ of 150.

Not really a strong basis for an argument if you ask me.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#163

Post by nostromo95 »

piuantiderp wrote: post #135
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.

Would you mind quoting a source?

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#164

Post by TMWNN »

nineplay wrote: post #69
Auracle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're assuming that people who are admitted to Ivy League schools a) have higher IQs than average and b) have parents with higher IQs than average. Neither of these need to be true. It's a incestuous system where it's easy to believe that people of average IQ have been born into privilege for generations and succeeded only because of their family wealth and connections.

>You're assuming that people who are admitted to Ivy League schools a) have higher IQs than average and b) have parents with higher IQs than average.

>Neither of these need to be true.

As George Orwell said, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool".

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#165

Post by TMWNN »

trgn wrote: post #154
adamsmith143 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

i guess we're just going around in circles. It happens nowhere near US levels in e.g. western europe.

Oxbridge and the Grande Écoles disagree with you.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#166

Post by cmxch »

alephnerd wrote: post #148
ericmay wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

It's a non-exhaustive list. Iowa State has a strong STEM program because of Ames National Lab. They also have on campus recruiting at UTD, UMinn, Purdue, BYU, ASU, and Stony Brook. And when did you attend college? And, to be fair, if it wasn't Ohio State I doubt they would have been there. > (just to be clear, I'm not picking on Google specifically and these comments can be applied generally to all the top hedge fund…

> Indiana Tech or Wright State aren't one of those and probably won't be.

Google won’t pick them up, but the public sector and adjacent industries will, provided a passable background.

Depending where those people land, they may end up somewhere that’s on par with if not better than Google.

That aside, I’d like to know what purpose Indiana Tech and Wright State (and their equivalents) fill according to you wrt careers.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#167

Post by Auracle »

hnbad wrote: post #81
Auracle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That article does not say what you seem to think it says. Heritability and IQ are both fairly complex topics and citing a single article out of context doesn't do the subject justice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ That said, your statement does not follow from your argument. The heritability of IQ is unrelated to whether people's potential is wasted by being denied access to a nepotistic college sy…

shrug

There were plenty of studies that popped up; I just picked one. Wikipedia for something controversial like IQ is iffy which is why I didn't link that.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#168

Post by dangus »

goodbyesf wrote: post #37
dangus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would invoke "chicken and egg" here: are the leaders of this country in the Ivy League because they're from ruling families, or are they ruling because they went to Ivy League? I suspect it's much more of the former than the latter. It's not that you have to go to an Ivy League school to run the country. Instead, the people born into the families that run the country have no reason not to go to Ivy League schools.…

> I would invoke "chicken and egg" here: are the leaders of this country in the Ivy League because they're from ruling families, or are they ruling because they went to Ivy League? Obama went to columbia and harvard. Trump went to UPenn. Neither are from ruling families. It's simply a matter of the ivy league representing some of the oldest institutions in the US and the ruling elite being entrenched members of these…

What I said wasn’t “everyone at the Ivies is in a ruling family,” what is said was “ruling families go to Ivies.” There’s a big difference in logic between those two statements.

Ivy League schools have other students besides legacy admissions, but if you’re not very smart/driven (Obama) or very rich (Trump) your chances are not so great.

(You should read Obama’s biography on his Wikipedia page. He transferred to Columbia as a junior, and between his undergraduate studies and law school he had a bunch of pretty unique accomplishments, the exact kind of “extracurricular activity” that would get you into Harvard. As far as Trump, he’s the son of an extremely wealthy landlord.)

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#169

Post by adamsmith143 »

trgn wrote: post #154
adamsmith143 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

i guess we're just going around in circles. It happens nowhere near US levels in e.g. western europe.

It happens much more in Asia, a place with oh idk several billion people. So hardly a US phenomena.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#170

Post by mrangle »

alephnerd wrote: post #53
mrangle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already knew your friend group because you attended the same "2-300" high schools? Flagship Public Schools have long been limited elite. Hence the concept of the "Public Ivies". Ivy does STEM, but STEM isn't the point of going Ivy. Public Schools will continue to be fine institutions for technical workers, who were and will never considered to be elite in the class sense. Real elites tend toward history and art m…

> STEM isn't the point of going Ivy It is. Cornell, Princeton, and Columbia are all Top 10 CS programs. For natural sciences, all the Ivies top the charts. For med school, same story. > Real elites tend toward history and art majors. Some children of HNWI do major in history and art. Others will gladly major in STEM. Look at people like Bill Gates or half my hs. This isn't the 80s or 90s anymore. Post-2008, top publi…

Read "Class" by Fussell. Or don't and continue to guess where the lines are. Class distinctions and behaviors aren't intuitive. That book will help you.
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