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Are Ivy League schools overrated?

andrewgelman.com

1–10 of 48 posts

Re: Are Ivy League schools overrated?

#2
YC/pg seems to be obsessed with Ivy league kids. When I went to startup school it was at Stanford and I met quite a few ivy league kids from the east coast. Plus a lot of YC companies I read about seem to be started by them.

Re: Are Ivy League schools overrated?

#4
post #2

YC/pg seems to be obsessed with Ivy league kids. When I went to startup school it was at Stanford and I met quite a few ivy league kids from the east coast. Plus a lot of YC companies I read about seem to be started by them.

That's not surprising because YC is the Ivy league of incubators.

Re: Are Ivy League schools overrated?

#5
post #4
post #2

YC/pg seems to be obsessed with Ivy league kids. When I went to startup school it was at Stanford and I met quite a few ivy league kids from the east coast. Plus a lot of YC companies I read about seem to be started by them.

That's not surprising because YC is the Ivy league of incubators.

looooool so you're mentioning this comment on your application? Edit: Yes we all know YC is a great accelerator, but the ass kissing ?

Re: Are Ivy League schools overrated?

#8
post #3

With improved access to high-quality online education, we may soon be asking "Are all colleges overrated?" (Though I think the college experience plays an important part in a teenager's maturation process.)

It will take a generation for the mindset to change that a purely online degree or a collection of classes from something like EdX are equal to 'Degree from State U'.

Re: Are Ivy League schools overrated?

#9
Not a new or controversial idea here, I'm 41 and this was the prevailing wisdom back when I was in high school and wasn't a new idea then either.

Going to an Ivy League school is and always has been mostly about having more "elite" networking opportunities and having an early social proof that you can get into an "elite" club.

The value of the actual education received (especially at the undergrad level where access to more exotic lab equipment and such is less of an issue for most majors) is highly variable in terms of the school, the student, and the overlap between the two, just like in any other college setting.

Re: Are Ivy League schools overrated?

#10
When I first moved east, I was enamored with MIT and Harvard and the whole east-coast-prep-school-thing. Then I worked with a bunch of grads from these schools and was underwhelmed. I was expecting that they'd be smarter and better at what we were doing. That's when I figure out that you go to Ivy League schools because of the doors they open via the people you meet and network with, not because you're going to learn more in the History 101 class or even your intro to Data Structures class.
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