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

Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–169 of 169 posts

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#161

Post by treenyc »

Drbble wrote: post #149
treenyc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brought up in China. I was NOT fortunate enough to have being a waldorf student myself. But my various experiences in life have lead me to meet many graduates and teacher of waldorf school. So far all of them I meet a incredibly intelligent and very nice to around.

Because Waldorf is great, or because children from rich families that pay for private school tend to be intelligent?

some of these family are in Denmark, which has a very egalitarian structure. But yes, family environment and friends circle counts a lot as well. Which brings me back to it is more important to have a good environment than learning any information. All that can be learn on the job.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#162

Post by dazuck »

This is a pretty discouraging thread to read. The vast majority of posters seem to be of a CS (or related) background, extremely smart (academically, at least), and hold their college experience in low regard. Consensus seems to be that the core CS coursework was pretty easy, forced conformity, and didn't have much interesting material to spark learning or creativity.

How many of the people complaining of this branched out to other subjects? Learned about political philosophy, geology or maybe tried some creative writing? True, those courses are 'easier' so won't be more challenging to get your coveted "A", and yes they might not help you graduate as quickly as humanly possible to get out of school or help you make millions in the marketplace. But there is a reason they are there, and it's not so less intelligent people can also get a Stanford degree. They tackle other questions, other problems, other ways of thinking. You might do very well in those classes without tons of work, but they undoubtedly would have provided another avenue to learn and experience a lot of things you don't get from CS.

The discussions around tuition cost, learning in the real world where you can make $10K/month, how easy 'soft' courses are, the dismissive idea that college is partially about having fun, making friends, romantic relationships, etc. probably does a lot to explain why the majority of this thread didn't feel like Stanford offered much to them besides a piece of paper that society demands. There is so much you didn't bother to do because it didn't fit into your specific and very narrow idea: learn CS to make money. Of course I'm generalizing here, and I doubt anybody actually thought 'learn CS to make money', but it really doesn't sound like many people who have posted had a ton of experience in school to develop their self, rather than just their career.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#163

Post by krschultz »

jcnnghm wrote: post #121
blahedo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So: you went to college determined to find a path through it that would let you "get straight A's" and "graduate as quickly as possible", and then treated each course as a list of stuff to "check off"... and you're upset that you didn't get very much out of college? Well, duh. Every year I get a number of students whose entire motivation to be in my class is that they want to get the piece of paper. This sort of pure…

So: you went to college determined to find a path through it that would let you "get straight A's" and "graduate as quickly as possible", and then treated each course as a list of stuff to "check off"... and you're upset that you didn't get very much out of college? No, I went to college determined to learn a lot, spent about 2 years on pre-reqs, then dropped out because I wasn't really learning anything. Starting a…

I am certain I could have done that assignment in 6th or 7th grade without difficulty.

That's the problem in a nutshell. If you choose a major where you already know 50%+ of the material, you won't get much out of it. I take it you took computer engineering (based on the FPGA class), but what if you had gone back to school and learned biophysics? You probably would have gotten more out of it.

I have lived this. I taught myself to programm in 5th or 6th grade. By 8th grade I was whipping up 3D games using OpenGL and what not. When I was picking majors and I absolutely did not want to go into computer science. I knew it was going to be a waste of my time.

My main 3 options were mechanical engineering, economics, and history. I based this solely on other areas I was interested in. I chose mechanical engineering and ended up taking about a dozen computer science courses for my major after testing out of the lower level classes. I learned a lot about AI, computer graphics, computer vision, and the like but skipped the BS 'learning how to programm' classes that would have been a waste. It worked out well. My mechanical engineering classes were all completely new material for me and I got a lot more out of it than if I had just taken CS.

To anyone who is a self taught programmer, I would suggest getting a minor in CS or double majoring. Simply getting a CS degree isn't enough new material to make it worthwhile. Math, physics, bio, chem, and economics all compliment a CS background very well. Obviously mechanical, chemical, computer, or electrical engineering match up very well with CS (but a double engineering major is TOUGH).

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#164

Post by dlo »

ballooney wrote: post #156
dlo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I typed "duck syndrome" into Google. The only relevant links on the first page pertain to "duck syndrome" at Stanford. Maybe the term is beginning to catch on elsewhere?

You're flirting with the assumption that something must exist on the Internet in order to exist at all. Or even that there's a strong correlation. That's a bit scary!

Indeed. But the converse is also untrue: Not everything that people post on the Internet has a basis in reality. I know many people who went to other universities, and many do not appear to have a similar concept: For example, there are probably few superficially serene ducks at MIT, because many of them seem to wear their hard work on their sleeves; and students at Cal have nicknamed their school "Berzerkeley".

I am not saying that this term or even this phenomenon is strictly unique to Stanford, but I simply have never observed "duck syndrome" used in this sense in any other context. This includes the Internet, personal conversations, and so on. And now, it includes this Hacker News thread, because aside from Drbble's vaguely plausible remark no one has yet come forth that their institution employed this term as well.

My take on it is that, just as everyone has their own mascot, everyone has their own vocabulary, which probably includes their own coinage for this experience if they indeed have this experience to describe.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#165

Post by tensor »

jcnnghm wrote: post #123
tensor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a great many areas of computer science that are incredibly difficult. There are a lot of long standing open problems that some of the smartest people on earth cannot solve. Further, a university gives you some of the best access to resources around: lots of domain expertise in various areas and access to nearly every worthy journal article in the world. It astonishes me that you could come out with the atti…

Computer Science is not about learning to program C, or Java. If your college gave you that impression then it most certainly failed you. Where did I say that?

Here you talk only about the most basic 101 level topics taught in CS:

When I went to school, I had about 10 years of programming experience already, but no java. That got me out of exactly zero classes, because the first two classes were effectively java syntax and apis. It also made the first two years of classes completely trivial, and was also unavoidable. At one point, I got accused of cheating because "it's impossible to learn C without attending lecture".

...

I did not need to sit around and hear what if statements and looping constructs are, or watch TA's that don't really understand memory management try to explain it.

What about graph theory? Complexity theory? Machine learning algorithms? Cache-aware and cache-oblivious algorithms? Randomized algorithms? Numerical computing? Cryptography? Scientific computing (fitting data, doing simulated experiments)?

I certainly learned some of these topics in undergrad CS, although only at a basic level considering each domain is quite deep.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#166

Post by gavanwoolery »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #150
gavanwoolery wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question: how does a piece of paper that thousands of others hold distinguish you? It doesn't. Take those four years and $120k-$240k you would spend on an "education" and get a real education - build a company. Building a legit company (successful or not) is worth 1000 times what that piece of paper is. Your mind will be tempered in the fires of reality. As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to bei…

How many financial institutions are going to lend $120-140k to an 18 year old for any purpose other than going to college? It's also worth bearing in mind that spending 3-4 years focused on learning stuff like math,econ and CS rigorously can help your abilities to build a business later. You might be able to setup your web dev shop at 18 and make a nice living for a few years making CRUD apps or whatever but once the…

A good portion of students receive little or no financial aid. Even if you do get that money loaned, its still debt on your head that you would have to save up for / pay off.

A common mistake people make is that any given subject (math, econ, etc) is limited to your studies in college. I have studied biology, architecture, the classics, geology, meteorology, botany, and much more outside of college.

It does depend whether or not you are a self learner, but is paying 120k+ really worth it to have someone twist your arm? Everything you can learn in college, you can learn outside, for free -- the interent has democratized information.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#167

Post by gavanwoolery »

sciurus wrote: post #106
gavanwoolery wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question: how does a piece of paper that thousands of others hold distinguish you? It doesn't. Take those four years and $120k-$240k you would spend on an "education" and get a real education - build a company. Building a legit company (successful or not) is worth 1000 times what that piece of paper is. Your mind will be tempered in the fires of reality. As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to bei…

That depends on what you want to do with your life, doesn't it? Obviously, running a company should teach you how to run a company. It won't teach you how to be a chemist, or an electrical engineer, or a teacher, or a composer, etc.

My brother studied electrical engineering (because the CS department was full). He now uses his degree as a paperweight and develops software, which he taught himself. There is a good chance what you learn in college won't benefit you much in real life.

That aside, you can learn anything you want outside of college, for free. Information is free, thanks to the internet.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#168

Post by gavanwoolery »

is74 wrote: post #105
gavanwoolery wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question: how does a piece of paper that thousands of others hold distinguish you? It doesn't. Take those four years and $120k-$240k you would spend on an "education" and get a real education - build a company. Building a legit company (successful or not) is worth 1000 times what that piece of paper is. Your mind will be tempered in the fires of reality. As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to bei…

Not having a degree is like not dressing well for an interview. It's superficial, but people are judged for it. Largely because there are more, percentage-wise, unqualified people without degrees than with degrees. A person may decide that it's not worth investing 4 years and lots of money for the sake of a degree, but a degree has advantages that should not be ignored.

I look through a lot of resumes for software engineers. I do not check for degrees -- I only look at their experience. I sense that this will become the norm as time goes on, but who knows. If some of the most successful people in the world are college dropouts, I figure a degree probably does not mean a whole lot.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#169

Post by gavanwoolery »

Drbble wrote: post #135
gavanwoolery wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question: how does a piece of paper that thousands of others hold distinguish you? It doesn't. Take those four years and $120k-$240k you would spend on an "education" and get a real education - build a company. Building a legit company (successful or not) is worth 1000 times what that piece of paper is. Your mind will be tempered in the fires of reality. As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to bei…

Your employees must love working with you.

They do, actually!

I'm mostly speaking from personal (and vicarious) experience - when I graduated from college, I put out around 100 job applications -- no response. Then I released my first project, and had employers coming to me (Electronic Arts and Pixar, to name two). Make your own destiny -- all a degree gives you is an unwarranted sense of entitlement.

Post reply on HN