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Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

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Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#41

Post by epalmer »

orzig wrote: post #30
adfm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having faculty like Allen B. Downey may contribute to their success. http://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/4828

As a former student of Allen's, I wholeheartedly agree. I actually started learning programming from him before even arriving at Olin, through his free textbooks (available here: http://greenteapress.com/wp/ ). We first met when he interviewed me as part of Olin's Candidate's Weekend. I told him how impactful the book had been. An hour later, he found me again and gave me a signed physical copy.

I've had a chance to read his books and talk with him. Amazing. down to earth and brilliant at the same time.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#42

Post by epalmer »

saalweachter wrote: post #33
devmunchies wrote: post #2

> Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year So its a tiny college with an emphasis on starting a company? At Stanford your numbers are being diluted by colleges whose student body don't tend to start a company (e.g. humanities, pre-med).

Two thoughts: 1. If you're graduating highschool and want nothing more than to start an engineering company, and you have the credentials to get into Olin, it is probably worth-while. The social network you'll acquire at Olin will be far more tuned to startups, with a lot of former & current startup founders, VCs, and people really interested in being an early employee at a startup. 2. Whatever Olin is doing right pr…

They are working with larger engineering schools to bring some of their learnings to the other schools.

http://www.olin.edu/news-events/2013/olin-insper-collaborate...

https://engineering.illinois.edu/news/article/2009-10-14-oli...

http://www.olin.edu/news-events/2013/university-texas-el-pas...

Project Based Education can scale. It just takes effort.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#43

Post by keerthiko »

luckydude wrote: post #18
tsaprailis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. This article is one of those "Hey this area is the area with the lowest cancer rates". But statistics tells us that small samples are more prone to extreme outcomes. This seems to be a problem in all scientific fields, a quick google search came up with this article from Nature: https://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/full/nrn3475.html?...

I was going to say the same thing. But that said, I've got a kid looking at colleges and I'm gonna suggest he look at Olin.

Olin alum here (and one of the listed founders). The bigger impact of the small graduating class size in this case, rather than extreme statistical outcomes is powerful network effects.

You're more likely to think something a large percentage of your cohort (and people you closely know personally) goes and does is cool, doable and worthwhile. A chunk of your peers at Olin will go found meaningful companies (startups or "just" businesses) and you will think of taking it up too. I never considered being a founder before going, or even most of my life attending Olin, but it became something I considered very seriously and eventually diving into after graduating, and needless to say best choice of my life.

The other cool thing is even if you don't start your own company, you are part of such a small and tight-knit community with all these founders, and founders-to-be! I have personally worked on projects, lived, or had drinks with all but 3 of the founders mentioned in this article, and I am definitely one of the more introverted people who went there.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#44

Post by koolba »

cjbprime wrote: post #39
sbierwagen wrote: post #31

(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rat…

Sorry, I guess I'm being slow -- I get that the sample size is too small to confirm the effect, but I'm not seeing where the selection bias is. Is it that the type of people who would be attracted to founding a startup are more likely to apply/be accepted to Olin than Stanford? That seems to confirm the original article's thesis rather than invalidate it, in my eyes, so I don't expect that's what you're thinking..

With enough tiny schools you can find outliers for anything.

Give me the stats and I'll show you why a seemingly random school is the epicenter of modern opioid addiction.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#45

Post by rjtobin »

cjbprime wrote: post #39
sbierwagen wrote: post #31

(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rat…

Sorry, I guess I'm being slow -- I get that the sample size is too small to confirm the effect, but I'm not seeing where the selection bias is. Is it that the type of people who would be attracted to founding a startup are more likely to apply/be accepted to Olin than Stanford? That seems to confirm the original article's thesis rather than invalidate it, in my eyes, so I don't expect that's what you're thinking..

One source of bias here: there are lots of small schools, chances are high that one of them will exhibit a large number of founders due to noise, and this will be the one picked up by the report cited.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#46

Post by pbiggar »

sbierwagen wrote: post #31

(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rat…

I asked my cofounder about this (she's mentioned in the article). She said "This occurred to us. We're a school of engineers - we talk about sample sizes a lot"?

Here's her thoughts on why it's not just sample size: https://twitter.com/ellenchisa/status/905448602142572545

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#47

Post by arcticfox »

sbierwagen wrote: post #31

(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rat…

Actually, it's not selection bias at all! This result wasn't just drawn out of a 1000-count small college hat, so naive Bayesian priors shouldn't be used here.

As an alum, I specifically went to Olin because I thought it would best help me become a successful entrepreneur. Many people do.

So my priors are that Olin is likely to do this at a higher rate (since Stanford / MIT etc. have entire swathes of the school not interested in entrepreneurship at all); this evidence makes that seem overwhelmingly likely now.

Consider evaluating all the departments of a school and finding out that one of the smallest turns out the highest percentage of high-energy physicists. Selection bias? Nope, just the high-energy physics department.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#48

Post by kolbe »

cjbprime wrote: post #39
sbierwagen wrote: post #31

(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rat…

Sorry, I guess I'm being slow -- I get that the sample size is too small to confirm the effect, but I'm not seeing where the selection bias is. Is it that the type of people who would be attracted to founding a startup are more likely to apply/be accepted to Olin than Stanford? That seems to confirm the original article's thesis rather than invalidate it, in my eyes, so I don't expect that's what you're thinking..

It's possible that Olin exclusively having engineering degrees produces a bias. Stanford has a significant population who study subjects that do not aid in pursuing a career in entrepreneurship.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#49

Post by blfr »

sbierwagen wrote: post #31

(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rat…

Tiny enrolment is a good point but selection bias is not. You could easily argue that virtually all of college effects are selection effects.

Re: Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

#50

Post by luckydude »

keerthiko wrote: post #43
luckydude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say the same thing. But that said, I've got a kid looking at colleges and I'm gonna suggest he look at Olin.

Olin alum here (and one of the listed founders). The bigger impact of the small graduating class size in this case, rather than extreme statistical outcomes is powerful network effects. You're more likely to think something a large percentage of your cohort (and people you closely know personally) goes and does is cool, doable and worthwhile. A chunk of your peers at Olin will go found meaningful companies (startups…

If you don't mind, can I ask a question about Olin? It looks like it's full of cool kids that make stuff and go on to make more stuff.

My guess is that they only accept kids with a track record of making stuff, like the kids that are in the robotics club.

I've got a sharp kid who I would like to turn into a maker kid but he's currently not that kid. He's a math guy, wants to try and get a PhD in math. I'd be happier for him if he became a maker of things, that's what I am and it's worked out well for me, both financially and it was satisfying.

So I'm wondering if Olin would take on a kid and try and form them into a maker or is that just asking way too much. His GPA is so so, 3.6 something, his ACT is 32 I think, I know the math part was 34. That was his only try at the ACT, he can do better. He's taking a gap year and working on retaking the ACT, he's shooting for a 34-35 overall.

Thanks for any insight and congrats on going to that college, it looks sweet!

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