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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

#71

Post by valuearb »

pbiggar wrote: post #46
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

None of her arguments make any sense. Most apply to any school.

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

#72

Post by popopobobobo »

e0m wrote: post #35

Olin alumni here. First of all this is an incredible survey of what Oliners have been able to achieve so far! Huge thanks to Lee & others for putting this together. I've been a huge fan of Olin's educational model and am proud to have turned down Stanford to go there. From the very first day you get to Olin, you're immediately immersed in a collaborative, figure-it-out-together, project-based environment where failur…

Other college alumni here. Nothing I learned in college has helped me to the place where I am. And I do not want to be classified by the college I graduated from. I stayed for four years and I graduated. I am learning new technologies everyday and I am doing very well on my own. I simply do not care what people in tech giants think about my school.

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

#73

Post by pbiggar »

valuearb wrote: post #71
pbiggar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

None of her arguments make any sense. Most apply to any school.

Would you care to provide evidence for your aggressively-worded comment?

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

#74

Post by pitt1980 »

https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/olin

is an interesting calculator

plugging in $150K combined income it indicated that hypothetical college age child would pay $44,906 a year to attend

for contrast, given the SAT range of 1470-1550 http://www.olin.edu/admission/class-profiles/2021/

https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.php

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

#75

Post by pataoAoC »

valuearb wrote: post #69
pataoAoC wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends what the conclusion in question is, whether selection bias is a factor. Does Olin produce / graduate founders at ~5 times the rate of Stanford? Yes - no bias. Is the effect size due to self-selection? Likely at least partially.

If by "partially" you mean "entirely" I agree.

I don't agree, I think it's more likely than not that a school specifically designed to foster a particular type of thinking is at least somewhat more effective at it than others. Just like Stanford is likely more effective at developing elite researchers.

I don't think there's nearly enough information to determine that confidently, but we're simply talking about beliefs at this point.

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

#76

Post by robrenaud »

scott00 wrote: post #24

95% confidence intervals for those curious about the statistical significance given the small Olin sample size: Olin: 1.80% - 4.06% MIT: 0.71% - 0.81% Stanford: 0.48% - 0.54%

What if you had the data for just the engineering and computer science majors?

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

#77

Post by dws »

epalmer wrote: post #68
dws wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FIRST Robotics Team I helped out with has sent three students to Olin so far, with more interested. So not only are these students who self-select, but Olin is getting students who've already had an aggressive, entrepreneurial Engineering project under the belts. Our team has sent students to lots of other Engineering schools, but my sense is that Olin is particularly dense with motivated students.

The incoming class of 2021 http://www.olin.edu/blog/olin-admission/post/welcome-class-2...

"And you love robotics! Which makes so much sense- we are Olin after all!- over half of you participated in competitive robotics in high school."

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

#78

Post by keerthiko »

throwawayjava wrote: post #10
katzgrau wrote: post #6

Well, perhaps ... 1. There is more opportunity for Stanford students to pursue graduate degrees, leading many to forgo the entrepreneurial route 2. Stanford students receive better job offers upon graduation, leading many to forgo the entrepreneurial route 3. Stanford attracts more international students who come from countries less encouraging of entrepreneurship Regarding the first two, I could probably think of 10…

1. Surprisingly, students from small private colleges like Olin are more likely to pursue graduate degrees. IDK if this holds for Olin specifically. 2. Olin is a great school. I doubt undergraduates from Olin are paid substantially differently from those at Stanford. There is probably data on this. 3. Seems the most likely explanation. Or just random chance.

Exactly, all 3 of your conclusions are true :)

1) My class had 30+% go into PhD programs, with over half of them receiving Fulbright/NSF/comparable prestigious research grants.

2) Earlier Olin classes graduated a larger percentage of people to take on high-paying jobs at Google/MS/IBM (and later FB/Twitter). It has shifted towards more academia and entrepreneurs

3) As one of (only) four international students in the first class (5% of the incoming class), yes, fewer international students. Yes, international students come from cultures less encouraging of entrepreneurship. While I'm definitely from one of those, being at Olin brought me around to entrepreneurship -- I wasn't interested until nearing graduation, reinforcing the article's point that Olin nurtures and graduates founders more effectively than other schools. I would almost certainly have worked a high-paying software dev job if I attended Stanford instead.

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

#79

Post by pataoAoC »

popopobobobo wrote: post #72
e0m wrote: post #35

Olin alumni here. First of all this is an incredible survey of what Oliners have been able to achieve so far! Huge thanks to Lee & others for putting this together. I've been a huge fan of Olin's educational model and am proud to have turned down Stanford to go there. From the very first day you get to Olin, you're immediately immersed in a collaborative, figure-it-out-together, project-based environment where failur…

Other college alumni here. Nothing I learned in college has helped me to the place where I am. And I do not want to be classified by the college I graduated from. I stayed for four years and I graduated. I am learning new technologies everyday and I am doing very well on my own. I simply do not care what people in tech giants think about my school.

> Nothing I learned in college has helped me to the place where I am.

:( That's too bad, I hope they change something. Certainly some people will never benefit from organized learning, and perhaps you're in that category and it's otherwise a great school, but most people aren't like that.

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

#80

Post by jwq1 »

valuearb wrote: post #69
pataoAoC wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends what the conclusion in question is, whether selection bias is a factor. Does Olin produce / graduate founders at ~5 times the rate of Stanford? Yes - no bias. Is the effect size due to self-selection? Likely at least partially.

If by "partially" you mean "entirely" I agree.

That is like saying, people who self-select to go to the physics department go there only to be with other physics students are and that it, "doesn't have anything to do with the teachers, [or] the curriculum."

What is more likely, is the school does an excellent job affording students the opportunity found successful, venture-backed companies. Similar to the way the Physics professors and curriculum afford physicists the ability to be good at physics.

The fact the article highlights this opportunity for other entrepreneurially minded people, who may want to attend in the future, is exactly what the data in the article is supposed to do.

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