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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

#81

Post by wellok »

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…

Well, it's easy to dismiss. Do you have anything substantive to add to the discussion?

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

#82

Post by jwq1 »

ComradeTaco wrote: post #64
arcticfox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is absolutely selection bias. Compare averages by major for each school, not the total population for each school. To compare a college that produces almost exclusively engineering majors to a university that offers everything from constitutional law to communications is absurd.

To say, “it is absolutely selection bias,” infers the professors and curriculum of the school had no effect on the ability of students to become successful, venture-backed entrepreneurs. Which you cannot conclude given the data.

What you have experienced is confirmation-bias. Whereby, you have interpreted evidence to reaffirm your own beliefs. In this case, your belief is, “Olin College cannot be better than MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and the like because those schools are the best.”

When you allow yourself to succumb to confirmation bias, you close yourself off to the possibility there is a school which prepares students for an entrepreneurial life. Please do not close others off to the same possibility.

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

#83

Post by jacobolus »

jwq1 wrote: post #80
valuearb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 physicist…

Stanford also does a good job of helping interested students with those things. It’s just larger and more diverse, and also includes students who want to be judges, literary critics, historians, medical doctors, mathematicians, journalists, school teachers, etc.

If you looked only at the subset of Stanford students with similar interests and backgrounds to Olin’s student population, you’d probably end up with a similar distribution of outcomes.

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

#84

Post by pataoAoC »

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…

Perhaps, but regarding the first 2...

1. Top graduate schools for Olin grads (in order): MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, UC-Berkeley, Cornell. It doesn't seem like people that want to go to grad school are struggling for opportunity.

2. Top employers (in order) for Olin grads: Google, Microsoft, athenahealth, Apple. I'm not sure a better list could be drawn up over the past few years.

http://www.olin.edu/collaborate/careers-graduate-studies/res...

I think [3] could be quite true, and I'm sure there are other potential explanations as well.

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

#85

Post by bllguo »

pbiggar wrote: post #73
valuearb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Hypothesis 3 - that alumni or faculty are supportive - applies to any number of schools. Need more to show this is a distinguishing factor.

Hypothesis 2 - the school encourages growth and "spiral learning" - is vague. Going to need more evidence to prove this is a unique characteristic of Olin.

Hypothesis 1 - the school attracts students with a certain risk profile - is precisely the parent's point about selection bias. There is a healthy discussion of this above.

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

#86

Post by graphitezepp »

luckydude wrote: post #50
keerthiko wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unrelated, but as someone who has experienced much distress over what my parents would be 'happy for me to be' I find that language super creepy. DEFINITELY not trying to attack you or even suggest that what I am about to say is the case for you, just saying I hear that language and go straight to the image of someone projecting their own desires onto someone else possibly to their detriment.

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

#87

Post by scott00 »

robrenaud wrote: post #76
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?

I don't understand the question.

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

#88

Post by aphextron »

As an adult wishing to go back to school for an engineering degree, is there anything on earth comparable to a program like Olin? I really have no interest in sitting through 500 person lectures at a traditional university with no focus on hands on work and a "sink or swim" academic mentality. Are there any integrated schools out there friendly to non-traditional students that teach from the ground up?

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

#89

Post by ComradeTaco »

jwq1 wrote: post #82
ComradeTaco wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely selection bias. Compare averages by major for each school, not the total population for each school. To compare a college that produces almost exclusively engineering majors to a university that offers everything from constitutional law to communications is absurd.

To say, “it is absolutely selection bias,” infers the professors and curriculum of the school had no effect on the ability of students to become successful, venture-backed entrepreneurs. Which you cannot conclude given the data. What you have experienced is confirmation-bias. Whereby, you have interpreted evidence to reaffirm your own beliefs. In this case, your belief is, “Olin College cannot be better than MIT, Har…

I never wrote that MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Yale are better than Olin. What I did say was that you should compare apples to apples, compare average start up rate for majors at Olin to the same majors at MIT, Yale, Stanford and Harvard.

Right now most startups are tech heavy. If you have a school with exclusively engineering and technology majors, you're much more likely to have a higher startup rate then a full university.

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

#90

Post by btilly »

pataoAoC wrote: post #75
valuearb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doubling down on this point, there are undoubtably people who went to Olin not planning to be a founder, who decided to be because they knew someone else who was a good role-model for them.

This is not dissimilar from the old boy network that makes Washington and Lee the single university which most increases your median earning potential. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Magazine%27s_Lis... for where I got that from.)

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