
Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs - deltapoint
I am a Junior in high school and am wondering which college would be the best for an aspiring start up entrepreneur. Also is a computer science or business degree recommended?
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iamelgringo
_Also is a computer science or business degree recommended?_

Computer science. Hands down.

 _am wondering which college would be the best for an aspiring start up
entrepreneur._

I think that Stanford is obviously the best choice, they push entrepreneurship
pretty hard. But at the same time, I don't really think that it's the school,
it's the student. And, Stanford is really expensive. If you get in to Stanford
and can get funded, great. If you can't get funded, I'd really try and balance
the really high costs, how much work it's going to require to get in to
Stanford and how much competition you'll have while you're there, with the
benefits that Stanford will give you.

You might be better off going to your local University of Foo state school,
and working hard on your own to learn the types of technologies that you're
going to use in your startup. Nothing can stop you from learning what you need
to learn to start a business. The school I'm finishing up at-- University of
Maryland--isn't a tech powerhouse. And, most of the CS education tends to have
a slant towards Defense contracting, which means Java and Oracle (Ada for the
advanced stuff. :) ). But, I've managed to squeeze out a decent education in
web development since I've been there, I think.

Another key factor in school selection is to keep expenses low. You're going
to have a hard time starting a business after college if you're $125k in debt
to school, and $25k in debt to credit cards because you went to a school that
you couldn't afford.

Your risk of failure is a lot lower if you have minimal expenses when you're
done with college. If you can finish college with zero debt, your can take all
the time you want to start a business as long as you have money for rent,
ramen and bandwidth. I really think that people underestimate this aspect of
being an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, it's in your best interest to run
financially lean and mean: low cost, low debt.

~~~
mechanical_fish
+10, University of Foo.

Pay as little as possible. State universities, full-tuition scholarships,
whatever. The debt is what will imprison you, and colleges aren't worth
anything near what they cost.

If you focus on doing well in school, and you later find that you need better
credentials than the U of X can provide, there's always the master's degree...
the thrifty person's path to Ultimate Credential Power. The top engineering
schools are easier to get into (because it's easier to distinguish yourself in
college than in high school, where grades and SATs are all hyperinflated and
everyone's admissions essays are ghostwritten) and much more affordable
(sometimes even marginally profitable!) at the graduate level.

~~~
nostrademons
"Pay as little as possible. State universities, full-tuition scholarships,
whatever. The debt is what will imprison you, and colleges aren't worth
anything near what they cost."

Remember that many private colleges give really generous financial aid if your
parents are not wealthy. Stanford is free if you make under $100K; Amherst has
abolished all loans in financial aid, so it's free for those making under
about $40-50K and quite reasonably priced (often less than a state uni) for
those making under $100K.

My actual tuition at Amherst was only slightly more than the sticker price at
UMass; my sister's at Rice was less. Now, granted it's not really a fair
comparison, since I would've gotten a full-ride at UMass Amherst (and UMass
Lowell offered to _pay_ me to attend). But I'd look long and hard at the
scholarship options available before discounting a top college based on price.

------
menloparkbum
Stanford has an amazing campus and most everyone there is very positive. It is
like a little island for overachievers.

MIT is great but the attitudes and environment are quite different. The campus
is in a much more urban environment. Rather than the upbeat attitude at
Stanford, MIT is more of a tough-love kind of school. "You might think you are
smart, but really you suck and are lazy" is how motivation works at MIT. At
Stanford it is more like "yo, we're all super smart. let's be rad and play
ultimate frisbee later." I think it has something to do with the wildly
different climates.

This is very qualitative, but from my experience MIT is probably a better
place to go if you want to do a form of engineering that requires crazy smarts
that isn't computer science. Like hardcore electrical engineering, or
bioengineering or material science or designing atomic weapons. Stanford is
better for straight-up computer stuff.

If you can get into one of those two schools you are a step ahead of the game.
They are the only two schools in the USA that are worth their super inflated
tuitions. Otherwise I'd just go to the best school you can get into that costs
the least amount of money.

------
wheels
You can learn (or incidentally, not learn) CS at most decent colleges. What I
think is a lot more interesting about college is everything else that you'll
learn there along the way and learning to get along and have fun with other
smart people.

When I was college shopping, I was choosing between a liberal arts school and
a top-tier engineering school. I visited the engineering school and realized
that while they had an amazing computer science program, the social outlook
was rather drab. Only 20% girls, in the middle of nowhere, the people that I
talked to didn't really seem to like it, but all assured me "that it was
really a great college."

Then I visited the liberal arts school. That was definitely the right choice.
As it were, I had some great professors that really took an interest in my
research and my life. I learned a lot about literature and philosophy and
psychology and history and hung out with folks that weren't just gear heads.
My world grew wider, not just deeper.

Now, many years later I realize that after the first two years or so of CS I
knew enough to be able to understand and find hard problems. But if I'd not
been forced to take that massive block of core classes, I might have never
realized that psychology is really interesting, that there are a lot of
parallels between the way that architechts and programmers think or that you
can meet a lot of cute girls if you hang out in the music department.

So, why is that important?

Well, when I was submitting my proposal for my senior research, I was stressed
out because it didn't fit neatly into a specific department. It was on the
line between CS, physics and biology. My advisor said something that's stuck
with me to this day:

"The interesting problems of the coming decades of computer science lie at the
intersection between computer science and other fields."

Getting a solid grasp on computer science in my opinion is critically
important, but it's also pretty ubiquitous. (Though, sadly, it's pretty
universally mediocre. A lot depends on your personal uptake.) What seems a lot
more important to me is finding a place where you can cross-pollinate with
other disciplines, meet a lot of different and interesting people and, well,
enjoy yourself. The skills required for that seem to escape nerds much more
often than the ability to sling code, and are essential in business
interactions. A lot of people get caught up in getting into the dozen hardest
to get into schools, but most colleges will have more people smarter than you
than's names you can remember, and it's not that hard to find them.

~~~
Spyckie
I would disagree with this, not because it isn't very good advice in general,
but because its not good advice for entrepreneurs. The fact is that other
people with motivation and drive to start something are quite rare to find in
non top-tier schools, and you not only want people who think like an
entrepreneur, but you also want them to be able to carry part of the load of
the initial work (for web-based applications, code). Don't apply to the top
tier schools because its something that everyone else is doing - do it because
you'll find the best people there, and anything less is giving yourself a
handicap that just isn't worth it. If you're scared about not making it into
the top tier, well just remember, wanting to be an entrpreneur already puts
you above many, many people.

One thing I do agree on is that starting something requires more than just
coding skills - your ability to socialize, to motivate other people, and to
get along with others is critically important. However, I would recommend
teaching yourself how to socialize and getting academic schooling on code
rather than the other way around.

If you're choosing your college based on where you can build a startup, you
should look at 3 things:

1) Smart, motivated people. I would say Stanford, Harvard, MIT have taken most
of them. Startups are rarely 1 person endeavors, and having a lot of
candidates for a partner really helps.

2) Skills. This is why any top-tier university is good, because the skill-sets
there are abundant. Plenty of smart people are looking for the next frontier,
and you can give it to them.

3) Community. Most people don't get serious about entrepreneurship until they
meet an entrepreneur. Make sure you have some sort of VC connection in your
school, or a business program in entrepreneurship and a lively entrepreneur
community. Also take entrepreneurial classes if you can, and try to connect
with the community as fast as possible.

I go to CMU (Carnegie Mellon), and while it has, to some extent, all of the 3
points above, I do sometimes regret not going somewhere better. The difference
in the caliber of people and the quantity and quality of the entrepreneurs
here is quite apparent. CMU has a lot of old VCs that don't really know the
web, and the entrepreneur community here is mostly older people doing older
stuff (but still fascinating startups). One thing I'm very satisfied with is
the professors here teaching entrepreneurship, as they have their own
companies and provide a LOT of advice and motivation (they just are limited in
how much help they can give if you're doing a web startup). I would say its a
tier or 2 below the top three.

There seems to be a good correlation between the VC money in a certain area
and how startup-friendly the colleges nearby are. Its best if you just follow
that.

also - business vs CS - do CS.

The business school here at CMU produces the worst slackers-that-look-good-in-
suits that I've ever seen. It does wonders to your presentation skills but
kills your ability to do any serious work whatsoever.

~~~
wheels
I really do see where you're coming from, partly because I believed the same
when I was in college. I kept looking around and thinking, "There has to be a
place where everybody's better than this, right?"

I'll go ahead and put out a few things that I still think might be true about
the top schools before I jump into my objections.

The alumni network seems to be good. This does seem to be important. I can't
really qualify how much better it is than other places since I didn't go to a
well known school, but it does seem to be big, and well, often rich. (Though,
strength of the alumni network doesn't seem really to be a linear function of
prestige. There are a lot of places out there with freakishly strong alumni
networks that aren't that hard to get into. Looking at the school's endowment
might be a good place to suss this out.) Location, as others have pointed out,
can make a big difference too. And while I don't at all believe that going to
Harvard or Stanford is a reliable indicator of intelligence, I suspect that it
is a pretty good indicator of people who are able to set hard to reach goals
and get them done. The last bit is brand recognition. Harvard and Stanford and
similar have that and I suspect "BS in Computer Science from Harvard" sounds
better on a VC pitch than, "moderately intelligent charismatic insomniac
workaholic with delusions of grandeur", even though the latter would probably
be closer to The Right Stuff.

There are smart and motivated people at every decent college. And pretty much
everywhere they're in the minority. It's enticing to think when you're at
College A that if you'd just gone to College B that it'd be better.

One of the funny statistics from where I went to college was that, at the time
that I went there, we had the highest percentage of students that went on to
receive PhDs of any college in the country. I say funny because, well, I'm
sure you've never heard of where I went to college (now, apparently, according
to US News, the 116th ranked liberal arts college). So, a few years after
college I had friends were TA-ing at Berkeley, Cornell, MIT and they all said
pretty much the same thing -- that the students were almost frustratingly
similar to us. It's easy to forget that for every Larry Page there are
thousands of Stanford grads that are working at boring jobs just like
everybody else.

Community and skills seem about the same. I'm not saying that people aren't
better at more prestigious schools. I'm pretty sure they are. But my feeling
is that the top 1% where I went are probably about on par with the top 10%
from Harvard. And that was still several dozen people and I reckon I knew most
of them. In the house I was living in senior year, I was the only one of the
five of us that wasn't a national merit scholar. But I'm not sure that matters
very much.

My next door neighbor and I are both from Southeast Texas. This is quite a
coincidence, because, you see, I live in east Berlin. His startup
(smartertours.com) has really taken off in the last year. I'm probably smarter
than him, but he's a charismatic insomniac workaholic with delusions of
grandeur. Dude's a machine.

Ryan went to University of Texas I think. My other ex-pat friend here, Jeff,
runs the cafe down the street where Ryan and I often see each other at lunch.
He went to some unknown bible college. Jeff's also managed to do pretty well
for himself since he managed to pick a trendy street just before it got
trendy. He's also worked his ass off.

Now, I'm not an entrepreneur yet. I couldn't legally start a business here
until I got my permanent residence a few weeks ago. But I've done pretty well
for myself as a hacker. When I look back at my brilliant college roommates,
and compare them to me, Ryan or Jeff, my old roommies were definitely a
smarter bunch with a more impressive collection of degrees. They've all got
normal jobs now. But Ryan and Jeff seem to have what it takes.

I'm not saying that an aspiring student shouldn't go to Harvard or Stanford. I
couldn't have gotten in, personally, but I'm sure they're great places to hit
the ground running. I'm just saying don't get hung up on it.

------
jksmith
Recently my son and I sat through a combo-presentation given by Stanford,
Penn, Harvard, Columbia, and Duke. The presentations were all good of course,
with the presenters from Harvard, Penn, and Duke being the best.

One point glaringly stuck out in the Duke presentation though. Even in your
freshman year at Duke, you as a student can pitch the school with an idea, and
they'll consider providing project funding and resources. None of the other
schools suggested they would do this.

Duke is obviously taking the entrepeneurial pulse right now, and consider
promoting and cultivating entrepeneurship as a selling point for their school.

------
bharris
Whichever college allows YOU to grow creatively, socially, and intellectually.
This college is not necessarily Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, or Somestate
University.

As far as a degree, whichever you enjoy the most. Don't focus on the product;
rather, HOW you reach it.

~~~
nostrademons
I think this needs some context. I felt much the same way when I decided on a
college, and made my decision based on that. I won't exactly say I was wrong,
but 7 years later I've got a better perspective on the tradeoffs involved.

Understand that your raw intellectual prowess is a depreciating asset. I'd
guess that I peaked in programming ability at about 19, and 18-20 seems a
pretty common age range based on famous programmers. I'm certainly not as
productive a programmer as I was at my first professional job at 19, and my 35
year old coworkers have said that there's no way they can keep up with what I
do now at 26.

You continue gaining experience for a while after that, so it's not like
you're over the hill at 20. The mid/late 20s seems to be the "sweet spot"
where you still have decent technical prowess and yet enough experience to
avoid blind alleys. But if you fritter away your early 20s, you lose the
benefits of high ability and don't have the experience to show for it. You're
starting behind and have to play catch-up to more youthful and more energetic
competitors, which is possible but can be kinda discouraging.

OTOH, trying out a variety of things gives you a lot of perspective on what
you do or don't want to pursue. I was certain I wanted to be a physics major
and then a theoretical physicist when I entered college. I flirted briefly
with majoring in philosophy or sociology when it turned out physics was much
harder than I bargained for. I tried out fiction writing and found I wasn't
any good at it. I made all-state violin in high school, but again realized
that I didn't have the passion for it needed to be a professional.

The one downside of having all those options open is that I never finished
anything. There was always some other avenue that looked more attractive. It
was only in my senior year, when I was practically flunking out of physics and
had a bunch of hobbies that weren't all that useful, that I decided I was
gonna close off all the other avenues and focus on computers. And it was only
then that I started actually producing stuff that was useful.

So, I'll agree with the parent post that it's important to grow creatively,
socially, and intellectually in college. But understand that there are doors
that going to Stanford/Harvard/MIT opens, and those doors tend to slam shut
afterwards. It's possible to prop them back open, but it takes a lot more
effort, because you're working against people's expectations. Similarly,
there're doors that open from focusing deeply on one field, and it's much
harder to achieve mastery in a subject than it seems in high school.

I remember thinking in high school "I've got 70 years left in my life, that's
plenty of time to accomplish everything." But you don't - you've got maybe
10-15 years (between the ages of 20 and 35) to really make a mark on the
world, and then the rest is for raising kids, writing books, passing on your
wisdom, and generally enjoying the fruits of those 10-15 years.

(I do reserve the right to change my mind in 10 years and say "Pish-posh.
Life's not over at 35 - keep an open mind and you can keep doing cool stuff
until the day you die." But this is how it looks from the mid-20s.)

~~~
DocSavage
Sadly, the attitude evident in the last two paragraphs of your comment runs
deep in young people. Zuckerberg at YC Startup last year, age discrimination
suit at Google, etc. _Logan's Run_ in Silicon Valley.

It's also upside down compared to other fields like medicine and writing. In
medicine, you make your "mark on the world" after you go through significant
training, which ends around 30 or later.

As far as making it entrepreneurially:

1) If it depends purely on intelligence or hacking ability, PlentyOfFish.com
and other success stories wouldn't have made it. Even if it's somewhat true,
consider that the decrease of your ability with age should be less than the
interpersonal variability of ability. (50 yo Einstein > 20 yo Homer Simpson)

2) If it depends on luck, don't worry about age.

3) If it depends on connections, you get more with age.

4) If it depends on others' perception of your youth.... you may be in
trouble.

~~~
nostrademons
Markus Frind is quite a bit more intelligent than many people give him credit
for, eg. he discovered the then-longest arithmetic progression of prime
numbers in 2004. Same goes for many other entrepreneurs that people assume
were just lucky - James Hong, Marc Andreesen, Brad Fitzpatrick, etc. And the
variation due to age may be much less than the variation due to person, but
remember that there are many more smart people than there are millionaires.
Empirically, it seems like you need to be smart, young, _and_ lucky.

Also - I doubt few people would dispute that succeeding _with a tech business_
requires the ability to concentrate intensely for long periods of time.
(Something I'm obviously failing at, having been back to news.YC 3 times so
far today.) Certainly many young people lack that, but for a given person, it
seems likely that they're better able to do that at 20 or 25 before things
like family, business connections, or reputation intercedes.

It definitely is upside down compared to medicine or writing, but that's
because computer programming is nearly in unique among human fields in being
subject to lots of chaotic effects. Almost every other body of knowledge is
additive, but in software, small changes to requirements at the base layer can
have ripple effects that invalid your whole system's design. That's why the
software industry seems to undergo major tectonic shifts every 10 years or so,
each of which creates lots of opportunities for young entrepreneurs who
haven't learned the now-obsolete ways of "how things are done".

When I was a kid, the hot new field was microcomputers, the programming
language was assembly (no wait...Pascal. no wait...C), and the largest
platform was Windows. When I was a teenager, the hot new field was the web,
the hot programming languages were Perl and PHP and Java, and the largest
platform was Netscape. Now that I'm in my twenties, the hot new field is rich
Internet applications, the hot programming languages are Flash, JavaScript,
Python, and Ruby, and the largest market is Internet Explorer. I can almost
guarantee that the hot field, language, and platform will be different in 10
years, and all the technical skills I've learned so far will be obsolete.

Edit: On reflection, it's not really _software_ as a whole that's chaotic so
much as the _leading edge_ of software, i.e. the edge where you can still have
a viable startup. If you're making a desktop app, the tools and skillsets are
only slightly different from making a desktop app in 1995. If you're making a
webapp that's just a sequence of forms, the tools from 1998 will work fine.
But those are mostly solved problems: either there's an off-the-shelf solution
that's already been built, or you can hire one of an army of consultants that
knows how to build one. The leading edge, by definition, involves tackling
problems that haven't been solved before, and so there's no advantage to
experience in solving them.

~~~
DocSavage
I didn't know about Markus Frind's intelligence (interesting info), but in
PlentyOfFish's case (and successes like MySpace), it's no masterpiece of
hacking.

Writing prose can be similar in intensity to writing code. John Scalzi, a
recent sci-fi award winner, wrote a book for writers called "You're Not
Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffeeshop." Many writers block
out pure concentration time. Nonetheless, I'll concede that long stretches of
time are more available to the young, unless they are out partying :)

I wonder how many big successes depend on _bleeding edge_ software? For every
Google, there are plenty more like MySpace, Ebay, Amazon, and Facebook.

I usually live off specialized applications, where you build software that
focuses on a particular need for a niche population. Knowing the domain (say
radiotherapy or creative writing) is really useful because of insights into
how you can fashion new tools using advancing technology (e.g., faster 3D
graphics or a better web framework). So while I agree that creating totally
innovative approaches might be easier for the young, I think experience helps
in creating domain-specific software.

My main point, though, is even if you believe you have a limited shelf-life,
you might consider it's your shelf-life in only one of many possible avenues
to make your mark.

------
alaskamiller
Babson College for entrepreneurship. Any top 10 engineering school in the
country for CS. You learn the same shit, it's the just level of immersion in
the coursework and peer pressure that differentiate the school.

A lot of mentions of Stanford here but how many of you actually went to school
there? I swear to god somedays I think most of you are just card-carrying
cargo-cultists.

~~~
zasz
I go there. I have a good hacker friend who's been approached by other
students or ex-students several times to form some sort of startup or to do
other little programming projects. So far, they have all been miserable
failures. No, not even failures, because they never even really tried. So what
if people here are smart? I don't think they are nearly as motivated as most
YC.ers think they are--god, just go to any meeting of a student group after
the first couple weeks of the quarter, it's a shitload of, "Yeah I would've
liked to go but I had a paper and a problem set due..." Same thing with the
little projects that just fizzled. Of the wannabe entrepeneurs I've met here,
nobody has shown the kind of commitment pg seems to think is necessary. I met
them. They're still in school, still trying to balance a startup with getting
their degree, still unable to commit themselves and take the plunge.

I think the vast majority of Stanford students, or other elite students
anywhere, are admitted because they put their schoolwork first. Sinking lots
of time into any extracurricular, including entrepeneurship, is a sacrifice a
lot of students aren't used to making and would have trained themselves to not
make in high school, and in fact, such a sacrifice could have royally screwed
them out of getting in in the first place, and almost certainly would have if
they had gone to a very competitive high school.

Seriously, FUCK STANFORD and don't worry about it. Just find a good school
that's not too much pressure to get into.

------
geebee
As a Berkeley grad, it pains me to say this, but Stanford is almost certainly
your best bet. It's great academically, _and_ it seems to understand how to
encourage students to get involved in startups. In the startup world, it's
Stanford and everyone else.

That said, "everyone else" still has some excellent options. MIT, Harvard,...
yeah, all good options. But don't rule out the big public research
universities. Berkeley and Illinois grads (among many others) have produced a
lot of great startups - great by almost any measure (except that damn
university to the south ;) )

------
jyu
Stanford by far. Then MIT/Harvard. Everywhere else is roughly in the same
magnitude.

For undergrad, getting a business degree is pretty irrelevant to start ups.
Get a technical degree, such as CS. Learn about start ups by evaluating
different opportunities, reading case studies and books like "founders at
work."

You can test out ideas in your free time during the semester and winter break.
It is important to get relevant internships during the summer.

------
white
Choose Stanford (MIT, Harvard). The major benefit which you will get there is
alumni and networking. If you are low on funds, you will have to be extremely
wise on budget. But don't let debt scare you. When you are done, you can take
two-three years working on other startups, get the rid of debt and gain
priceless practical experience. And you can always bootstrap your own thing
during your off-hours outside day job. Startup is not an easy thing, but if
you have passion and willingness to win, nothing can stop you now. Don't be
afraid and you'll be thankful to yourself for making this choice.

"Being in your own business is working 80 hours a week so that you can avoid
working 40 hours a week for someone else." (c) Ramona Arnett

------
AnotherUser
I'd highly recommend the University of Maryland's "Hinman CEOs" program. UMD
has been pushing entrepreneurship very heavily in the past few years
(especially in the engineering disciplines.)

The Hinman program provides mentors, classes, living/learning environments,
conference rooms, and other facilities to help potential entrepreneurs.
Additionally, they bring in a steady stream of successful entrepreneurs to
speak, network, and help you on your way.

Add that to its close proximity to Washington D.C., good tuition, and highly
ranked engineering/business departments, and you have a fairly good
entrepreneurship package.

------
rms
Stanford.

Computer Science.

Good luck.

~~~
boucher
From what I recall, Stanford accepts roughly 1% of applicants to the Computer
Science program, compared with just over 10% for the University as a whole,
making it one of the most competitive programs in the nation.

On a side note, my alma mater, the University of Southern California, accepts
roughly 25% of students as a whole, and a slightly lower percentage of
computer science students (though I can't find specific numbers).

I can't speak to knowing a large volume of entrepreneurs at USC, but I do know
a few. The school itself has been making an impressive dedication to
increasing entrepreneurship, however, especially in the Viterbi school of
engineering. Mark Stevens, of Sequoia, recently funded a center for technology
commercialization designed to help students build businesses out of research
projects, and there are several student groups devoted to similar pursuits.

Los Angeles is also not the valley, but it turns out that it is a decent
alternative, I would say at least as much so as any other major city in the
U.S.

I'm not saying you should go to USC necessarily, but I enjoyed myself while I
was there. One thing is certain, though, it is very different from Stanford.

~~~
RyanGWU82
_From what I recall, Stanford accepts roughly 1% of applicants to the Computer
Science program, compared with just over 10% for the University as a whole,
making it one of the most competitive programs in the nation._

That may be true for Ph.D. students, but not for undergraduates. Undergraduate
applications are reviewed without regards to major. You'll have an equal
chance of getting in whether you express interest in CS or English. The
Stanford admissions website confirms this. [1]

The Ph.D. program may have acceptance rates approaching 1%, although I don't
really think it's that low. Also, the master's program accepts a significantly
higher percentage of applicants than the doctoral program.

[1] "All applicants apply to Stanford through the Office of Undergraduate
Admission, not to a particular school or department within the University, and
Stanford does not give preference to any major."
<http://admission.stanford.edu/applying/1_8_faqs.html>

~~~
boucher
You're right, in that I cannot find anyone claiming the significantly lower
figure for CS admissions in particular. Even at 10%, it is among the most
competitive programs in the country. Both Williams and Amherst, the top two
liberal arts colleges in the US, have over 15% admissions, while Yale and
Harvard come in usually between 8% and 10%.

On a side note, I have some doubt that the admissions process is truly blind
to your stated major of interest. These schools do have a desire to maintain
balance between their programs.

~~~
nostrademons
They're not blind, but you can also put down anything you want, including
"undecided". I was certain I wanted to be a physics major when I applied to
college. Things change.

------
mronge
If you live in the midwest, I highly recommend the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. It's a top 5 CS program.

~~~
falsestprophet
If you live in Illinois, it is a great idea. Otherwise, you will pay dearly
for the degree.

------
python_kiss
For Canada: Waterloo University

------
bkrausz
a) Answers without reasons are more or less alma mater shoutouts, I recommend
you ignore them.

b) Stanford and UIUC tend to be more entrepreneurial than other CS colleges (I
find Carnegie Mellon/MIT tend to lean towards academia), but I'd say it's more
important to go where you'll be happy...visit everywhere and find a place that
won't drive you insane, since nothing kills the startup spirit faster than
being forced to work day-in and day-out on things you don't enjoy.

That being said, I love Carnegie Mellon :-P

------
skmurphy
The school of hard knocks? Dropping out seems to be a common path for
successful entrepreneurs. Witness Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Walt
Disney, to name a few in the technology space. Follow subjects that energize
you; they are the ones that you will continue to get better at after you
graduate. Entrepreneurship has very little to do with programming or college,
and a lot to do with a relentless focus on value creation.

------
far33d
I went to brown - I loved it, it had a really great CS department, especially
for an undergrad, and was overall an amazing social and academic experience.
Not a big entrepreneurship culture in the CS department, but I think you can
make that happen if that's what you want to do.

College is all about the people. Find the one with the people you like the
best and respect the most. You'll figure out the rest while you are there.

------
edw519
If you're a junior in high school, I'd take as many college level courses
(mostly math and CS) as I could in your senior year and seriously consider
skipping college.

I would normally never recommend this to anyone who cared about their future,
but if you truly are an "aspiring start up entrepreneur", then you already
know this is the right answer. In your case, college is an unnecessary detour.

~~~
neilc
Strictly-speaking, it is unnecessary for an entrepreneur, but I wouldn't be
very keen to skip college (what's the rush to start your first business? Your
career as an entrepreneur doesn't end at 30). The educational background will
be very useful -- you can learn Rails, SQL, and the like on your own, but
tackling true CS subjects individually is not something a lot of people can
truly do. Going to college is also a great experience, from a networking and
personal maturity perspective.

~~~
edw519
For "networking" and "personal maturity", agreed.

"but tackling true CS subjects individually is not something a lot of people
can truly do"

Unless they have jobs.

Please don't kid yourself into thinking that CS in college is anything other
than the warm-up act for the real thing. It's strictly optional.

~~~
neilc
Well, I'm just saying that the number of people with the enthusiasm to really,
deeply grok, say, the PCP theorem, Bayes nets, or the FFT in their spare time
is quite small. Sure, undergrad CS is just a "warm-up act for the real thing",
but a solid grounding in all those topics is a really useful thing for someone
planning a career doing technology startups.

------
aswanson
Where the weather is warm and the energy is palpable. Where else but
SomeSchool, CA? Any school near the valley. Hang on every campus you can't get
in and get a good feel of the people you can build with. I envy you. Good
luck.

------
trekker7
Go to a place with easy exams, cool course projects, and smart people.

------
samt
Someone has to mention Cornell. The undergrad community is intensely
entrepreneurial, the CS department is top notch and you won't find nearly as
many a-holes as at Harvard (half serious).

------
prakash
>Also is a computer science or business degree recommended?

why not both?

------
yters
I would like to point out that if your aim is purely financial freedom, there
are much easier ways to accomplish this.

------
prakash
location, location, location: where are all the startup hubs?

anywhere close to the valley, boston/cambridge, austin, seattle, nyc.

------
daniel-cussen
Stanford.

------
limeade
Harvard. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg.

~~~
pg
Sergey Brin went to the University of Maryland. Larry Page went to Michigan.
Marc Andreessen and Max Levchin went to the University of Illinois.

This not to say some schools aren't better than others, but when people do
great things it's usually because of who they are rather than where they went
to college.

~~~
neilc
Well, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a top 10 (arguably top
5) ranked CS department, and Michigan is no slouch, either.

I agree with the gist of your point, though. The school you attend is
considerably more important for grad school.

