
American Horror, Ivy League Edition - juanplusjuan
http://www.newsweek.com/american-horror-ivy-league-edition-263448
======
Thriptic
> Deresiewicz says essentially the same thing, urging students to flee the Ivy
> League in favor of smaller colleges like Wesleyan, Reed and Grinnell, where
> the students are more passionate and receptive...

This is terrible advice and simply not true. I went to a small, solidly ranked
liberal arts school. Most of the students also drank incredibly hard; they had
little regard for academics; and while it was true that you could always get
in contact with a professor, the faculty was of a far lower quality than you
would find at an ivy league university. Research opportunities were also non-
existent.

> where the students are ... less prone to unseemly résumé-padding

It's certainly true that my school did not emphasize résumé-padding, and the
end result was that none of my friends who majored in STEM related fields got
into top graduate programs, and none of my friends / anyone else I knew
outside of such fields achieved meaningful employment following graduation.

~~~
thesteamboat
> It's certainly true that my school did not emphasize résumé-padding, and the
> end result was that none of my friends who majored in STEM related fields
> got into top graduate programs,

In my experience (currently a PhD student at a top 10 STEM program) graduate
programs only care at about ability to do research. There may be a few non-
research activities that demonstrate this, e.g. scoring well on Putnam, but no
one scores points for activism or running a club or excelling athletically, or
any of the others activities I associate with the phrase resume-padding.

~~~
Thriptic
This is a fair point, and what I meant was something more along the lines of
"It's certainly true that my school did not emphasize résumé-padding or even
resume building".

No one at my school ever discussed career development, and it was a
fundamental disservice to the students. The assumption on the part of the
faculty was that students would go to 1 of 3 mediocre grad programs or low
tier medical programs that our students were regularly admitted to, and that
furthering students' development outside of undergrad was not their concern.
The only reason I ended up in a better place was because of fantastic
mentoring outside of school.

To put this into context, I majored in biochemistry in undergrad, and was the
only person in my department (or out of anyone else that I knew in STEM) to do
summer research internships at other universities (we didn't have such a
thing) / in industry while I was there. I was also the only person to push for
a more independent senior research thesis rather than a cookie cutter project
which was handed to me.

The university I performed research at for two summers had large, well
organized career counseling and job placement efforts, including multiple
large scale career fairs each year. When I returned to my school and suggested
that we organize a trip to a large university career fair nearby, I was met
with blank stares by the faculty and the students. When I asked people what
their career plans were soon after the start of senior year, no one even had a
general sense of what they wanted to do or what opportunities were out
there...

~~~
tstactplsignore
Just so you know how different the other side of the coin is, I go to a top
research university similar to the Ivies, and of around 50 STEM students I
know, every single one did some form of summer research or STEM internship. An
additional 2 semesters of research are required for most STEM majors.

------
burgers
_> Economics, conversely, is as popular as beer, topping all majors at
Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton and Penn. In what Deresiewicz calls “a stunning
convergence,” it was the top major at 26 of the nation’s top 40 universities
and colleges._

In a society that sets up severe and aggressive punishments for having less
money than someone else, why would anyone go into any other field? Only the
masochists and the selfless will be outside the world of finance soon.

~~~
melling
Well, there will probably still be an abundant number of indie developers
willing to make $40k/year. They'll move to Alaska so they can live the dream.
I should have kept a list of all the recent podcasts and links. Anyway, here's
one from today.

[http://www.developereconomics.com/indie-app-opportunity-
gone...](http://www.developereconomics.com/indie-app-opportunity-gone/)

~~~
otakucode
It always amazes me when a future where everyone can make a good living, but
where there may be reduced opportunities for insanely extravagant wealth
concentration, makes people scoff, but I see it often. Since technology has
solved the problem of distribution - the main product that companies were
invented to solve - it only seems natural for centralized companies to
dissolve entirely. Aside from solving distribution (both of work and of
product), everything companies provide can be provided for nearly no cost by
software. And companies today have tremendous overhead, doing unwise things
like maintaining offices. They do nothing but drain resources and subtract
value. Physical co-location of workers is worthless thanks to technology in
most every industry.

And it always seems to be the people who are most dedicated to economic ideals
and capitalism who refuse to see that capitalism dictates that the current
system of megacorps will be defeated by capitalism itself because they are
radically inefficient when compared to swarms of freelancers coordinated by
and through software. Simply because we may never see another 'Goldman Sachs'
strangling the wealth out of millions and putting it into the pockets of a
handful who did nothing to earn it, they ignore the fact that most people only
need $72k/yr to get to a point where more money won't even make them happier.

~~~
melling
That's less than a first year salary for a first year junior banker.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-20/goldman-sachs-
said-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-20/goldman-sachs-said-to-
raise-junior-staff-salaries-20-.html)

People with kids need to pay $1000/month for day care in the NYC area. The
price for an average 3 bedroom home that's commutable to NYC has to be over
$500,000.

Yes, $72k/year will go a long way in Alaska.

~~~
mbrameld
I think you underestimate the cost of living in Alaska. I live in Juneau and
it is very expensive. Maybe not NYC or SF expensive, but in 2012 the median
value of a single family home was $332,000. Food and gas are also very
expensive. Things might be slightly cheaper in Anchorage or Fairbanks. You
might be able to find some cheap land somewhere undesirable and build a house
or a cabin, but it's going to be very expensive to get building materials
shipped there.

~~~
hudibras
Median household income in Alaska is $61,000/year, so there are definitely
lots of Alaskans who can scrimp by on $72k.

[https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statemedian/](https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statemedian/)

~~~
monknomo
$72k/year is above average in Alaska; it is above average in every state. If
you look at the census data you cite, you can see that Alaska is #7 in terms
of median household in the US. I doubt that means that Alaskans are
significantly richer than average Americans, it probably means that Alaska is
more expensive.

It looks like melling is using Alaska as an example of a cheap place;
somewhere your dollar goes farther. If you look at the "Real Value of $100"
maps you see floating around[0] you'll see it is not a particularly cheap
state. It might be cheaper than New York City, but I'm not at all sure it's
cheaper than New York State. In fact, New York looks like it has a median
income of 53k, so plenty of New Yorkers scrimp by on $72k. Based purely on
maximizing the difference between their income and their neighbors, the
hypothetical indie dev should go to Mississippi.

I think looking at the cost of living in a state is a better guide than median
income. This cost of living chart[2] says that the cheapest states are
Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Indiana, whereas the most
expensive states are Hawaii, DC, New York, Alaska (ha!), and New Jersey. Based
purely on minimizing their cost of living, the hypothetical indie dev should
still go to Mississippi.

I am a little surprised to see that the median income of New York is so low
compared to its cost of living, so a New Yorker, on average, might be better
off moving to Alaska, but not by as much as some other state, I'd wager.

My surprise got me thinking, so I did a tiny bit of excel analysis, where I
normalized median wages[0] based on the value of a dollar data[1], then sorted
states based on normalized median wage / cost of living[2]. Utah, Nebraska,
Virginia, Iowa, and Wyoming are the top 5 with that ratio, while Hawaii, New
York, DC, California and Oregon (Oregon pips Alaska here, by one rank, but my
point stands, Alaska is many things, but cheap isn't one of them) are the
bottom 5. I think that maps roughly with my intuition that big coastal places
are sort of expensive for their average salaries and that boring, but not poor
places are cheap for their salaries. I'm not sure this is relevant to the
indie dev who doesn't have an employer, but for those of us who work in the
flesh, I guess we should go to Utah?

[0]
[https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statemedian/](https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statemedian/)
[1] [http://taxfoundation.org/blog/real-value-100-each-
state](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/real-value-100-each-state) [2]
[http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/ind...](http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/index.stm)

------
aidenn0
As far as access to professors; I went to a school with approximately 30k
undergraduates. There were some phenomenal professors there, and if you merely
showed up to one of their talks and take an interest and you immediately stood
out to them.

Going by my data-point of one school, it's not particularly hard to get
interaction with professors, even when nearly all the freshman classes are
taught by TAs.

I got to meet and interact with some wonderful physicists, just by being
interested in what they had to say. I wonder if it is easier or harder to do
that at an Ivy.

~~~
ISL
Easy to do in physics at Cornell and the University of Washington. Send emails
or knock on doors; it's not hard to find a professor who's interested in
working with interested people.

~~~
wiredfool
My recollections of Cornell and UW are the same. Show up and ask questions and
you might wind up working in their lab.

------
ddilger
Research and business benefit from pooling the best talent in one place. So
what if some students get in from legacy or money. That's a price paid to have
a large endowment at your disposal.

Sounds like the authors of the article and the books referenced are just
jealous of Ivy League students. Students joining frats? Glad they don't do
that at lesser universities.

------
sebular
This article hits on some good points, but it conflates two separate issues:

1\. The quality of education at Ivy League schools isn't living up to the hype
(and cost) of their "brand".

2\. Fraternities are a destructive force in the lives of college students.

I actually agree with both points, but they are, in fact, unrelated to each
other.

------
otakucode
I imagine all of those Valedictorians moving on to Ivy League status are
simply gathering the benefits of a childhood designed to make them
subservient, unquestioning, and anything but self-determined. Of course they
end up vomiting in frat basements. They're dumped into adulthood without an
iota of experience of being a human being. How are they supposed to know what
to do when no one is telling them exactly what to do with every moment of
their day for the first time in their entire lives?

~~~
protonfish
I am not sure why your comment is getting so much hate. Are there that many
valedictorians on HN? I read so much about the dangers of performance metrics
in the work place, but aren't grades the most widespread and pernicious of
them all? Face it, a 4.0 does not require more than average intelligence, only
the ability to quickly and precisely do exactly as you are told.

~~~
bsilvereagle
> only the ability to quickly and precisely do exactly as you are told

In my experience, my 4.0 existed because I didn't do what I'm told. If I
disagreed with a teacher's answer, I would write in "(e) bsilvereagle's
answer" and usually get full credit. Similarly, not once did I write a Bing-
Bang-Bongo paper in high school as instructed, yet I got top grades in English
because I could independently construct a worthwhile essay. I don't think I
ever completed a Chemistry lab as instructed either, I would stop half way
through and start tinkering around and could usually come up with a
hypothesis/experiment/conclusion that was much better than what the lab set
out to do.

In short, don't assume every 4.0 you see is going to do exactly as they're
told.

~~~
protonfish
Not sure what school you went to (or even in what country - what the heck is
"Bing-Bang-Bongo"?) but you only need one teacher that doesn't like your
alleged independent methods to put a fly into your perfect score. You must be
very fortunate to somehow have avoided this your entire high school career.
Bravo.

