

Ask YC: What percentage of the YC accepted come from Ivy League Schools? - maxklein

YC is a subjective judging process. Is the school that ones goes to weighed in proportionally or over-proportionally?<p>This question could be rephrased as : Of the people picked so far, what is the ratio of people from 'good schools' vs people from 'bad schools'? Is this information publicly available?
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SwellJoe
One would have to have data about the relative sizes of student bodies of all
schools everywhere vs. the Ivy League schools, which I don't have.

But, it's easy to say that a lot of the YC company founders that I know came
from the following schools:

Stanford (by far the leader, I'm sure)

MIT

Oxford (a surprise to me)

CMU

But, a lot also came from other places. I can think of examples from UPenn,
University of Florida, many of the UC schools, Monash University (in
Australia), as well as folks who don't actually have a university degree (me,
for example--I went to a bunch of different schools for a bunch of different
subjects, and none worth speaking of).

I suspect the "disproportionate" numbers are due to the basic fact that folks
who go to an "elite" university are more likely to be highly ambitious, and
school was just another way to achieve. Motivation plays a big role in getting
into YC...and getting into and graduating from a top university takes a lot of
ambition and motivation. I don't think YC thinks a lot about the college field
on the application. If they did, Virtualmin wouldn't be a YC funded company;
though my co-founder did go to a good school, I didn't know what it was when I
filled out the application, so as far as YC could tell we were both marginally
educated.

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pg
<http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

Off the top of my head I know of 5 founders in the current group of 50-60 who
went to Ivy League colleges. There may be more, but I'd have to go back and
look at the applications to know how many.

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qhoxie
Given past commentary from PG/YC, the supposed caliber of the school an
applicant attended would have little impact on their decision. I could see
them analyzing more factors relating to the school, such as difficulty of the
major, honors status, and time taken to graduate. These seem like they would
have equal or greater impact on decisions than the school's reputation itself.

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amrithk
I am not sure if the judges look at the schools the candidates come from.
Maybe I am mistaken?

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SwellJoe
They look at everything, I'm sure, or they wouldn't ask.

But, I doubt it is considered a vital statistic...just another way to indicate
motivation and ambition. I'm pretty sure pg and Co. know that university is
not where most of the best hackers acquired their skills.

