

Ask HN: Do college admission requirements disfavor hacker start-up founders? - tokenadult

I saw an interesting comment by pg in the last day or so on the issue of whether students at very elite universities choose safe careers rather than the risk-taking of founding a start-up. I'd love to see more discussion of this issue. Are the most selective colleges selecting students who play it safe in high school (thus getting into a highly selective college) and missing out on risk-taking students (who end up attending somewhat less selective colleges)? If a college admission policy were tweaked to maximize selection of future successful start-up founders, what would it look for among high-school-age applicants? Are there things that high school students can do that are both good practice for business risk-taking and safe choices for building a resume for a college application?
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carbocation
I suspect that educational institutions favor the entrepreneurial spirit, and
I say this because I can attribute my post-college success to (a) having
standardized test scores and grades that fall within the tolerated range, and
(b) having an analytically-oriented website that I take seriously. In other
words, they won't reject me due to scores or grades, and then the website ends
up being the hook that gets me in.

I suspect that very few applicants have a clearly articulated entrepreneurial
drive by the time they apply to college. They may well have that drive, but
until they can articulate it or, better yet, create a product or service to
demonstrate it, they may have a hard time making that a key part of their
college application. Also, I do think that the start-up spirit will be strong
in some people (and this will tend to run in peer groups due to network
effect).

If you believe that people often like to start by 'scratching their own itch',
then you may well see a phenomenon where young creative people produce things
that educational institutions might not like too much. Let's say you chat on
AIM all day long, so you create an AIM profile website or, more adventurously,
an AIM exploit. For you this may be technically engaging and challenging,
requiring plenty of on-the-fly learning. Let's say your tool becomes popular,
and the ad revenue from your site nets you some nice income. Great! But will
you feel like you can tell colleges about your tool? Maybe not, if, upon
reflection, you feel that it's too childish or too unsavory.

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pg
Probably the best thing you could do is have a moderately well advertised way
of wangling your way in despite doing badly on some or all of the usual
measures.

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_delirium
My impression is that essentially _doing anything at all_ in high school that
is vaguely intellectual and not totally routine will probably look good to a
college, and there are plenty of things like that that are also good for
prospective entrepreneurs. When I applied to colleges in 2000, the mere fact
that I was active in Internet Stuff helped me, as far as I can tell (I ran a
fan site and mailing list for a semi-popular band that I liked).

The bigger question is probably whether there are tradeoffs that should be
balanced differently. Between a student with perfect grades and top test
scores _and_ some online projects, and one with just the good grades/scores,
the one with the online projects wins. But what about a student with perfect
grades/scores versus one with a B average and some online projects? That's
probably where elite schools start being less interested in people who aren't
at the very top academically but might make good entrepreneurs.

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tokenadult
Here is pg's comment that prompts this new thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320363>

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hga
MIT very much likes applicants who do projects and that's in alignment with
what you desire.

Then again, MIT has from the beginning been about a close alignment between
industry and itself. Professors are have one day a week that they can work for
themselves, undergraduate research, projects and internships (in many
departments) are formally supported. Entrepreneurship is strongly encouraged,
at least in the School of Engineering.

