

Do I need to go to a big-name university? - meadhikari
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35208/do-i-need-to-go-to-a-big-name-university

======
jchonphoenix
This is purely anecdotal, but is probably less biased than most responses for
I've experienced both sides of the table. It also reflects my perception at
the time which may be skewed.

In April of my Junior year of High School, I decided to graduate a year early
and attend college. This was way after admissions deadlines, but the
University of Pittsburgh let me in, so I decided to spend my "senior" year
there.

I then transferred to Carnegie Mellon to complete my degree.

There were many major differences between the two. Namely, at Pitt, the
professors were much better at explaining course material. However, the course
material was also much easier and much simpler to understand. Where at Pitt,
the professor would teach you combinatorics, at Carnegie Mellon, the professor
would ATTEMPT to teach you combinatorics, then force you to do a problem set
filled with Putnam level combinatorics problems. The result was you learned
much more at CMU because much more material was covered. In addition, you were
forced to learn on your own or else you would fail.

At Pitt, few people drop out of their degree program because they can't handle
the course load. There are a large number of people who drop out because they
spend too much time partying, but if you put in the effort, you will receive a
degree. Carnegie Mellon is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my
life. In high school, I was top of my class, 1500's on my SATs, 5's on 6 AP
exam's, made it to the USAMO. At Carnegie Mellon, I was just another above
average student. Being well rounded meant absolutely nothing. The kid who
failed English in high school but completely upset the curve in the class made
you scramble the rest of the semester. Sure, I did well. But I was by far not
the most intelligent student that professors fawn over. That person is a
friend of mine. He placed in the top few at ICPC World Finals and can solve
Putnam problems easily. He also doesn't know the definition of entertainment
and, according to his housemate, hasn't been back to his room in 2 weeks for
he's been sleeping in the library. When he was my TA, he gave me a word of
advice. Go on amazon and buy yourself a shipment of the largest packet of Red
Bull and Jolt you can find (he preferred Jolt). He was not wrong. The famously
difficult 15-251 (that he TAed) forced you to spend 30-40 hours a week on the
homework. I felt the absolute dumbest I have ever felt in my entire life. This
was the first (and only) class I have ever taken where I've seen multiple
students break down and cry during an exam. As a side note, the mathematics of
CS was always much harder than programming. IMO programming is easy.

This all paid off when I went to apply for internships. At the Pitt career
fair, there were many large companies. Google and Microsoft showed up, but
besides these two, no scrappy startups or hot valley companies were present.
CS students were expected to work for the tech departments of Alcoa, or Union
Railroad. Google or Microsoft was a big deal.

At Carnegie Mellon, Google and Microsoft was the standard. Recruiters
literally mob you to try to get your attention. A friend once joked after
seeing the Spacex booth and their recruiters that Spacex was implementing the
next level of recruiting for top level nerds: booth babes. If you had put any
effort into your classes and actually had some coding ability, you were bound
to land an internship. As I said, Google and Microsoft were prestigious but
expected for those that were in the top 20% of their class. The most
prestigious internships always came from Facebook and Palantir.
Coincidentally, Palantir quickly gained fame throughout Carnegie Mellon for
having the cockiest employees and the most killer interviews. They expected
you to eat algorithms for breakfast and solve ACM ICPC World finals level
problems in their interviews.

At my internship at Microsoft after my second year of college, I also noticed
some very telling signs of benefits of a top tier University. The best
developers and most intelligent students all came from MIT, CMU, and Waterloo
(I met no Stanford people). Even those that came from good schools such as
Georgia Tech or Cornell had a marked difference in ability. Every student from
the top tier CS institutions could out-code, out-theory, and out-problem solve
all their peers. Was this due to intelligence? Maybe. But I highly suspect
that this was also due to schooling. People from other universities had just
never been exposed to the same kick-ass curriculum that we had been. They
learned Dijkstra's, Union-Find, and Red Black Trees in their senior year. We
learned it our freshman year. They knew hash table's were and how they worked.
We implemented hash tables with 3 different hashing scheme's and learned about
the bleeding edge algorithms in hashing such as Cuckoo hashing. They were
taught splay trees. We were taught splay trees then had to rederive them on
our final because our professor had invented them. They learned lisp. We had
SML beaten into our heads by the best programming languages department in the
country. They learned about Operating Systems, "wrote" one in python or java,
and did so by filling in the blanks like parts of the scheduler and maybe some
parts of vm. We wrote one in C and asm, from scratch starting with a blank
file. We implemented a pre-emptive kernel with the ability to load programs
and run on bare hardware. There was literally no way the other students from
other universities could compete. We'd just had hundreds of times more
practice than they had. As a side note, I'm not sure who has the better deal
because they partied/slept 8 hours a night on average. For us, sleep was a
luxury.

What's the moral of this story? I don't really know. Top tier universities are
hard--really hard. I've heard CMU and MIT are the two most difficult CS
universities, so my opinion may be skewed. The most relaxing time of these 4
years has been during my internships. I got full nights of sleep and only
worked up to 12 hours a day. I honestly feel that I've learned much more than
my peers at other schools, but this is probably due to the fact that the
material has been forcefully whipped into my brain, and I've spent many
hundreds of hours more than my peers practicing and studying the material. The
professors at CMU are more brilliant, but there appears to be an inverse
correlation between brilliance and teaching ability.

~~~
Hypharse
I agree with the two main points of your post regarding the importance of:

\- being forced to learn difficult problems

\- being surrounded by very smart people

In the long run it really helps to be forced to learn difficult ideas. If you
aren't forced to learn them then you are unlikely to put forth the effort
necessary. This is why it is a nice benefit to be in a class where they expect
you to do hard problems and you have the pride to not want to let them down.
As you stated, big state universities cater to a lower common denominator so
the focus on difficulty is not as extreme.

Anyone that is reasonably intelligent and very self-motivated can conquer the
hard problems students go through in top Computer Science programs. They can
also network in a similar, although not as easy, fashion as done at top-tier
universities by doing open-source. So, while a top-tier university does make
things easier, it isn't a requirement. This is doubly true for Computer
Science.

I do think that your experience at Microsoft was purely anecdotal as you
stated. The part where those from top-tier schools were always better than
those from a lower-tier is very far from a universal truth. Following that
train of logic in the real world will get you burned.

~~~
jchonphoenix
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that they were ALWAYS better. It was just very
rare (I think 1 person) for someone not CMU/MIT/Waterloo to be on the same
tier. Again, I think this is likely due to the fact that we were all in
school, and we had learned things they had never even heard of. It was like
comparing a college senior to a freshman. Over time after leaving universities
I'm sure things will balance out. Those that continue learning will keep
ahead. Those that don't will fall behind.

~~~
nostrademons
It does even out after a few years. When I think of the half a dozen or so
people I know at the Googleplex who I would most want on my team for a
startup, they graduated from: Virginia Tech, UT Austin, UMich Ann Arbor, UC
Berkeley, Stanford, and perhaps Brown.

I've noticed that the MIT _interns_ are noticeably ahead of interns from other
schools, and that fresh grads from top tier schools tend to be ahead of other
fresh grads (actually, fresh grads from state schools tend not to end up at
Google - nearly everyone above except the Brown & Stanford grads came to
Google after work experience elsewhere). But that advantage fades after a year
or two, and the long-term top performers are often folks who blew off college
or went on tour with their punk-rock band.

------
patio11
I went to a major US research institution and double degreed in CS and East
Asian Studies (Japanese, basically). The quality of the Japanese program was
life-changing for me. The quality of the CS program -- meh, I'm not unhappy
with it, but neither the instruction nor the brand name was worth
substantially more than the equivalent degree from a less prestigious
institution.

Sevenish-years later I can guarantee you that no one who I do business with
cares a lick about the name of my university. They don't ask, I don't tell.
(Same with GPA, major, and specific wording of the degree, by the way. My
professors and advisors carried on as if these were really important when I
was in school. I actually _cried_ when some minor academic rule looked like it
was going to knock my degree from $ARBITRARY_LETTERS to
$EQUALLY_ARBITRARY_LETTERS. I strongly suggest college kids have a
professional mentor _outside_ of academia in whatever industry/culture/etc
they want to seek employment in, so you can figure out whether the things
academia are so obsessed with actually matter at all.)

This is, obviously, influenced by my career choices. If I had done what many
kids at my university did and gone into investment banking, management
consulting, or the like, I would have a 4x scale replica of my diploma made so
that one could not help reading the name when one entered my office.

~~~
Retric
The problem with CS is nobody really knows how to select students that are
good at it or teach it. So there is little real difference between graduates
of a top school and an average school with a few good instructors. As to
networking, there are plenty of ways to network that don't cost 100,000$.

PS: Some schools still attract talent, but plenty of terrible programmers
graduated from ex: MIT.

~~~
shriphani
I do not attend MIT but I am a big fan of OCW videos and I still regret being
rejected (probably will for life). I would love to be taught by Demaine,
Leiserson et al.

I am not sure you can survive that rigorous a coursework and graduate with
less-than-average skills in at least theory, systems, compilers / prog.
languages (dunno if everyone there does other stuff like ML, Advanced theory
courses etc).

------
iqster
Random thoughts from my experience:

1) Doing a fifth year Masters at the same University is a waste. It is better
to go to a different school. You get to meet new people, get exposed to
different perspectives, and perhaps even live in a different part of the
country.

2) If you are not rich and do not get into a top-10 school, taking on a 100K
in debt for college is a bad idea.

3) Getting into a top-10 school is hard. If someone suggests the "transfer
after 2-years" option, ask them for stats. Be aware of "self-selection" in
that people who bother applying will likely have solid stats to begin with.

4) The key benefits of a top-10 school are networking/peers and the school's
selectivity. When it comes to knowledge, classes are useless IMHO. You can get
more complete information in books. If you are truly stuck with a concept, you
can hop on a bus to the local elite school and convince a grad student or
professor to explain something to you. Oh .. and don't forget about all those
lectures online :-)

5) Not having a lot of school-related debt makes it less stressful to become a
young entrepreneur.

6) If you did a solid but cheap undergrad program, doing a course-based
Masters at a top school might be worth it.

7) If you want to go into academia, school matters. Top-20 is okay for
undergrad. Top-10 (general or field specific) for grad is a must.

~~~
impendia
"You can hop on a bus to the local elite school and convince a grad student or
professor to explain something to you."

Really. You've tried this? Because grad students and professors aren't busy at
all...

~~~
lacker
I haven't tried it. But I've seen it done, and more.

When I was a grad student at Berkeley, there was a computational biology class
where another student (I'll call him SG) and I hung around afterwards to talk
to the professor. I assumed that he, like me, was looking for an advisor. The
reality was a bit different.

SG wasn't a student at all. He worked from home as a programmer doing boring
stuff and lived an hour away. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he drove to Berkeley,
snuck into the CS department by coasting behind someone else who left the door
open, and went to the graduate classes he thought were interesting.

On day 1, SG asked the professor if he could sit in without formally
registering for class. Sure, why not, the profs don't care about the
administrivia. Halfway through the semester, SG explained his whole situation
to the prof (and me, because I was waiting around too). How he was extremely
motivated, hard working, and wanted to learn, and would work half-time for
free indefinitely if someday there might be a job there for him. How could the
prof say no?

Over the next few months, SG gets a lot done. A lot more than your average
Berkeley grad student with no real-world software engineering experience. So
when the prof next gets some grant money, it's a no-brainer to hire him full
time. Suddenly SG has an interesting job and a great resume.

You can do a lot just with persistence....

------
kleinsch
One thing that's frequently overlooked are the relationships you'll build at
school. I went to a very solidly ranked state school (umd.edu), and most of
the people I know got jobs at government contractors. I have friends I've met
through jobs that went to Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, and they have a bunch
of connections at Google, Facebook, and other hot startups. Getting jobs
through personal connections is way more effective than combing Internet ads
or dealing with recruiters, and the jobs you'll be exposed to through friends
seem to be way better at a top-tier school.

~~~
hammerdr
This.

I was in a really good CS program at a top engineering school. I had great
teachers, peers and courses. I had 2 years of real client experience when I
walked out the door.

That's all well and good. What I _learned_ at school was far more on the
social side. I learned how to be a leader. I learned how to be more outgoing.
I learned how to be comfortable with a large group of people. I did stupid
things. I made life long friends. I made connections that continue to help me.

You have to learn this stuff in a trial by fire. College is good because it a)
forces you into those trials by nature of the beast and b) is expected that
you screw up a few times in your college years.

------
cmadan
I think more than a "big-name" university, it is important to go to a
university with a great course structure (which most "big-name" universities
do have). I've often looked at courses at MIT, Stanford, CMU etc and said "I
wish this course was offered at my school" or "I wish this course was
structured like this at my school".

~~~
stcredzero
Even better: go somewhere there is a prof you really click with and who would
make for a great mentor.

Difficult to imagine a practical way to do this? Congrats, you've stumbled on
what's wrong with higher education in the US today!

------
andrewcooke
The one way an education at a "big name" university has helped me is that
people trust me more. I moved from academia (astronomy) to software
engineering and I have no formal qualifications (or training) in what I do for
a living. But once people hear where I went they assume the best. I have
noticed this several times.

In retrospect I find the way that class and education are linked to be
terrible (you could pretty much divide the place up into rich people and smart
people, with only a small intersection), but it wasn't a bad experience.

------
jakevoytko
Like most things, it depends.

If you want to program in the industry, the name on your degree doesn't help
you much. I couldn't justify paying for the big-name private university that
accepted me, so I got a BS in CS from The College of New Jersey, and have
since been fortunate enough to work at Google. I also paid off my student
loans within 10 months of graduation. If you go this route, and do extra work
on the side, you _might_ get the same education you could at a top university.
But you will have no help. A difference I didn't appreciate when I was 17 is
the support structure a big-name university provides. They already have
contacts everywhere, plus you're more likely to be surrounded with self-
starters and high-energy workers. If you need help, you might get it.

But if you want to work at a top research university, you might want to get
the biggest name on your degree you can. I know a few PhDs who complain that
degrees flow downhill - they feel they must get jobs in the industry, since
they have degrees from second-tier schools. When they came to the USA, they
viewed an economically-priced degree as the better deal. But there is a glut
of people with degrees from top universities who are looking for research
positions, so they believe theirs don't come up for consideration.

~~~
drgath
I agree with this. It largely depends on where you want to take your career. I
don't have a CS degree from $BIG_NAME, never had to take out a loan, and am
very happy with my career thus far.

If you want a top research position, yes, $BIG_NAME CS degree is almost
required. If you want to work for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc... It
helps, but certainly isn't required. If you want to work for a startup or any
other company, it doesn't matter at all.

What matters is that you know your shit. $BIG_COMPANY isn't going to turn you
down because you don't have a CS degree from Stanford even though you wowed
them with your knowledge. All they care about is that you are you smart and
gets shit done. That doesn't come from a degree, that comes from you.

------
ffffruit
I would argue: it depends.

I live and work in London ; the only places where I've seen recruiters or job
ads specifically ask for a 'red brick' or 'top ten' university degrees is the
financial domain. They specifically ask and check for a top ten university in
order to hire you for most jobs, be it analyst or IT consultant. I would also
argue that the pay scales you get there reflect this.

Most startups I've seen, again in London, dont really care where you are
coming from. I used to work with one which basically said 'we dont care how
you look or where you finished uni or even if you did, we just want you to be
a) hard working b) smart working c) eager to learn'. Worked very good for them
as they are now a successful business and most people have stuck around for
years. I now work in a "top 3" uni in central London and we also dont care
where yo u got your degree from. Our job ads are, by law, neutral - we are not
able to distinct between candidates based on university alone. Again, works
fine for us. It doesn't matter where you went, it only matters what you are.
At the end of the day, I myself did not finish a 'big name' university,far
from it, and its worked out well for me.

~~~
ig1
Not true, it's perfectly legal to distinguish candidates by university. It's
not a protected category.

(I'm not a lawyer; but I have had training in the legal aspects of hiring and
I run a job board)

~~~
ffffruit
Are you 100% sure? Doesn't the whole 'equal opportunities' scheme dictate that
you cant ?

~~~
ig1
Yes I used to work for one of the largest employer of graduates in the UK and
we looked at this.

Equal opportunities is about not discriminating on the basis of gender, race
or disability. Also various bits of legislation also prohibit discrimination
on the basis of financial status, nationality, religious or political beliefs
and sexual orientation (although these don't normally come under the "equal
opportunities" banner).

You can legally use performance correlation in hiring (people who went to X
tend to do well, so we'll prefer to hire people who went to X), as long as it
doesn't violate one of the legislated areas. In the legislated areas you can
only discriminate on where there's evidence for a link. So for example you can
favour Computer Science students for Developer jobs over non-CS students even
though that contains an implicit gender bias.

------
tmekjian
As a graduate from a "big name" university I would say I am a little biased
but honestly it depends on a few things but ultimately comes down to one
principle: You will get out of school what you want.

In that I mean, there are people who go to "big name" schools and make ZERO
connections and take off after 4 years wondering why they took on 100k in
debt. Then there are people who go to small schools (like my wife) who meet
lots of great people in their field who eventually will be a great resource
for them (eg, my wife now works at Google). She has zero debt and works beside
graduates of top schools from around the country.

Now personally, I think that she is the exception and not the rule. The
biggest advantage of going to a big name school is that it lets you get your
foot in the door. You never have to "hide" the fact that you went to a small
school, and there will inevitably be times that you fill out an application
and wish that you could put down Stanford/MIT/Univ. of Michigan

Good luck in your decision. Remember that you will probably adjust your career
path during college and that a school that offers an overall brilliant student
body and faculty will only help you down the road.

------
andywood
I think it really depends on you. More specifically, it depends on your
learning style, how self-motivated you are, and how outgoing you are. There
are big pros and big cons on both sides.

I have a high school education. I've also been an extremely motivated self-
learner and voracious reader since early childhood. I'm one of those who
learned programming on my own, from books, at age 12, and then spent most of
my waking life over the next 8 years writing code and reading about software
development. And yes, for me it is something I truly love from the core of my
being, and will never, ever be just a job. Although somewhat introverted, I
tend to be very enthusiastic and aggressive while job-hunting.

I started my software career at 20 and advanced very quickly during the dot-
com boom. I just finished a 5-year stint at Microsoft. I don't think I could
have landed a job at Google 5 years ago, but I've been contacted by their
recruiters since leaving MS, and I believe I'd have a shot if I really poured
myself into reviewing/studying the right subject matter.

As I see it, the main advantage of my route is that I've never had any
significant debt, but I still made the senior dev salary and the bonuses. More
importantly, this has made it very easy for me to take time off between jobs
to work on the side-projects that keep my love of programming strong. I'm on
my second full-blown sabbatical in 10 years, working happily on my own dime,
bootstrapping a one-man game development 'studio'.

The main disadvantage is that I usually feel like I have to work to initially
convince people that I'm good, and I do actively wonder whether I can get
hired at certain companies.

Conversely, I've worked with lots of people with Ivy League degrees. All those
I've met are still paying off the loans, even in their late 20's - even at 30
(but as loans go, the interest is pretty low and the payments are small
compared to their income). But on the office grapevine, when someone mentions
that X went to Yale or Y went to Princeton, it's obvious that this sets up a
positive expectation. Colleagues and managers start off expecting that they're
good. I find I have to build a good reputation over time _first_, before
people start talking about me that way. Also, these people always know lots of
people working at other top employers, where I generally have to go out and
meet people cold to find new opportunities (which I don't mind).

So I'd say it depends on which of those trade-offs sounds more appealing to
you, based on your personality and inclinations.

------
aaront
In Canada, at least, the quality of education is monitored closely by the
accreditation board. A degree from one university, for all intents and
purposes, is equal to another.

I go to a fairly good school for Software Engineering with a good reputation,
but definitely not the best (by some standards). A lot of people consider
Waterloo to be the "best" CS/Software Eng. school in Canada, but I end up
getting the exact same degree. I've done the same courses, with some brilliant
minds behind the podium.

Mind you, my choice was also on the environment surrounding the program. The
impression I had when I visited Waterloo was fairly bad. The campus is a huge
sprawl, and not too many people on campus looked like they were having a good
time. My tour guide, a software engineer, told us that Waterloo was the only
place to go if I wanted to get a good job when I graduated. As well, beyond
residences on campus, there wasn't a whole lot of housing surrounding the
campus. Students are sprawled out around, leading to (in my opinion) not the
true university experience.

I'm currently a tour guide for my program, and I usually get the question:
"Why would I go here when I can go to Waterloo?". First of all, I know this
guy/girl is probably being forced to look at other schools as a backup plan,
and I also know that I have about 60 seconds to state my case before he/she
loses interest.

My university was one of the first in Canada to have a Software Eng. program,
and had several interesting "sub"-degrees with Software Eng & Game Design and
Software Eng & Embedded Systems. The campus is beautiful and fairly compact--
you can get from the furthest point in the campus to the other side in less
than 10 minutes. People are socializing outside. In the spring, the field in
the middle of campus is full of people having picnics and playing pick-up
soccer, football, and cricket.

I tell the student that it's not so much about where you'll be in 4-5 years,
but how you get there that's important. University was my first taste of the
world, and I'd much rather have a good experience transitioning to the working
world than asking myself about what I actually did in the past few years.

------
silverlake
It gets your foot in the door for your 1st and, maybe, 2nd job. If your first
job is Google or Apple or Facebook, then you have an advantage going into your
2nd job or startup. This advantage compounds over your career. I went to a
giant mid-western school with no recruiters from hot SV companies. Instead
only large corporations came to hire drones. This is a significant
disadvantage. It's not insurmountable, but it does suck.

There is an assumption that a degree from Fancy School means you're smart.
Also, I've noticed that many people from Fancy School have more self-
confidence that allows them to take bigger risks. I was awed by MIT until I
worked with someone with straight A's in CS there. He wasn't any smarter than
me, but he did work 10X harder than me. I'm lazy.

------
ig1
I don't know about the US but in the UK it does matter. If you have a
university which takes students with A* average grades and a university with D
average grades, they don't teach the same syllabus. It just doesn't make
sense, universities have to teach a syllabus that matches the ability of it's
student body.

There's also significant difference in employability by university
(statistically speaking).

~~~
dasil003
My impression as an american is that grades mean more in UK schools than they
do in the US where grade inflation has reached almost comical levels.

~~~
araneae
The grades probably mean more, but that doesn't mean that the students in more
elite universities in the US don't learn more than their counterparts at other
schools.

At Cornell, all the classes were curved, and the curve was set (in most intro
classes, somewhere between a C+ and a B). That meant if you wanted to get a B
you had to beat at least half the people in the course. If those people got
1600 on their SATs and had gotten a 5 on their AP comp sci exam they're a bit
more of a challenge than kids of lesser qualifications.

~~~
nickbarnwell
If I'm understanding correctly the parent is referring to high school, where
to a large extent I can't help but agree. The situation at the university
level is much different, as illustrated by your example.

------
ry0ohki
To me as a someone hiring, the "big name" part doesn't matter, but the school
itself does. The curriculums are just not the same everywhere. I worked in a
computer lab of an "online university" at the same time I was getting my Comp
Sci degree at a large state school, and was shocked to see that Juniors in the
online university had projects where they had to write a Celsius to Fahrenheit
conversion app in Java (this was more basic then my freshman level comp sci!).

That said, you shouldn't just limit to Harvard, CMU etc... There is a very
small four year school near us that I've seen crank out extremely smart Comp
sci people, who have learned better fundamentals then people I know from CMU.

~~~
ry0ohki
I should also say school only matters for people with < 3 years of work
experience. After that I find the experience itself much more important.

------
kd5bjo
I interview most of the job candidates that we get at Justin.tv for technical
positions. Once you get to the point that I see you, what degree you have
doesn't matter at all. For most candidates, I never look or ask about their
education.

I used to, but the correlation between education history and hirability is
weak enough to be useless to someone in my position. I think that most of the
employees that are evaluating resumes feel about the same, as well.

What's important to us is whether or not you can actually write code and
reason about computer science problems; what path you've taken to get there
doesn't really matter.

------
ohyes
My impression is that at 'big name' schools you don't really have much
interaction with your professors, until you are at least at graduate level
(and even then the doctoral students who get the attention, not the lowly
masters students).

In my opinion, what you are paying for at college is one on one time with
intelligent people. Your peers and your professors. If the classes at the
school consist of sitting through gigantic lectures, I feel like you are kind
of missing out.

There is currently a glut of talent competing for teaching jobs at
universities, even at a slightly below top-tier school, you are likely to find
capable, intelligent professors (as well as students). And at a smaller school
you will get one on one time with those professors much more readily.

You do, however, also want to make sure that the caliber of other students
around you is high. It is hard to be motivated in an environment where you can
simply breeze through everything that your classmate struggle with.

I don't know about what to do in terms of landing a job. It seems to me that
landing a first job is one thing (aided by a 'big-name' school, but having the
appropriate skills to develop an entire career is entirely different (no one
care where you got your degree once they hire you).

My preference would be with the career developing skills, rather than the job-
acquiring piece of paper.

Others probably have different experiences. The important thing is to really
consider your options and decide what is best for you. (You might not even
like CS by the time you graduate).

------
algorias
It's interesting (if not disturbing) to see just how big of a gamble Americans
are forced to make with their college decision. I'm lucky to live in a country
(Switzerland) where college is practically free, making the whole thing a non-
issue.

~~~
troels
Yes, it's a surreal thought really. When I was in my late teens, I was
certainly not capable of dealing with that kind of decisions. Must be very
hard.

~~~
jarek
Yup. I'm really happy with the university decision I made when I was 17,
because I now realize I didn't know shit and it was mostly through luck that I
ended up making a decent one.

------
nicpottier
I went to CMU and dropped out after two years when I decided I was learning a
lot more at a summer internship than I was at school. (this back in '96 BTW)

Things that have surprised me: \- the name does open the door more than you'd
think, even to this day, it gets respect, even when I always disclaim it with
dropping out \- I don't think the quality of the education was particularly
better, but the quality of the students was. Being surrounded by people that
make you feel like a moron is a good life experience. \- It won't
automatically get you hired, but it will make people spend a bit more time on
you.

So I don't know, my advice? Drop out or transfer after a couple years, because
jesus christ that shit is expensive these days.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Dropping out of a top ranked CS program b/c you can learn/do/achieve/earn more
on your own = the new MS.

------
bane
It depends, I've worked in industry and startups for about 15 years. Time and
again I've found that people I work with from $BIG_NAME tend to _not_ be the
best performers.

Often they operate with presumption that they should be in top positions, but
rarely do the kinds of crap work that would actually earn them that slot. This
can cause tons of friction in a team and I've personally found it better to
try and not have people from $BIG_NAME on the team if I can help it.

I've also found that they are rarely innovators or out-of-the-box thinkers.
They tend to be conformists and try to execute within the given rule set to
the best of their ability.

However, I think perhaps my anecdotal experience runs contrary to the fact of
how many SV types come from $BIG_NAME.

Perhaps it's the circles I tend to work in, selecting less from $BIG_NAME and
more from $LOCAL_STATE_SCHOOL...perhaps all the folks from $BIG_NAME are
people I'm seeing who have slid quite down the ladder with respect to their
peers and aren't star performers no matter what.

Back in my college days at $LOCAL_STATE_SCHOOL I did notice that there were
very few SV companies recruiting there and many more of the huge defense
contractor type. It was alarmingly easy to get an internship at one of those
huge companies and disappear into a long, but often reasonably rewarding
career in the government. Some of the problems the government works on are
impressively hard (see SV darling Palantir for an example) and there's no
shortage of incredible people I've met who decidedly didn't go to $BIG_NAME
and do fantastic, mind-blowing stuff.

I think early in your career it can mean something. And except for a few
holdouts that care about some largely irrelevant piece of paper you bought a
decade before (see Google), most places won't care after 5 years in the field
and I've found most people end up more or less even in term of pay,
responsibility, position, etc. If you are starting your own company? It
doesn't matter at all.

------
denisonwright
Here is my general take on this: Going to a top school can probably be a great
experience, have you learn things from top professors/researchers in the
field, get exposure to great companies recruiting at the university, be part
of a pool of highly competitive high achieving students, etc. All this is
probably worth a lot and might lead to one being better prepared, having
connection or access to a network of people who might have more influence,
connections, means, etc.

However, there is not sure path to success and the things mentioned above
might give one a higher chance at success, but no guarantee. I would say that
ones personality, ambition, and hard work play a huge factor in ones success,
perhaps even a bigger factor, so I believe someone can be successful
irrespective of the school they attended.

Taking on $100K+ debt at such young age is a huge risk as well. There are many
problems with debt, but the major one I consider is how it ties you down and
prevents you from taking risks and being able to take risks at a young age is
really important. If one graduates with lots of debt, one has to have a steady
job (and hopefully one that pays very well) to meet the financial obligations.
That might hinder one's ability to take a job at an early stage startup or
other opportunities that might enable one to learn and grow faster than
working at a more stable company.

I personally like experiencing freedom from debt (as much as possible), so I
would (and did) pursue the best educational option that would only cost an
amount that I feel would still grant me a certain degree of freedom/risk-
taking ability.

------
damoncali
I wouldn't trade the experience of watching Big 8 football from the student
section for all the ivy in the world.

I've said it before - too many young people are being pushed through life.
It's a tragic waste of enthusiasm.

------
chollida1
In one of the stackoverflow podcasts Joel did touch on this.

I believe this comment was that a "big-name" school won't get you hired.
Conversely not going to a "big-name" school won't get you excluded from
hiring.

To paraphrase what I remember him saying...

The only thing a that going to a top school gets you is your resume move to
the top of the pile when doing interviews.

Meaning if they are hiring 2 people and the people who have the big name
school on their resume do well then the person with out the big name school
won't get a crack at the interview.

------
meinhimmel
I go to a 'meh' school, but it was by choice for me. I'm a math major for the
theoretical background, and then a computer science major for the practical
background. I do what I love, and I take misc. classes enough that my parents
are legitimately worried about me becoming a 'professional student'.

I didn't apply to any other schools than the one I'm at now. I believed that
the campus was beautiful, and so I applied here. I could have gotten into any
school I'd like to think, but life is too short to be worried about future
financial gains or something like that. I'd rather go somewhere with a
beautiful campus than be a person that's worried about some potential future
monetary gains. Money is just money after all. After you have enough to buy a
plane ticket to get to Google IO, what more could you really want?

It's worked out for me fairly well though. I met a professor, and he's become
a mentor in my life. We worked on a research project together last summer, and
he has the connections to get my resume in at almost anywhere I'd want to go.
He worked at Motorola in their research labs for 16 years, and he knows people
that have been at Google, Microsoft, etc. from their very beginnings.

Don't worry about what school you go to. Go to the school you want despite
things such as academic standing or something equally silly. Things have a way
of working themselves out if you give it a bit of effort. Just remember that
life is about more than just your grades.

------
_corbett
I went to MIT and could not have been happier with my decision. Highest
concentration of amazing people in the world IMHO (and I am proud to call a
quite a few of them friends) and a huge density of inspiration. As for $100k,
I went for free (c.f. financial aid) but would happily have taken out loans.

A big name school is not necessary for everyone by any means, and in fact if I
had my current skills and network when I was 18 I wouldn't choose to go again
(well I'd skip university altogether) but for me it was invaluable.

------
kadavy
I often wish I had attended a big-name university.

When I chose a college, I didn't give it much thought. I didn't get much
advice or guidance on what a big decision choosing a college was. Plus, I
would have been too scared to move very far away from Nebraska, where I was
born and raised. I wasn't surrounded by people who encouraged - or even
considered - this sort of behavior.

Through a crazy turn of events, I eventually ended up living and working in
Silicon Valley. I met many people who went to Stanford, Yale, Carnegie Mellon,
and found that I got along with them very well. It was the first time I was
surrounded by people I understood, and I was 25 years old.

With my upbringing, I expected them to be God-like, but it seemed like most of
them were coastal people with backgrounds through which it seemed natural for
them to go to schools like that.

I made some great connections in the valley, but I still think I could have
done better if I had college friends there from one of these universities.
There was nobody in my social and professional circles that was from my
school. Meanwhile, college friends from these schools were starting successful
startups.

Everything has turned out pretty well so far, but I often wonder what my life
would be like if I had been encouraged to try to go to a better school.

------
imcqueen
I think most people are saying the same thing, but the general idea is this:

-Get good grades. Grades definitely matter. I worked at a local startup during college and I thought it mattered more than my grades. I now regret not putting that effort towards my academic performance.

-Choose the best school you can afford and keep in mind that graduate school is becoming very common. If you have too much undergrad debt you may be forced to make a grad school decision based on finances.

------
matwood
I went to a small state college (www.cofc.edu). I feel that I received a very
good education in CS mainly because the classes were small and the teachers
were focused on teaching. I just wanted to point this out because I'm sure it
reflects my opinions on big-name universities.

IMHO, if you can get into a Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc... then yes you should
go. If you can't get into the absolute top, then the school does not matter as
much as long as it's an accredited institution.

------
_delirium
It depends on what you want to do, I think. I found my undergrad university's
reputation useful for a few years; it wasn't very "big-name", but it was well-
respected in its area (hmc.edu). I wanted to do sort of media/humanities
oriented AI, artificial-creativity/etc. kind of stuff, and the fact that I
came from a school with a solid technical reputation made people take me more
seriously, and kept me out of the "guy who wants to do AI and read too many
sci-fi books but doesn't have the technical chops" category.

But either way it only matters for a few years. Once you've done something for
3-5 years since college, it's unusual for anyone to care greatly where you
went to college.

The other main factor is whether a university has strong recruiting
relationships, which isn't identical to big-nameness, but can correlate with
it. If lots of companies come to the school's career fair every year expecting
to hire N graduates, it can make it easier to get in the door.

------
bane
<http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

_Between the volume of people we judge and the rapid, unequivocal test that's
applied to our choices, Y Combinator has been an unprecedented opportunity for
learning how to pick winners. One of the most surprising things we've learned
is how little it matters where people went to college._

------
bryanwb
i went to a top-twenty liberal arts school in the US and frankly it wasn't
worth the $. Further, top-tier private schools dumb you down when it comes to
life skills because they coddle you.

If I was this kid I would go to SUNY Binghamton

A good school can help you but you really have to ask yourself if it worth
$200,000 USD

Also, this 18 year old may change his mind in two years about his major and
decide that he wants to teach high school science, in which case he will be
screwed financially.

------
drgath
Doug Crockford has a degree in Radio & TV from San Francisco State University.

/thread

------
known
Yes, if you need a job after education.

