
Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford - nertzy
https://blog.ledwards.com/the-college-that-produces-founders-at-3-times-the-rate-of-stanford-2c53ea44f91e
======
sbierwagen
(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never
heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size
will be selection bias + random noise.

>Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates
around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of
alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the
rate of Stanford (0.51%), MIT (0.75%), Harvard (0.28%),

Wow, who would have guessed.

[https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-
is-t...](https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-
powerful-force-in-education/)

~~~
arcticfox
Actually, it's not selection bias at all! This result wasn't just drawn out of
a 1000-count small college hat, so naive Bayesian priors shouldn't be used
here.

As an alum, I specifically went to Olin because I thought it would best help
me become a successful entrepreneur. Many people do.

So my priors are that Olin is likely to do this at a higher rate (since
Stanford / MIT etc. have entire swathes of the school not interested in
entrepreneurship at all); this evidence makes that seem overwhelmingly likely
now.

Consider evaluating all the departments of a school and finding out that one
of the smallest turns out the highest percentage of high-energy physicists.
Selection bias? Nope, just the high-energy physics department.

~~~
sbierwagen
>Actually, it's not selection bias at all! [...] As an alum, I specifically
went to Olin because I thought it would best help me become a successful
entrepreneur. Many people do.

From the link:

>In other words, what we might have perceived as a difference in education
quality was really the product of systematic differences in how the considered
populations were put together. The groups we considered had a hidden non-
random distribution. This is selection bias.

As you just stated, entrepreneur-y students self-select into Olin. The fact
the school produces entrepreneurs doesn't have anything to do with the
teachers, the curriculum, or the chemicals Olin puts in the drinking water.
It's the non-random distribution of students.

~~~
pataoAoC
It depends what the conclusion in question is, whether selection bias is a
factor.

Does Olin produce / graduate founders at ~5 times the rate of Stanford? Yes -
no bias.

Is the effect size due to self-selection? Likely at least partially.

~~~
valuearb
If by "partially" you mean "entirely" I agree.

~~~
jwq1
That is like saying, people who self-select to go to the physics department go
there only to be with other physics students are and that it, "doesn't have
anything to do with the teachers, [or] the curriculum."

What is more likely, is the school does an excellent job affording students
the opportunity found successful, venture-backed companies. Similar to the way
the Physics professors and curriculum afford physicists the ability to be good
at physics.

The fact the article highlights this opportunity for other entrepreneurially
minded people, who may want to attend in the future, is exactly what the data
in the article is supposed to do.

~~~
jacobolus
Stanford also does a good job of helping interested students with those
things. It’s just larger and more diverse, and also includes students who want
to be judges, literary critics, historians, medical doctors, mathematicians,
journalists, school teachers, etc.

If you looked only at the subset of Stanford students with similar interests
and backgrounds to Olin’s student population, you’d probably end up with a
similar distribution of outcomes.

~~~
CydeWeys
There's a qualitative difference, though, in being in a place that is full of
mostly people who don't share your interests/goals of founding startups
(Stanford) versus those who do (Olin). E.g. there's more gay people in Dallas
than in San Francisco (owing to population size differences), but the latter
is still a much better place to be gay because of the concentration.

~~~
valuearb
Yea, but Stanford has better faculty, better access to startups, and many
people value a more well rounded experience.

------
makmanalp
I've met and talked to Olin kids, and also been to Olin - this doesn't
surprise me one bit. They seem to attract the "maker" type, and also seem to
be committed to actually teaching kids how to do things rather than picking
kids who already know everything. Everything feels super hands-on and project
driven, and the goal is to ship things. They even have classes like products &
markets ([http://www.olin.edu/course-listing/ahse1515-products-and-
mar...](http://www.olin.edu/course-listing/ahse1515-products-and-markets/)),
integrated product design ([http://www.olin.edu/course-
listing/engr3250-integrated-produ...](http://www.olin.edu/course-
listing/engr3250-integrated-product-design/)). The focus really seems to be
industry and entrepreneurship rather than academia. My own school (WPI) also
has a similar approach to classwork, and it works, but I don't think is as
good as preparing students for business as Olin seems to be.

~~~
adfm
Having faculty like Allen B. Downey may contribute to their success.

[http://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/4828](http://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/4828)

~~~
orzig
As a former student of Allen's, I wholeheartedly agree. I actually started
learning programming from him before even arriving at Olin, through his free
textbooks (available here:
[http://greenteapress.com/wp/](http://greenteapress.com/wp/)).

We first met when he interviewed me as part of Olin's Candidate's Weekend. I
told him how impactful the book had been. An hour later, he found me again and
gave me a signed physical copy.

~~~
epalmer
I've had a chance to read his books and talk with him. Amazing. down to earth
and brilliant at the same time.

------
robterrin
Two comments:

1\. First and foremost, go Olin College! It sounds like a really special place
where liberal arts and engineering are valued. I wish more colleges followed
this model.

2\. It's not very surprising and likely a statistical quirk that their per
capita founding rate is so high. After reading this piece on why the highest
and lowest cancer rates by county in the US are in rural counties, I am seeing
this statistical phenomenon everywhere:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=JRueDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=JRueDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=rural+counties+with+the+highest+and+lowest+cancer+rates+gelman&source=bl&ots=V8jzHjPWZb&sig=S5FM8wKLpw7ICE-
QHiDlNqDbJzQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjm84H925DWAhXn44MKHclFBwIQ6AEIXzAH#v=onepage&q=rural%20counties%20with%20the%20highest%20and%20lowest%20cancer%20rates%20gelman&f=false)

~~~
Retric
It's not just random noise. A small population is more impacted by individual
events so far there is often reasons for such aberrations.

~~~
BeetleB
> It's not just random noise. A small population is more impacted by
> individual events so far there is often reasons for such aberrations. ￼

That _is_ random noise. A small population is impacted far more by noise.

￼

~~~
Retric
I would not call a nearby chemical dump 'random noise'.

Consider the dean of a tiny school wants to be different where the dean of a
large school wants to be better at a wide range of things. The first dean will
have a larger impact on a smaller number of things. Further, the dean of the
smaller schools choice of focus is going to have a major impact.

------
devmunchies
> _Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates
> around 75 students per year_

So its a tiny college with an emphasis on starting a company? At Stanford your
numbers are being diluted by colleges whose student body don't tend to start a
company (e.g. humanities, pre-med).

~~~
ledwards
The college encourages an entrepreneurial attitude, but is not focused
explicitly on getting alumni to start companies. But you do see a lot of Olin
alumni joining early startups as well as big companies. Google was the largest
employer of Olin alumni in the first two years (2006-2007), mostly through the
new-at-the-time APM program. A few years later, it was Microsoft. Now Pivotal
is high up the list. You also see Olin alumni joining early startups that they
did not found as early employees (Square, AirBnB, Adroll off the top of my
head).

I have looked into controlling for major, but I would need to rework all the
data from the Pitchbook report, and I don't have their primary data sources.
Surely some founders from those schools come from non-technical majors. If I
remove them from the denominator, I'd need to remove them from the numerator
as well.

I did start looking at this though, and I don't think it would change the
outcome much. At MIT, almost 90% of alumni are in science, math, engineering,
and business. At Stanford, it's more than half. So that would change the
difference from something like 5x to maybe 2x, and that's without removing the
founders of those colleges with non-technical degrees from their list of
founders. Harvard might be the more interesting one, where I suspect technical
and business degrees are not a clear majority.

But given the wide margin, I don't expect this would change the order of the
ranking at all, maybe just my (intentionally) clickbaity headline.

~~~
devmunchies
when you say "Google was the largest employer of Olin alumni" do you mean
like, what, 3 to 10 people? Its too small to even compare to Stanford. Its
apples to appleseeds.

I mean it sounds like a great school, kudos to the staff, but its a silly
comparison.

------
axplusb
Before jumping to conclusions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_small_numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_small_numbers)

Edit: Actual Wikipedia entry =
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insensitivity_to_sample_size](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insensitivity_to_sample_size)

~~~
Bartweiss
Not just that - it's also sample bias twice over.

First, because Olin is ludicrously selective, and second, because Olin only
offers founding-friendly majors. I don't think a pre-med intending to become a
surgeon should really be faulted for "failing" to start a company, but that's
effectively what the article does.

~~~
pbiggar
Well, pick one. Either there's a cause, or there's no cause. Either they're
full of shit, or they deliberately did this. You can't credibly claim both to
dismiss them.

~~~
Bartweiss
Pick one of what?

I'm not talking about whether Olin is a good school, it obviously is. I'm
saying that "rate of company founding" is a nonsensical axis of comparison.
It's like noting that Olin produces 100% fewer Stanford grads than Stanford
does.

------
didgeoridoo
Not surprising. I've met some Olin kids (I helped teach a session of their
product design & development class) and they are some of the most impressive
college students I've ever encountered. They tend to take feedback extremely
well, and are genuinely interested in creating useful things for people.

Whatever they're doing over there, I hope they keep it up.

------
epalmer
All of the commenters might find this useful.

Olin outcomes for the class of 2017 [http://www.olin.edu/blog/career-and-
graduate-stories/post/co...](http://www.olin.edu/blog/career-and-graduate-
stories/post/congratulations-class-%E2%80%9917/)

Olin is trying to reinvent engineering education for this century. They did
locate at the edge of Babson college because they think that having business
knowledge is important. The student can take classes at Wellesley and they
think that is important also. aka Liberal Arts.

The are working to export their engineering education successes. I can't find
a link that explains that right now but they want to change engineering
education widely.

They are selective. They require an onsite interview and observed team work
after you have been academically qualified. They want students with grit, that
know have to reflect, and students that know success comes via failure. You
can read about the incoming class of 2021 here:
[http://www.olin.edu/blog/olin-admission/post/welcome-
class-2...](http://www.olin.edu/blog/olin-admission/post/welcome-class-2021/)

Full disclosure: My youngest daughter is a first year 2021 student. She is not
a start up kind of person but she iterates toward success via failure and has
4 years of FLL experience, 6 years of FRC experience and 2 years of FTC. She
has assembled a 3D printer, written a state law that funds after school STEM
(it passed and was funded) and worked with underserved middle schools on after
school STEM enrichment for a year between HS and College (gap year). Yes I am
proud.

FLL - First Lego League FTC - First Tech Challenge FRC - First Robotics
Competition

I have a engineering degree and a pure science degree. I would die and go to
heaven if I could go to Olin. And yes Dr. Allen Downey is amazing. I have
spoken with him when he visited the university I work at, read several of his
books and my daughter has already had classes with him teaching Modeling and
Simulations with Python.

------
everdev
An important omission is that Olin is on the same property as Babson, one if
the top entrepreneurship schools in the country. Olin kids can attend Babson
classes and have access to Babson resources.

So, imagine an engineering college where you have a very favorable
student:teacher ratio plus a 5min walk to a world class entrepreneurship
education.

~~~
cthrow
I went to babson, took a few classes at olin, my thesis advisor was an olin
grad.

Many of the olin students are brilliant, quirky, very progressive, want to
give back with their high quality (and what used to be 100% fully funded from
endowments and grants, think its 50% now) education. Think this is a large
point that gets overlooked - graduate an engineering degree debt free and it
is easier to give back through a start up or social venture :)

Huge emphasis on actually building things in capstone classes. Fantastic
faculty and amazing machine shop resources for such a small school. Some of
the best students in my negotiations and accounting classes were from Olin.
Additionally wellesley college is a 10 min bus ride for access to top-notch
liberal arts classes. Lucky to have that mixture for sure.

------
ledwards
Hey I'm Lee, the author of this article. I think there are a lot of fair
callouts about controlling for major, sample size, selection bias, and others,
so I collected my response to those concerns here:
[https://blog.ledwards.com/methods-for-determining-startup-
de...](https://blog.ledwards.com/methods-for-determining-startup-
density-c9e2a4c2c283) and linked to this follow-up article at the top of the
original. Really appreciate the comments and feedback, and happy to hear more.

I'm sure this won't satisfy everyone, but I wanted to do this analysis now
instead of in 40 years, so I had to work with the data I do have. I think this
is enough to show at least directionally that Olin is doing a reasonably good
job at producing startup founders, though as I raise myself at the end of this
article, we won't know for sure until we have some exits and long-term value
creation in the future.

------
e0m
Olin alumni here. First of all this is an incredible survey of what Oliners
have been able to achieve so far! Huge thanks to Lee & others for putting this
together.

I've been a huge fan of Olin's educational model and am proud to have turned
down Stanford to go there. From the very first day you get to Olin, you're
immediately immersed in a collaborative, figure-it-out-together, project-based
environment where failure happens and there's no ceiling to the scope of what
you can do.

They also try harder than any curriculum I've seen to really ingrain the
importance of an entrepreneurial mindset and user-centered design thinking
throughout the program. For example, all sophomores are required to take a set
of design classes that forces you (though much struggling) to emphasize the
viability and desirability, not just the feasibility, of everything you do.
Most classes make you to orally present and really communicate your ideas to
an intentionally skeptical audience.

By the time you graduate, many begin to realize how well this actually
prepares you to not just make cool things, but also structurally think about
what people want and how to realistically make it viably work in the real
world.

The tech industry notices as well. Oliners have had an extremely strong tract
record, particularly in product management programs, at most of the big
companies. If you're a PM at Google, Facebook, or Microsoft, you likely know
an Oliner, which given a graduating class 80ish, is pretty good reach. Big
company PM programs are also not foreigners to producing a lot of
entrepreneurs and I've found many of the skills we were taught in college come
around again and again in this industry. These skills are also highly prized
by places like HBS, where a disproportionate number of Oliners also find
themselves right after graduating.

Right now, we definitely play the law-of-small-numbers game. The school is
very new (first class was 2006) and the class sizes intentionally small. The
size is limited to ensure Olin can continue to be a laboratory for education
pedagogy. Over time, however, I'm definitely optimistic this trend will only
continue and I'm prod to have known several of the people mentioned in this
article.

~~~
popopobobobo
Other college alumni here. Nothing I learned in college has helped me to the
place where I am. And I do not want to be classified by the college I
graduated from. I stayed for four years and I graduated. I am learning new
technologies everyday and I am doing very well on my own. I simply do not care
what people in tech giants think about my school.

~~~
pataoAoC
> Nothing I learned in college has helped me to the place where I am.

:( That's too bad, I hope they change something. Certainly some people will
never benefit from organized learning, and perhaps you're in that category and
it's otherwise a great school, but most people aren't like that.

------
bjacokes
The small student population at Olin affects the founder rate in a more
pertinent way than sample variance: because they only need to admit 100
students, this group of students can be of a higher average quality than if
they needed to accept 1000+ students like Stanford/MIT. As an analogy, if YC
were to 10x the number of startups they invested in per batch, they'd
certainly expect their average return to decrease, because the last company
they accept will be less likely to succeed than the first or tenth.

If you really wanted to measure how Olin's teaching compares to that of
MIT/Stanford, vis-a-vis startup founding success, you could have the other
schools "draft" a team of 100 CS students at the beginning of their freshman
year, and measure the founding success rate of only those 100 students.

~~~
Nanite
I think it would be more useful to compare Olin to another private
technology/engineering focussed undergraduate college such as Harvey Mudd.

~~~
keerthiko
That is implicit in the studies done in the paper, in that Cooper Union,
Harvey Mudd, etc don't figure in the top universities that follow after Olin
on these metrics.

------
scott00
95% confidence intervals for those curious about the statistical significance
given the small Olin sample size:

Olin: 1.80% - 4.06%

MIT: 0.71% - 0.81%

Stanford: 0.48% - 0.54%

~~~
robrenaud
What if you had the data for just the engineering and computer science majors?

~~~
scott00
I don't understand the question.

~~~
gertef
Stanford has many majors -- what are the means and interval sizes per Stanford
major?

~~~
scott00
That's a good question, but I don't have the data to answer it.

------
mooneater
Olin is on to something with their fresh take on engineering education.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXNT-
RRcfyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXNT-RRcfyo)

------
jackcosgrove
If Olin's small numbers are skewed by a few founder types moreso than the
large numbers of Stanford, and you wanted to be a founder type, wouldn't you
stand a chance of learning more from your peers by going to Olin?

I don't see why people are arguing that selectivity and small size invalidate
the better quality of Olin's education. I learned as much from my peers as
from my teachers, not to mention the motivation of peer competition.

------
aphextron
As an adult wishing to go back to school for an engineering degree, is there
anything on earth comparable to a program like Olin? I really have no interest
in sitting through 500 person lectures at a traditional university with no
focus on hands on work and a "sink or swim" academic mentality. Are there any
integrated schools out there friendly to non-traditional students that teach
from the ground up?

------
matthewvincent
Perhaps the larger percentage of founders has more to do with the
substantially smaller student body and shorter track record of the university.
Daniel Kahneman touches on this phenomenon in "Thinking Fast and Slow".

~~~
axplusb
Yes, I was thinking about the law of small numbers too ! Pretty sure the
college with the smallest rate of startup founders is also a small college.

------
chirau
Whether venture-backed or not:

A startup does not always equal a business.

Unfortunately we now live in a mindset where the ability to raise capital is
the yardstick of success. The yardstick of a business, however, has never
changed. It's profit.

How many of these ventures are actually profitable? Not to hate on the school,
but if the companies are not profitable then they are basically being taught
how to raise capital, not how to run a business. They could be producing
Clinkles and Juiceros. Remember that VC funding is also just a gamble that
they may make it. Statistically most VC-backed companies don't make it. So
that alone should not be a measure of success.

I think a better stat would be percentage of startups out of a school that
make it to profitability. Take the NBA 3-point approach. You have to have a
minimum number of attempts to be considered. Likewise, a school would have to
have a minimum number of startups to come out of it. Then from there you
measure the percentage of those startups that are profitable after some agreed
upon average age.

~~~
pataoAoC
Amusingly, I'm an Olin grad with a profitable lifestyle business that I
started, so I wasn't included in this stat. I wholeheartedly agree with you on
goals and values. Fortunately, Olin isn't a "VC startup factory", but that
could have easily been the case from the data presented in the article.

------
robomartin
I know someone attending Olin. She will graduate with $300,000 in student
loans and a degree good for a median salary of $85K. In my mind this is
financial slavery.

A small percentage of a small percentage of graduates might succeed in
business. This does not mean they will be wealthy. Some? Maybe. All? Not
likely. Which means most will face a lifetime of paying on outrageous student
debt that might prevent them from such things as buying a home and saving for
retirement. Thirty years of financial slavery isn't a good way to go through
life.

I simply can't reconcile this reality with the article.

~~~
tostie
Perhaps this is a different Olin school? (There are a number of universities
with Olin schools or colleges on them.) The current cost of attending Olin
before factoring in the half-tuition scholarship is $71,825 (see
[http://www.olin.edu/admission/costs/cost-of-
attendance/](http://www.olin.edu/admission/costs/cost-of-attendance/)). After
including the half-tuition scholarship, which all students receive, costs drop
to $47,525 per year. I'm not sure where an extra $100K in student loans would
be coming from. Additionally, Olin provides need-based aid for those who
qualify.

~~~
rebootthesystem
$50K for six years = You walk away with a $300K Masters which entitles you to
a median salary of somewhere around $80K a year. Even if you go for a
Bachelors (a mistake if you ask me) you'd walk away with $200K in debt, which
is just as insane given the lower earning potential.

Payments are approximately as follows:

Pay it off in 20 years: $2,100 per month

Pay it off in 30 years: $1,800 per month

This means you'll pay somewhere around $504K to $648K.

If your gross pay is $100K per year that means that, in very rough terms, in
California, your effective take-home pay is about $64K per year or $5,333 per
month.

Out of that you need to take $2,000 every month for 20 to 30 years and pay
your student loan.

That leaves you with $3,333/mo to live.

Median rent for a one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles is $2,000/mo.

You are down to $1,333.

It is nearly impossible to live without a car in a place like Los Angeles. Buy
a crappy car and pay for car, gas and insurance. That will easily set you back
$500 a month.

Now we are down to $833.

Food, say, about $400 a month.

Down to $433.

Utilities, well, let's say $250/mo to be kind.

Down to $183.

I am not accounting for buying clothes, toilet paper, toothpaste, furniture an
occasional outing, etc.

Forget travel. Forget investing. Forget saving.

If you need health insurance you are screwed.

And that, right there, is a formula for financial slavery and pain for
decades.

It also means you will almost never buy a house (in CA) unless you get married
and your spouse does not come in with massive student loan debt like you. You
might want to eliminate all your social interactions at Olin or risk marrying
someone with $200K to $300K in debt, just like you.

Not zeroing in on Olin here. We have lots of universities that cost in the
range of $40K to $60K a year. In Olin's case the article says that about 3% of
the roughly 75 graduates every year become entrepreneurs (not necessarily
successful). This means that fully 72 graduates do not. And they get out of
there with what can only be described as massive unmanageable debt.

Certain degree programs, such as Mechanical Engineering, simply don't have
high earning potential. Someone graduating with $300K in debt and one of these
degrees in hand is starting life with a formula for suffering. There are
plenty of reasonably priced schools that could cut the cost of these degrees
in half and even less.

From my perspective, going to a place like Olin is a terrible mistake. It does
not guarantee financial success. The only thing it guarantees is financial
hardship. It's an example of how demented things have become due to just how
easy it is to get student loans.

------
katzgrau
Well, perhaps ...

1\. There is more opportunity for Stanford students to pursue graduate
degrees, leading many to forgo the entrepreneurial route

2\. Stanford students receive better job offers upon graduation, leading many
to forgo the entrepreneurial route

3\. Stanford attracts more international students who come from countries less
encouraging of entrepreneurship

Regarding the first two, I could probably think of 10 more positive reasons
the numbers might be what they are. What's perceived as a positive for Olin
may actually be due to an inarguably positive thing for Stanford

~~~
throwawayjava
1\. Surprisingly, students from small private colleges like Olin are more
likely to pursue graduate degrees. IDK if this holds for Olin specifically.

2\. Olin is a great school. I doubt undergraduates from Olin are paid
substantially differently from those at Stanford. There is probably data on
this.

3\. Seems the most likely explanation. Or just random chance.

~~~
keerthiko
Exactly, all 3 of your conclusions are true :)

1) My class had 30+% go into PhD programs, with over half of them receiving
Fulbright/NSF/comparable prestigious research grants.

2) Earlier Olin classes graduated a larger percentage of people to take on
high-paying jobs at Google/MS/IBM (and later FB/Twitter). It has shifted
towards more academia and entrepreneurs

3) As one of (only) four international students in the first class (5% of the
incoming class), yes, fewer international students. Yes, international
students come from cultures less encouraging of entrepreneurship. While I'm
definitely from one of those, being at Olin _brought me around to
entrepreneurship_ \-- I wasn't interested until nearing graduation,
reinforcing the article's point that Olin nurtures and graduates founders more
effectively than other schools. I would almost certainly have worked a high-
paying software dev job if I attended Stanford instead.

------
aswanson
Putting this one on the suggest/visit list for my son, definitely.

~~~
epalmer
If you visit make make sure to walk through the academic building. Yes only
one such building. That is where you will find the students, usually on the
floor, with their project, in the halls, everywhere. Giant post-it notes all
over the walls.

My wife and youngest visited in 2015. She is now a first year their. She did a
gap year.

------
dna_polymerase
A university should not focus on producing founders but to teach scientific
working and after all enabling research. If people found their own companies -
nice. If not, doesn't matter.

Also nice for Olin College to produce so many companies but Stanford's history
did not only produce tons of companies but also this place known these days as
Silicon Valley (there is no way SV would be the place it is toady without
Stanford).

------
dqdo
Some things to consider from this article.

1\. Olin gives free tuition or reduced tuition leading to almost no debt.
There is probably a positive correlation with not having school debt and
starting companies.

2\. Olin has a very small population size. The best and the worst cases can
always be found in small sample sizes.

3\. Schools such as Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, etc. have a wide range of
students with wide range of interests. Most people do not go to these schools
with the sole purpose of being an entrepreneur. There are many people that
become doctors, writers, researchers, etc. and benefit society in other ways.
Measuring just one narrow dimension may be understating contribution in other
places.

4\. Olin seems like a great place. It's small enough and independent enough to
take chances in how it educates its students. Most older and more prestigious
are more conservative in their teaching methods. Since Olin is fully endowed
by one person with an open vision, they are able to do things that other
institutions cannot.

------
d--b
I don't know anything about the topic, but perhaps graduating Stanford offers
a broader range of possible jobs than Olin does. Hence in a sense you have
less to loose risking starting a company when you're an Olin graduate than a
Stanford graduate?

~~~
Bartweiss
This is definitely the case, in that Stanford offers lots of degrees not at
all on founding "tracks". Doctors, theoretical physicists, etc are not somehow
failed founders, they're doing a completely different thing with their lives.
By being engineering-specific, Olin is totally incomparable to Stanford on
this axis.

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pitt1980
[https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/olin](https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/olin)

is an interesting calculator

plugging in $150K combined income it indicated that hypothetical college age
child would pay $44,906 a year to attend

for contrast, given the SAT range of 1470-1550
[http://www.olin.edu/admission/class-
profiles/2021/](http://www.olin.edu/admission/class-profiles/2021/)

[https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-
state.php](https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.php)

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smcg
I'd like to see this correlated with family income and other factors before
attributing it solely to Olin.

Also, this was written by an Olin alumnus.

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Kephael
This isn't a fair comparison, for it to be fair we would need to compare Olin
to the Engineering and CS departments at Stanford.

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skywhopper
What are the founder rates of Stanford grads with the three degrees given by
Olin College?

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gabipurcaru
sampling bias at work -- the smaller a college is (and the more small colleges
you sample), the higher your chances of finding one with better percentages,
in pretty much anything

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j7ake
Cool but is it statistically significant ?

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popopobobobo
Sometimes I think that startup is for those who have nothing to lose. Kids in
Stanford probably have weighted their feasible career more than a free throw.

It is also strange to me this Olin School is trying to beat Stanford with a
single statistics. What are they trying to do here? To prove they are better
than Stanford? Or to let kids dropping out of Stanford and apply to them? Or
to make a fame by taking on a particularly prestigious school?

This is what I know. In the tech startup world, nobody cares where you
graduated. Whether it is Olin or Stan, it doesn't matter.

~~~
wavefunction
Olin is just educating people.

You seem to be projecting quite a bit.

