
Our obsession with elite colleges is making our kids feel worthless - kornish
http://qz.com/577827/our-obsession-with-elite-colleges-is-making-our-kids-feel-worthless/
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jondubois
Our obsession with fame/celebrity is the root problem. We want to go to famous
colleges, work for famous companies (or start our own famous startup) and
companies want to hire famous employees (at least at the executive level).

Fame is a fairly reliable way to quickly evaluate the quality of something
(without knowing anything about the subject matter) but it severely limits
your options and it's expensive.

~~~
dillchen
Your comment reminded me of PG's "Cities and Ambition" essay.
[http://paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://paulgraham.com/cities.html)

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superuser2
HN seems pretty sure that the only difference between a top-20 residential
college and a rural commuter school ranked in the 300s is the wealth of the
people attending.

We recognize vast differences in quality between engineers, managers,
companies, and code... but not education? Why?

~~~
wmt
Imagined quality differences shouldn't be recognised where don't actually
exist. To quote the story:

"in David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell draws upon research that shows it’s
actually more advantageous for a student to attend a college where they can be
in the top 10% rather than in the bottom half of the class. It’s the top
students at every college who receive the kind of attention from faculty and
access to special programs that pave the way to more opportunity after
college."

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rdlecler1
Two thirds of CEOs didn't go to top schools... That means that 1/3rd of the
CEOs were drawn from 2% of the schools. Similarly you find that a
disproportionate number of entrepreneurs went to a top school. The network and
credibility you get are clearly important. I think most parent realize how
tough it has gotten and they saw the shortcoming of their own careers.

~~~
panic
Expecting your kids to become CEOs is another way to make them feel worthless.

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mwhuang2
Growing up, it felt like I was raised with the sole purpose of attending an
elite college. I took AP classes, did SAT prep, and signed up for all the
right extracurriculars, but my heart was never in it, and I couldn't force
myself through in the end.

I ended up getting rejected from all but my safeties when applying to
colleges. It felt like I was dead inside; I'd go through my daily motions, but
I basically lost my interest in living for a while.

~~~
mercer
A friend of mine is in a similar situation. When we talk about it I often find
myself frustrated because I'm the complete opposite.

I was raised in a kind of hippie-environment where I could do what I wanted as
long as I got acceptable grades and didn't get into trouble. While perhaps as
a result me and my siblings are not the most ambitious of people (at least not
conventionally so), I can say that I've had a very happy and even successful
life so far. Definitely less stressful than that of many of my friends who
were raised to be ambitious (and then weren't able to 'satisfy' this
ambition).

Could you tell me more about what you did or what happened to you since that
'for a while' period that you describe? I have no desire to prescribe to my
friend what he should do, but I'm kind of expecting a personal crisis of sorts
in the near future as he seems to be able to only barely managing the
ambitious environment he's in and the anxiety-filled, high-pressure life he's
led so far. If/when he doesn't succeed, it might shatter his high
expectations. I'd love to hear how others dealt with similar situations.

~~~
mwhuang2
Sure, I'll share. After my rejections, I kind of fell apart during senior year
of high school. I was extremely depressed and ended up almost failing all of
my classes. In the end, I barely made it to graduation and was more relieved
than happy about finishing.

Post-graduation, I went straight to college and tried to put the past behind
me. I started off pretty strong, but it was clear that I still lacked
maturity, and my grades took a nosedive during my second semester.

I ended up being disqualified from my scholarships, so I left school for a
year to figure things out. I worked full-time and took courses at community
college to keep myself busy. It took a lot of effort and introspection, but I
finally transferred back to college and started working on my computer science
degree.

Now I'm doing much better, having grown a lot as a person. I've also landed
two internships since then and gotten involved with plenty of extracurriculars
and social activities on the side. My path wasn't as smooth as it could've
been, but I don't regret much about my experiences. Failing at a young age
taught me to shrug off shortcomings and made me a stronger person for the
future.

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Animats
Well, look at YC's stats on success rate vs. founder went to an elite school.

~~~
therobot24
if there's a positive correlation it can be due to:

\- VCs biasing toward founders with an elite school on their resume

\- Elite schools offering more opportunities for building a start-up
(Stanford, CMU, etc. have separate funds dedicated toward investing in student
start-ups)

\- Those who go to elite schools usually come from a place of privilege
allowing for higher risk opportunities

\- Those at elite schools have more connections to get their foot into a VC's
door

and so on..

~~~
fixxer
So, are you arguing against elite colleges being worthwhile, or in favor of
them? Are we not supposed to use every opportunity we get? That's cute ;)

~~~
setpatchaddress
VCs are probably missing opportunities by biasing in favor of elite
universities. Just desserts, of course.

~~~
dsharlet
This argument is also commonly made in the context of the pool from which
companies search for candidates to hire.

The problem with both situations (VC/entrepreneurs and employers/employees) is
that there's a cost associated with evaluating a candidate.

I don't think anyone doubts that good opportunities (and candidates) exist at
all at lower tier schools, but it seems very likely that there are fewer of
them.

If your resources are already constrained by something other than the number
of opportunities you can afford to fund/hire (e.g. time to
evaluate/interview), then it doesn't make sense to expand your search if it
means lowering your success rate.

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kelukelugames
I don't think any HNers aspire to become Chris Christie.

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doctorpangloss
> "Moreover, in David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell draws upon research that
> shows it’s actually more advantageous for a student to attend a college
> where they can be in the top 10% rather than in the bottom half of the
> class. It’s the top students at every college who receive the kind of
> attention from faculty and access to special programs that pave the way to
> more opportunity after college."

I thought this theory—mismatch theory—was discredited?

To clarify for future responses, check out this amicus brief sent to the
Supreme Court in the affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas.
[0] There is a particularly exhaustive section pp. 14-16.

I bring this up (and prepare myself for the inevitable downvotes) because I
feel like this mismatch theory exists only in the particular social debate
around affirmative action, not because it necessarily is or is not true (even
though mismatch theory is probably not true). Malcolm Gladwell's two stories
in David and Goliath and in Outliers—general musings about private schools and
musing about football players [1]—plus the one study by a journalist and an
economist [2] arguing for Fisher are the entirety of the basis of mismatch
theory. There may be two more articles supporting it since the Fisher case
went to trial years ago. The amicus I link above must reference a dozen
studies refuting it, from a variety of researchers in a variety of contexts.
You'd have to believe there was a huge multi-academic conspiracy to simply
ignore that evidence—you know, the kind that people think exists with climate
change research.

Mismatch theory may be the only argument that is persuasive to these parents,
because on the face of it, mismatch theory is consistent with their values for
improving their children's positivist success. But what if it's not true?
Trying to ignore the reality that the rat race pays off is not going to reduce
suicides.

[0] [http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/LCCR-
an...](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/LCCR-and-Mintz-
Fisher-Amicus-Empirical-Scholars.pdf)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/books/david-and-goliath-
by...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/books/david-and-goliath-by-malcolm-
gladwell.html) "As usual, Mr. Gladwell’s science is convenient. He has charts
to back up his premise about academic success, but how is success measured? In
happiness? Salary? Getting jobs, or keeping them? Read the annotations if you
must, but they won’t get you far. Mr. Gladwell needs a David-Goliath school
story, so he creates one. His version happens to have common sense on its
side, even if it is in no way definitive or complete."

[2]
[https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/ACN%20Richard%20San...](https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/ACN%20Richard%20Sander%20and%20Stuart%20Taylor.pdf)

~~~
omonra
That's not my understanding, for example:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-
pain...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-painful-
truth-about-affirmative-action/263122/)

One site I found to 'debunk' mismatch theory focuses solely on graduation rate
as a measure (ie students graduate more at more selective colleges). But that
could be due these students transferring out to easier majors or simply
graduating with lower grades (as discussed in the Atlantic article above).

~~~
jpatrick
One of the co-authors of that Atlantic article is Richard Sander, who's the
leading proponent of the mismatch hypothesis and routinely overstates the
evidence for it. His original study is based on outcomes for law students who
started law school in 1991 -- not necessarily applicable, I'd argue, to
undergraduates starting college in 2015 -- and his methodology has been pretty
much discredited anyway (see the amicus brief that doctorpangloss cites).

This is off-topic from the original post, but I think the whole mismatch
controversy has been kind of a scary illustration of how one determined
academic can shape the narrative around an issue: because he's a professor,
and because media outlets trust professors (and like controversy), he can
easily find a platform to represent the debate in a way that's favorable to
his side (e.g. [0]). I don't think it's a crazy hypothesis or anything, and
it's definitely worth debating, but I'd be skeptical of claims coming from
someone who's staked so much of his career on its validity.

</rant>

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2015/12/10/an-emerging-scholarly-consensus-on-mismatch-and-
affirmative-action-ideologues-not-welcome/)

~~~
omonra
I think the mismatch theory is catching on because

1) It simply makes intuitive sense 2) There is simply lack of hard data that
would disprove it

Ie when you place a group of students whose SAT scores are 250 points below
the average, in a competitive environment, they will struggle because there is
no AA once inside the university. So this is the default 'makes sense' theory.

If it is actually not true - you have to bring data to bear.

