
Ask HN: Choosing a college - v3rt
I'm a high school senior, and I can't see myself doing anything but technological entrepreneurship (although not necessarily software) for a career, initially anyways. I applied to the usual suspects in the fall, but was rejected from all the colleges that both seemed like good fits and offered good financial aid. (Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and Princeton) I thought my application was strong (2400 SAT, A average, placed in top ~50 of my grade nationwide in math competitions, strong history of programming projects, et al), but even Rice waitlisted me. Anyways, that’s irrelevant now, although I’m still curious as to what might have sunk me at those places.<p>Now, I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself for next year. I know that I want an atmosphere of smart, driven, people (for both rub-off effect and cofounder potential) and professors I can both learn from and do good work with. The problem is that there’s no place I’ve been accepted to that offers all that and an affordable price. My options seem to be as follows:<p>-Get into Yale off the waitlist: Seems like the ideal outcome, considering their financial aid and overall atmosphere; the main drawback seems to be the lack of engineering focus, although I get the impression there’ll be plenty of technical things there to keep me occupied and more.<p>-Cornell (Engineering): Everything’s good, except that my family can’t afford to pay for Cornell with the aid package they’ve sent us. Some negotiation may help, but most likely, the only real option will be to try to secure a guaranteed transfer after a year at Tufts and graduate in two years with AP and Tufts credits.<p>-Tufts: Tufts is tuition-free for me thanks to my mother working there, but the atmosphere there strikes me as a bit indolent and even less technically focused than Yale, although the students seem talented enough. On the positive side, Tufts is close to Boston, and I could work on research somewhere in Cambridge if I didn't find what I needed at Tufts. A downside would be continuing to be the “too-intense guy” I come off as at my high school, and potentially continuing to feel slowed down by my peers.<p>-McGill: This strikes me as a not particularly good option, unless someone has something positive to say. It’s more than affordable, though.<p>-UMass Amherst: Possible full ride scholarship. That summarizes the pluses, as far as I can tell.<p>So I guess the more general question amounts to: Is it worth paying large sums of money for me as a budding entrepreneur to be around smart, like-minded students for my college years?<p>(Sorry for the novel, but I feel that the HN community is the best place to get solid advice from those who have been through my current situation, and I needed to get the situation across)<p>Thanks for the help.
======
kirse
My best advice to you is to take none of our specific "go here" advice...

Take a good week off to just step back from the college admissions process and
recollect your thoughts so you can look at it objectively. I'm sure right now
it's a bit stressful and probably overwhelming, not to mention getting spanked
by the rejections is a bit of a blow to the ego... especially coming from
somebody who sees themselves as _slowed down by my peers_...

Once you take that break, spend a good couple hours alone and not distracted
to just write out (and I mean write, not think) what you really want out of
your life for the next couple years. You don't need to have concrete goals,
but something as simple as "I'd like to start my own software business before
I graduate" or "I want to get involved with mathematics research projects" are
examples. You seem like someone who is very driven, so I bet you'll have no
problem with this.

Secondly, write down who you are and what are your values. Are you the type of
person that needs the structure of class to be motivated, or can you stay
focused on your own? How much personal time do you want? Obviously a less
demanding class-load gives you more time to work on your own projects.

Once you lay down the big picture of who you are as a person and your overall
goals/purpose for the next few years, it's going to be 1000x easier to choose
a college. It's like finding the shoe that fits you best.

Finally, you'll find plenty of people who are smarter than you, even at a
state school. I knew many people "smarter" than myself when I went to a state
school, yet I was the one who was making a 5 figure income by my senior year
in college from my own business (as if money is the only thing that matters).
For the record, I was _only_ a 1400 SAT.

------
ruddzw
Congratulations on getting Cornell -- I'm graduating from there this May.
Though I'm clearly biased, I'd recommend Cornell all the way. Definitely speak
with the financial aid office to see what they can do for you; they're trying
to get better about offering students everything they can. If you have to take
some private loans not through the school, that's okay too -- just more work
for you is all.

Cornell Engineering really is good, and I have nothing but good things to say
about the CS department here (okay, I can criticize them on using SML/NJ for
CS 312/3110, but meh. It's still a functional language). Every one of the
students I've worked with has been great. Another thing is that engineering
here isn't looked down upon. It's sort of looked at as one of the hard
colleges to be in here. If people want a group of students to make fun of
here, there's plenty of Hotelies. :)

The CS education you'll get here is great. If you can find the money to come
here, it's worth it. I know someone graduating with something like $80,000 in
loans, but from the opportunities Cornell has given her, it's worth it.

About the rejections from those good schools, I've heard it's possible to
reject some really good students because they're literally too good. If a
school thinks that you're likely to apply to a bunch of really good schools
and get into some of them, they may reject you so that they don't end up
extending an offer and getting turned down.

------
nostrademons
> I’m still curious as to what might have sunk me at those places.

I'm guessing that you seem too one-dimensional. Admissions committees look for
someone that'll add diversity to the campus - not just racial diversity, but
diversity of interests too.

I went to Amherst (College, not UMass). Something like 1 in 8 of my admitted
class had a 4.0 and 1 in 10 had perfect SATs, but we all had something _else_
besides that. Like my astro-major dormmate who was also a nationally-ranked
scrabble player. Or my friend who'd been left for dead at age 10 in Liberia,
and had started his own organization dedicated to eradicating child soldiers.
I'd worked in an all-teenage dot-com in my gap year before college, too.

Anyway, here's my somewhat heretical advice:

Don't go to college - yet. Instead, if you're really set on tech
entrepreneurship, take a year off and found a startup. Take it as far as you
can - pick out a market, talk to people in that market, try to design and
build a product that satisfies that market.

If you succeed, great - you don't need college. You can always pull a Woz and
go back anyway. But even if you fail, it'll teach you lots about what you
_really_ want to do. It may not be what you think now. One of my biggest
regrets is that I basically planned my college career based on what I thought
I wanted to do in my last year of high school, completely ignoring the lessons
from my gap year. I could've saved myself a lot of aggravation and made my
college experience a lot more meaningful had I adjusted my plans for where I
wanted to go and what I wanted to study based on my experience working in a
tech startup.

And if you fail - great. You'll look so much better to colleges for having
given it a shot. Maybe you'll even get into Stanford or MIT next time around.

~~~
v3rt
Well, I'm an avid mixed martial artist, skier, and violinist on top of the
technical stuff, although those might seem superficial since I have so many
interests.

As for the gap year - wow, that could be a really good idea. I had considered
that option, but I guess I didn't think about it enough. The lack of co-
founders and money could pose problems in certain areas, but I could either
just keep pushing the web app I've been developing to commercial release, or
go to work at someone else's startup. Do those sound like potentially good
ideas? (I can probably even defer enrollment to a college to have a safety net
in case rejections round two comes around)

Also, what did you learn during your gap year, more specifically? (if it's not
entirely specific to your case)

Thanks for the insight; I have a lot more thinking to do, but taking a gap
year could be a very good option for me.

Edit: Posted before I saw your comment, fuzzmeister; that's probably a good
way to have my cake and eat it too, although the downside is that I won't
exactly be motivated to succeed with the startup no matter what if I have a
spot at a college waiting for me.

~~~
nostrademons
No idea why they turned you down then. :-)

As for whether to join someone else's startup or start your own - I'd say do
whichever will answer more questions about your future life (in answering
them, it'll raise more). If you feel you absolutely must start a company to be
fulfilled, go do it. That's how I felt, though I waited until I was out of
college and had a couple years of work experience under my belt. I started it,
it failed miserably, and it was still one of the best decisions I made in my
life.

In my case, I worked for someone else's startup in my gap year, just because
the opportunity presented itself. My math teacher was starting a company; his
company had a wholly owned subsidiary that was doing a teen-content .com; it
was being staffed exclusively by teenagers (many of whom were my friends from
high school); did I want to join? Of course I did. You will probably learn
more technical skills working for someone else than you will on your own;
there's a vast body of knowledge in everyday software engineering that's
largely passed from engineer-to-engineer, and you miss out on a lot of it if
you only learn from the Internet. OTOH, you will probably learn more about
yourself and what you want if you start your own company.

It's hard for me to say precisely what I learned in my gap year, because most
knowledge takes the form of skills, not facts, and you can't reduce skills to
words. I do think it was one of the most educational experiences, perhaps the
most educational, that I'd had up to that point in my life. A quick list,
based on what I remember 8 years later:

I learned Perl scripting (actually, I sorta knew it before, but I learned it
better.) I learned how there's always a core group of people that actually get
things done while the rest of the office takes long lunches and bitches about
how the core group is usurping their authority. I learned how to exaggerate
your PR budget so companies pay attention to you. I learned how to feed
newspapers a hook so that they do a story on you ("all teenage dot-com"
actually got us a lot of free publicity), and I learned that all this PR
doesn't matter if your product sucks. I learned that what you think of as
"intelligent" content usually just seems pretentious to other people. I
learned that even if you start with users, they'll leave if you take away the
reason they came - and that reason is not always obvious to you as the
designer of the site. I learned that teenagers can be just as vicious at
office politics as adults. Actually, this last one is a really broad lesson.
Next time you think "That guy is evil; I could do his job so much better",
think about what you would actually do if you were placed in his job and had
to operate under his constraints. Chances are, you'd be just as incompetent
and evil as he is.

Anyway, I'm only 3 months into my gap year...

I learned about version control and IDEs. I learned Java Swing. I learned
about maintaining other people's code, and that it's basically a waste of time
to fix their formatting (other than mixed tabs/spaces, which should always be
converted to spaces. ;-)) I learned about OOP and how to split up
responsibilities between classes. Unfortunately I didn't learn about avoiding
cyclic dependencies, but at least I was primed so I could understand why this
was a problem when I learned it in college. I learned that your first attempt
at a program usually turns out badly, even if you have 30 years of experience
under your belt, and so you should always be revising and refactoring your
code. I learned that companies will often shift their business plan entirely
when they are a week away from beta. I learned that this is not always a good
idea.

I learned that cool projects often go to the guy who happens to be in the
office at the time someone dreams them up (sorry, Trevor). I learned how to
design UIs myself and get them working. I learned that you should always,
always try to code things up incrementally, working in small chunks, though I
had to relearn this about 5 times more before it really sank in. I "learned"
C++ and why manual memory management sucks. While I should've been debugging
those segfaults, I learned that thousands of fangirls will go wild for Draco
Malfoy in leather pants (this turned out to be very important for my career
later).

I learned InstallShield, and why just about every desktop software package
leaves behind a ton of junk when you uninstall it. I learned that manually
testing installation executables on a half dozen VirtualPC boxes kinda sucks.
I tried to learn WinRunner but it never sunk in. I did learn design patterns
while I was avoiding WinRunner though.

I learned that companies that stay "2 weeks away from beta" for more than 2
months have a tendency to stay that way indefinitely. (Though not always: I've
heard that offline GMail was "2 weeks away from launch" for a year, and they
_did_ eventually get it out.) I learned that code quality matters _a lot_ ,
and that if you write sucky code in the name of just getting it done, you will
pay for it later, possibly forever. I learned that you need to know what
you're building in order to build it, but I took the wrong lesson from that: I
learned that you should always have specs that try to think of every
eventuality, when I should've learned that you should always have prototypes
and working code that tries to explore every eventuality. I learned that
companies should always keep track of their cash very carefully, and they
should _know_ when a $6M bridge loan is coming due, and that VCs behave
basically like sharks when they smell blood in the water. I learned that
certain company founders will also do pretty crazy things with the remnants of
their company, like run off to China with its IP when the VC sues them.

All in all, I'd say it was highly educational. :-)

~~~
bigbang
Thanks for sharing.

------
danhak
I really feel for you...going through the college admissions process three
years ago was one of the most daunting experiences of my life.

As a Yale student, let me give you some advice should you get the opportunity
to come here. First off, it's truly an amazing place. Kids here are brilliant
and Yale will give you money to do absolutely anything you're interested in.
All you have to do is ask. There's also the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, an
incubator for student ventures. Think of it as a Y Combinator for Yale
students; you get a 5K stipend to spend the summer in New Haven, work on your
project and attend workshops.

With that said, there are a few things you should be aware of. Yale is
obviously not known for its science or engineering focus but among many
students there's actually a contempt for any subject involving numbers. Most
of my friends fulfilled their math requirement with ridiculous classes like
"The Pleasures of Counting" or "Geometry of Nature." I am not even joking.

As a science student I sometimes feel like a second class citizen.
Science/Engineering classes tend to meet earlier than usual and on Fridays.
The buildings are all on Science Hill which is a 10-15 minute walk from
central campus. This isn't a huge deal until December when New Haven turns
into an icy hellscape for three months.

Finally, as far as entrepreneurship goes, you'll find a lot of kids here who
would be interested in co-founding a venture. The only problem is most of them
don't have the technical background to put their money where their mouth is.

I'd be glad to talk to you more about this or answer specific questions. My
e-mail address is HN User Name at gmail.

~~~
carterschonwald
I'll second the points about yale culture. Honestly, if you're worried about
being A downside would be continuing to be the “too-intense guy” I come off as
at my high school, and potentially continuing to feel slowed down by my
peers." then if you're as technically / mathematically oriented as you claim,
outside of certain parts of mit, caltech and other places with a large
engineering culture, you'll continue to be viewed as such.

A simple, but in retrospect insightful bit of advice that I ignored (but
shouldn't have) when choosing a university is the following: go through the
course catalogue and figure out what percentage of all the classes you would
certainly find interesting, all other considerations being equal, choose the
school with the best percentage!

~~~
v3rt
I'm into less technical subjects almost as much as science as engineering;
most of the "too-intense" stuff I think comes from me being overall
achievement and knowledge focused. So, I'd hopefully be far less out of place
at Yale than at my high school, or even Tufts.

Thanks for the advice on the course catalog - I'll definitely do that.

------
cia_plant
I went to MIT. At the time I was sure that it was what I wanted - I felt very
ready to "take a drink from the firehose" or whatever.

Since actually going there, my feelings about college have changed a lot. It
seems to me that I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to work like a dog, if I
want to. I would have rather spent my college years exploring things I didn't
know much about - like art, travel, people, languages - instead of obsessing
over math and science, which I was already pretty good at.

My advice is this: If you want to do technological entrepreneurship, then that
path will be available to you in four years. You're already ahead of the
curve, and you don't need to do much during college. Go somewhere interesting,
relax and have fun.

~~~
v3rt
I'm sure kicking back a bit has its merits (and I'll give it a shot), but I
can't shake the impression that if I say "OK, I'll stop being relentlessly
hungry and relax now, I can work later", there goes my inertia and my expected
level of success plummets. Am I wrong?

------
blackguardx
As a college grad who is now employed at a "top" tech company (although
unhappily), I would say that it probably doesn't matter where you go. Choose a
place that makes you feel comfortable. Don't choose a place based on any
perceived benefit after graduation. Your happiness while there is paramount.

I was fortunate enough to go to a small engineering school with many people
who shared my interests (Case Western Reserve). It was a great experience that
I will cherish for a long time to come. My school is not very famous and the
name didn't help me out in any job interviews, but I got a "good" job just the
same.

In my experience, the biggest benefit of a college is having an extensive
alumni network and lots of cool companies recruit there. If you want to work
for a startup, then even that doesn't matter. This didn't matter for me
because the company I work for doesn't recruit at CWRU. I got an interview
after applying online.

One thing to keep in mind is that I think I learned more from my peers than I
did from my professors. I think that is the whole idea behind a university.

------
GeneralMaximus
I'm a freshman IT student, but I'm currently in India so I might not be able
to give you useful advice about which college to join, but I can tell you this
- for Pete's sake, choose wisely. I could have taken an year off to prepare
for the college entrance exams (college is a big deal in India, so we have too
much competition) and got much better marks, but I chose to just join
whichever college I could get into, reputation or no reputation. Now I regret
it. My college is more like a 4-year crash course in getting a 9-to-5 job, my
teachers care only about academic performance and my peers think I'm a nutjob.
Not that it's a bad college, it's just that they don't really _get_ education.
You know, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by
stupidity.

The environment of your college matters. Your peers matter. In college, a bad
crowd will not just slow you down, they'll _take_ you down.

~~~
quizbiz
get out, transfer and find somewhere that will inspire you. Indiana is one of
those schools that as soon as I heard it mentioned, I knew to stay away.

~~~
abii
dude he said he was in INDIA, not INDIANA.

~~~
quizbiz
>_<

------
maggie
I don't have much to say that other people haven't said already. But: It's
unrealistic and silly in my opinion to plan on graduating from college in 3
years. If you really want that atmosphere of smart, driven people you're going
to want to be around those people /as long as possible/. I don't advocate
'taking your time' (you know, graduate on time! go on to other things!), but
as someone who could conceivably have graduated from college in 3 years and
chose not to, I just think you'll get much much more out of college by going
there for a full 4 years.

Honestly, you're never going to be 'slowed down' by your peers the way you
probably were in high school. A lot of learning in college goes on outside of
the classroom. I /think/ a lot about all my classes, go talk to all my
professors outside of class (even the humanities ones!) and probably get a lot
more out of my classes than everyone else taking them. People aren't slowing
me down, I'm just getting more out of the same material. Additionally,
there're independent studies, doing research, having a job--you'll find that
there are plenty of ways to occupy your time. : ]

So, with that in mind, I'd consider the overall culture of the school. What do
you want to be doing in your spare time? What type of people do you want to be
hanging out with? That being said, every school (especially the larger ones)
have people of all types.

------
tsally
Meh. I was similarly crushed when I was rejected from the Ivy league schools I
thought I would be going to. The most important thing to do is realize that
most of it is ultimately irrelevant. If your department is top 10, the school
wont make much of an impact past that point. Once you're in a decent
department the rest is up to you.

More importantly, you actually have no idea which one of these schools is a
best fit for you. My focus was Columbia in highschool. You know what I
realized now? It would have been a horrible fit for me. UIUC is pretty good
culture wise (mostly because of the CS department) and it has far better
Computer Science. I didn't even apply to the school which I realize now would
be the best fit (Berkeley). But I had never even heard of Berkeley outside of
the CS rankings because it's not an Ivy.

Recognizing that you have very little chance in correctly reading your own
needs, try narrowing down the college by obvious criteria:

1.) Place yourself in a top 10 department in the subject you want to study.

2.) Make sure the campus culture is at least a decent fit for you (i.e., don't
go to a big 10 school if you have an aversion to sports and partying. I
personally think the hardcore party people here are jokes, but I have no
problem dealing or even being friends with them.).

3.) Minimize the amount of money it takes you to get there. Only make a
concession if your upgrading yourself from a bottom half of the top 10 to a
number 1.

4.) Make sure the campus is a place where you see yourself living for four
years.

Academics + Culture + Minimal Money + Location. It really is that simple. I
doubt more than one of the colleges on your list fits into the above criteria.

EDIT: Also, don't beat yourself up over not getting in. It's essentially a
coin flip when it comes down to it. I thought I had a pretty kickass profile
too, but there you go. As PG has written, it's not in the best interest of the
admissions committee to spend the time picking the exact best candidates. And
believe me, this type of rejection will keep happening. I just got rejected
from a NASA scholarship I thought I had a pretty good shot at. In the
rejection email, they suggested if I reapplied to improve on pretty much every
aspect of my application! I know my app was better than that. Like I said..
meh. :)

~~~
kajecounterhack
Haha tsally, I got into Berkeley and UIUC...going to UIUC (see you there!!)
cause the cost difference is completely unjustifiable. Unless you're
instate...50k vs 10k (merit scholarships)...yeah it's pretty clear which one
you go to. Well, unless of course you can afford the 50k. Haha.

~~~
tsally
I just saw this, but hopefully you check your thread tab...

Congrats :)

~~~
kajecounterhack
Haha thanks, yeah I check it

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aaronsw
I'm not sure this directly applies to you, but the one thing I wish people had
told me when I was applying to college was that if you want to be a Master of
the Universe, there's still a significant advantage to going to an east coast
Ivy League school. My friends at Harvard and Yale and so on have a valuable
network of powerful people looking out for them, making sure they get cushy
jobs and lecture gigs and book deals. Stanford, by contrast, was all about
pushing you into Silicon Valley, either as a startup grunt or a VC pawn.

------
hko
I'd try to negotiate with Cornell. Might be worth going there in person. If
not, your scheme of starting at Tufts and transferring seems reasonable. If
you worry about lame peers, take upper-level courses as a freshman. Audit them
if they won't let you register because of prerequisites. I suspect most profs
would even grade your work in a case like that, so you'd get the full
intellectual benefit of the class, just not the credit.

------
tokenadult
_I’m still curious as to what might have sunk me at those places._

How did you describe your plans for the future in your application?

 _placed in top ~50 of my grade nationwide in math competitions_

I follow a lot of math competitions, as a math coach. Which competitions were
the ones you participated in most avidly?

 _the "too-intense guy" I come off as at my high school_

What specific behaviors are your high school classmates observing as they come
to that conclusion about you?

~~~
v3rt
_How did you describe your plans for the future in your application?_ My
major/career first choices were "undecided", although I sent Cornell, Rice,
and Princeton an essay in which I explained how I wished to better the world
through innovative engineering startups.

 _I follow a lot of math competitions, as a math coach. Which competitions
were the ones you participated in most avidly?_ I narrowly missed the MA
Mathcounts team in middle school, and have done well on other less prestigious
competitions (HMMT, NEML, CML...), but my AMC/AIME results are probably the
best. Unfortunately, my highest AIME score, an 11 (and presumably USAMO
qualification), was just this year and therefore probably didn't factor in to
decisions much.

 _What specific behaviors are your high school classmates observing as they
come to that conclusion about you?_

I focus on my work at the expense of an active social life, and I make an
effort to really understand all knowledge that comes my way, rather than just
working for grades (if that) and acting anti-intellectual (the prevailing
culture). I did lack social skills in middle school, so the reputation
carryover could be creating an additional gulf between my classmates and me.

~~~
tokenadult
Residential colleges are always looking for students who are outgoing to their
fellow students. Life is dull on a college campus if the students all stay in
their dorm rooms and don't talk to one another.

------
lleger
An important thing to note is that college admissions is really a terrible,
fairly unscientific process. You're clearly qualified, so getting rejected
shouldn't be a terrible thing for you.

To answer your first apprehension: being around like-minded people is
incredibly important. Graduating from one of the best high schools in the
nation, I was around people who were intellectuals so there was always
wonderful discussions to whet and kindle my growing mind. Two years later, I'm
at the local state university whose stigma is entirely accurate. Few
people—even in the honors college—are true intellectuals. Living here has been
an intellectual nightmare for me, and I can sense my acuity and mental agility
suffering.

However, I really didn't have a choice. My family could not afford to send me
anywhere else. Basically, the situation I got stuck with was this: paying
$40k+/year for a wonderful, private institution or paying $0/year (including
room and board) and getting compensated a stipend for the local state
university which still made USNWR's top-tier colleges list.

And really, if you're going for engineering, then you're going to learn the
same thing anywhere. I'd argue that illustrious universities really aren't a
frugal choice. Graduating debt free is really going to free me up financially
to start up my company instead of needing to find a job right out of school to
fund myself. Also, the local state university offered a lot of options for
testing out of classes, so I'm graduating in three years, as opposed to four.

One more thing to consider: student life. You don't want to be miserable, even
if it's cheaper or a better school. I've known to many of my peers who went to
their dream school and then hated their life. Consider spending time on campus
and getting familiar with the local scene.

Good luck.

------
jmtame
Check out Olin College. They are built specifically for engineers who also
want to get into creativity and design. They emphasize teams with a project-
based curriculum. Oh, and there's no cost. They've been cited as one of the
next Ivy League schools and have what I've heard to be a very strong
engineering program.

~~~
v3rt
I was seriously considering Olin before I visited, but it just didn't jive
with me. The small size and 100% engineering focus made it feel like such a
narrow bubble that I couldn't see myself enjoying more than a semester there,
which is too bad, because it seemed like it would have been perfect for me in
all respects other than the claustrophobia.

------
s_baar
Sorry for trying to hijack, but I was going to create a similar thread for
myself too, and I don't think it would be a good idea to create two. (I got
waitlisted at Rice too!) Right now I'm trying to decide between UCLA, UCSD,
and Univeristy of Washington. Which one would be best for a CS major?

~~~
jbarciauskas
5 years ago, UW, far and away. They were ranked #12 when I was looking, and
even higher before that I think. Seattle is also of course a great town for
technology, and not just for Microsoft hangers-on.

~~~
Shooter
UW is still a great school. Some great CS research is done there.

------
bryanalves
Just my opinion. I went to some random school that nobody here is going to
know of or care about, and I had a blast at school. College should be a place
to have fun at. Realistically, 3+ years out of college nobody cares about your
education anymore anyway.

If you really want to go to MIT/etc. or something and kill yourself for 4
years, go for it. I don't think it's necessary, unless you HAVE to work at
<insert name of prestigious company> as your first job out of college.

Also, don't underestimate the effect of a full-ride or close to it. Being debt
free or nearly so while making 60k+ a year in your early 20s is nothing to
scoff at.

If I were in your shoes, knowing what I know now, at 25, and given the options
listed, I would take the full ride in a heartbeat.

~~~
krschultz
It is all about being DEBT free, if you can get a full ride somewhere, do it.
60k without debt means you have a few hundred bucks to burn at the bars or on
a nice car or saving for retirement or traveling or starting a company,
whatever you want to do. Paying for school loans would suck, it is a bill for
something you already used up, and probably figured out was a scam along the
way.

------
abii
I'm a high school senior too and I only recently got accepted at Carnegie
Mellon and Stanford (didn't apply to Ivys or MIT). First, you should get over
the rejections. Last December, I applied for Cornell ED (36% acceptance rate)
and I got rejected! I couldn't quite figure out why but now, five months
later, I'm really really happy cos it gave the opportunity to apply for
Stanford/CMU during RD. And Stanford had a RD acceptance rate of 7.2%. Only
Harvard has a lower rate. So, shit does happen but good things also happen.

Anyway, as an international, I can't get financial aid at most schools (only
Harvard, MIT and a few others are need-blind for intls). So, I'm faced with a
similar question. Is it worth paying so much for Stanford or CMU?

------
dspeyer
From my experience, Cornell Alumni have a much greater presence in high-end cs
industry than any of those other schools. It's probably worth trying to
squeeze more money out of them (what do you have to lose by trying?).

Tufts has a generally good reputation, though not particularly technical. Free
is good and Boston is good. You might investigate if you can take high-level
CS courses at MIT or Harvard with a Tufts enrollment (I think it's possible,
but you'll want to know details). It's certainly possible to join the MIT
culture without actually enrolling there.

Yale receives a certain degree of contempt in technical circles. It's probably
possible to get a solid education there, but certainly don't expect the name
to open doors.

------
noaharc
I think you shouldn't be too sure that Yale et al. will have many "smart,
like-minded students". I go to UPenn, studying business and CS and I've found
that there are very few people interested in technology startups (they like
finance, of course).

I also have found that though students are capable of getting good grades,
they tend to be less intellectually curious than, for example, the average HN
reader.

So don't make your decision simply thinking that good reputation = great
students. I think the ancillary benefits of being in Boston easily outweigh
any relative drawbacks of going to Tufts.

------
sown
Here's my take: I went to Shit Hole State University, well outside of cali and
SV. In the cubicle next to me was a Stanford Master's grad. He and I made
similar salary, did similar work. He got to be in more debt, though, and as a
bit of a bonus he bragged about stanford and software quality, etc blah blah.
I told him all software startup code is garbage and quietly to myself he
should just work on the product. He quit, startup got sold and I cashed out.
Sure I was lucky but his whole attitude was wrong.

Back at SSU I knew of another Stanford grad who was humble and was genuinely
into software and all around a spiffy guy. And he knew more than my cube-
neighbor.

Here's thing thing about "it" schools like Stanford, MIT: it's something of an
illusion. Sure they great schools and they do the best research, if that is
where you want to go (something I had a hard time doing at SSU). Before I got
hired I worked on my own stuff, contributed code and had all-around genuine
extracurricular fun messing around with systems, hacking, and reading about
binary analysis and security. That's the kind of stuff that gets you
somewhere. Not going to "it" schools gives you the freedom to pick what your
extracurricular stuff is, though. :)

I guess my advice is to do what ever you want. In life there are front doors
that are jammed and there are back windows you can slip in unnoticed if you
know where to look.

------
falsestprophet
Programmers tend to value tangible evidence of technical expertise. Your best
bet if you want to operate in software is to build impressive things and go to
school wherever you feel most comfortable.

Engineers tend have a more limited idea of how technical expertise ought to be
acquired: at a top 10 (maybe 15) ranked university. So, Stanford, MIT, and
Cornell are very fine choices for mechanical or electrical engineering. For
you then, Cornell is the only way to go for engineering.

------
HalcyonMuse
Tuition-free tufts? I'd jump at it.

Anything close to Boston would be pretty cool. I hear there's a pretty strong
hacker scene there... but I've never been there myself.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yep. If you have the option to go to college without paying, you should do it
unless there are strong mitigating factors. And you haven't got a free ride to
Idaho State University here: You have _Tufts_ , in _Boston_ , for _free_.
Swallow your pride and grab that!

There is nothing better for your career as an entrepreneur than to spend four
years in _Boston_ , among students, and then emerge debt-free. Save that money
you would spend going to Cornell so that you can spend it on your startup
later.

The dirty little secret of undergraduate education is: It's much the same
wherever you go. You are taught by grad students and by professors who have
not got enough seniority to get out of teaching undergraduates. The textbooks
are the same everywhere. The engineering schools with better reputations
usually get those reputations by having lots of great, well-funded
researchers... none of whom have anything to do with undergraduate teaching if
they can help it. And if you're smart, curious, have a good library and two or
three mentors you're going to learn as much as you want, no matter the
surroundings.

Sometimes the smaller schools with poorer research reputations actually have
_better_ undergraduate teaching.

Until you get to _much_ lower-ranked schools than any on your list, the major
difference from school to school is your fellow students. But Tufts is in
_Boston_. If the Tufts scene just isn't for you, ride the train to MIT. I've
been impersonating an MIT alum off and on for years, and I'm sure
impersonating a student is even easier if you're the right age. Just go to
their club meetings, study in their libraries, hang out at Mary Chung's. Get
summer jobs in their labs or their startups. You can probably even take their
classes if you want.

Now, here's a hypothesis for you [1]: I'm guessing that your otherwise
inexplicable rejection from all those top schools is because they took one
look at your application, said "hey, this one will be getting an admission and
a free ride from Tufts," and decided to expend their precious slots elsewhere.

[EDITORIAL UPDATE: I've removed my interesting sidelight about the old Ivy
League admissions collusion scandal, partly because it wasn't important to my
wacky hypothesis, but mostly because I misremembered it. See below for
correction and link.]

I'm sorry if that rankles. Nobody likes to feel like they're being railroaded.
But you are being railroaded into freaking _Tufts_. Count your blessings! Ride
the legacy-student rails! Pick another time of life to be crazy and
rebellious! And if you get too depressed, go talk to someone who just got out
of school and is $50k in debt.

\---

[1] Obviously, this hypothesis hinges on your application containing
information about who your mother is and where she works. I'm assuming it does
-- financial aid applications have that and more, right? Although for all I
know the colleges have a strict separation of financial-aid apps and
admissions apps, and they also don't cheat. In which case, on to the next
hypothesis! ;)

~~~
tokenadult
_So the schools would collude: They would quietly agree that Student X would
be admitted to Harvard but nowhere else, Student Y would be admitted to
Cornell, and so forth._

I'm pretty sure this is mistaken information. The quoted statement is about
admission rather than financial aid. The colleges used to confer about
financial aid offers. Then, yes, they were told based on antitrust law that
they couldn't do that anymore.

<http://568group.org/>

Now, with permission from Congress, they STILL confer to discuss general
principles of how they administer financial aid, but I'm sure that the
admission decisions are not made in collusion, and I'm even more sure that the
college lawyers now don't let the financial aid offices talk about specific
applicants before financial aid offers are made.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Blast. Thanks for the correction. Should have checked those references!

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1991/may29/24753.html>

You're right, I'm wrong. I'll see if I have time to edit the submission...

Of course, this still doesn't refute my hypothesis. We'll leave that for the
next commenter. ;)

------
quizbiz
First of all big congrats on Cornell. I was crushed when they rejected me,
luckily it was my one rejection.

I am currently having to choose between Georgia Tech (nearly free) and Emory
(50k/year). I'm not a math/engineering person, while that background would be
nice I see myself as an Econ major. I hate to hijack the topic, but I'm in a
tough situation as well...

Would YC prefer a non engineering grad from Emory or GT?

~~~
krschultz
You should go to GT without a doubt, literally NO DOUBT in my mind. I'm not
even saying GT is better than Emory, I know people at both and are happy, but
if the difference is between 200k+ in debt (don't forget rising costs over 4
years!) vs 10-20k, take the smaller one! Imagine you come out of college
making 60k a year, by the time you subtract taxes, rent, food, healthcare,
car, cell phone bill, ISP bill at home, you will spend 10 years paying off
that debt. It will NEVER be worth it. Seriously break down average pay for
your degree, guesstimate your bills after college, and figure out how much it
will cost you. My girlfriend and I both make over 60k, we had only a combined
50k in loans, and it is still will take 2 years to pay off. If you are doing
it alone with 4 times that amount, forget it.

Second, more people know GT than Emory anyway. I only know Emory because a
neighbor went there.

Third, if you get a graduate degree, it will completely over run your
undergrad degree anyway. My dad went to a shitty (so shitty it no longer
exists) state school in west virginia, and got C's. He then went to work for
10 years, then got an MBA from a good business school. Now he is the CEO of a
160 million a year company. Does anyway care about his undergrad degree? Hell
no. Do they care about the MBA? Definitely more than the undergrad, you can't
sit at most of the interviews if you don't have an MBA. But the only thing
they REALLY care about is his performance ON THE JOB.

Remember, your undergrad degree only gets you the first interview. It might
seem huge from high school, but you will eventually realize that teachers only
hype it to motivate you in high school. it doesn't matter that much in the
business world.

~~~
quizbiz
thanks, the major thing pulling at me is that I just see Emory as so much more
conducive to my personality. I don't think I would stand out at Emory like I
would at GT. I suppose I just need to push myself.

~~~
krschultz
All you need to have a great four years are 5-10 people like you. In a school
of thousands the problem is not are there 10 people I can be friends with
happily, but in FINDING those 10 people. Join the clubs that interest you and
meet those people and you will have fun anywhere.

------
rdouble
My theory on higher ed in the USA is that you should make an effort to attend
a school with a great brand name reputation like Harvard, MIT, Yale, Stanford
or Berkeley.

If that doesn't work you should go to the best place that costs you the least
amount of money.

I'll probably offend the alumni of the schools I mention, but as someone who
has assisted with hiring for startups, I don't believe HR really distinguishes
between places like McGill, Amherst or Tufts (or even places like Cornell and
Brown.) However, Harvard, MIT or Stanford will definitely get you an
interview.

I didn't get into anywhere good and instead went to a no-name private school
in the midwest that essentially paid me to go there. Since then I've worked
alongside, and been paid the same as people from MIT, Stanford, Harvard and
Berkeley, as well as people who dropped out of high school.

I would have preferred paying for Stanford if that had been an option.
However, I'm very glad I'm not 200K in debt to a "2nd choice" school.

In your situation I'd probably go to Tufts if Yale doesn't come through.
Living in that area definitely beats Amherst.

~~~
blackguardx
Harvard has a terrible engineering reputation

~~~
rdouble
It's still Harvard. It ranks #1 in nearly every other subject. A Harvard
degree will get you an interview at Google or anywhere I've ever worked.
However, I don't think it matters that much for the OP since he (or she)
didn't apply there.

~~~
blackguardx
Google recruits everywhere. I have lots of friends that have interviewed at
Google.

Will going to Harvard surround you with like-minded people to learn from and
work on projects with? Sure, but probably not as many as some other schools.

~~~
rdouble
I didn't intend to start a debate about the merits of Harvard's engineering
department. I was just using it as an example of a school with an obvious
(perhaps the most obvious) brand name reputation.

~~~
krschultz
Agree with the point, except that the true answer is MIT or Caltech, Harvard
really wouldn't push you ahead to any HR guy worth his salt at a tech company.

------
endlessvoid94
University of Illinois (Urbana/Champaign). World-class CS education at public
school costs. ACM is an active place for outside class projects and getting to
know some geeks. There's also a newly started IEN - Illini Entrepreneurship
Network.

I highly taking a serious look.

------
garply
I got a CS degree from Stanford and looking back I have to say I really regret
going to college. If you're interested in building your own business, that
time and money is a hell of a lot of opportunity cost.

So my advice to you is: Screw college. Start your business now.

------
w1ntermute
Make a call to the Cornell's financial aid office and make a personal case for
a better financial aid package. Be sure to mention you have a full ride to
UMass and Tufts. They may be willing to help you out, and it definitely can't
hurt at this point.

------
joshwprinceton
Did you apply to Babson? 2400 SAT = baller, props

My friend runs a great site for high schoolers going through the college
admissions process. I'd suggest checking it out: zinch.com

Congrats on your acceptances, McGill is a great school, too

~~~
quizbiz
I must say I regret applying there. I got in, never really planned on going
for a pure management education, but they sent in the fanciest most
personalized acceptance package. A very "feel good" acceptance.

------
krschultz
I was in your shoes as well, 2350 SATs, 40+ college credits, 4.0 GPA + all the
standard extra curricular leadership/community service stuff + a few unique
things like being on national radio & tv.

I didn't apply to any Ivy. I thought about MIT but decided not to apply
because my brother went to a *IT and for a lot of reasons hated the whole
"only guys on campus in engineering degrees" atmosphere.

I'll give you four reasons why a "lesser" school will wind up making you MUCH
happier

1) Focus - those schools are not super focused on engineering. You are second
fiddle to the business and humanities - always. That applies for all the
Ivy's, tufts, amherst, (not sure about mcgill)

2) Legacy - based on the 10 or so people who went from my high school that I
knew prior to my college choice, non were happy with their classmates. A lot
of the kids who get into ivy are children of alumni, and thus are not as
qualified as you are, so your classes are a lot weaker than you would expect.

3) Money - If you can get into one of those schools you can get a full ride at
plenty of BETTER technical schools. I got a full ride+, meaning tuition,
books, housing, to 5 of the top 20 schools in my major (mechanical
engineering), and I only applied to 5.

4 (and most importantly)) If you really are smart and know your stuff. your
undergraduate degree does not matter. One of two things will happen to you
after college, you will successfully start your own business and your
credentials won't matter, or you will get a graduate degree.

It seems to me that you have the list of the north eastern top 10 schools and
applied to them without digging deeper into the list of colleges and finding
the true engineering gems. Start with US news & world reports rankings for
comp eng/comp sci or whatever you want, they are not perfect but they are a
good place to start. Then visit them and decide for yourself. Setup private
meetings with professors/deans. The group tours done by students are utterly
useless. It doesn't matter what the dorms look like or how well manicured the
lawns are. Ask if undergraduates are involved in research, what the study
abroad programs are like, what areas the school's research focuses on, etc.
Specific questions about the program.

For me I had a list of 5 schools that lined up and narrowed them down by
program quality, and then focus. For example I liked Penn State's aerospace
engineering program, but their focus was on propulsion at the time and I'm not
very interested in that. Where as the school I go to now focuses on fuel cells
and robotics, both of which interest me. Those are the questions to be asking,
not whether people will recognize the name of your school on a resume.

Also I would say that you MUST go to a school on a school day, observing the
interactions between students tells you all you need to know about the place.
I went to one school over the summer and loved it, and then during the school
year people looked so "click"-y I didn't want to go there anymore.

The problem for you is this - transfer students are generally not offered
scholarships. So you are a bit late to the party for applying and getting
money. I would say nothing is as important as minimizing your college debt if
you want to remain flexible to start a company. It might be worth applying
scattershot to a bunch of schools before their deadlines and working it out
later, or taking a half year off and do something to boost your resume and
apply again. Normally I would say transfer but if you have a resume like that,
you will get money else where so don't leave that on the table.

Sorry for the rambling but I'm between projects, good luck, email me if you
have more questions. Just look back some day and say, the best thing that ever
happened to me was getting rejected from the IVYs.

------
gilesgoatboy
Tufts. The differences between colleges don't make as much difference as
people think. Being debt-free is awesome. If you get into Yale, go, maybe.
Other than that, Tufts. Most of college admissions and college-choosing is
just utter bullshit. You've already given it too much thought. People who do
anything interesting with their time are incredibly rare and your chances of
becoming one of those people will not be adjusted in any direction by any
amount by what college you choose. So give it LESS thought. It's not worth any
energy. It is worth doing, however, but you'd have to be a complete fucking
idiot to go anywhere other than Tufts given that it's free. Unless Yale gives
you a fantastic deal, and even then, you'd still want to give Tufts some
serious thought.

Best way to get a reality check: make a list of 100 people you admire, find
out how many of them went to an Ivy League school. Wikipedia makes it easy as
hell. The schools are great but saving that money is much, much better.

~~~
gilesgoatboy
By the way, I know my vernacular doesn't ever give this impression, but that
thing about the differences between colleges is based on statistical analysis
I read somewhere. It is scientifically proven that with a very few exceptions,
any good school is as good as any other.

