
Y Combinator only considers IVY League applicants? - ginn

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SwellJoe
Definitely not. I don't even have a four year degree, much less one from an
Ivy League school, and my co-founder went to some school in Australia that I
didn't even identify on the application, because I didn't know the name and
had no time to check. (Our company was in WFP2007.)

But if I were offering advice from what I know today, I'd say, "Go to a
famously good school. It'll pay for itself in one to five years, depending on
your path after college, and after that it's all gravy."

I dunno what goes into the application vetting process, but I'll give the YCs
credit for being extremely fair in the interview process. I met most of the
other folks in Boston for the interview process (and spoke with many of them
for a lot longer than the 15 minutes the YCs did), and while most who made it
that far were impressive, the ones actually picked for the program were
exactly the ones I would have picked as being most likely to succeed. And,
interestingly, an MIT group that I met was turned down.

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richcollins
I know of a Y Combinator company founded by someone who didn't attend college.

Also, it turns out that lots of smart people go to Ivy caliber schools (who
would have guessed)

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MobileDigit
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, how much value does Y
Combinator give to schooling?

What about age?

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BitGeek
So, is the claimed "early 20s" requirement also false?

I know its a theme, but I didn't think it was a requirement.

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pg
Yes; we've had several people in their 30s. We get a lot of people in their
early 20s, but that's probably just because more of them are starting
startups.

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RyanGWU82
And paying attention to Y Combinator.

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boomstrap
Strange in my application I was never asked where I went to school.

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immad
7th textbox down: "For each founder, please list: YC username; name; age;
year, school, degree, and subject for each degree..."

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ginn
I read an old RWW 2006 article that said if you're not from an ivy league
school, than Y Combinator doesn't consider you. Anyone know if this is true?

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pg
Sure, I know. It's false (of course). Sounds like something written by someone
we turned down. What is RWW?

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staunch
How about people with no university education?

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pg
Yes, we've funded people who've never been to college, along with a large
number who didn't finish.

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staunch
One of the best programmers I've ever met dropped out of high school (I
believe he eventually got a GED). Now he's Director (but never stopped
programming) of an entire department with a handful of CS PhDs under him.

Do you do background checks for criminal history or education? Are there any
fixed requirements like this?

(Sorry for not asking all of this in my first post)

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pg
If we didn't allow people with criminal records, we would have had to exclude
one of our own partners.

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danielha
I'm starting to feel that the elusive, intangible rtm is but a legendary myth,
like the griffin or the free lunch.

