<p>@PurpleTitan I was thinking the same thing. I mean you can help Goldman come up with the next Mortgage Backed Securities scheme (while misdirecting your investment customers) - or help launch the next big thing in bioinformatics or automated cars or ?? And while you’re only making 80k - you have these little lotto tickets called stock options. And you are in California. </p>
<p>@patertrium </p>
<p>Would a top UC be better than the ivies for working at a Silicon Valley startup? That is, do ivy league students fare well in startup tech ventures, or are they only Wall Street focused? </p>
<p>Also, have you heard of anybody who did both? Like a few years of investment banking on Wall Street to pay off the loans, and then creating/working at a Silicon Valley startup? </p>
<p>Haven’t read all of the posts:</p>
<p>Comparing the Ivy sports experience to Pac 12 sports experience is pretty funny! Also, H,P,Y have minimal greek systems.</p>
<p>Op,
I would add that you do get more support and individualized attention for getting though the 4 years of college at a smaller private school (not just an Ivy) compared with UC Berkeley. I went to another large UC and it was, many times, like going to the DMV when you needed any help with most things. Also, you will pretty much always graduate in 4 years at a private, but maybe not at Cal.</p>
<p>To answer your questions
- Career Prospects - depends
- Quality + Utility of Networks - Ivies have the edge
- Difficulty of succeeding academically - Cal more difficult because not as much handholding
- The College Experience- depends</p>
<p>puzzled123, much of this discussion so far has focused on outcomes in a couple of specific areas (finance, tech start-ups). The numbers cited above suggest that a few public universities do generate as many successful alumni in these fields as some of the most selective private schools (in absolute if not per capita numbers). Especially if you are interested in those career fields, then one of those public universities may help you reach your goals more cheaply, at least if you major in one of the areas (business, CS, engineering) that seem to generate the majority of successful alumni from those universities in the fields discussed above.</p>
<p>A few researchers (including Dale & Krueger, Carolin Hoxby, Joni Hersch) have addressed this question with respect to average alumni earnings (regardless of field):<br>
<a href=“Estimating the Return to College Selectivity over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data | NBER”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w17159</a>
<a href=“http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jepsen/hoxby-selective.pdf”>http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jepsen/hoxby-selective.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238##”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238##</a></p>
<p>These researchers use different methods to control for the abilities of the alumni they are comparing. Dale & Krueger conclude that, for most students admitted to selective/prestigious schools, there is no significant advantage in future earnings to attending one of those schools instead of a less selective/prestigious alternative. Hoxby and Hersch conclude that there does tend to be a significant earnings pay-off to attending the most selective/prestigious schools. All three findings have been discussed extensively in other CC threads.</p>
<p>Maybe the jury is still out on this question. Until a clearer research verdict comes in, I’d say it is risky to pay a big price premium (let’s say, more than the federal student loan limits) to attend an expensive private school, especially if your only justification is the expectation of a big future earnings benefit. For many lower and middle income students, after aid there is no big price premium (a private school may even have a lower net price). For many middle/upper-middle income students, a prestigious private school may be worth some price premium. It’s probably best to compare specific colleges for specific majors and specific personal circumstances. </p>
<p>I know from researching with my son that top public universities that are not in our state are just as expensive for us as the Ivies would be, and most do not offer grants, certainly not to the extent several of the Ivies do. He would end up owing more money if he goes to Maryland than most Ivies because of this.</p>
<p>If you are doing ROI, there are a lot more factors than where you went to school. Networking is #1, so if you can get into “society”, places where you would meet people who are already in business and making money, that would be big.</p>
<p>If you want to become a millionaire, getting lucky is a big part of it. If you don’t want to “waste money” going to college somewhere that is “too expensive versus other places can get me to where I want to go”, go to a community college for two years, making sure it has a transfer agreement with a top public and then finish at the top public university.</p>
<p>@puzzled123 Apple hires most of its Engineers from San Jose State was one factoid I learned. Proximity to Silicon Valley is a strong factor in getting hired generally. You can use advanced search in LinkedIn to see this and there are articles on same. An unscientific search on LinkedIn shows for Google:</p>
<p>Harvard 134
Princeton 23
Yale 38
Cornell 73
Brown 30
MIT 99
CMU 79
Stanford 387
Berkeley 404
San Jose State 191
Cal Poly 87
UCLA 106
UC Davis 100
UC San Diego 87</p>
<p>This isn’t looking at levels - just numbers. Your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>Quartz had an article on this, for CS location matters.
<a href=“What Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple employees have in common”>http://qz.com/183958/what-facebook-twitter-google-and-apple-employees-have-in-common/</a></p>
<p>I found this Quartz article interesting. Apparently the head of “people operations” at Google is not only unimpressed by fancy credentials from fancy schools, he’s openly disdainful of them, saying the graduates of top schools often lack the quality Google most values in its employees: “intellectual humility,” the ability to recognize the value of other people’s ideas, learn from them, and adapt one’s own thinking while learning on the fly. That’s something colleges, even the best of them, don’t teach well, if at all. </p>
<p><a href=“Why Google doesn’t care about hiring top college graduates”>http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college-graduates/</a></p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>You can get to the Valley several ways. Including going to an Ivy or other top private. Also including going to a public with a strong CS program. Also including attending a Bay Area school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sorry, I can’t let this go uncorrected. This is just patently untrue. Roughly half the students at HYPSM and other elite private colleges are full-pay. Apart from the internationals, every one of those full-pays has an in-state public that would be much cheaper to attend, even as a full-pay, and in many cases they would qualify for merit awards that would make the public option even that much cheaper. Most don’t care because it’s Mom & Dad’s money anyway, and some of those families are so well off that a $240K education is easily affordable, but there are many full-pay families for whom the decision to commit $240K to junior’s education isn’t made lightly. Many people at that level seek out other, less costly options, and in many cases don’t even bother applying to expensive private schools that don’t give merit aid. </p>
<p>HYPSM are great schools and provide great opportunities for the handful of people who attend them. But they’re not the best choice for everyone. For aspiring engineers, for example, Stanford and MIT are outstanding, and Princeton is not very far behind. But UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Illinois, and Purdue are also outstanding engineering schools, at least on a par with Cornell and Princeton and better than any other Ivy. and may represent the best value for residents of those states. Michigan and UC Berkeley meet full need for in-state students, so the net cost should at least be competitive, and for anyone who would be a full-pay at the elite privates, the in-state public option will always be much, much cheaper. </p>
1 Like
<p>@PurpleTitan That’s true. Any college or university is fine in Silicon Valley once you start proving your mettle. Everyone’s a little too busy meeting the next release date to be comparing sheepskins. 
I’ve met lots of people who learned to code on their own. One of my managers had a music degree and was outstanding. Another didn’t complete a degree at a local CC but advanced by outworking those around him. </p>
<p><a href=“Top 50 Universities for VC-Backed Entrepreneurs | Entrepreneur”>http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236912</a></p>
<p>^ This article is interesting but not complete. It does not include the total number of undergraduate students of each college in order to make and apple to apple comparison. The rankings should be adjusted by dividing the count by the total number of students of each college.</p>
<p>Two kinds of schools dominate the list of top 50 universities for VC-backed entrepreneurs:
large state universities with strong engineering programs;
Ivy League colleges (and a few other very selective private universities with strong pre-professional programs).
Absent are tiny schools with strong engineering/tech programs, such as Harvey Mudd, Caltech, Olin and Cooper Union.</p>
<p>The list suggests that many public universities compete well with the most selective private universities for engineering, technology, and business career outcomes … at least if we’re comparing absolute not per capita numbers. Each year, Yale graduates about 30 CS majors, 50 engineering majors, and zero business majors. Each year, Michigan graduates over 200 CS majors, about 1000 engineering majors, and ~400 business majors. So Michigan graduates ~20X as many students as Yale in these 3 areas. Yet Yale alumni evidently raise nearly twice as much venture capital as Michigan alumni. (I’m assuming we’re only comparing alumni of undergraduate programs; I’m estimating majors from CDS section J percentages.)</p>
<p>What does that tell us? It may say more about the kinds of students Yale admits, or perhaps about the reputation of Yale alumni among venture capitalists, than it does about the quality of public v. private university education (or the likely pay-off of choosing one v. the other to students admitted to both.) Consider students who are admitted to Yale and Michigan and who choose to attend Michigan for engineering/CS/business, v. students admitted to Yale and Michigan who choose to attend Yale for engineering/CS. Do both kinds of students do equally well in entrepreneurship? </p>
<p>According to this article, VC only contributes a small percentage to startups.</p>
<p><a href=“finfacts.ie”>finfacts.ie;
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well because VC sometimes interferes and dilutes your shares. I think I’ve read the WhatsApp company did raise the least and it turned out well for the company.</p>
<p>This comments pertains to posts in the neighborhood of Post 25 about med school. My kids are not in the market for law school or med school admissions so I’m less knowledgeable but the both fields (and especially law) seem to use predominantly the LSAT / GPA or MCAT / GPA as the criteria for admission. I know med school less, but get that sense that in med school admissions, recs and other work that convinces the adcom that the applicant is actually interested in medicine can make a difference. I have the sense that with law schools, grades/scores are almost the entire ball game.</p>
<p>I recall from an earlier conversation that the law school admissions formula does not adjust the GPA at all (or much) for the undergraduate college. </p>
<p>Are my assumptions are correct (scores/grades the predominant or even sole criteria and grades are not adjusted at all or much for the undergraduate college)?</p>
<p>If
a) these assumptions are correct;
b) the HS senior knows with certainty that he/she wants to go to med school or law school (I usually question the latter, but assume it for the moment); and
c) the sole objective of college section is to increase the odds of getting into a high-end law school or into any medical school,
…
then,
wouldn’t you be better off going to a lesser state school where you are going to get a 4.0 or very close and get fabulous recommendations because you are academically stronger than most of your class? If you were capable of doing well on the LSATs, which I suspect is just like doing well on the SATs, or the MCATs (probably requires that you learned stuff in your courses, but you could easily supplement weaker courses with a great tutor), then wouldn’t you be much better off with the very high GPA and stellar recs from a lesser school and high GPA and very good recs from school with a stronger student body?</p>
<p>Well duh, most Ivies are more expensive than top publics if you full pay. But I disagree, and apparently Harvard does too, that most people full pay AND most people would pay less at their state school:</p>
<p><a href=“Financial Aid Fact Sheet | Harvard”>https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works/fact-sheet</a></p>
<p>Our family makes around $150,000 per year together. There is a HUGE difference in NPC results between schools, and after the school I work at (=tuition free for my son) and a rather cheap private school, the next two cheapest are Columbia and Penn. U Maryland is $18,000 more per year as compared to Columbia ($51,000 vs. $33,000 for us).</p>
<p>“Much much cheaper” if you are a full pay is usually $20,000 per year between Ivies and top publics, at best. If you are full pay, there is NO WAY that $80,000 over four years will mean diddly versus the money your mom and dad has (and possibly you already have).</p>
<p>Of course if you are disowned, declare yourself independent and go to most Ivies and a selection of other well-endowed colleges for free.</p>
<p>Anyone whose heart is set on medical school or law school should start out focused that way, and consider six-year programs if they want to save money. </p>
<p>I had this discussion with a few of my friends when I was in college (at UNC).</p>
<p>Between the 4 of us, we had admissions offers from Davidson, Chicago, Brown, Wake Forest, Dartmouth, Emory, Notre Dame, NYU, and Tufts during our senior year of high school. Quite honestly though (looking back at it now), none of us could even fathom going anywhere besides UNC. I’m in a fully funded MD/PhD program now and my friends are all in top 5 graduate programs in their area of study.</p>
<p>Take this for what you will.</p>
<p>^thats why it’s hard to nail down this argument. The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is a Princeton undergraduate alum and got his MS & PhD from UC Berkeley. There is no such thing in my mind as a school or degree that makes you rich, secure or desirable all by itself. It will always be a combination of hardwork, talent, timing and ambition. Add those to the modest step up provided by an elite education and the sky is the limit - whether public or private, big school or small, well known or not so well known.</p>