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Applying to college
- Thread starter xenu
- Start date
Cool place to live? No
Expect a good job after four years? Only if you study the right shit
My mistake...not 4 years,5 :(,integrated bs/ms in comp sci. I'm rather curious though as to what scores most of you guys have in the SAT =0
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Some career fairs are (much) better (and more frequent) than others. There is a clear divide between Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, and MIT and the rest of them when it comes to r&D, prestige, opportunities, difficulty, etc.
you'll literally be living in the middle of nowhere. im pretty sure thats why its such a big party school. there's absolutely nothing to do there.
I don't think that's what you were talking about, though. People who studied at fuck-nowhere get software engineering jobs at Apple, Google, Facebook, Dropbox etc. Membership of what you call the "upper echelon" has little practical impact outside peer effects for students interested in going into industry rather than attending graduate school. In the latter case, people can easily find research opportunities outside their home university to compensate. Point is, there's no reason to attend Stanford or Berkeley out-of-state on your expense if your goal is to optimise your financial situation upon graduation.
My 2400 did not get me into MIT or Harvard, so IDGAF about SAT unless you have a polynomial-time algorithm for it.
Sorry, but I'm not entirely convinced that there is no "practical effect" for attending "upper echelon" schools. Do you have any sources to support your claim? Yeah, people from fuck-nowhere schools get software engineering jobs. That doesn't prove anything about the impact that a more prestigious university has in helping a student get that job. It just means that you can still get a software engineering job even if you don't go to a prestigious university. I find it hard to believe that going to Stanford has "no effect" in terms of optimizing one's financial situation. On that note, I would also think that for graduate school, where one studied for undergraduate wouldn't be as important due to that being more about how one did individual at their school? And that for industry it would be more important with factors such as school connections, alumni, etc? Maybe I'm wrong lol but idk
I think that college decisions vary greatly on an individual basis and that yeah, Stanford isn't for everyone due to factors such as cost. But saying that there's no reason to go Stanford if you want to get a high paying job post college is a bit preposterous I feel. That isn't to say that you need to go to Stanford or another prestigious university to get that job. Stanford doesn't guarantee a job in the slightest. And as evidenced by people from fuck-nowhere schools getting software engineering jobs, there is still a large onus on one's self to do the work and to take advantage of the opportunities you have at your disposal to get what you want from college.
My sources are purely anecdotal and based on personal experience. I would argue that the students at MIT and Stanford are much more skilled as prospective software engineers than those elsewhere, but part of that has a lot to do with both self-selection and the filtering done by admissions officers to the school. The only impact I see is peer effects: If your friends have been coding since the age of 5 and applying for internships at top tech firms rather starting out in middle school a just barely getting by, then you'll likely push yourself quite a bit more and be able to learn more from them.
No, the most important factor for admissions to graduate school is quality of research and the strength letters of recommendation from the faculty known to people on the admissions board. Schools with larger, more reputable computer science departments are more likely to have more people working on problems of interest to the student, have faculty who know how to train students to become effective researchers and are more likely to have better connections to top graduate schools. The skills needed to become a good PhD student require reporting on a more personal level and can only be evaluated by a small set of people working in the field for an extended time. Software engineering skills, on the other hand, can be judged by much less. Actual engineering fields have dedicated degree programs to ensure that students have the needed skills to solve this problem.
So there's no difference in the quality of education between attending MIT compared to say, Bowling Green? What about things like class sizes? Quality of professors? Access to professors? If all of that doesn't matter and it truly is "easy" to gain research experience, why bother with college at all if there's no difference between any school other than peer effects? If it's easy to find research opportunities (is it truly???), then why go through the whole college charade?
Do you believe that most companies do not recruit more heavily at certain schools? I know you can get a job from a fuck-nowhere school, but you really haven't addressed the fact that it might easier to get that same job if you go to a more prestigious university. Don't more prestigious schools have better connections to these sort of companies then fuck-nowhere schools that would better facilitate actually getting those jobs? Won't certain companies recruit more at more prestigious universities?
But even though certain schools have better connections to top graduate schools, those sort of connections are easily replaceable right?
The only reason I'm challenging you on this considering I don't know anything about software engineering is because I don't think your advice is particularly good because it's too black/white and probably too specific. It's never as easy as "to maximize income, don't go to Stanford," unless you're the type of person who has been coding since 5 and has been preparing their entire life to be a software engineer, which, I doubt there are too many people who are like that. But for certain people (and maybe even most), the cost of Stanford will 100% be worth it. I personally think you're underplaying the effect that going to a school such as Stanford has on a student (given literature that has shown that going to prestigious university does matter). It's definitely more than just peer effects. I think there's also the quality of education received and the connections that a school has. But at the end of the day, I think you are right: you can attend a fuck-nowhere school for 0 cost and be successful if you are driven and take advantage of all the opportunities you are given. But how many people are truly brilliant enough to go to Ball State and still get that job at google? Maybe software engineering is a huge anomaly and it truly doesn't matter where you go. But in general, the type of school you go to definitely does matter in terms of income post-undergrad.
Out of curiosity, are you a grad student? Why did you decide to apply to MIT/Harvard given what you've said? Would you go to those schools if you were admitted knowing what you know now?
As an aside, I just want to say that SAT/ACT scores won't get you into top schools, but bad ones will get you eliminated.
Anyway, now that this is reopened.
PM me if you need a college essay read or need tips on college selection. I want to see people here get somewhere and am offering free college counseling to all, which means picking the schools that will be a good fit for you and read your essays yada-yada. I'll probably find some time to write up some helpful material for the general good.
That said, any transfers here? I'm currently reapplying to Stanford and Columbia since I originally denied them for financial reasons and started disliking the University of Maryland a bit.
PM me if you need a college essay read or need tips on college selection. I want to see people here get somewhere and am offering free college counseling to all, which means picking the schools that will be a good fit for you and read your essays yada-yada. I'll probably find some time to write up some helpful material for the general good.
That said, any transfers here? I'm currently reapplying to Stanford and Columbia since I originally denied them for financial reasons and started disliking the University of Maryland a bit.
The thing about quality of education with respect to finding the jobs we were talking about is that most people who end up working successfully in them knew everything they use in those jobs before entering university.
The point is that an exogenous change in the university you attend is not going to help you find a better job if you find a job in STEM. Also, note that when I say "fuck nowhere," a bit of a hyperbole, I am not talking about directional universities but rather schools people would be applying to top American universities if not accepted to their top choices (e.g. state flagships in states other than Illinois and California).
No.
I have no interest in working industry. I would choose MIT over where I am currently attending but not Harvard.
I know how the system works. A decent number of students from my secondary school are accepted to these schools every year.
Why bother going to college then?
OK but the key phrase there is "if you find a job." A college degree would make it easier to actually get a job, would it not? For some people then, that might be the right path for them.
Great, your statement and mine do not contradict, unless you want to make the claim that SAT scores do not matter at all, which is demonstratively false.
So I'm writing essays right now, and this is one of UChicago's actual prompts:
Rerhceseras say it’s siltl plisbsoe to raed txet wtih olny the frist and lsat ltteres in palce. This is beaucse the hamun mnid can fnid oderr in dorsdier. Give us your best example of finding order in disorder. (For your reader’s sake, please use full sentences with conventional spelling). —Also inspired by Payton Weidenbacher, Class of 2015. Payton is extra-inspirational this year!
I have no idea how to respond to this.
Rerhceseras say it’s siltl plisbsoe to raed txet wtih olny the frist and lsat ltteres in palce. This is beaucse the hamun mnid can fnid oderr in dorsdier. Give us your best example of finding order in disorder. (For your reader’s sake, please use full sentences with conventional spelling). —Also inspired by Payton Weidenbacher, Class of 2015. Payton is extra-inspirational this year!
I have no idea how to respond to this.
A lot of people make that argument.
Fair enough.
recount a really memorable dream you had, in non-chronological order.
write a basic explanation of the activation-synthesis hypothesis. (basically the theory that dreams are just your brain trying to make sense of random electrical impulses)
between each paragraph of the dream tale include a sentence from ur explanation.
finish with "this essay has been left as an exercise for the reader as an example of a close second."
ive heard uchicago eats this sort of shit up
It's worth noting that they use weird essay prompts for a reason. If you're not the sort of person to whom an answer to their essay prompts comes naturally, you might not actually be all that happy at UChicago. I've known a few people who've gone there and all of them are really, really weird. And yes, I'm saying that with full knowledge of tons of Smogonites. These kids were weirder than most anyone on Smogon.
The problem is that I don't know whether I should write it on the straight and narrow or turn it into one giant veiled political satire. I've heard people say that try to keep humor or jokes at a minimum, but this prompt feels like a perfect prompt for a humorous essay.
There's also a lot of normal people. The weirdness is really overstated, and if anything, the administration is moving away from a lot of the quirks that make it so "weird" through closing the off-campus dorms, which I would say contain a high proportion of the weird people (well, with the exception of one on-campus dorm). It's definitely there if you want to take part in the quirky uchicago experience, but it's also possible to have a more "traditional" college experience as well. that doesn't mean it's for everyone, but it's not a school for crazy people. there's a great variety of people including athletes, greek life kids, hipsters, and the aforementioned "weird kids."
what uchicago really eats up imo is giving a shit about the school and actually showing genuine interest in attending. that's the sort of thing that sets people apart. you should only apply if you truly want to go there, but at the same time don't be put off by the school's reputation. uchicago is definitely trying to shed their "quirky" reputation and become more of a "mainstream" school option on par with the ivies, stanford, mit, etc.
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Unrelated question: Why do people always say "Ivies, Stanford, MIT"? There really only two Ivy League schools on par with Stanford and MIT. Why bring Cornell, Brown, UPenn, Yale, Columbia, or Dartmouth in this? Also, note that "Harvard, Princeton" is the same number of words as "Ivy League."
Not too sure what the gist of this question is, but I'll answer to the best of my ability. The phrase "Ivies, Stanford, MIT" has essentially become the popular opinion of elite American universities due to the number of successful alumni (Kennedy dynasty, almost every U.S. Supreme Justice, Emma Watson, Donald Trump, Dr. Seuss, Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson). The Ivy League originally was an NCAA athletic conference that contained a majority if the colonial-era universities (which also happen to be academically prestigious). Stanford has the strongest overall programs in the United States in pretty much every academic field. MIT produces a lot of successful scientists and businesspeople (e.g. Koch brothers). There are many other universities that produce successful people, but mainstream media (movies, TV, etc.) usually focus on these ten schools.
Yes it does.
In colloquial speech, people use "Ivy League" to refer to Harvard, Princeton and Yale -- schools with established influence and wealth -- to the exclusion of the five other schools (possibly with the exception of Wharton) that are only formally a part of the Ivy League based on the historical sports league ties you describe. The other Ivy League schools have no "prestige" or power outside the worlds of Asian Tiger Moms.
When people hear Ivy, they think Kennedy and SCOTUS (Ginsburg is the only member to not go to HYP), not Dr. Seuss and Emma Watson. As for Trump, have you not noticed how the much of the American media laughs at Trump's claims of going to an Ivy League school? His claims are valid on technical grounds, but in practice he is claiming membership of an elite he is not a part of.
What's your argument?