The “inferiority complex” is real until you get to your new destination, and realize the people at UCLA or JPL or Google aren’t very different from you. Furthermore, projects/institutions that you have put on a pedestal since childhood are a lot less “magical” once you have seen how the sausage is made.
I’ve met exceptional people from Cal State schools and people I wouldn’t hire from MIT. At this point, I find the school a person graduated from, for undergrad, to be a weak signal at best; and in many cases their grad school as well.
I remember discovering this phenomenon too coming up from a underprivileged background (to use a common term). I had great appreciation for recognizing this phenomenon reading a forward to some homeschooling book. You might appreciate this blurb too...
"The Roman writer Tacitus said, "Omne ignotum, pro magnifico," which translates roughly, "Everything unknown is taken for wonderful."
Think about it. Somehow we humans have this complex to assume great ideal things when ignorant of them. I've been pondering this for the past 10 months or so.
I started doing that after realizing that I used to do this with software I saw in magazines as a child, and then get disappointed when I got the actual software: When you just look at the surface, it's easy to infer a lot of qualities that are not there, and be entirely unaware of the shortcomings.
>> 1. Smart, capable students have the "inferiority complex" of being surrounded by CalTech, USC, UCLA. They know they need to push harder to have equal footing when stepping into the industry.
I just ended my graduate studies at a UC school and had some miscellaneous encounters with CSU students, both undergrad and graduate. I found that for the most part they were just as capable as many UC students, but what set many of them apart was their maturity. This may be because many of them came from unconventional backgrounds, they were either lucky to be attending college or were attending college later on in life. At the same time, a lot of them felt like UC was a more legitimate college, or that they were somehow less intelligent because they were going to a state school.
However, that does depend on the CSU. Cal Poly is highly regarded (engineering-wise), while UC Merced or Riverside are often held at a "lower tier".
Anecdotally, a lot of people hold Chico at the bottom, and Berkeley/Cal at the top of CA public schools.
Anecdotally, a lot of people hold Chico at the bottom
https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/top-party-schools/s/ca...
Your technical/interpersonal skills are definitely more important, but odds are you won't get a chance to demonstrate it.
As someone working their way through the California public school system in a similar situation, I've hit a roadblock with the math classes. Having no background in even basic high school math has killed me, failing pre-calculus twice now. Any tips?
Also after you've done the homework, make sure you consult with your teacher about things that troubled you. Having battled your way through so many examples, you will be able to appreciate their explanation better than if you never tried them.
Good luck!
Having no background in even basic high school math has killed me, failing pre-calculus twice now.
For anecdotes: I took the calculus sequence at a community college, and the teachers I had for (differential) Calculus I and (integral) Calculus II were among the best teachers I had at any level. The Calculus I teacher, the late Jack Minnick, was the best teacher I had in any discipline and at any level. He also published some math texts.
The key takeaway from both those instructors is that both had quizzes based on the homework material essentially every class, a methodology that pre-empted my tendency toward procrastination.
YMMV
After failing calculus once, I decided to go into physics (because, really I am an idiot), but I knew I needed to up my math game. I camped out in the library and saw a whole bunch of foreign students memorising stuff. Now, I used to scoff at this kind of behaviour, but I thought "I just failed calculus and now I want to go into physics", so what the heck -- nothing is crazier than that.
I sat down with a deck of index cards and I wrote a memorable name on one side and a theorem, lemma, equation, proof, etc on the back. I think I wrote something like 600 of them for my calculus class. And I memorised them -- all at once (because I'm an idiot).
But something wonderful happened after I memorised the cards. When I started to do example questions... I understood them... completely. The answers were blatantly obvious. All I had to do was write them down.
Well, very unfortunately, Physics was super hard (who'd have thunk it) and I still wasn't that great at math, so I switched to Computer Science. I was so intrigued by math, though, that I enrolled in every course I could fit in. Bizarrely, due to a miscalculation on my part, I accidentally graduated with a math degree and had to go back to convert it to a CS degree (like, I said, idiot).
Anyway, the point is that you can't speak without vocabulary. And even if you understand the vocabulary, you can't use it if you don't intuitively have a feeling for where it is appropriate. I later became a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and learned that language acquisition comes from repeated exposure to things that you comprehend.
If you memorise things, you won't acquire it, but it gives you a kind of super fast dictionary in your head that you can use to build comprehension. Then if you repeatedly expose yourself to natural language (problems in your text book, and especially proofs) you will acquire the language. After a while, it will just come naturally to you. However, the key is first memorising (see note) and then repeatedly exposing yourself to it over time.
Note - memorisation is not strictly necessary, but it saves a huge amount of time because either you have to keep looking things up that you don't understand (which is very tiring), or you have to expose yourself a billion times so that you understand it from context.
I highly recommend using spaced repetition software (Anki is great and perfect for this as it can handle LaTeX input) and work through your text book adding everything that could possibly fit on a card. Get creative about ways of breaking things down that don't fit on a card. Go through about 20 every day and review every single day. Do a couple of problems in your text book every day. At one point it will just "click" and everything will be obvious. It's kind of magical, really. I'm not saying you will be a math genius, but every casual undergraduate math course is doable by the average student, IMHO. Good Luck (even though you won't need it!)
Years ago, when I lived in the upper Midwest, I had fellow manager tell me he liked to hire engineers that grew up on dairy farms. "They know that they have to show up every day. They know that a certain amount of st comes along with every job, even great ones, so you might as well just spend a few minutes with a shovel and get it out of the way. They know the work doesn't get done by somebody else if they don't do it."
As a manager I've had the experience myself of convincing kids from fancy schools that, yes, I really do expect them to contribute to the less fun assignments, too. Only once did that not have a good outcome -- but that guy had other issues, too.
My starting salary in 1994 was (converting to USD), $18,000 by 2001 I was earning $84,000 (my last salary in the UK)
Starting salary doesn’t have to be a limitation, it is an uphill climb, but it’s not on your “permanent record”
Lots of people I've talked to at my school don't believe software engineers can make $160k-$200k TC out of undergrad.
It's the same as buying anything brand name, you're paying for the (presumed) higher probability of higher quality or reduced chance of failure.
Transparency of salaries would be a boon to the general public, but we have such a huge social stigma against discussing pay, that employers can take advantage of this, however that's not the employer's fault.
Even the not rich kids often have had very supportive families. The vast majority of students don’t take college classes in high school / decide to compete in olympiads by themselves. At the least it takes a supportive teacher or more likely a supportive parent to suggest the idea—most kids in most neighborhoods aren’t even aware of the existence of such programs.
rich kids might go to less-prestigious private schools, but they're not getting into the Ivy League without working hard at something.
Or not. I've been told by someone teaching introductory courses at an ivy, that a major challenge they face is that their students have had such good teachers, presenting ("spoon feeding") information so clearly, that their students now have neither the skills, nor the inclination, to wrestle with a body of knowledge and extract understanding.
Anecdotally, I will say these factors likely boost the effectiveness of this particular campus:
1. Smart, capable students have the "inferiority complex" of being surrounded by CalTech, USC, UCLA. They know they need to push harder to have equal footing when stepping into the industry.
2. Several of the industries represented in Los Angeles are more interested in loyal, hard-working candidates than prestigious/elite geniuses. I have talked with many representatives from companies partnering with CSULA on student projects who have expressed this.
3. Students I met were generally more interested in launching their careers than in pursuing the quintessential "college life", e.g. parties, campus societies
4. Specifically for STEM students: the Los Angeles tech scene has deep roots with the aerospace industry, as well as a lot of companies doing real tech work without the flair of typical SV/NYC companies. I had instructors who work (or have worked) at NASA JPL, AT&T, Boeing, Western Digital, and in medical research at USC/UCLA.