If you had the wherewithal to do well at a lousy high school, you'll be just as able to make something of yourself at a mid-grade university.

Elite universities are important if you want to be in the "elite" clique. If you just want to make a better life for yourself, any old university will get you pretty far. One close to home will likely be a lot more relatable culturally as well. Not everyone wants to uproot their identity and go be someone else somewhere else.

It's also worth noting that Harvard, for example, admits fewer than 3,000 students per year. That means that 100-150 students (out of 40,000 applicants) will come from a poor background.

Seems like being rejected from an Ivy league school is statistically the most likely outcome, regardless of what your qualifications are.

I'm not sure I see a problem. You can get a great education in most non-elite schools. You can do well in undergrad and it makes it easier to go to an elite grad school (it's a much more level playing field to get in there). It's not as if the landscape of education has a sharp cutoff at the elite level.

I know this is going to rub people the wrong way, but your comment reminds me of a documentary I saw where a couple tried to live on food stamps to show how difficult life is (as in that food stamps don't provide for much food).

The couple insisted on buying everything organic.

Yes, that is going to make life difficult!

I completely agree with you that you can get fantastic educations in a number of places.

But I think part of the problem is how much of a walled garden there is associated with these elite institutions in terms of top positions.

Tech isn't the only place this happens either.

I've become convinced that part of the source of our inequality in the US is hypercredentialing. That is, your abilities and skillset are equated with your degree. You're not that competent if you didn't go to an elite college, you can't do task X unless you have this very specific degree in Y, etc. and so forth and so on. It's rampant and affects all sorts of realms, from unemployment to licensing laws.

The comments in this thread make it sound like if you aren't born in the top 1% and don't spend every minute planning your application to uni then you will end up homeless on the street. If that is true then I highly recommend moving somewhere sane.

Interesting - I never browse job postings here. Do you have a reference?

What's posted on HN is not at all representative of the rest of the country, though. I've certainly worked in places where they tend to prefer "top schools", but once again, that was for graduate degrees, where as I said, being from a wealthy background doesn't help all that much. And for engineering schools (Princeton would not be viewed favorably, for example).

>Tech isn't the only place this happens either.

In my experience, tech is probably where it happens less. In most of my peer companies, after something like 4-5 years experience, no one cares where you went to school. It's much more common for things like MBA and Law (one lawyer told me that many of his firm's clients stipulate that the lawyers working on their case must be from a top school, and graduated in the top N of the class).

>I've become convinced that part of the source of our inequality in the US is hypercredentialing. That is, your abilities and skillset are equated with your degree. You're not that competent if you didn't go to an elite college, you can't do task X unless you have this very specific degree in Y, etc. and so forth and so on. It's rampant and affects all sorts of realms, from unemployment to licensing laws.

I'd be interested in seeing studies supporting this. In my anecdotal experience, I've seen it much more acutely in other countries. But then again, those countries also tend to have much more inequality.

Elite universities tend to try to make admissions somewhat objective and so you get certain points for various things. And coming from a less privileged background gives you a pretty big boost. Pair that with a perfect SAT and you're already very near the finish line. Really strange he wouldn't get accepted. Extracurricular/sports are also important.

I came from a crap school, went to an top university (and did not have a 1600), felt slightly behind early on in calculus since most of everybody had already taken it in high school and I had not, but the playing field leveled out very rapidly. Never felt the least bit disadvantaged in any other course. I'm also certain that I would not have gotten in if I had my exact same background but came from a more prestigious/wealthy school. Of course I'd probably have done more in my high school years if I had that background, which is exactly why you get that boost coming from a poor background.

That's the problem though - blank slate theory. If we had a more biological attitude towards this, we'd be able to help individual more effectively. Do IQ tests yearly, find smart kids and get them into better programs. On the flipside, accept that some schools have naturally less intelligent kids, and that their performance will, as a result, be lower.

Blank slate and no child left behind and similar ideas create this false belief that bad results are the teachers fault. If you teach kids that all have below average IQs, and they achieve average results, you are an awesome teacher. If you teach geniuses and the get average results, you are awful.