You're conflating your value as an individual with your value to other people. Pursuing passions and giving back is great for your value as an individual, but most of the world doesn't actually care. Unless your passion is something that other people can use to make money, it's not going to be relevant to anyone else. I don't care if someone I hire to do a job is the world's greatest amateur ichthyologist if I'm hiring them to do a job that doesn't involve fish.

The sooner you learn this, the better off you will be. I used to believe similarly that if I worked hard, went to school, and got a degree, that would be enough to get me a decent job. I was wrong. Nobody cared about any of that. All they wanted to know was could I do anything for them that would make them more money than it cost to hire me.

By all means, pursue whatever passions you want, but don't think it's necessarily going to get you anywhere in the world.

To this I would add "without a lot of drama or other management overhead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=rmshea

What it means is that you get more opportunities. And literally, nobody cares once you get to the working world which is what the majority of people go to college for. In fact, the longer you work, the less your degree is even considered. Degrees only provide more opportunity and help get your foot in the door a lot easier.

Also, you're competing with all the other 1% so it wouldn't be a shocker if you didn't get in. Nearly everyone applying to those schools will have perfect grades, SAT/ACT scores, and extra-curriculars. Plus special interest applicants such as sports players, rich people, and disadvantaged minorities.

The OP doesn't even mention how many times he applied. And now he publishes a web page with the entire goal of being condescending toward everyone else and acting like he deserves to get everything he wants. Its like he's never learned the greatest lesson of life, that it's horribly unfair.

I have doubts. The DS&A classes in top schools are probably better than mine and according to people I've met at top schools they make studying for tech interviews easy. They don't need to study Leetcode problems, they just need to study for their tests.

>Also, you're competing with all the other 1% so it wouldn't be a shocker if you didn't get in.

Obviously, but it implies if you don't get into any of the top schools that you're not 1%.

Are you saying that someone in the 1% can't choose to go to a non-top 1% school?

Now that is pretty specious to me because it doesn't imply anything. He could've simply been applying during a highly competitive time of year. And considering the college scandal and how money affects people getting in or not, clearly the "top 1%" really isn't the top.

I have doubts. The DS&A classes in top schools are probably better than mine and according to people I've met at top schools they make studying for tech interviews easy. They don't need to study Leetcode problems, they just need to study for their tests.

I'd argue that most jobs don't require you to go to interviews that are as competitive as big tech companies. Most of my interviews have been pretty low key. It may help if you want to get into Facebook, Google, Amazon, MSFT, or Apple, but I'd argue plenty people work there that aren't the top 1% simply because the companies are so large that it would be impossible to have that many people at the top, otherwise the top would be the mean.

If you look at MIT Open Courseware, nothing out right shocked me with regards to the curriculum. In fact, they taught Scheme in their intro class for years. How many companies do you think use that language? I'd guess not a lot.

Financial, parental, social stress aside, this is beautiful. It definitely seems like you have a better head on your shoulders than I did at your age.

What ever path you choose, just stay positive, work on yourself, shoot for things, let time do it’s thing.

This is funny because for me it's the opposite. I didn't apply to Stanford, Harvard or any of the other Ivy+ schools he applied to - only applied to two elite schools that I got rejected from and I'm still heartbroken!

With that said, I'm impressed that Ryan did this instead of having a quarter life crisis like I did.

How does that work? The whole lead in was specific about complete failure.

Good luck.

Oh man, my eyes couldn't possibly be rolling harder back in my head.

It might make sense to do this kind of thing as a personal reflection or inducement to growth, but the article itself makes the author seem mostly self-aggrandizing and smug.

But I was a real shit -- probably worse, honestly -- at 18, so who am I to judge the form that this reflection takes?

There's nothing abnormal about you Ryan. I hope you find something interesting and educational to do. I'm excited to see where you end up.

What a horrible thing to say to someone! That is equivalent to saying "You are not unique in any way Ryan".