>This essay is about college, not grad school. I tried to make that clear by always using the word college rather than university. Maybe it was not clear enough.

Certainly not clear enough for this non-US reader. But of course the word "college" has a different meaning on this side of the border (and an entirely different meaning in Oxford).

A bunch of other education-related words have different meanings on different sides of the pond. For example,

UK: You write a dissertation for a masters degree and a thesis for a PhD.

US: The opposite.

I wonder if the terminology will converge...

In the US you never write a thesis, you write a dissertation (document) based on a thesis (idea.)

Interesting. Wikipedia thinks the two are synonymous:

"In academia, a thesis or dissertation is a document that presents the author's research and findings and is submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification."

[from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis]

Npk is correct, but it's a pedantic distinction. Most people, apparently including the Wikipedia editors, just use the two words interchangably.

Edit: yikes. Somebody went on a downmodding spree on this thread.

I asked all my academic friends, and I've come to the conclusion that it is a pedantic distinction. But it's useful to have two different words for the two separate concepts :)

Yeah, I didn't realize grad school wasn't part of these considerations. That said, I think the graduate school vs. undergraduate line gets kind of blurry for hacker types. An awesome Scheme hacker coming into MIT freshman year is going to have access to Gerry Sussman right out of the gate. No need to go to grad school for that sort of thing. And it's not entirely clear that a Master's buys you much in the software industry regardless of whether you do a startup or work for BigCo, so your chance to meet hacker types is sorta limited to your undergraduate days in many cases.