How good were you at college?

Re:How good were you at college? by donal on Monday November 12, 2007 @10:05PM (#78985)

As someone that reads resumes and works with both degree and non-degree individuals, I couldn't disagree with a statement more. The difference in quality of work between those with degrees and those without is significant. It is even possible to distinguish those with some college over those without any.

Like any generality, there are specific counter-examples, but the people that will need to judge you quickly by little pieces of information are very likely to skip over you. That is unless you have some amazing thing on your resume.

I did ok in undergrad (3.4), but I'm finding that as I tackle a masters full-time will working full-time I am rocking... Funny what perspective and motivation working gives you.

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Re:How good were you at college? by rms on Monday November 12, 2007 @10:28PM (#78998)

What I meant was that even with college, many people utterly fail at life because there aren't as many opportunities as there used to be. I'm sure that if you are evaluating programmers the average programmer with a CS degree will be better than the self-taught person.

I know that not having a degree hurts me severely in a traditional job pool. I don't care. If I need to submit my resume to get a job, I will have failed miserably. I think I would choose street life over working for the man. I probably couldn't get a real job anyways, because I don't have very many skills or qualifications. Despite my lack of skills, qualifications, and especially motivation, I am confident that I have the instinct necessary to manage successful and obscenely profitable companies.

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Re:How good were you at college? by jey on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @12:38AM (#79072)

"the people that will need to judge you quickly by little pieces of information are very likely to skip over you. That is unless you have some amazing thing on your resume."

Exactly, so we should be telling people that college is the backup option. Try to do some impressive and interesting stuff, and if you succeed, you've got a free ticket out of college. If not, you can always just do the safe thing and go to college.

I admit this wasn't my plan, and that dropping out of college was an act of desperation in response to the pain it caused me. I just happened to have enough stuff with which to fill out my resume since I had been interested in CS and programming for a long time.

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