> The Thiel Fellowship still needs a success story. It is in its early stages. All it will take is a single fellow that accomplishes something revolutionary and cool to completely change public perception of this program.

Perhaps that will change the public perception, but it says absolutely nothing about the actual value of the program. It's a selective group of high-achieving teens, of course some small subset will go on to experience amazing success.

Harvard could lay off its entire faculty and sell its campus, but as long as admissions stayed the same Harvard acceptees would continue to accomplish amazing things.

I agree that a major success story would chance public perception of the Fellowship, but I want to add that many of the Fellows who have had success have decided not to publicize it.

I thought the relevant success metric would be whether the median student does better, in order for it to be a case against going to college.

Thiel is accountable to nobody for the results of this program. It's more of an experiment. It becomes a more powerful tool for the members if the media likes the program, and a single shining success is what the media requires.

It's not an experiment, it's a bizarre political propaganda effort in service of some chip Thiel has on his shoulder.

If anything, a big success will make the problem worse by further fooling kids into thinking it's easy to become a big tech success.