pataoAoC

Perhaps, but regarding the first 2...

1. Top graduate schools for Olin grads (in order): MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, UC-Berkeley, Cornell. It doesn't seem like people that want to go to grad school are struggling for opportunity.

2. Top employers (in order) for Olin grads: Google, Microsoft, athenahealth, Apple. I'm not sure a better list could be drawn up over the past few years.

http://www.olin.edu/collaborate/careers-graduate-studies/res...

I think [3] could be quite true, and I'm sure there are other potential explanations as well.

> Nothing I learned in college has helped me to the place where I am.

:( That's too bad, I hope they change something. Certainly some people will never benefit from organized learning, and perhaps you're in that category and it's otherwise a great school, but most people aren't like that.

I don't agree, I think it's more likely than not that a school specifically designed to foster a particular type of thinking is at least somewhat more effective at it than others. Just like Stanford is likely more effective at developing elite researchers.

I don't think there's nearly enough information to determine that confidently, but we're simply talking about beliefs at this point.

Amusingly, I'm an Olin grad with a profitable lifestyle business that I started, so I wasn't included in this stat. I wholeheartedly agree with you on goals and values. Fortunately, Olin isn't a "VC startup factory", but that could have easily been the case from the data presented in the article.

It depends which conclusion is being questioned.

arcticfox is probably referring to the title conclusion "Olin College Produces Founders at Five Time the Rate of Stanford" not being the result of selection bias during the analysis phase (as implied for example in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15184748).

The conclusion "Olin College is more effective at turning people into founders than Stanford" is indeed a far more speculative conclusion due to self-selection.

It depends what the conclusion in question is, whether selection bias is a factor.

Does Olin produce / graduate founders at ~5 times the rate of Stanford? Yes - no bias.

Is the effect size due to self-selection? Likely at least partially.

I really like the Hyperion Cantos - the Ousters make exactly that decision, to forego terraforming in favor of self-modification. Naturally, the natural humans vilify and hunt them.

http://hyperioncantos.wikia.com/wiki/Ousters