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A professor in my social circle has taught at various schools across North America including Harvard, University of Toronto and a few prominent USA state schools. He says in his experience there's no difference between the intellect and quality of work he sees at the schools he's taught at but the Harvard students are more ambitious and more entitled.

In my own personal experience Harvard, Princeton, Stanford types often carry an elitism that they need to justify the work they put in to get to that school and the amount the school prestige means to their own self worth.

There's also a classic OpEd from I believe the Harvard Crimson from a Harvard admin officer saying Harvard could admit sufficiently qualified students from it's applicants several times over the actual count of its freshman class. So basically you have to have rich parents or be lucky not just be qualified. The elitism exists nonetheless and it's a fraud.

> Harvard could admit sufficiently qualified students from it's applicants several times over the actual count of its freshman class

The key word there being "sufficiently". The academics at Harvard are not unusually difficult (relatively easy in some majors), and I would argue that the content in the coursework is distinctly not what makes Harvard what it is.

If Harvard only accepted their third-tier of admits (i.e., ~4000th to 6000th ranked applicants) for a decade, I imagine that you would find that it will have lost quite a bit of its shine. Not that they still wouldn't produce great people who do great things, just that they would produce much fewer of them. The ambition and capability of the top 30ish percent of each of Harvard's entering classes is a game changer, imho.

As opposed to the current 1/3 legacy, unclear percentage propped up by wealthy parents, elite prep school system that consistently and efficiently finds the best students.

There are still plenty of directionless Harvard kids that end up back in their parents's basements after graduation.

Also have you ever stopped to ask yourself who reads and evaluates these admission packets? How often do we complain about hiring here on HN? That it's hard, that you can't tell enough from the slice of information you have about a person. Do you really think the admission people at Harvard have such a gift to accurately tier these teens futures?

And if they had such a gift, why are they admission officers at a university and not in a position where their impeccable qualitative assessment skills can be better leveraged to make tons of money or truly great careers? The same people assessing these applications are the same, reasonably intelligent but flawed people that are doing recruiting and hiring and screening in every other prestigious institution that struggles to choose the best candidates.

Anyway I'm not trying to argue most people are undeserving (except for the legacy and wealthy parents kids, who are again, a very sizable percentage). But the idea that we actually have a finely enough tuned comb and good enough data to actually pick the children with the most elite futures is on its face absurd. And culturally both the benefactors and the people in awe of the halo of achievement around our elite universities are taking it too far.

> As opposed to the current 1/3 legacy, unclear percentage propped up by wealthy parents, elite prep school system that consistently and efficiently finds the best students.

This is a (despicable) feature. Harvard isn't trying to find the most capable students, they're trying to find the students that will most succeed. And they deny that they know there's a difference.

If you are talking about the most capable of success, there is no difference. The fact that the rules of the game which determine success isn't what you'd prefer (or what I'd prefer!) is, well, not principally Harvard's doing.

I think the problem is that you want Harvard to favor those who would be most capable of success, if the rest of society other than the individual and Harvard were (your version of) ideal.

I don't believe Harvard is choosing the wealthy kids and the legacies because they are most likely to succeed, I believe Harvard is choosing those people because they are most likely to have the highest ROI for the Harvard endowment & future donations. Someone from a low socio-economic status or otherwise marginalized background that has worked hard enough and smart enough by 17 or 18 to be a good candidate for admission at Harvard is an outstanding bet to have the determination to succeed later on in life.

Something I did as I did when younger that annoyed more ambitious friends: go to Wikipedia and find the incoming freshman class size for the top schools (say Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT). Add them together. Now look up the number of high schools in the US and assume there’s 1 valedictorian per school. There just aren’t enough spots to even fit them.

Now complicate things more: all the elite high schools like Groton or something are gonna be sending way more than their top 1 student to these programs.

My conclusion was that it frankly doesn’t matter how much you compete with your personal classmates unless you have some other angle.

However outcompeting your classmates might get you a full scholarship to the state flagship, which is actually massive if you don’t use it completely imprudently.

I have no way to prove this but I feel certain I missed out on the next step in some jobs because of my Southern accent.

> I don’t notice much correlation between the school they attended and their interview performance.

I've noticed one: About half the best engineers I've hired over the years have no degree at all. For the other half, there's no correlation between school and performance.

Oddly enough some of the brightest engineers I've worked with were actually self-taught. No formal CS background or education, but they were incredibly driven and outperformed from Stanford.

There were also a few disparaging comments about the South in general

Silicon Valley is all about equality and opportunity. Except when it isn't.

Certain types of bigotry are not only tolerated, they're celebrated.

A large-ish, very pro-underdog company I worked for was absolutely fine with "toothless" jokes because I was from Tennessee and fat jokes. I was pretty incensed about the fat joke because that's one level under orientation, skin color, etc IMO.

I see a lot of that in deep Blue country these days. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... is a good exploration of what's going on.

Everybody wants to pat themselves on the back about how non-bigoted they are because they stopped hating the last outgroup. In reality, there's just as much hatred and bigotry as ever, they just transferred it to a new outgroup.

James Hetfield talked about that as a reason he left.

"I kind of got sick of the Bay Area, the attitudes of the people there, a little bit. They talk about how diverse they are, and things like that, and it's fine if you're diverse like them. But showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn't fly in Marin County. My form of eating organic doesn't vibe with theirs."

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-james-hetfield-m...

> My form of eating organic doesn't vibe with theirs

I've never heard this before but I love this quote. In my opinion, hunting responsibly brings one a great appreciation for conservation efforts and increases connection to nature. Especially hunting fowl, where you are walking the whole time and working with a dog that you trained yourself from a pup for this purpose. It gives great appreciation for nature and responsibly sourced food.

And the fact is no matter how hard a farmer or rancher works to ensure their product is "organic" it is still being exposed to human meddling. It will never be as "organic" as an animal that grew up in the middle of the woods with little to no human exposure.

There are plenty of places in the Bay Area where hunting and fishing (and the associated lifestyle/political leanings) are part of the cultural fabric. I live in one of those towns, lifted trucks and fishing boats in front of every other house. Obviously, you won't find that in the super wealthy enclaves of Marin, which is probably on the extreme end of the liberal scale, but one does not have to move to Colorado to escape that.

And another relevant tidbit in the article: "It's something I felt. I probably made it up in my head a little bit."

1) I really wouldn't quote James Hetfield as a bastion of "tolerance", thanks.

2) Lots of old Metallica metal fans will regale you at length about how Metallica sold out to Redneck America(tm) in return for lots and lots of cash. So, lots of this kind of stuff is suspect as to whether it is genuine vs planned marketing.

3) "But showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn't fly in Marin County."

Erm, actually James I know quite a few people in Marin that are totally fine with a deer on the hood. Somehow I never saw you hanging out with any of us.

But, then, none of us are multimillionaires who are worthy of running around in Mr. Hetfield's social circles.

Just passing along a quote that I heard, nothing more.

As for your first point, he's put up with Lars Ulrich for almost 40 years now. If that's not tolerance I don't know what is.

For point 2, decrying a large portion of the country as "Redneck America(tm)" sounds like the exact type of thing Hetfield is talking about, the same as your dismissive "thanks" at the end of point 1. They sold out with the black album in 91 anyway, there was nothing "redneck" about that album.

> For point 2, decrying a large portion of the country as "Redneck America(tm)" sounds like the exact type of thing Hetfield is talking about

This comes from the fan reaction directly to "Load", specifically. A GREAT deal of Metallica's then-current fanbase was incredibly pissed off.

Metallica, I am sure, cried all the way to the bank. I am reminded of Neal Schon from Journey (paraphrased): "Everybody says we sold out. We played prog rock for how long and where did it get us? We write a couple pop ballads and suddenly we're drowning in money and swimming in women. Did we sell out? Damn straight we did and I have nothing to apologize for."

And maybe James Hetfield really believes what he is saying, and maybe he doesn't. For the amount of money he gets paid, you could get me to say quite lot--some of which I might even believe after a while.

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but the successful people in the music business all understand that they are in the business, first, of making music, second. So, I'm going to regard any "public persona" through the lens of being a carefully crafted marketing construct.

maybe that's his point, that even wealthy social circles outside of the bay area are more accepting of things like hunting.

Regarding #2, I don't know who the 'Lots' are you are referring to, but I do know people who were OG Friends of Metallica, as in they were at the Metallica Mansion when Cliff Burton auditioned and full circle, invited to join the band when they were inducted into the RRHoF. Your poor mouthing is at odds with the experiences of people who actually know the members of Metallica (well, except for Lars) have always been super down to earth and remain committed to making great metal music for their fans. Personally, I prefer the old stuff, but I don't condescend to the 'Redneck America' sellout bs. You should try not to as well.

I don't understand why that's a form of bigotry. If someone legitimately thinks that hunting is unethical, it seems reasonable to look down upon someone who hunts.

Replace hunting with some act you find unethical, and you'll see why this doesn't make sense.

Maybe it's the my personal bay area bubble, no one cares about hunting and fishing.

> It’s not like 90% of the students that attended Stanford are brighter than 90% that attended CMU.

But they probably are brighter than 99% of people that attended NC State.

As a sidenote, I've noticed these sorts of microaggressions against the South as well, but it's dampened by the fact that I don't appear stereotypically "southern" because I don't have an accent and am also South-Asian by ethnicity.

(Disclaimer - I went to NC State, so I can say this)