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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

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For students, sure, but when being hired (or funded) they all have similar “elite” tier intelligence/potential, nothing about ruling class

In tech, sure, but that’s because it’s tech. How many MIT alums are on the Supreme Court?

Lawyers are certainly an old profession stuck in old ways. I agree

MIT doesn't have a law school.

To be fair, Supreme Court justices didn’t always used to previously be judges. So, you know, there’s a chance…

That goes to my original point, I think.

Might not be crazy to prefer someone with that ruling-class cred/connections (even if not, themselves, of that background) in certain very-lucrative sales positions. Or investing. Or law (especially the varieties that tend to pay very well). Or lobbying. Or just about any halfway-important position in a non-profit. Or the C-suite of a corporation, and more-so the bigger it is.

And so on.

Lots of cases where "oh, I sailed with her nephew one Summer when we were both at Harvard" or just being able to credibly wear any of several "in-group" school colors ties and talk the talk is worth more than 10 extra IQ points or whatever.

>> MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

> For students, sure, but when being hired (or funded) they all have similar “elite” tier intelligence/potential, nothing about ruling class

Being suited to "ruthless no-compromise academic excellence" may actually tend to make one unsuited to a whole host of "ruling class" jobs, so maybe they're not so similar after all.

IMHO, people who are personally focused on intelligence (especially when they're "intelligent" themselves) tend to overestimate its value in a lot of endeavors. Even in academic sphere, I understand a lot of extremely successful scientists are intelligent but not that intelligent. Their success comes from their attitude, personality, and other factors.

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