Comment by tromp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tromp | Hacker News Reader

> Justin Yu, Class of 2025

No idea what the 2025 is doing there, or the '25 appended to his name. His Wikipedia entry [1] mentions neither. It does explain how he inspired Blue Scuti to (be the first to) crash the game:

> After the 2023 CTWC, Yu announced his intentions to try to "beat the game" by reaching its "killscreen," a point late in the game when the code glitches, resulting in a game crash due to hardware limitations within the NES.

> Fellow competitive Tetris player and YouTuber Willis Gibson (known online as "Blue Scuti") became inspired by the goal, and would beat Yu to the achievement on December 21, 2023. Yu celebrated the achievement with Gibson, exclaiming "He did it, he did it!" on his livestream.

> On another livestream on January 3, 2024, Yu beat the game, becoming the second person to do so after Gibson and first person to achieve the earliest possible game crash on level 155, two levels quicker than on Gibson's run.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Yu

The 2025 refers to the year he'll graduate - it's fairly common for US college students to classify themselves this way - and this is a college publication he's being profiled on.

That seems to be a bit premature, no?

No

No. You are designated class of year X on the day you join (in year X-4). If you end up graduating sooner or later then X it will be adjusted.

Interesting, I didn't know that. There seems to be a built in assumption that you will graduate, which I find a bit odd. But then again, I'm Dutch and we have a proverb here that roughly translates to 'don't celebrate until you've crossed the bridge' so this may be a cultural heritage thing.

I get the idea of “not counting your chickens before they are hatched”

Consider “class of 2025” as shorthand for “cohort targeting 2025 graduation” if you are struggling to accept it :)

Yes, I got it. Thanks for the clarification.

> There seems to be a built in assumption that you will graduate, which I find a bit odd.

Are there many Dutch university students who don't graduate?

Absolutely. On an 8 year window 30% doesn't make it to graduation.

Interesting. Is this true consistently across institutions, and across disciplines? E.g., at TU Delft, VU, etc?

In the US at least, the 4-year graduation rate at e.g., MIT and Harvard are well above 90%, quite a bit higher than the national average.

That was the national average, I suspect there are differences between the institutions themselves as well as between the disciplines. But there definitely is no implied assumption that if you start university that you will graduate.

Why would you start if not to graduate?

Why would you get married if it ended in divorce?

A divorce might happen if:

- You decide to divorce your partner based on circumstances you weren't expecting.

- Your partner decides to divorce you.

In the analogy, those would correspond to you leaving the school, or the school expelling you.

But the element of "circumstances you weren't expecting" has been completely lost. There's nothing more predictable than the university experience.

Are 30% of Dutch undergraduates leaving because they stumbled into better opportunities? Are they leaving because they're surprised that "school, but more of it" feels like more school? Are they leaving because their schools find that they perform below what their credentials suggested? (And if it's that last one... thirty percent?)

The 30% figure is not all that strange internationally.

That divorce question was a shorthand way of saying that not everything that you plan to do ends up running to completion. In general I think the answer is 'life happens' and not everything you start gets finished. People get disillusioned, they might see the future of the field they started to study in as imperiled or they might simply find that they do not see an advantage to completing the study. They might not have the self discipline to complete the run or they might have other needs or changing circumstances. They might simply get ill. They may find an opportunity that short-circuits the need for a degree.

Lots of people do graduate but to assume up front that over a period of four years of someone's life things are so stable that you will always be able to graduate is to ignore the reality of the circumstances of a large number of people.

Some people might realize that the degree they started is not what they expected, or it is way too difficult for them, so they will either move to another degree, or drop out of university and go to a trade school or similar.

Ah, fair. The US national average for “completion within 8 years” is not far off, about 60%.

At US “elite” schools there is definitely an expectation of completion in 4 years, though not much stigma if you take longer—and students go through in cohorts with target graduation dates (“class of ‘25” or whatever).

In US universities, much more of the selection seems to happen before your first semester than in Europe.

In Germany or Austria, it would also be considered absurd to prematurely declare yourself a “future graduate of (today + 3-6 years)”.

One reason for that is people dropping out: Changing your major is not really a thing so you need to start over or you at least only get partial credit and need to add some semesters if you do. There’s also very little preselection of applicants, so many only realize that they don’t like their major or don’t have the skill set/motivation/grit to still finish it halfway through or later.

And for those that do graduate, there is very little incentive to actually graduate on time: Tuition is free, and many people trade speed for work experience while studying (or just to support themselves at a nicer lifestyle than just a students budget; taking on student loans is not that common either).

Tetris isn't THAT time consuming!

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