Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges. I thought it was just a relic of Soviet past but no, apparently it exists in the US and other first world countries as well for some strange reason.
It was during COVID, when testing didn’t happen and schools had to rely on gut feel and high school reputation, so that may have played a role too.
He’s started his career now and wondering what to do with all his free time after eight years of living on six hours of sleep or less.
Oh how tragic!
Went to a very average school - well below 35 - and a top grad school. Definitely benefited from not going to a top school for undergrad. Some details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293077
(Been planning for years to write a much more detailed blog post about this. Maybe one day...)
I think participating in a fairly competitive sports league tells you more than most other activities you can do.
The college may have an ulterior motive, as others in this discussion say: to select for scions of richer families and increase the likelihood of gaining an alumn that they can siphon some money from. If someone spends their afternoon playing polo, it is a good signal of riches to be inherited.
One thing that always surprises me during American conversations on wealth and greed is how the academic sector somehow gets a moral pass, even though it is quite obviously geared towards milking young people for every penny.
I think sports are just easy to categorize when you're trying to figure out what some kid's been up to. Admissions gets to check a box instead of reading essays.
You have 100 places on the course next year. You have 10,000 applications with straight A's. You need to put ~9,000 in the bin.
This is the situation for less than 10% of universities in the US. Likely a lot less than 5%.
I wish I could find the source (a university president), but over 70% of public universities simply set a bar, and whoever meets the bar is admitted. There's no notion of "limited seats".
I just checked 3 decent state universities near me. Admission rates are 76, 77 and 87%.
One of them has a 75th percentile SAT score of 1230. 25th percentile is in the 900's. Another's range is from mid 1100's to 1400.
I've worked in multiple top tech companies. I know plenty of alumni from these 3 universities working there - with several doing quite well (and very technically competent). Most of them did not even go to grad school, so it's not as if an advanced degree from a good name place helped them.
This idea that you need to go to a top school to get good salaries and careers is something only people who live in a bubble believe. It's true for law school, and not that true for business school, and really not true for engineering.
If I had to summarize my experience: Motivated students going to very average schools for engineering do quite well. Average students who go to top engineering schools almost always change their career path at some point because they don't grow well in a technical career. Top schools don't provide a magical recipe.
(OK, as a footnote, having gone to both a low ranked and a top 10 school, the one thing I will admit is better in a top 10 school is that networking is easier - which I'm sure does help in one's career).