alt Hacker NewsConversely, the correlation between university eliteness and occupational eliteness is weakening.
Who is more elite - a new grad who has founded a YC backed startup who attended UIUC (an elite and selective CS program at a university that is not viewed as prestigious by society at large) or a Yale grad working on the Hill earning $50k?
As of today, all UCs are viewed similarly from a tech hiring practice perspective, though there is a bit of a geographic bias helping UC Berkeley, but this same bias also helps much less selective and less socially prestigious SJSU.
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idk man, I’ve always thought UIUC was pretty selective, especially for their EE and CS programs. I’m also 10+ years out from college applications so maybe things have changed.
UC Riverside, UC Merced etc are not viewed similarly to UCLA or UCB.
I have met more other founders that came from large engineering state schools then the next tier-up of prestigious schools, with one exception being Stanford. Of course these larger schools produce far more students. Purdue (where I went) generates over 3000 new engineering graduates every year.
From the hiring perspective - A degree from from ivy school means so little compared to the actual skill level of the applicant. I honestly could not tell you where the last 10 people I hired went to school, or if they even did.