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Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

219 点作者 nertzy超过 7 年前

30 条评论

sbierwagen超过 7 年前
(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I&#x27;ve never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise.<p>&gt;Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the rate of Stanford (0.51%), MIT (0.75%), Harvard (0.28%),<p>Wow, who would have guessed.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fredrikdeboer.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;29&#x2F;why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fredrikdeboer.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;29&#x2F;why-selection-bias-is-t...</a>
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makmanalp超过 7 年前
I&#x27;ve met and talked to Olin kids, and also been to Olin - this doesn&#x27;t surprise me one bit. They seem to attract the &quot;maker&quot; type, and also seem to be committed to actually teaching kids how to do things rather than picking kids who already know everything. Everything feels super hands-on and project driven, and the goal is to ship things. They even have classes like products &amp; markets (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;course-listing&#x2F;ahse1515-products-and-markets&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;course-listing&#x2F;ahse1515-products-and-mar...</a>), integrated product design (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;course-listing&#x2F;engr3250-integrated-product-design&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;course-listing&#x2F;engr3250-integrated-produ...</a>). The focus really seems to be industry and entrepreneurship rather than academia. My own school (WPI) also has a similar approach to classwork, and it works, but I don&#x27;t think is as good as preparing students for business as Olin seems to be.
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robterrin超过 7 年前
Two comments:<p>1. First and foremost, go Olin College! It sounds like a really special place where liberal arts and engineering are valued. I wish more colleges followed this model.<p>2. It&#x27;s not very surprising and likely a statistical quirk that their per capita founding rate is so high. After reading this piece on why the highest and lowest cancer rates by county in the US are in rural counties, I am seeing this statistical phenomenon everywhere: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=JRueDgAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA14&amp;lpg=PA14&amp;dq=rural+counties+with+the+highest+and+lowest+cancer+rates+gelman&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=V8jzHjPWZb&amp;sig=S5FM8wKLpw7ICE-QHiDlNqDbJzQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjm84H925DWAhXn44MKHclFBwIQ6AEIXzAH#v=onepage&amp;q=rural%20counties%20with%20the%20highest%20and%20lowest%20cancer%20rates%20gelman&amp;f=false" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=JRueDgAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA14&amp;lpg=P...</a>
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devmunchies超过 7 年前
&gt; <i>Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year</i><p>So its a tiny college with an emphasis on starting a company? At Stanford your numbers are being diluted by colleges whose student body don&#x27;t tend to start a company (e.g. humanities, pre-med).
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axplusb超过 7 年前
Before jumping to conclusions: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_small_numbers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_small_numbers</a><p>Edit: Actual Wikipedia entry = <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Insensitivity_to_sample_size" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Insensitivity_to_sample_size</a>
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didgeoridoo超过 7 年前
Not surprising. I&#x27;ve met some Olin kids (I helped teach a session of their product design &amp; development class) and they are some of the most impressive college students I&#x27;ve ever encountered. They tend to take feedback extremely well, and are genuinely interested in creating useful things for people.<p>Whatever they&#x27;re doing over there, I hope they keep it up.
epalmer超过 7 年前
All of the commenters might find this useful.<p>Olin outcomes for the class of 2017 <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;blog&#x2F;career-and-graduate-stories&#x2F;post&#x2F;congratulations-class-%E2%80%9917&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;blog&#x2F;career-and-graduate-stories&#x2F;post&#x2F;co...</a><p>Olin is trying to reinvent engineering education for this century. They did locate at the edge of Babson college because they think that having business knowledge is important. The student can take classes at Wellesley and they think that is important also. aka Liberal Arts.<p>The are working to export their engineering education successes. I can&#x27;t find a link that explains that right now but they want to change engineering education widely.<p>They are selective. They require an onsite interview and observed team work after you have been academically qualified. They want students with grit, that know have to reflect, and students that know success comes via failure. You can read about the incoming class of 2021 here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;blog&#x2F;olin-admission&#x2F;post&#x2F;welcome-class-2021&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;blog&#x2F;olin-admission&#x2F;post&#x2F;welcome-class-2...</a><p>Full disclosure: My youngest daughter is a first year 2021 student. She is not a start up kind of person but she iterates toward success via failure and has 4 years of FLL experience, 6 years of FRC experience and 2 years of FTC. She has assembled a 3D printer, written a state law that funds after school STEM (it passed and was funded) and worked with underserved middle schools on after school STEM enrichment for a year between HS and College (gap year). Yes I am proud.<p>FLL - First Lego League FTC - First Tech Challenge FRC - First Robotics Competition<p>I have a engineering degree and a pure science degree. I would die and go to heaven if I could go to Olin. And yes Dr. Allen Downey is amazing. I have spoken with him when he visited the university I work at, read several of his books and my daughter has already had classes with him teaching Modeling and Simulations with Python.
everdev超过 7 年前
An important omission is that Olin is on the same property as Babson, one if the top entrepreneurship schools in the country. Olin kids can attend Babson classes and have access to Babson resources.<p>So, imagine an engineering college where you have a very favorable student:teacher ratio plus a 5min walk to a world class entrepreneurship education.
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ledwards超过 7 年前
Hey I&#x27;m Lee, the author of this article. I think there are a lot of fair callouts about controlling for major, sample size, selection bias, and others, so I collected my response to those concerns here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ledwards.com&#x2F;methods-for-determining-startup-density-c9e2a4c2c283" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ledwards.com&#x2F;methods-for-determining-startup-de...</a> and linked to this follow-up article at the top of the original. Really appreciate the comments and feedback, and happy to hear more.<p>I&#x27;m sure this won&#x27;t satisfy everyone, but I wanted to do this analysis now instead of in 40 years, so I had to work with the data I do have. I think this is enough to show at least directionally that Olin is doing a reasonably good job at producing startup founders, though as I raise myself at the end of this article, we won&#x27;t know for sure until we have some exits and long-term value creation in the future.
e0m超过 7 年前
Olin alumni here. First of all this is an incredible survey of what Oliners have been able to achieve so far! Huge thanks to Lee &amp; others for putting this together.<p>I&#x27;ve been a huge fan of Olin&#x27;s educational model and am proud to have turned down Stanford to go there. From the very first day you get to Olin, you&#x27;re immediately immersed in a collaborative, figure-it-out-together, project-based environment where failure happens and there&#x27;s no ceiling to the scope of what you can do.<p>They also try harder than any curriculum I&#x27;ve seen to really ingrain the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset and user-centered design thinking throughout the program. For example, all sophomores are required to take a set of design classes that forces you (though much struggling) to emphasize the viability and desirability, not just the feasibility, of everything you do. Most classes make you to orally present and really communicate your ideas to an intentionally skeptical audience.<p>By the time you graduate, many begin to realize how well this actually prepares you to not just make cool things, but also structurally think about what people want and how to realistically make it viably work in the real world.<p>The tech industry notices as well. Oliners have had an extremely strong tract record, particularly in product management programs, at most of the big companies. If you&#x27;re a PM at Google, Facebook, or Microsoft, you likely know an Oliner, which given a graduating class 80ish, is pretty good reach. Big company PM programs are also not foreigners to producing a lot of entrepreneurs and I&#x27;ve found many of the skills we were taught in college come around again and again in this industry. These skills are also highly prized by places like HBS, where a disproportionate number of Oliners also find themselves right after graduating.<p>Right now, we definitely play the law-of-small-numbers game. The school is very new (first class was 2006) and the class sizes intentionally small. The size is limited to ensure Olin can continue to be a laboratory for education pedagogy. Over time, however, I&#x27;m definitely optimistic this trend will only continue and I&#x27;m prod to have known several of the people mentioned in this article.
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bjacokes超过 7 年前
The small student population at Olin affects the founder rate in a more pertinent way than sample variance: because they only need to admit 100 students, this group of students can be of a higher average quality than if they needed to accept 1000+ students like Stanford&#x2F;MIT. As an analogy, if YC were to 10x the number of startups they invested in per batch, they&#x27;d certainly expect their average return to decrease, because the last company they accept will be less likely to succeed than the first or tenth.<p>If you really wanted to measure how Olin&#x27;s teaching compares to that of MIT&#x2F;Stanford, vis-a-vis startup founding success, you could have the other schools &quot;draft&quot; a team of 100 CS students at the beginning of their freshman year, and measure the founding success rate of only those 100 students.
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scott00超过 7 年前
95% confidence intervals for those curious about the statistical significance given the small Olin sample size:<p>Olin: 1.80% - 4.06%<p>MIT: 0.71% - 0.81%<p>Stanford: 0.48% - 0.54%
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mooneater超过 7 年前
Olin is on to something with their fresh take on engineering education. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=KXNT-RRcfyo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=KXNT-RRcfyo</a>
jackcosgrove超过 7 年前
If Olin&#x27;s small numbers are skewed by a few founder types moreso than the large numbers of Stanford, and you wanted to be a founder type, wouldn&#x27;t you stand a chance of learning more from your peers by going to Olin?<p>I don&#x27;t see why people are arguing that selectivity and small size invalidate the better quality of Olin&#x27;s education. I learned as much from my peers as from my teachers, not to mention the motivation of peer competition.
aphextron超过 7 年前
As an adult wishing to go back to school for an engineering degree, is there anything on earth comparable to a program like Olin? I really have no interest in sitting through 500 person lectures at a traditional university with no focus on hands on work and a &quot;sink or swim&quot; academic mentality. Are there any integrated schools out there friendly to non-traditional students that teach from the ground up?
matthewvincent超过 7 年前
Perhaps the larger percentage of founders has more to do with the substantially smaller student body and shorter track record of the university. Daniel Kahneman touches on this phenomenon in &quot;Thinking Fast and Slow&quot;.
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chirau超过 7 年前
Whether venture-backed or not:<p>A startup does not always equal a business.<p>Unfortunately we now live in a mindset where the ability to raise capital is the yardstick of success. The yardstick of a business, however, has never changed. It&#x27;s profit.<p>How many of these ventures are actually profitable? Not to hate on the school, but if the companies are not profitable then they are basically being taught how to raise capital, not how to run a business. They could be producing Clinkles and Juiceros. Remember that VC funding is also just a gamble that they may make it. Statistically most VC-backed companies don&#x27;t make it. So that alone should not be a measure of success.<p>I think a better stat would be percentage of startups out of a school that make it to profitability. Take the NBA 3-point approach. You have to have a minimum number of attempts to be considered. Likewise, a school would have to have a minimum number of startups to come out of it. Then from there you measure the percentage of those startups that are profitable after some agreed upon average age.
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robomartin超过 7 年前
I know someone attending Olin. She will graduate with $300,000 in student loans and a degree good for a median salary of $85K. In my mind this is financial slavery.<p>A small percentage of a small percentage of graduates might succeed in business. This does not mean they will be wealthy. Some? Maybe. All? Not likely. Which means most will face a lifetime of paying on outrageous student debt that might prevent them from such things as buying a home and saving for retirement. Thirty years of financial slavery isn&#x27;t a good way to go through life.<p>I simply can&#x27;t reconcile this reality with the article.
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katzgrau超过 7 年前
Well, perhaps ...<p>1. There is more opportunity for Stanford students to pursue graduate degrees, leading many to forgo the entrepreneurial route<p>2. Stanford students receive better job offers upon graduation, leading many to forgo the entrepreneurial route<p>3. Stanford attracts more international students who come from countries less encouraging of entrepreneurship<p>Regarding the first two, I could probably think of 10 more positive reasons the numbers might be what they are. What&#x27;s perceived as a positive for Olin may actually be due to an inarguably positive thing for Stanford
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aswanson超过 7 年前
Putting this one on the suggest&#x2F;visit list for my son, definitely.
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dna_polymerase超过 7 年前
A university should not focus on producing founders but to teach scientific working and after all enabling research. If people found their own companies - nice. If not, doesn&#x27;t matter.<p>Also nice for Olin College to produce so many companies but Stanford&#x27;s history did not only produce tons of companies but also this place known these days as Silicon Valley (there is no way SV would be the place it is toady without Stanford).
dqdo超过 7 年前
Some things to consider from this article.<p>1. Olin gives free tuition or reduced tuition leading to almost no debt. There is probably a positive correlation with not having school debt and starting companies.<p>2. Olin has a very small population size. The best and the worst cases can always be found in small sample sizes.<p>3. Schools such as Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, etc. have a wide range of students with wide range of interests. Most people do not go to these schools with the sole purpose of being an entrepreneur. There are many people that become doctors, writers, researchers, etc. and benefit society in other ways. Measuring just one narrow dimension may be understating contribution in other places.<p>4. Olin seems like a great place. It&#x27;s small enough and independent enough to take chances in how it educates its students. Most older and more prestigious are more conservative in their teaching methods. Since Olin is fully endowed by one person with an open vision, they are able to do things that other institutions cannot.
d--b超过 7 年前
I don&#x27;t know anything about the topic, but perhaps graduating Stanford offers a broader range of possible jobs than Olin does. Hence in a sense you have less to loose risking starting a company when you&#x27;re an Olin graduate than a Stanford graduate?
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pitt1980超过 7 年前
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;npc.collegeboard.org&#x2F;student&#x2F;app&#x2F;olin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;npc.collegeboard.org&#x2F;student&#x2F;app&#x2F;olin</a><p>is an interesting calculator<p>plugging in $150K combined income it indicated that hypothetical college age child would pay $44,906 a year to attend<p>for contrast, given the SAT range of 1470-1550 <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;admission&#x2F;class-profiles&#x2F;2021&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.olin.edu&#x2F;admission&#x2F;class-profiles&#x2F;2021&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholarships.ua.edu&#x2F;types&#x2F;out-of-state.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholarships.ua.edu&#x2F;types&#x2F;out-of-state.php</a>
smcg超过 7 年前
I&#x27;d like to see this correlated with family income and other factors before attributing it solely to Olin.<p>Also, this was written by an Olin alumnus.
Kephael超过 7 年前
This isn&#x27;t a fair comparison, for it to be fair we would need to compare Olin to the Engineering and CS departments at Stanford.
skywhopper超过 7 年前
What are the founder rates of Stanford grads with the three degrees given by Olin College?
gabipurcaru超过 7 年前
sampling bias at work -- the smaller a college is (and the more small colleges you sample), the higher your chances of finding one with better percentages, in pretty much anything
j7ake超过 7 年前
Cool but is it statistically significant ?
popopobobobo超过 7 年前
Sometimes I think that startup is for those who have nothing to lose. Kids in Stanford probably have weighted their feasible career more than a free throw.<p>It is also strange to me this Olin School is trying to beat Stanford with a single statistics. What are they trying to do here? To prove they are better than Stanford? Or to let kids dropping out of Stanford and apply to them? Or to make a fame by taking on a particularly prestigious school?<p>This is what I know. In the tech startup world, nobody cares where you graduated. Whether it is Olin or Stan, it doesn&#x27;t matter.
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