Ask HN: Choosing a college

My best advice to you is to take none of our specific "go here" advice...<p>Take a good week off to just step back from the college admissions process and recollect your thoughts so you can look at it objectively. I'm sure right now it's a bit stressful and probably overwhelming, not to mention getting spanked by the rejections is a bit of a blow to the ego... especially coming from somebody who sees themselves as <i>slowed down by my peers</i>...<p>Once you take that break, spend a good couple hours alone and not distracted to just write out (and I mean write, not think) what you really want out of your life for the next couple years. You don't need to have concrete goals, but something as simple as "I'd like to start my own software business before I graduate" or "I want to get involved with mathematics research projects" are examples. You seem like someone who is very driven, so I bet you'll have no problem with this.<p>Secondly, write down who you are and what are your values. Are you the type of person that needs the structure of class to be motivated, or can you stay focused on your own? How much personal time do you want? Obviously a less demanding class-load gives you more time to work on your own projects.<p>Once you lay down the big picture of who you are as a person and your overall goals/purpose for the next few years, it's going to be 1000x easier to choose a college. It's like finding the shoe that fits you best.<p>Finally, you'll find plenty of people who are smarter than you, even at a state school. I knew many people "smarter" than myself when I went to a state school, yet I was the one who was making a 5 figure income by my senior year in college from my own business (as if money is the only thing that matters). For the record, I was <i>only</i> a 1400 SAT.

Congratulations on getting Cornell -- I'm graduating from there this May. Though I'm clearly biased, I'd recommend Cornell all the way. Definitely speak with the financial aid office to see what they can do for you; they're trying to get better about offering students everything they can. If you have to take some private loans not through the school, that's okay too -- just more work for you is all.<p>Cornell Engineering really is good, and I have nothing but good things to say about the CS department here (okay, I can criticize them on using SML/NJ for CS 312/3110, but meh. It's still a functional language). Every one of the students I've worked with has been great. Another thing is that engineering here isn't looked down upon. It's sort of looked at as one of the hard colleges to be in here. If people want a group of students to make fun of here, there's plenty of Hotelies. :)<p>The CS education you'll get here is great. If you can find the money to come here, it's worth it. I know someone graduating with something like $80,000 in loans, but from the opportunities Cornell has given her, it's worth it.<p>About the rejections from those good schools, I've heard it's possible to reject some really good students because they're literally too good. If a school thinks that you're likely to apply to a bunch of really good schools and get into some of them, they may reject you so that they don't end up extending an offer and getting turned down.

&#62; I’m still curious as to what might have sunk me at those places.<p>I'm guessing that you seem too one-dimensional. Admissions committees look for someone that'll add diversity to the campus - not just racial diversity, but diversity of interests too.<p>I went to Amherst (College, not UMass). Something like 1 in 8 of my admitted class had a 4.0 and 1 in 10 had perfect SATs, but we all had something <i>else</i> besides that. Like my astro-major dormmate who was also a nationally-ranked scrabble player. Or my friend who'd been left for dead at age 10 in Liberia, and had started his own organization dedicated to eradicating child soldiers. I'd worked in an all-teenage dot-com in my gap year before college, too.<p>Anyway, here's my somewhat heretical advice:<p>Don't go to college - yet. Instead, if you're really set on tech entrepreneurship, take a year off and found a startup. Take it as far as you can - pick out a market, talk to people in that market, try to design and build a product that satisfies that market.<p>If you succeed, great - you don't need college. You can always pull a Woz and go back anyway. But even if you fail, it'll teach you lots about what you <i>really</i> want to do. It may not be what you think now. One of my biggest regrets is that I basically planned my college career based on what I thought I wanted to do in my last year of high school, completely ignoring the lessons from my gap year. I could've saved myself a lot of aggravation and made my college experience a lot more meaningful had I adjusted my plans for where I wanted to go and what I wanted to study based on my experience working in a tech startup.<p>And if you fail - great. You'll look so much better to colleges for having given it a shot. Maybe you'll even get into Stanford or MIT next time around.

I really feel for you...going through the college admissions process three years ago was one of the most daunting experiences of my life.<p>As a Yale student, let me give you some advice should you get the opportunity to come here. First off, it's truly an amazing place. Kids here are brilliant and Yale will give you money to do absolutely anything you're interested in. All you have to do is ask. There's also the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, an incubator for student ventures. Think of it as a Y Combinator for Yale students; you get a 5K stipend to spend the summer in New Haven, work on your project and attend workshops.<p>With that said, there are a few things you should be aware of. Yale is obviously not known for its science or engineering focus but among many students there's actually a contempt for any subject involving numbers. Most of my friends fulfilled their math requirement with ridiculous classes like "The Pleasures of Counting" or "Geometry of Nature." I am not even joking.<p>As a science student I sometimes feel like a second class citizen. Science/Engineering classes tend to meet earlier than usual and on Fridays. The buildings are all on Science Hill which is a 10-15 minute walk from central campus. This isn't a huge deal until December when New Haven turns into an icy hellscape for three months.<p>Finally, as far as entrepreneurship goes, you'll find a lot of kids here who would be interested in co-founding a venture. The only problem is most of them don't have the technical background to put their money where their mouth is.<p>I'd be glad to talk to you more about this or answer specific questions. My e-mail address is HN User Name at gmail.

I went to MIT. At the time I was sure that it was what I wanted - I felt very ready to "take a drink from the firehose" or whatever.<p>Since actually going there, my feelings about college have changed a lot. It seems to me that I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to work like a dog, if I want to. I would have rather spent my college years exploring things I didn't know much about - like art, travel, people, languages - instead of obsessing over math and science, which I was already pretty good at.<p>My advice is this: If you want to do technological entrepreneurship, then that path will be available to you in four years. You're already ahead of the curve, and you don't need to do much during college. Go somewhere interesting, relax and have fun.

As a college grad who is now employed at a "top" tech company (although unhappily), I would say that it probably doesn't matter where you go. Choose a place that makes you feel comfortable. Don't choose a place based on any perceived benefit after graduation. Your happiness while there is paramount.<p>I was fortunate enough to go to a small engineering school with many people who shared my interests (Case Western Reserve). It was a great experience that I will cherish for a long time to come. My school is not very famous and the name didn't help me out in any job interviews, but I got a "good" job just the same.<p>In my experience, the biggest benefit of a college is having an extensive alumni network and lots of cool companies recruit there. If you want to work for a startup, then even that doesn't matter. This didn't matter for me because the company I work for doesn't recruit at CWRU. I got an interview after applying online.<p>One thing to keep in mind is that I think I learned more from my peers than I did from my professors. I think that is the whole idea behind a university.

I'm a freshman IT student, but I'm currently in India so I might not be able to give you useful advice about which college to join, but I can tell you this - for Pete's sake, choose wisely. I could have taken an year off to prepare for the college entrance exams (college is a big deal in India, so we have too much competition) and got much better marks, but I chose to just join whichever college I could get into, reputation or no reputation. Now I regret it. My college is more like a 4-year crash course in getting a 9-to-5 job, my teachers care only about academic performance and my peers think I'm a nutjob. Not that it's a bad college, it's just that they don't really <i>get</i> education. You know, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.<p>The environment of your college matters. Your peers matter. In college, a bad crowd will not just slow you down, they'll <i>take</i> you down.

I don't have much to say that other people haven't said already. But: It's unrealistic and silly in my opinion to plan on graduating from college in 3 years. If you really want that atmosphere of smart, driven people you're going to want to be around those people /as long as possible/. I don't advocate 'taking your time' (you know, graduate on time! go on to other things!), but as someone who could conceivably have graduated from college in 3 years and chose not to, I just think you'll get much much more out of college by going there for a full 4 years.<p>Honestly, you're never going to be 'slowed down' by your peers the way you probably were in high school. A lot of learning in college goes on outside of the classroom. I /think/ a lot about all my classes, go talk to all my professors outside of class (even the humanities ones!) and probably get a lot more out of my classes than everyone else taking them. People aren't slowing me down, I'm just getting more out of the same material. Additionally, there're independent studies, doing research, having a job--you'll find that there are plenty of ways to occupy your time. : ]<p>So, with that in mind, I'd consider the overall culture of the school. What do you want to be doing in your spare time? What type of people do you want to be hanging out with? That being said, every school (especially the larger ones) have people of all types.

Meh. I was similarly crushed when I was rejected from the Ivy league schools I thought I would be going to. The most important thing to do is realize that most of it is ultimately irrelevant. If your department is top 10, the school wont make much of an impact past that point. Once you're in a decent department the rest is up to you.<p>More importantly, you actually have no idea which one of these schools is a best fit for you. My focus was Columbia in highschool. You know what I realized now? It would have been a horrible fit for me. UIUC is pretty good culture wise (mostly because of the CS department) and it has far better Computer Science. I didn't even apply to the school which I realize now would be the best fit (Berkeley). But I had never even heard of Berkeley outside of the CS rankings because it's not an Ivy.<p>Recognizing that you have very little chance in correctly reading your own needs, try narrowing down the college by obvious criteria:<p>1.) Place yourself in a top 10 department in the subject you want to study.<p>2.) Make sure the campus culture is at least a decent fit for you (i.e., don't go to a big 10 school if you have an aversion to sports and partying. I personally think the hardcore party people here are jokes, but I have no problem dealing or even being friends with them.).<p>3.) Minimize the amount of money it takes you to get there. Only make a concession if your upgrading yourself from a bottom half of the top 10 to a number 1.<p>4.) Make sure the campus is a place where you see yourself living for four years.<p>Academics + Culture + Minimal Money + Location. It really is that simple. I doubt more than one of the colleges on your list fits into the above criteria.<p>EDIT: Also, don't beat yourself up over not getting in. It's essentially a coin flip when it comes down to it. I thought I had a pretty kickass profile too, but there you go. As PG has written, it's not in the best interest of the admissions committee to spend the time picking the exact best candidates. And believe me, this type of rejection will keep happening. I just got rejected from a NASA scholarship I thought I had a pretty good shot at. In the rejection email, they suggested if I reapplied to improve on pretty much every aspect of my application! I know my app was better than that. Like I said.. meh. :)

I'm not sure this directly applies to you, but the one thing I wish people had told me when I was applying to college was that if you want to be a Master of the Universe, there's still a significant advantage to going to an east coast Ivy League school. My friends at Harvard and Yale and so on have a valuable network of powerful people looking out for them, making sure they get cushy jobs and lecture gigs and book deals. Stanford, by contrast, was all about pushing you into Silicon Valley, either as a startup grunt or a VC pawn.

I'd try to negotiate with Cornell. Might be worth going there in person. If not, your scheme of starting at Tufts and transferring seems reasonable. If you worry about lame peers, take upper-level courses as a freshman. Audit them if they won't let you register because of prerequisites. I suspect most profs would even grade your work in a case like that, so you'd get the full intellectual benefit of the class, just not the credit.

<i>I’m still curious as to what might have sunk me at those places.</i><p>How did you describe your plans for the future in your application?<p><i>placed in top ~50 of my grade nationwide in math competitions</i><p>I follow a lot of math competitions, as a math coach. Which competitions were the ones you participated in most avidly?<p><i>the "too-intense guy" I come off as at my high school</i><p>What specific behaviors are your high school classmates observing as they come to that conclusion about you?

An important thing to note is that college admissions is really a terrible, fairly unscientific process. You're clearly qualified, so getting rejected shouldn't be a terrible thing for you.<p>To answer your first apprehension: being around like-minded people is incredibly important. Graduating from one of the best high schools in the nation, I was around people who were intellectuals so there was always wonderful discussions to whet and kindle my growing mind. Two years later, I'm at the local state university whose stigma is entirely accurate. Few people—even in the honors college—are true intellectuals. Living here has been an intellectual nightmare for me, and I can sense my acuity and mental agility suffering.<p>However, I really didn't have a choice. My family could not afford to send me anywhere else. Basically, the situation I got stuck with was this: paying $40k+/year for a wonderful, private institution or paying $0/year (including room and board) and getting compensated a stipend for the local state university which still made USNWR's top-tier colleges list.<p>And really, if you're going for engineering, then you're going to learn the same thing anywhere. I'd argue that illustrious universities really aren't a frugal choice. Graduating debt free is really going to free me up financially to start up my company instead of needing to find a job right out of school to fund myself. Also, the local state university offered a lot of options for testing out of classes, so I'm graduating in three years, as opposed to four.<p>One more thing to consider: student life. You don't want to be miserable, even if it's cheaper or a better school. I've known to many of my peers who went to their dream school and then hated their life. Consider spending time on campus and getting familiar with the local scene.<p>Good luck.

Check out Olin College. They are built specifically for engineers who also want to get into creativity and design. They emphasize teams with a project-based curriculum. Oh, and there's no cost. They've been cited as one of the next Ivy League schools and have what I've heard to be a very strong engineering program.

Sorry for trying to hijack, but I was going to create a similar thread for myself too, and I don't think it would be a good idea to create two. (I got waitlisted at Rice too!) Right now I'm trying to decide between UCLA, UCSD, and Univeristy of Washington. Which one would be best for a CS major?

Just my opinion. I went to some random school that nobody here is going to know of or care about, and I had a blast at school. College should be a place to have fun at. Realistically, 3+ years out of college nobody cares about your education anymore anyway.<p>If you really want to go to MIT/etc. or something and kill yourself for 4 years, go for it. I don't think it's necessary, unless you HAVE to work at &#60;insert name of prestigious company&#62; as your first job out of college.<p>Also, don't underestimate the effect of a full-ride or close to it. Being debt free or nearly so while making 60k+ a year in your early 20s is nothing to scoff at.<p>If I were in your shoes, knowing what I know now, at 25, and given the options listed, I would take the full ride in a heartbeat.

I'm a high school senior too and I only recently got accepted at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford (didn't apply to Ivys or MIT). First, you should get over the rejections. Last December, I applied for Cornell ED (36% acceptance rate) and I got rejected! I couldn't quite figure out why but now, five months later, I'm really really happy cos it gave the opportunity to apply for Stanford/CMU during RD. And Stanford had a RD acceptance rate of 7.2%. Only Harvard has a lower rate. So, shit does happen but good things also happen.<p>Anyway, as an international, I can't get financial aid at most schools (only Harvard, MIT and a few others are need-blind for intls). So, I'm faced with a similar question. Is it worth paying so much for Stanford or CMU?

From my experience, Cornell Alumni have a much greater presence in high-end cs industry than any of those other schools. It's probably worth trying to squeeze more money out of them (what do you have to lose by trying?).<p>Tufts has a generally good reputation, though not particularly technical. Free is good and Boston is good. You might investigate if you can take high-level CS courses at MIT or Harvard with a Tufts enrollment (I think it's possible, but you'll want to know details). It's certainly possible to join the MIT culture without actually enrolling there.<p>Yale receives a certain degree of contempt in technical circles. It's probably possible to get a solid education there, but certainly don't expect the name to open doors.

I think you shouldn't be too sure that Yale et al. will have many "smart, like-minded students". I go to UPenn, studying business and CS and I've found that there are very few people interested in technology startups (they like finance, of course).<p>I also have found that though students are capable of getting good grades, they tend to be less intellectually curious than, for example, the average HN reader.<p>So don't make your decision simply thinking that good reputation = great students. I think the ancillary benefits of being in Boston easily outweigh any relative drawbacks of going to Tufts.

Here's my take: I went to Shit Hole State University, well outside of cali and SV. In the cubicle next to me was a Stanford Master's grad. He and I made similar salary, did similar work. He got to be in more debt, though, and as a bit of a bonus he bragged about stanford and software quality, etc blah blah. I told him all software startup code is garbage and quietly to myself he should just work on the product. He quit, startup got sold and I cashed out. Sure I was lucky but his whole attitude was wrong.<p>Back at SSU I knew of another Stanford grad who was humble and was genuinely into software and all around a spiffy guy. And he knew more than my cube-neighbor.<p>Here's thing thing about "it" schools like Stanford, MIT: it's something of an illusion. Sure they great schools and they do the best research, if that is where you want to go (something I had a hard time doing at SSU). Before I got hired I worked on my own stuff, contributed code and had all-around genuine extracurricular fun messing around with systems, hacking, and reading about binary analysis and security. That's the kind of stuff that gets you somewhere. Not going to "it" schools gives you the freedom to pick what your extracurricular stuff is, though. :)<p>I guess my advice is to do what ever you want. In life there are front doors that are jammed and there are back windows you can slip in unnoticed if you know where to look.

Programmers tend to value tangible evidence of technical expertise. Your best bet if you want to operate in software is to build impressive things and go to school wherever you feel most comfortable.<p>Engineers tend have a more limited idea of how technical expertise ought to be acquired: at a top 10 (maybe 15) ranked university. So, Stanford, MIT, and Cornell are very fine choices for mechanical or electrical engineering. For you then, Cornell is the only way to go for engineering.

Tuition-free tufts? I'd jump at it.<p>Anything close to Boston would be pretty cool. I hear there's a pretty strong hacker scene there... but I've never been there myself.

First of all big congrats on Cornell. I was crushed when they rejected me, luckily it was my one rejection.<p>I am currently having to choose between Georgia Tech (nearly free) and Emory (50k/year). I'm not a math/engineering person, while that background would be nice I see myself as an Econ major. I hate to hijack the topic, but I'm in a tough situation as well...<p>Would YC prefer a non engineering grad from Emory or GT?

My theory on higher ed in the USA is that you should make an effort to attend a school with a great brand name reputation like Harvard, MIT, Yale, Stanford or Berkeley.<p>If that doesn't work you should go to the best place that costs you the least amount of money.<p>I'll probably offend the alumni of the schools I mention, but as someone who has assisted with hiring for startups, I don't believe HR really distinguishes between places like McGill, Amherst or Tufts (or even places like Cornell and Brown.) However, Harvard, MIT or Stanford will definitely get you an interview.<p>I didn't get into anywhere good and instead went to a no-name private school in the midwest that essentially paid me to go there. Since then I've worked alongside, and been paid the same as people from MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Berkeley, as well as people who dropped out of high school.<p>I would have preferred paying for Stanford if that had been an option. However, I'm very glad I'm not 200K in debt to a "2nd choice" school.<p>In your situation I'd probably go to Tufts if Yale doesn't come through. Living in that area definitely beats Amherst.

University of Illinois (Urbana/Champaign). World-class CS education at public school costs. ACM is an active place for outside class projects and getting to know some geeks. There's also a newly started IEN - Illini Entrepreneurship Network.<p>I highly taking a serious look.

I got a CS degree from Stanford and looking back I have to say I really regret going to college. If you're interested in building your own business, that time and money is a hell of a lot of opportunity cost.<p>So my advice to you is: Screw college. Start your business now.

Make a call to the Cornell's financial aid office and make a personal case for a better financial aid package. Be sure to mention you have a full ride to UMass and Tufts. They may be willing to help you out, and it definitely can't hurt at this point.

Did you apply to Babson? 2400 SAT = baller, props<p>My friend runs a great site for high schoolers going through the college admissions process. I'd suggest checking it out: zinch.com<p>Congrats on your acceptances, McGill is a great school, too

I was in your shoes as well, 2350 SATs, 40+ college credits, 4.0 GPA + all the standard extra curricular leadership/community service stuff + a few unique things like being on national radio &#38; tv.<p>I didn't apply to any Ivy. I thought about MIT but decided not to apply because my brother went to a *IT and for a lot of reasons hated the whole "only guys on campus in engineering degrees" atmosphere.<p>I'll give you four reasons why a "lesser" school will wind up making you MUCH happier<p>1) Focus - those schools are not super focused on engineering. You are second fiddle to the business and humanities - always. That applies for all the Ivy's, tufts, amherst, (not sure about mcgill)<p>2) Legacy - based on the 10 or so people who went from my high school that I knew prior to my college choice, non were happy with their classmates. A lot of the kids who get into ivy are children of alumni, and thus are not as qualified as you are, so your classes are a lot weaker than you would expect.<p>3) Money - If you can get into one of those schools you can get a full ride at plenty of BETTER technical schools. I got a full ride+, meaning tuition, books, housing, to 5 of the top 20 schools in my major (mechanical engineering), and I only applied to 5.<p>4 (and most importantly)) If you really are smart and know your stuff. your undergraduate degree does not matter. One of two things will happen to you after college, you will successfully start your own business and your credentials won't matter, or you will get a graduate degree.<p>It seems to me that you have the list of the north eastern top 10 schools and applied to them without digging deeper into the list of colleges and finding the true engineering gems. Start with US news &#38; world reports rankings for comp eng/comp sci or whatever you want, they are not perfect but they are a good place to start. Then visit them and decide for yourself. Setup private meetings with professors/deans. The group tours done by students are utterly useless. It doesn't matter what the dorms look like or how well manicured the lawns are. Ask if undergraduates are involved in research, what the study abroad programs are like, what areas the school's research focuses on, etc. Specific questions about the program.<p>For me I had a list of 5 schools that lined up and narrowed them down by program quality, and then focus. For example I liked Penn State's aerospace engineering program, but their focus was on propulsion at the time and I'm not very interested in that. Where as the school I go to now focuses on fuel cells and robotics, both of which interest me. Those are the questions to be asking, not whether people will recognize the name of your school on a resume.<p>Also I would say that you MUST go to a school on a school day, observing the interactions between students tells you all you need to know about the place. I went to one school over the summer and loved it, and then during the school year people looked so "click"-y I didn't want to go there anymore.<p>The problem for you is this - transfer students are generally not offered scholarships. So you are a bit late to the party for applying and getting money. I would say nothing is as important as minimizing your college debt if you want to remain flexible to start a company. It might be worth applying scattershot to a bunch of schools before their deadlines and working it out later, or taking a half year off and do something to boost your resume and apply again. Normally I would say transfer but if you have a resume like that, you will get money else where so don't leave that on the table.<p>Sorry for the rambling but I'm between projects, good luck, email me if you have more questions. Just look back some day and say, the best thing that ever happened to me was getting rejected from the IVYs.

Tufts. The differences between colleges don't make as much difference as people think. Being debt-free is awesome. If you get into Yale, go, maybe. Other than that, Tufts. Most of college admissions and college-choosing is just utter bullshit. You've already given it too much thought. People who do anything interesting with their time are incredibly rare and your chances of becoming one of those people will not be adjusted in any direction by any amount by what college you choose. So give it LESS thought. It's not worth any energy. It is worth doing, however, but you'd have to be a complete fucking idiot to go anywhere other than Tufts given that it's free. Unless Yale gives you a fantastic deal, and even then, you'd still want to give Tufts some serious thought.<p>Best way to get a reality check: make a list of 100 people you admire, find out how many of them went to an Ivy League school. Wikipedia makes it easy as hell. The schools are great but saving that money is much, much better.