Acceptance rates: BC 27%, Wellesley 22%, BU 19%, Northeastern 18%, Tufts 15%,

[Boston_Burbs]

Given the small, well connected Alumni, I have been impressed with the NESCAC schools (Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Colby, Bowdoin) + Dartmouth, more so than some of the larger Ivy's. They seem to really be connected to their former schools.

[9162]

Originally Posted by bostonguy1960

But a college student told me it's not enough to just check the acceptance rate but also combine it all with the test scores (for those colleges still requiring scores) in order to assess the difficulty or even prestige of getting accepted. Well, I don't have time for that also.

I've also noticed that some of the schools have changed their acceptance rates more than once in a year. Hmmm... I'd think they'd be updated just once per year.

Gender, and ethnicity play a big role too. Many of these schools considerably limit the amount of American born white males, particularly in a technical school like MIT. Schools focus heavily on diversity.

[robr2]

Originally Posted by BosYuppie

Ivy leaguers go to Finance. Stanford/MIT/UC Berkley go to FAANGs.

Why not both? I know of someone who studied CS at MIT and now works on Wall Street as a developer doing AI trading applications.

[mdovell]

Originally Posted by timberline742

All three of those people had resources that almost no one has, or used other peoples work for personal gain. Lets not perpetuate this myth that anyone can do it, ethically

Bill Gates had incredibly powerful parents who used their influence to secure him a contract with IBM.


Steve Jobs used Steve W's invention to get one of his first gigs (parlayed the creation as his own) and promoted the fairy tale of "we built it in our garage".


Mark Zuckerberg stabbed several people in the back he was working with took credit for their work.

Gates without a doubt had powerful parents although I'd also argue being in southern California in the early 70's at that age was the right time and right place. Businesses tend to cluster. Between smith and wesson and colt the western mass/western ct area is a great place to learn about firearms etc.

Jobs is one of the biggest jokes in IT. Apple until recently didn't really make their own products. They contracted out for everything. Frog Design for the design, OSX came from NeXT which came from FreeBSD, processors from Motorola (until '06) Intel (until recently). Remember AMC? Yeah it's the same concept. Jobs was a great manager and had high standards for quality, no argument there but it was really saying yes or no to anything put in his face. He was Six sigma in person. Jobs made the Apple 1 while at Atari. The Apple 1 and Atari 400 had the same processor so he was literally copying the very engine of the device. Motorola series of processors was pretty commonplace from the 1970's to early 1990's (68000 series). Same with the Zilog Z 80 and of course the MOS 6502.

Zuckerberg was also odd because frankly much of this was already done. Dot com 1.0 had College Club. Literally it was facebook before facebook. Email? IM? Message boards? Music? yeah it had all of that. The trouble is broadband was hardly out there and smart phones didn't come out yet. It pretty much ran out of money. Before facebook was also AOL that again did much of facebook but it cost $20 a month and didn't have ads. It didn't really adapt much to a service and was eventually the butt of jokes. heck IM was based on ICQ way back in 1996, message boards come from BBS's in the 80's etc.

None of these people programmed (ok Jobs did breakout..big deal) or designed any of their products. Now there's nothing wrong with that but anyone suggesting that they did is outright lying. There's nothing wrong with being a manager but it doesn't mean you directly did everything. If you are a president it doesn't mean you have a Medal of Honor, if you are a Mayor it doesn't mean you have a financial award etc.