YC at Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UPenn
Wall Street is also known for visiting and doing on-campus recruiting at only a very small list of target schools. Right or wrong every year we pick which schools to give this extra attention to and every year we debate if we are doing this right and if we should target schools at all.<p>Entirely anecdotal, maybe obvious to some, but here&#x27;s what I have experienced (I&#x27;ll focus on STEM students):<p><i>TL; DR I have had to visit and do on-campus recruiting. The top of top talented, skilled, smart student could be at any school. Every school has dumb as fuck kids too. But there is higher % chance the valedictorian at Stanford is smarter than the valedictorian at San Jose State. But who cares, when a cream of the crop student ends up at non-target school for whatever, they know how to work with those circumstances and get to where they want to go. I think if you know how to &quot;disrupt&quot; or &quot;hack&quot; or whatever stupid word we are using these days, it is easier to stand out as applicant from a no-name school. Good luck</i><p>1. The practical stuff: The &quot;budget&quot; of time and people and money to do recruiting and campus outreach is not unlimited. There are only so many hours in a day, you can&#x27;t visit every school and meet every kid.<p>2. School visits are worth doing, for the students to learn about a company and for a company to get to know a few of the students better. Companies that do visit schools can attract more applicants and higher quality applicants.<p>3. The school someone went to tells you <i>ZERO</i> about how talented or skilled that individual is as an engineer or potential founder or employee. Zero. The best person for a job or to fund could have studied at Stanford or San Jose State or Joe Bummwarts University. There are plenty of kids at no-name schools that crush the skills of kids at top-ranked schools. (Also the whole &quot;but the department&#x27;s reputation is good&quot; doesn&#x27;t matter nor do grades tell you very much either - I don&#x27;t even care if someone has a degree to be honest - but that&#x27;s another story).<p>4. If a top company or VC or Grad school is looking for those best of the best young people; they often seem to be the type of student that can self-teach and have done so. They are frequently miles ahead of their classmates at their school and any school in terms of knowledge. They know things the schools don&#x27;t even teach.<p>5. Unfortunately where someone went to school still matters for several reasons. I&#x27;m sorry if this offends. There are many reasons your schools makes a difference. I won&#x27;t go into things like PR pedigree and friendships and alumni networks. And just to be clear there are a shitload of dumb people at every school, tons and tons of dumb people at the top ranked-schools. Spot them a mile away. <i>But: when you are looking for the one or two or three students who are miles ahead of other people their same age, the % chance that person is going to be at a top-ranked school is slightly higher. i.e. if you are looking for the smartest kid in the sandbox, the odds the valedictorian at Stanford is smarter than the valedictorian at San Jose State is higher on average, not guarantee, but enough to say it&#x27;s more likely.</i><p>6. Lastly, I&#x27;ll just say in my experience when legit talented students ends up at a non-target school for whatever reason (family, cost, bad luck, whatever) they are mature and they know why they are there and they know what it means and they know what they need to do to succeed at their goal under these circumstances - these are not the students you see complaining about school recruiting being unfair. It&#x27;s the idiots and the average people who complain the loudest about this :( Those talented students at no-name school are aware of how the world works and that life&#x27;s not fair. They know how much better they are than their peers and they know the school they went to will not matter. They also know they will have to take a couple different steps to get where they want to go vs. target-schools kids. (it&#x27;s a known secret it&#x27;s actually much easier for a no-name school students to stand out). They seem to know what to do: they just keep quiet about it, they network with the people who get it and they find the other doors. Sorry. Look around. Students from no-name non-target schools get top jobs right out of school and they get funded and they get into a top grad schools all the time, every year. If you don&#x27;t understand how they did what they did, that&#x27;s the point. Seriously, no offense some people are more skilled and talented than others. But if you are so smart and happened to have gone to a crap school, but want to get in somewhere difficult, then figure it out, many others have before you. If you feel you need someone to come visit your school to get something you are missing the point of how this works. Good luck YC SUMMA CLASS