[ComradeTaco]

It is absolutely selection bias. Compare averages by major for each school, not the total population for each school. To compare a college that produces almost exclusively engineering majors to a university that offers everything from constitutional law to communications is absurd.

[jwq1]

To say, “it is absolutely selection bias,” infers the professors and curriculum of the school had no effect on the ability of students to become successful, venture-backed entrepreneurs. Which you cannot conclude given the data.

What you have experienced is confirmation-bias. Whereby, you have interpreted evidence to reaffirm your own beliefs. In this case, your belief is, “Olin College cannot be better than MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and the like because those schools are the best.”

When you allow yourself to succumb to confirmation bias, you close yourself off to the possibility there is a school which prepares students for an entrepreneurial life. Please do not close others off to the same possibility.

[ComradeTaco]

I never wrote that MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Yale are better than Olin. What I did say was that you should compare apples to apples, compare average start up rate for majors at Olin to the same majors at MIT, Yale, Stanford and Harvard.

Right now most startups are tech heavy. If you have a school with exclusively engineering and technology majors, you're much more likely to have a higher startup rate then a full university.

[pessimizer]

To say "it is absolutely selection bias," you have to include Harvard poetry majors in the comparison, which they did. Why so condescending?