| In the U.S., one's undergraduate institution does not correlate to success as much as it does in certain countries like France or Japan, where universities are a pipeline for elite selection and grooming. Also, not all intelligent American kids can or want to go to elite schools, even if they are academically qualified. In the U.S., you often hear stories of kids turning down really good schools for ones they felt were a better "fit" (financially, culturally, etc.). And unlike the rest of the world, elite colleges in the U.S. are often private and expensive. Despite need-blind admissions, not everyone can afford them without going into heavy debt. (many middle-class parents make just enough money for their kid to not qualify for substantial financial aid). So kids go to schools they can afford. One of my college professors (who attended Princeton and MIT) once told me that in his observation, the top 5 percentile students in (good) state schools aren't that different from the kids who went to Princeton or MIT. I didn't believe him at the time, but having worked with different folks over the years, my experience inclines me to believe that there's some truth in that observation. Owing to its population and economy, the U.S. has a large enough talent pool that the top percentile students at large, well-funded state schools (of which UMN is an example) are plenty smart. If you were to meet the really smart top-5-percentile kids from such state colleges (I have), you'd have no doubt that many of them could have attended MIT or CMU. To be sure, good colleges can give you a headstart in life -- but it's what you do with that advantage that counts. -- Examples of smart computer folk who went to decent, but non-elite schools for undergrad: Doug Crockford (Javascript), SFSU JJ Allaire (ColdFusion, Rstudio, etc.), Macalester College Ward Cunningham (Wikis), Purdue Rich Hickey (Clojure), SUNY Empire State (though he did go to Berklee College of Music) John Carmack (Doom, Quake), U. Missouri Kansas City Sergey Brin (Google), U. Maryland College Park (before Stanford) Larry Page (Google), U. Michigan (before Stanford) Dave Cutler (VMS, Windows NT), Olivet College Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), U at Buffalo Ryan Dahl (Node.js), UCSD, then U Rochester Larry Wall (Perl), Seattle Pacific U (before Berkeley) Alan Kay (Smalltalk, windowing GUIs), U Colorado, then U Utah. Brendan Eich (Javascript, Mozilla), Santa Clara U (before UIUC) |