"Good college +2" seems counter to some of his latest writings. I guess "No Hackers on Team" would be a way greater penalty. I'm curious: why is the bonus for "founded a web startup" higher for a team of non-hackers?
If non hackers created a successful web startup, then they must have some other kind of talent going for them, which is a plus since most others in the YC community have the hacker thing going for them.
I completely understand the difference between correlation and causation. But in the grand scheme of things, the human brain is designed to recognize correlation when developing internal rating systems. You would have to be stupid to not automatically give more clout to a graduate of Harvard than to a drop out of some state university. The state university student may or may not be less qualified than the Harvard graduate, but in the vast majority of situations he will be.
Even if YC doesn't give "real" points to graduates/students of good universities, just the mere emotional response to reading "harvard" or "yale" or "berkeley" sparks an automatically positive regard for the applicant. Isn't that enough cause?
From the gospel, according to Paul...
(September, 2007)
"Between the volume of people we judge and the rapid, unequivocal test that's applied to our choices, Y Combinator has been an unprecedented opportunity for learning how to pick winners. One of the most surprising things we've learned is how little it matters where people went to college.
I thought I'd already been cured of caring about that. There's nothing like going to grad school at Harvard to cure you of any illusions you might have about the average Harvard undergrad. And yet Y Combinator showed us we were still overestimating people who'd been to elite colleges. We'd interview people from MIT or Harvard or Stanford and sometimes find ourselves thinking: they must be smarter than they seem. It took us a few iterations to learn to trust our senses.
Practically everyone thinks that someone who went to MIT or Harvard or Stanford must be smart. Even people who hate you for it believe it.
But when you think about what it means to have gone to an elite college, how could this be true? We're talking about a decision made by admissions officers--basically, HR people--based on a cursory examination of a huge pile of depressingly similar applications submitted by seventeen year olds. And what do they have to go on? An easily gamed standardized test; a short essay telling you what the kid thinks you want to hear; an interview with a random alum; a high school record that's largely an index of obedience. Who would rely on such a test?"