I know a FB exec that has never taken a college class. It doesn’t matter. People either perform or they don’t. I worked with an Amazon VP that had a degree in art history. Even she’d laugh about how irrelevant it was for her career. People love to make excuses and play the victim card. Doing that has never made someone successful, so it’s not worth paying attention to those people.
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Good to hear!
I do want to caution that for every successful example like this, there are probably 100 failed examples as well. We may never know how that individual put in learning to reach where they are. Point is the drive, ambitions, discipline, determination etc., really decides this.
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Survivorship bias.
Most people with art history degree don’t work in tech. Neither do most people who don’t bother to go to college.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are billionaires without a college degree. Maybe kids should try getting into Harvard first.
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Of course. But people don’t want to believe they (or their kids) are average or below average.
For the average person trying to get an average white collar job, having a degree from a good/great school helps a Lot.
Any time you go outside of the “system” or usual process, you have to be extra elsewhere (drive/ambition, networking/social, work ethic, street smarts, etc).
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Agreed. He is certainly capable of succeeding, but he perceives there being a serious disadvantage in this path. And I guess that’s really what I’m asking. If he has to try twice as hard to get a job or apply to twice as many places, that’s one thing. If he’s permanently fighting an uphill battle and always making less than his counterparts or not getting promoted because he has no degree, that’s another thing.
Another issue that he may face is if he wants to get a Master’s degree in Machine Learning or similar, a lot of places seem to require a Bachelor’s degree - even if the Bachelor’s is in Art History. Which is kinda ridiculous. If he had 5 years of industry experience, he’s not going to want to take 4 years to get a BS just to get a Master’s.
If I am not mistaken, most machine learning is statistics. And it’s much easier to get into Stat program than CS. Maybe an alternative path is to get into Statistics and take some programming classes on the side?
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If he has to reapply next year, this is something we’re going to look into - I think it’s called Applied Math. Any degree that gets you permission to take the CS courses… Because my understanding is that at a lot of places, especially the UCs, the CS courses are restricted to CS majors because there’s so much demand.
If your son is interested in ML, he needs MS or phD degree……
I have degree in EE but our team (HW architecture) hires many CS major, and I’ve never seen resume without MS degree. We hire interns from graduate schools only.
Silimilar situation for ML team in the company.
Is he waitlisted from any schools?
Did he send LOCI?
He should do his best to get admitted from waitlisted school now. If it doesn’t work, then, accept any school and consider transfer.
This year’s college admission seems insane.
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.
From what I read, those on aggressive growth strategy is 
There is no 9 figures TSLA investor here.
Actually, it was UCM to UCSD and it was for CS. The other one from UIUC to UCB was BS (Engg) to Data Science. So that may be different.
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Very helpful… thanks!
If a person hit their peak earning years after 2000 and went aggressive growth as opposed to index I think they could easily have done 10x better. If that will hold going forward is anyone’s guess.
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Yes - 4 waitlists, 1 open application he’s still waiting to hear from. 2 of the waitlists are unlikely to have anyone at all come off of them based on 2019 common data sets from the colleges.
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Yes, and he will probably do the handwritten letters to try to reinforce interest
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He has no real acceptances. He accidentally applied to the wrong Calpoly (he meant to apply to SLO) and it would require him to finish 2 semesters of biology (via UC scout) before he graduates in June which he has zero interest in busting his butt over for said school. We did check the box that other UCs can contact him, but he does not have any UC acceptances via the “Statewide Guarantee route” yet, but I found out this week it tends to only be UC Merced ***. (he’s 4.29 UC weighted GPA, so he qualifies)
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No kidding… And next year’s is going to be worse. Way worse.
Next time we’ll hire a college consultant… Lesson learned.
*** I think he’s better off trying again next year than trying to go from UC Merced to somewhere else. I’m skeptical anyone would let him in if they won’t now (anecdotal evidence above noted), and frankly, I think he would have difficulty sitting through classes that are likely taught at a slower pace and lower academic level. He’s used to very hard classes. And if he were really to spend next year going to classes (I think he should work instead but…), it looks like the community college system here would actually be a better choice than UC Merced because more of the classes would transfer to other UCs. It’s not clear to me that Merced’s classes are aligned with the UC transfer system. Maybe I didn’t find the right version of the course catalog, but in the one I did find, even the Calculus classes do not have the UC general designation like Math 1A, Math 1B. If that’s the case, transferring is not straightforward.
We also think that one of the waitlists would likely take him via ED next year if he reapplied. They accept 50% of the ED kids that apply and they do two ED rounds.
Last year’s number of “admitted from waitlisted” was extremely low because of all students who came back from gap year. I don’t think this years admit rate from waitlist would be that low. Refer to past 5 years admit rate from wailist instead.
I agree your son should not be too optimistic on waitlisted schools but it’s very important to show persistent interest until they close the waitlist completely. It will be a long journey.
Best wishes for him.
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That’s why I looked at 2019. It’s pre-Covid wackiness.
Best wishes for him.
Thanks.
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Any good college counselors that anyone can suggest? What is a good time to start with a counselor, especially considering the high costs?
That’s why sky-high tuition is a joke. It’s all going to administrative staff making $100k+ a year to do very little work.
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