Should I go to Virginia Tech or Penn State?

nah right wrote:

hmmm? wrote:

You're not right, though. There have been and will continue to be plenty of successful people from both schools and he will have no problem finding a job if he does well in school. I'm not worried about saying the right thing.

I know hundreds of VT grads that are killing it in their chosen profession. Both schools are consistently ranked in the top 100 in the country. VT alum do very well in the DC area and elsewhere. Your idea of what schools are "good" is delusional.

Just because you're a tool about it doesn't make what you say fact and what I say opinion or feelings based. You just come off as a poor man's Ben Shapiro.

So I'll ask again: what do you do and where did you go?

You moved the goal posts quite a bit.

Are there successful people from both schools? Yes. Are there as much as Stanford, MIT, etc? No.

Both schools are in the top 100 in the country? Yes. Wow! 100! Amazing. Every kid should aspire to go to a peer school of Rutgers, Southern Methodist, and UConn. What you're defining as a "delusional" ranking is backed up by just about every service that ranks these things, not to mention the reality of hiring practices and entry-level salaries.

You're doing this kid a disservice by white-washing how average these schools really are. Can he succeed and thrive with a degree from there? Sure. It's unequivocally, immeasurably harder though. All of the effort you're putting into making people with average degrees from average schools feel good about themselves is noble, but wrong.

Not that you'd believe me, but undergrad MIT and grad Stanford. Work in tech, Bay Area, FAANG. I can count on one-hand how many people in every new employee cohort we bring in from something other than the elite schools. You can complain all you want about how it's fair or unfair, but it's the truth. And half of them are going to be millionaires before they're 30 in ten years simply due to the salaries and the RSUs.

The Starved Elephant wrote:

nah right wrote:

You moved the goal posts quite a bit.

Are there successful people from both schools? Yes. Are there as much as Stanford, MIT, etc? No.

Both schools are in the top 100 in the country? Yes. Wow! 100! Amazing. Every kid should aspire to go to a peer school of Rutgers, Southern Methodist, and UConn. What you're defining as a "delusional" ranking is backed up by just about every service that ranks these things, not to mention the reality of hiring practices and entry-level salaries.

You're doing this kid a disservice by white-washing how average these schools really are. Can he succeed and thrive with a degree from there? Sure. It's unequivocally, immeasurably harder though. All of the effort you're putting into making people with average degrees from average schools feel good about themselves is noble, but wrong.

Not that you'd believe me, but undergrad MIT and grad Stanford. Work in tech, Bay Area, FAANG. I can count on one-hand how many people in every new employee cohort we bring in from something other than the elite schools. You can complain all you want about how it's fair or unfair, but it's the truth. And half of them are going to be millionaires before they're 30 in ten years simply due to the salaries and the RSUs.

Congrats on being smart. The OP probably didn't get into Stanford or MIT, hence why he's looking at VTech. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, since 99.9% of people don't get into MIT and still wind up very successful. We should focus on helping the kid do the best with what he's been given instead of insinuating that he's screwed if he doesn't go to an elite school, because that's not true.