When Schools Matter

The other thing to say about Paul Graham’s essay is that success at founding startups seems like almost the worst possible metric for judging the value of an Ivy League education. At least the way Graham tells it, to succeed at a startup, you have to be reasonably smart, extremely dedicated, and willing to break a few rules in order to find a new way of doing things. Intelligence is useful for getting into a good college as well, but the other major criteria are almost exactly the opposite. To get into an Ivy League school, you need to be good at following rules, sucking up to grown-ups, and performing activities that look good on your resume whether or not you’re actually interested in them. In some cases, getting into an elite school is helped by having access to good tutors, career counselors, test prep coaching, and in some cases parents willing to make 5-figure donations to their alma maters. The sort of intense, deep, and sustained interest in a single subject that is essential to success at a startup is hard to convey on a college application form or a resume.

Now, the thing is, the skills that are required to get into an elite school actually are useful in a lot of high-status careers. For example, becoming a good doctor involves achieving proficiency at a lot of different aspects of medical practice. You don’t really care if your doctor is capable of devoting months of intense effort to a hard technical problem, as long as he can correctly diagnose your condition and competently administer the remedy.

So I think the question of whether someone’s Ivy League background matters is largely a function of what qualities you’re looking for. An Ivy League degree is a good signal for the kinds of qualities that allow people to get admitted to Ivy League schools. If you’re in a business in which those qualities aren’t important, as Graham is, then it obviously doesn’t make sense to pay attention to where someone went to school.

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