@itsgettingreal17 It is very likely that many of these grads will be making upwards of $500k in 10 years, as they climb the ranks, move around, and join management.
That is obviously a very competitive world, and many of the new hires will either leave for other less stressful / competitive environs, to start their own businesses, or balance work/life by staying relatively stationary in their job. It is the minority who will make $500k+, but there will be many of them.
An additional thought…
Keep in mind that these numbers are completely unhinged from reality, as tech companies fight to gather talent that they can then truly test and nurture…looking to find the few stars from the masses. They have foolish amounts of cash at their disposal…MS and Google have $100B in cash…Apple $250B… so paying 1,000 grads $150K is only $150M. That’s a lot of money to everyone outside of tech…but a drop in the bucket as they keep hoarding cash.
Back to the OP (in a round about way)… Tech companies are targeting every kid they can from highly selective schools. They will also look for the better students at selective schools (Flagships), but will make offers to nearly anyone who has successfully navigated a highly selective curriculum.
@Canuckguy : Anything that doesn’t blur the line of “achievement” in college gets push back. I remember when Yale considered going to a 100 point scale (though I do not know how that would work. I guess all the instructors who give challenging enough assignments and exams to warrant a curve would have to add points directly to the final course grade?) and the level of push back it got. They were right in assuming it would amplify small differences, but I think it would reveal interesting trends. Like I am wondering if you would begin noticing that all folks in certain disciplines were say, in the 90 (high at that). Even those in more so called “subject grading” disciplines would have to find a way of being more precise (like putting a letter on papers would not suffice). But regardless, often the push back ultimately reveals that many students know they have something to hide and certainly do not want increased (or really any) stress from the academic part of their lives.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/which-colleges-do-facebook-google-and-other-top-employers-recruit indicates that the well known large computer companies (except for Facebook) mostly hire more widely with respect to college origins than people on these forums assume.
@bernie12 We are really talking about gerrymandering and special interest groups, are we not? These problems are not exclusive to politics.
I do know a thing or two about the 100 point scale. I have lived with it all my life. Each class taken is graded out of 100. They then divide the total grades by the number of courses taken. In my time, 75 or higher is first class (honours), 66 to 74 is second class.
Now, they made it much cleaner- 80 and above is first class, and second class is 70 to 79. A GPA is also given in more recent time, mainly for comparative purposes with American grading.
@Canuckguy : Interesting point, and I suppose it is. Also, the system you just spoke of I guess is the Oxbridge system I brought up in this some pages ago. It makes sense to me, but I guess it does not work when k-12 in America puts so much stock in the “gifted” students always being near 100 or at least in the 90s on such scales. Studies showing students’ sensitivities to seeing “low” scores seem to have been published in an American context. And again, it usually ends up meaning that courses considered more challenging at an elite are often the ones with means of high 70/low 80. That doesn’t create much room to challenge students by requiring high levels of analytical skills or critical thinking in STEM disciplines for example. It means most of the exam basically must be freebies or freebies with a slight twist and then A/B (80/90) separators have bigger twists or derivations. Can be dull if you were expecting better expectations than a good high school. It is basically HS with less grade inflation, a faster pace, and a a couple of curveball questions. Again, the latter qualities are what end up creating a grade distribution.
For STEM in the U.S., an Oxbridge type of system (or even the system you mention) applies to instructors who are considered “very” challenging (these types will have course or assessment means in the low 70s, 60s, or lower in their context. So the students around these means are in class 2 I guess, with some sort of B usually, because said courses are always curved or have an adjusted scale from the get go, or some compensating mechanism that distributes grades so that average is usually C+, B- or B, with B-/B becoming much more common). These are more common in engineering schools at elites and even elsewhere (these instructors do not mind putting the “interesting” or “cool” problems on exams or p-sets).
Depending on departmental strengths, can happen in the natural and physical sciences as well, but there do seem to be a good amount instructors in those who are obsessed with writing p-sets and exams with a 77-82 average. I guess it gives them the grade distribution they desire (they can appear rigorous, as rigorous as the “very challenging” instructors on paper) while also avoiding writing exams that require more time and thought to grade. Most elite students and faculty are happy with this concept/paradigm of “challenging” and certainly do not want think about putting (in the faculty member’s case) or dealing with (in the student’s case) the problem/problem type that is “interesting” (one that the instructor even finds fascinating). However, even a challenge at this level gets resistance at some schools…where this super common grade distribution is called grade deflation and it is also claimed that “we are too smart to miss over 20% of the exam and could have been making A’s somewhere less selective so this is unfair” basically forgetting that they supposedly came for a challenge in the context of the elite school, or did they? Perhaps that was merely an unexpected side effect because they knew/thought they were too smart be challenged by anything academically lol.
To the title: DUH! Unless you are at certain schools.
@engineer80 “So you claim a Berkeley computer engineering graduate was offered an average starting salary of $107.7k? Is that actually a maximum not an average?”
@ucbalumnus & @mathmom are correct about avg. CS salaries. That is the average, not the top. Tech companies are paying that much, and more for top students. Offers in the $120,000 - $130,000 range for a top student are reasonably common.
@eyeveee “Half of those hired at CMU went to the big 4: Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook. They aren’t getting $250k in option upside. Great experience and nice salaries, but they’re between 5 and 25 years too late.”
These companies are still the top preference of many top students, if you add Apple. These students are not getting huge option packages but they are getting very good salaries, hands on practical experience, the opportunity to work on great projects with amazing peers, and they are building a strong resumes.
@Canuckguy “A simple way around such a problem is to have students write a standardized exit exam”
That is not far from what happens in CS programs because hiring at tech companies is based largely on technical interviews. It isn’t really impacted much by where you went to school, per se, or even your degree. Top schools with average salaries at this level are getting absolutely amazing students and they work them hard for four years. Consequently, their typical students are more able to solve and explain more difficult problems in these interviews.
@ucbalumnus - The article / graphics has some interesting data points. The reason that Amazon only has half of their new hires from top 200 schools…because they are hiring warehouse folks, drivers, customer service reps, and a slew of folks who do many less glamorous things.
The University of Phoenix is the largest feeder of banking professionals? They aren’t in corporate leadership positions (for the most part)…they’re working in branches.
What would be truly interesting is to see the breakdown of average new hire compensation by ranking groups. I’m sure the folks from the top 20 schools are making a great deal more at Apple than those hired from outside the top 200. The top 20 folks are in Cuppertino. Those outside the top 200 can be found at your local “genius” bar.
This thread is about more selective schools being more difficult. It has morphed into theorizing and documenting if that means a greater expectation of compensation on the back end. I believe both assumptions to be true. You can be CEO from any school in the country, but educational rigor and observed ability favor highly selective colleges over less competitive institutions.
Going back to the original question, it’s difficult for most people to answer for the obvious reason that people only know what courses were like at the school they attended. The University of Alabama grad never experienced what courses were like at Harvard and the Harvard grad never experienced what classes were like at the University of Alabama. Probably, the most qualified people to speak on this topic would be faculty members who have taught the same classes at multiple universities in different rankings tiers.
@roethlisburger: Besides faculty, some students transfer and some students go to grad school somewhere else and TA there.
And we actually have heard from faculty and others on this thread.
Even then, a given faculty member may not have too many different courses and schools that s/he has direct knowledge of. For example:
Also, the experience as a student and as a TA or faculty instructor is different. Course material may be difficult to the student learning it for the first time, but may be instant knowledge for the same person as a TA or faculty member who has been living and breathing that subject for years. So s/he may remember the course at University X being difficult when s/he was a student, but the courses at University Y and Z being easy from the point of view of an instructor.
Lots of students transfer, but not many transfer either into or outside the top schools. Harvard has a freshmen retention rate of 97% and getting admitted there as a transfer is even harder than as a traditional admit. I bet most of the transfers Harvard does admit, are those from other top schools.
Cornell, Columbia, UCB, UCLA, and USC all take significant numbers of transfers.
However, transfer students may not take too many of the same courses that they took at their previous schools (and the previous schools are often community colleges). The new school may be “harder”, but they are also taking more advanced courses after transferring.
“I bet most of the transfers Harvard does admit, are those from other top schools.”
I have personal knowledge that this is true.
You @ed me but I’m not sure that your response was actually a response to me. I know I certainly said from the beginning that there is no simple way to determine whether a school will be challenging for an individual student – that you are basically gambling based on limited information when you chose a school and the decision where to attend should be based on what will help the student achieves his or her long term goals. I did however say that based on my limited experience some things are more probable than others. It is obviously possible that a world-class scholar will be a poor teacher … so what? – it is also possible that a poor scholar will be a poor teacher, a scenario where you get two negatives instead of at least one positive.
And to think that the elite schools will teach the class faster than a lower ranked school but then have testing at the same level is a hard argument to make. You cover more material, you test for more material. There are always exceptions but this seems pretty obvious. The whole academic game is kind of a racket though. It’s hard for some and nothing for others, even in the same school in the same class in the same semester. I had a course at William & Mary that I took with a good friend of mine at the time. It was a writing class. The teacher sometimes didn’t even bother to show up, leaving the class sitting waiting for more than an hour. She never taught anything. And she graded people without reading their work closely, based on who she favored, giving out bad grades to those who questioned her. My friend was very connected to people in the teacher’s industry. After a couple of weeks he stopped doing work and never turned in the semester-long project, which he just didn’t do. The teacher had told him that she knew he was so busy that she understood and would give him a pass. An A for no work. She tried to shaft me on my grade. When she found out I was close friends with her prized golden ram, she got embarrassed. “Oh you are working with him? Why didn’t you tell me you two were close friends?” And she bumped my grade up a little.
That’s academia for you. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. So take everything with a grain of salt. You never know what your teacher is going to be like until you are are halfway though her class.
@Farquhar : A world class scholar and mediocre or poor teacher is the current paradigm in the U.S. It makes sense.
A hard argument? Dude I can show you bunches of exams I have gotten off the internet from several instructors that taught or still teach courses. You also mention William and Mary which has more of a focus on teaching than many places. It is quite common and still very possible to test at a superficial level. Many faculty will not even realize that they are doing that. Ever listen to Eric Mazur on this topic? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBzn9RAJG6Q
Many faculty are actually well aware with issues of assessment. You are confusing the amount of material tested versus “how” it is tested. That is the problem that even some faculty at elites struggle with. More material may be covered faster, but to avoid trouble in grading, you make assessments that mostly use 1-3 on Bloom’s taxonomy. This is what I meant.
I will give you an example that happens in general chemistry for example. The instructor at a more selective school may tend to “dress up” some exam items to make them look harder. But they usually just end up being plug and chug with lots of words (meaning students have to sort of sift through those words to find the numbers) in comparison to “lesser schools” but sometimes this is not the case (like there are many faculty that rarely ask conceptual questions, graphing questions in the free response section, even at elites). In organic chemistry I have seen cases where instructors are so clearly only testing what came directly from lecture or the book and the exams are often completely devoid of application or derivation (algorithmic problem solving). This latter scenario is actually very common at much less competitive schools. The primary difference is that the amount of tested content is typically higher at a school beyond a certain threshold. However, where the items fall on Bloom’s Taxonomy are too often unfortunately similar. Now in better departments with better teachers/known for more rigor (which…surprise, even at many elites are often lecturers/instructional faculty), you really begin to see differences. Also perhaps at smaller schools where grading is less burdensome, you will see bigger differences.
You are certainly more likely to find rigorous instructors at elites but again, some have questionable ideas of rigor and some may just not be as great at assessment as they/we think they are. You still have many that are great, but let us not say that selectivity alleviates common problems in highered.
@Farquhar: You can tell how difficult classes will be in many subjects by syllabi, tests, project assignments, and grade distributions if you can find them out.
These days, a lot is online.
My son has happened to take Discrete Math and related courses in several settings and has some basis for comparison.
– Last year he took Discrete Structures at a California Community College, a class that transfers to UCs. It was focused on getting the correct answer, and not much theory. He was pretty bored.
– He visited Harvey Mudd for a day and sat in on their Discrete Math course. It happened to be the same topic as they covered in the CCC class later that day when we returned home. (Graphs and trees.) The Harvey Mudd class was much more proof-based, but he found it understandable and enjoyable based on his preparation in the CCC class.
– He took “Automata and Formal Languages” at UC Santa Barbara this year. The prerequisite is the UC class that is equivalent to the CCC class he took. It was clear to him that the CCC class was taught at a bit lower level than the equivalent UC class, but not by a lot. And the prerequisite UC class was clearly not taught at the Harvey Mudd level from the level of his classmates. The Automata class was quite proof-based. He enjoyed it a lot and did quite well as far as grading.
– He’ll probably retake related classes at Caltech. He’s not (over)confident about his preparation for their classes. At the Caltech prefrosh event, a trivia question in a game they played was based on the context-free grammars he’d covered in the UCSB Automata class, so he was happy to be able to answer that question.
So, from his limited perspective so far, academic difficulty follows the expected hierarchy.
Caltech > Mudd > UCSB > Community College
I’ve read that grad schools may want a list of the textbooks used in major classes as a measure of course difficulty.
Caltech and Harvey Mudd are outliers in rigor and content compared to other schools (including other “elite” schools). For example, their “calculus” courses are theory and proof based, with the expectation that the student has had a regular high school or college calculus course before starting there.
Caltech Ma 1a textbook:
http://www.math.caltech.edu/~nets/cranks.pdf
For comparison, here is a regular calculus textbook:
https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-textbook-spring-2005/textbook/