This post irked me because I think it’s wrong if you raise the bar for what “Ivy-smart” means. If it means something like “being good at an academic thing on a national (or even state) level” then I think most of these people are at Ivy League schools. For example, I know ~40 people who went to Olympiad training camps or were finalists in research contests, and pretty much all of them other than one or two are at top 10 schools. As another example, one competitive math research program list its results for alumni:
This research program I think is considered around as tough to get into as making the national math Olympiad.
I’m estimating there are maybe 5,000 − 10,000 people who would qualify as being good at something on the national level per four year groups (how I’m getting this estimate—good at national level = top 500 in something, there are maybe 10ish academic areas, and each of this has 1-2 ways to be good. For example, for sciences there are olympiads and research, for CS there’s CS research and building impressive projects, etc. ) Meanwhile, after a quick google search there are about 24,000 who would get a 150+ SAT score. It seems to me that there are a lot of people who are great at something on a national level that don’t know what EA is. Maybe enough that we should focus on Ivies significantly more than anywhere else?
As others have said, this really depends on what the context is. If we’re choosing how much money to spend on which University groups, and all University groups have around equal need for money, I’m guessing that the vast majority of the money should go towards Ivy University groups.
I briefly looked into this. Of the 22 Fields medalists since 2002, X went to undergrad at elite US universities, Y went to non-elite US universities, and Z went to non-US universities.
Please register your predictions for what numbers should fill X, Y, and Z.
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[...]
The answers are 1 (Harvard), 0, and 21, respectively. So the evidence does maybe weakly support investing in elite US universities over non-elite US universities, but pretty weakly. A far more important point seems to be that many people with outlier talent on this dimension are neither American nor come to the US as undergrads.
I’d like to see this foray replicated for metrics of top ex post performance in physics, CS, and entrepreneurship.
Update: I helped Linch collect data on the undergrad degrees of exceptionally successful people (using some of the ex post metrics Linch mentioned).
Of the 32 Turing Award winners in the last 20 years, 6 attended a top 10 US university, 16 attended another US university, 3 attended Oxbridge, and 7 attended other non-US universities. (full data)
Of the 97 Decacorn company founders I could find education data for, 19 attended a top 10 US university, 32 attended another US university, and 46 attended non-US universities (no Oxbridge). (full data)
So it seems like people who are successful on these metrics are pretty spread out across both US/elsewhere and elite/non-elite unis, but concentrated enough that having considerable focus on top US universities makes sense (assuming a key aim is to target people with the potential to be extremely successful).
The concentration gets a bit higher for PhDs for the Turing Award winners (28% at top 10 US universities). It’s also higher for younger Decacorn company founders (e.g., 50% of under-35s in the US at MIT or Stanford) – so that gives some (relatively weak) evidence that concentration at top US universities has increased in the last few decades.
There’s a doc with more details here for anyone interested.
Wow awesome analysis! Haven’t read super carefully just yet but does seem to point in the opposite direction of the evidence I present insofar as it relates to uni CB. I think this would be worth making a normal high-level post! Blame it on me and link this comment if anyone disagrees lol
My only super brief thought, which I don’t think is controversial but I’ll make explicit, is that reverse causality (i.e. Stanford signal->success metric) is one reason you might not want to take this as knockdown evidence in favor of “Ivies select for talent,” though I really don’t have a great guess as to how much this is indeed the case
This post irked me because I think it’s wrong if you raise the bar for what “Ivy-smart” means. If it means something like “being good at an academic thing on a national (or even state) level” then I think most of these people are at Ivy League schools. For example, I know ~40 people who went to Olympiad training camps or were finalists in research contests, and pretty much all of them other than one or two are at top 10 schools. As another example, one competitive math research program list its results for alumni:
This research program I think is considered around as tough to get into as making the national math Olympiad.
I’m estimating there are maybe 5,000 − 10,000 people who would qualify as being good at something on the national level per four year groups (how I’m getting this estimate—good at national level = top 500 in something, there are maybe 10ish academic areas, and each of this has 1-2 ways to be good. For example, for sciences there are olympiads and research, for CS there’s CS research and building impressive projects, etc. ) Meanwhile, after a quick google search there are about 24,000 who would get a 150+ SAT score. It seems to me that there are a lot of people who are great at something on a national level that don’t know what EA is. Maybe enough that we should focus on Ivies significantly more than anywhere else?
As others have said, this really depends on what the context is. If we’re choosing how much money to spend on which University groups, and all University groups have around equal need for money, I’m guessing that the vast majority of the money should go towards Ivy University groups.
I briefly looked into this. Of the 22 Fields medalists since 2002, X went to undergrad at elite US universities, Y went to non-elite US universities, and Z went to non-US universities.
Please register your predictions for what numbers should fill X, Y, and Z.
[...]
[...]
The answers are 1 (Harvard), 0, and 21, respectively. So the evidence does maybe weakly support investing in elite US universities over non-elite US universities, but pretty weakly. A far more important point seems to be that many people with outlier talent on this dimension are neither American nor come to the US as undergrads.
I’d like to see this foray replicated for metrics of top ex post performance in physics, CS, and entrepreneurship.
[Shortform version of this comment here.]
Update: I helped Linch collect data on the undergrad degrees of exceptionally successful people (using some of the ex post metrics Linch mentioned).
Of the 32 Turing Award winners in the last 20 years, 6 attended a top 10 US university, 16 attended another US university, 3 attended Oxbridge, and 7 attended other non-US universities. (full data)
Of the 97 Decacorn company founders I could find education data for, 19 attended a top 10 US university, 32 attended another US university, and 46 attended non-US universities (no Oxbridge). (full data)
So it seems like people who are successful on these metrics are pretty spread out across both US/elsewhere and elite/non-elite unis, but concentrated enough that having considerable focus on top US universities makes sense (assuming a key aim is to target people with the potential to be extremely successful).
The concentration gets a bit higher for PhDs for the Turing Award winners (28% at top 10 US universities). It’s also higher for younger Decacorn company founders (e.g., 50% of under-35s in the US at MIT or Stanford) – so that gives some (relatively weak) evidence that concentration at top US universities has increased in the last few decades.
There’s a doc with more details here for anyone interested.
Wow awesome analysis! Haven’t read super carefully just yet but does seem to point in the opposite direction of the evidence I present insofar as it relates to uni CB. I think this would be worth making a normal high-level post! Blame it on me and link this comment if anyone disagrees lol
My only super brief thought, which I don’t think is controversial but I’ll make explicit, is that reverse causality (i.e. Stanford signal->success metric) is one reason you might not want to take this as knockdown evidence in favor of “Ivies select for talent,” though I really don’t have a great guess as to how much this is indeed the case