I think EA should have organized outreach at each US state’s top public university (or at least, most of the 50 top public schools by state). You mention two schools that perfectly illustrate this:
1. University of Texas at Austin:
You quoted Scott Aaronson that: ”These days I run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, where almost every year I meet undergrads who I would’ve been thrilled to have at MIT.”
Well, UT is Texas’s top public school (ranked #38 nationally). Compare it to Texas’s premiere private institution, Rice University of Houston: Rice is technically “better” (#17 overall), but UT is 10x the size of Rice (yes, 10x! So many more potential EAs!) and $40K cheaper for a Texan (compare here, and wait for it to load). Also, people from the south clamor to attend Rice—it is known colloquially as one of “the Southern Ivys”, and they pay the same as a native Texan. The incentives are such that more bright Texans will attend UT than Rice.
(FWIW, Scott’s point of comparison, MIT, is also private!)
2. University of Maryland at College Park:
You name UMD in your post, as the example university with 25% of SAT scores as good as 75% of Harvard’s.
Well, UMD is Maryland’s top public school (#59 overall). Again, comparing it to the private institution that “beats it”, Johns Hopkins (#9 overall): UMD is 5x the size of JH and costs ~$50K less (compare here). And people from all over America choose to attend JH (again, once you are looking at private institutions, location doesn’t matter), so JH isn’t really filtering for Maryland’s best and brightest. If anything, it is filtering it out!
Conclusion: While I guess just looking for public universities in the national rankings works roughly as well, I think this is illuminating for what is going on here. Private institutions probably do a good job filtering for the best of people who are willing and able to attend a private institution, and they do filter nationwide. But many students are not willing or able to even participate in that race (and much of the race is rigged anyway). A separate sorting is going on in each state via the public universities.
If EA wants to reach all of the best of the best, rather than 80/20ing it, we need to operate within both sorting systems (private and nationwide vs. public and state-wide). EA has probably neglected public/state institutions far too much.
Action: -I wonder how EA can be seeded at some of these top state schools if they don’t already have a group? -I really appreciate all the gorgeous data in this post, and would love to see some comparing private to public universities -Does this also apply to top schools by country compared to global listings? For example, should there ideally be outreach at each top uni for each European country rather than looking at the overall best schools in Europe? America is an outlier for comparing the prestige of our private unis vs our public unis, but it might still apply.
I think EA should have organized outreach at each US state’s top public university (or at least, most of the 50 top public schools by state). You mention two schools that perfectly illustrate this:
1. University of Texas at Austin:
You quoted Scott Aaronson that:
”These days I run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, where almost every year I meet undergrads who I would’ve been thrilled to have at MIT.”
Well, UT is Texas’s top public school (ranked #38 nationally).
Compare it to Texas’s premiere private institution, Rice University of Houston: Rice is technically “better” (#17 overall), but UT is 10x the size of Rice (yes, 10x! So many more potential EAs!) and $40K cheaper for a Texan (compare here, and wait for it to load).
Also, people from the south clamor to attend Rice—it is known colloquially as one of “the Southern Ivys”, and they pay the same as a native Texan. The incentives are such that more bright Texans will attend UT than Rice.
(FWIW, Scott’s point of comparison, MIT, is also private!)
2. University of Maryland at College Park:
You name UMD in your post, as the example university with 25% of SAT scores as good as 75% of Harvard’s.
Well, UMD is Maryland’s top public school (#59 overall).
Again, comparing it to the private institution that “beats it”, Johns Hopkins (#9 overall): UMD is 5x the size of JH and costs ~$50K less (compare here).
And people from all over America choose to attend JH (again, once you are looking at private institutions, location doesn’t matter), so JH isn’t really filtering for Maryland’s best and brightest. If anything, it is filtering it out!
Conclusion:
While I guess just looking for public universities in the national rankings works roughly as well, I think this is illuminating for what is going on here. Private institutions probably do a good job filtering for the best of people who are willing and able to attend a private institution, and they do filter nationwide. But many students are not willing or able to even participate in that race (and much of the race is rigged anyway). A separate sorting is going on in each state via the public universities.
If EA wants to reach all of the best of the best, rather than 80/20ing it, we need to operate within both sorting systems (private and nationwide vs. public and state-wide). EA has probably neglected public/state institutions far too much.
Action:
-I wonder how EA can be seeded at some of these top state schools if they don’t already have a group?
-I really appreciate all the gorgeous data in this post, and would love to see some comparing private to public universities
-Does this also apply to top schools by country compared to global listings? For example, should there ideally be outreach at each top uni for each European country rather than looking at the overall best schools in Europe? America is an outlier for comparing the prestige of our private unis vs our public unis, but it might still apply.