I'm a YC founder and I dropped out of not-one-of-those colleges (RPI). My cofounder dropped out of high school.

Why not just give it a shot? Find the powerful parts of your story (I'm sure they exist) and share them!

We applied, as GP advocates for, mostly to sharpen our thinking. Just the application process would've been worth the time, even if we had gotten declined immediately. The interview 10x'd that value, then the YC batch itself was another multiple on top of that.

I would definitely count RPI as one of "those" colleges! I guess everyone has a different list, but for me, RPI is in the same category as Rose-Hulman, Olin, Harvey Mudd, etc. Perhaps not Ivy League level in the sense of being a household name, but still known among people in the field.

The "Ivy League" consists of precisely these eight schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale.

Honestly I feel like some of these are negative indicators when it comes to engineering cred.

Meanwhile, stellar engineering schools like Caltech, Stanford, and MIT are in a league of their own.

This comment is mostly to complain that using "Ivy League" as a shorthand for prestigious engineering schools is inaccurate.

Silicon League?

It’s definitely a great, high caliber school. But it’s not one of the dropout-porn inspiring ones like Stanford/Harvard.

For example, a lot of people drop out of RPI because it’s actually difficult to get good grades there (not why I did it FWIW). That’s not why anyone drops out of Harvard.

Not that I'm aware of, no, just the local state school.

My impression of the YC application process was that it was way more holistic than just educational background.

YC approval process is pretty much this:

- Do I even understand your idea.

- Have you talked to customers.

- Am I impressed in your use of time.

- Do I believe that your team is capable of delivering.

- Is it a good idea.

Most people can't get past the first two but obsess over the last two.

This is the process. They want people with high agency, a bias to action, and who make progress in the face of uncertainty.

This is a really good point because the vast majority of YC members (97-99%) either graduated or dropped out from Ivy League level schools, or really highly rated state schools. (Dropouts are also a very small minority.) There are YC members who didn’t come from prestigious schools, but they are outliers. Maybe it’s changed the last 4 years? That’s when I stopped tracking it.

That's definitely not true. Where did you get these numbers?

I had a side project that was meant to be an “IMDB of everything”. For my initial focus, I targeted YC, its companies and members. This involved looking at a lot of LinkedIn profiles and recording their alma mater because I wanted to give credit to organizations as well and not just individuals. That’s how I came to that conclusion.

The result surprised me as well but it also makes sense. Investors would be more eager to invest if the founders were already part of some of their networks. People from these schools also tend to be more inclined to be higher achievers than other places on average.

The only time where there was more educational diversity was probably only during the 1st two years of YC.

Has it changed in recent years? I would rather be wrong on this one.

Assuming it's true/accurate it seems like the kind of research you should share (for free or otherwise) with YC, because it seems like the kind of bias that they would be interested in correcting for.

Not just from an equality perspective, but also that good ideas and founders can come from anywhere. Top Schools are going to produce one type of founder and idea. People that have walked different paths, another.

I’ll see if I can scrounge up the data. For some years, I had the entire batch covered, but most had holes since not everyone had a LinkedIn account. Unfortunately, the more recent the years the less the data.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with what YC is doing. Startups are hard enough as is, and they found a formula that works consistently.

Dang going around saying, "no no apply anyway" says to me that even if it is in that state, that's not what they want.

As a unknown university dropout (2001) I wouldn't feel intimidated to apply, and may well go after the next batch (have just found a cofounder). I have to trust that they'll evaluate me on merits rather than prestige.

That’s the thing. They were clearly judging people on merits if you look at the founders closely. They just all happened to have graduated from really good schools.