wow, that is quite a stretch from what i said or implied in my article! Here is my central thesis:

"Thus, I assert that given two people with comparable levels of intelligence and technical skills, the one who did not go to a name-brand university will be more likely to display outward signs of elitism, arrogance, and snobbery as a form of compensation for his/her lack of visible status."

i'm sorry that i didn't make it more clear up-front (and my intro about school grades wasn't the greatest choice), but the central tenet of my article is that i am comparing people "with comparable levels of intelligence and technical skills". in other words, i'm asking you to compare identical twins, one who went to a well-known university and the other who went to a lesser-known university. i'm definitely not saying that one is smarter than the other :) quite the opposite, actually ... i'm controlling for intelligence/technical-skills

i really hope that i didn't write or imply any of what you accused me of writing, namely that i somehow feel that people who didn't make it into a well-known school are "not of the top intellect" ... if i did, please please point that out, and i will immediately take down the offending portions of that article. i don't want people mis-interpreting what was meant to be a simple statement.

Glad the author is here, so this doesn't stay one-sided! Some people here apparently think I'm trolling, but I'm simply cutting to the chase and hoping for a spirited and informed debate.

Mr. Guo, your article stands in opposition to itself. On the one hand, you try to state that "given comparable levels of intelligence or skill" and on the other "only the smartest have the highest grades". Your only example is one that does not draw a comparison of comparable persons (or rather, reaches the conclusion that an A student and a B student are not comparable or equivalent). And then you directly relate this situation of grades=intelligence to the world of adults. You don't say, "only smart people get into top schools", but the implication is pretty apparent.

Over the past few decades, largely because of the rise of the Internet, and the equalization of information access this brings about, name brand schools are finding themselves greatly diminished in reputation (it probably didn't help that our last president was mysteriously from Yale). World class research now regularly comes from lesser known schools without ridiculously large endowments. I'm not sure the same could be said 50-100 years ago. Yet an attitude persists in the "adult world" that people from tier-1 schools should start their careers higher and progress faster because they have somehow received a higher quality of education from their esteemed institutions of higher learning.

I think that this attitude is demonstrably false. In 14 years I've worked with a variety of people from a variety of educational backgrounds and I've seen virtually no difference in performance across the board. In fact, in the last two years I've had to take 2 Ivy League grads off of projects because of their failure to perform.

Understandably, many grads from these schools don't turn down these unearned opportunities (when was the last time you heard of a Harvard grad asking for a smaller starting salary because it wasn't fair?). I wouldn't. But to the folks who did not, for whatever reason (grades, opportunity, money, family, immigration, etc.), attend a name brand school, this unfairness smacks of all kinds of bad.

If I choose to ignore the elitist garbage in your post and focus only on your stated central argument, you decry their only avenue of dealing with the situation -- making noise about it. Yet you offer no other alternative except for an unstated "you shoulda gone to a better school then."

You've chosen to define this state of things as elitism, if you can find me a dictionary with a definition of elitism that matches your I'll eat my hat. You do hit the nail on the head with this however,

"Such an attitude is understandable, since alumni from top-tier schools have an implicit symbol of status from the name-recognition of their diploma, but alumni from more obscure universities often get puzzled replies of "hmmm, sorry, never heard of that place" when they mention their alma mater. Thus, in order to prove themselves as worthy colleagues, they must strive to more actively advertise and demonstrate their skills and technical competence, because their peers, superiors, and outside observers are not going to give them the benefit of the doubt."

A person saying "but I'm just as good as that guy from a name branded school!" is not elitism by any possible stretch of the word. It's a desire to seek equality and be given a fair shake. Something that, being a student two name branded schools you will never ever have to deal with. For a salient example, can you guess how immensely hard it is to even get a call back let alone a job from Google if you didn't graduate a top school? Who's elitist? The Stanford grads that don't call back the folks who graduated from xyz State University, or the people who graduated from xyz State University? These people have to make noise just to be seen beyond the brick wall of tier-1 graduated middle level managers in any organization.

But to my reading of the entirety of the article, what you seem most upset about is the declining status of the elite schools, and that people should have the temerity point this out in the real world. Instead of elitism, I think you are trying to turn this state of things into a kind of victimization. It's kind of sad really, the rest of us peons have had to get by on merit, it's time that the elite did also.

This time around you have some very interesting and well reasoned points.

But it does not diminish from the original points of the essay. People who lack visible status indicators will tend to make a lot of noice about how good they. This may be justified, or not depending on the person. It may be necessary, or not depending on the circumstances. But the tendency to do it is definitely there.

There is also a tendency, in some of these people making a lot of noise, to do it in the form of diminishing others.

A person who makes a lot of noice about how good they comes accross as at least slightly arrogant, someone who does this in the form of trying to lower others can come across as elitist.

I agree completely about people putting others down. I would call it more "bullying" than elitist. But that's just semantics.

I also agree with the claim that more disadvantaged people will make more noise to get noticed. That's because they have to.

The alternative is to simply accept the fallacy that people from elite backgrounds are simply better than you.

> There is also a tendency, in some of these people making a lot of noise, to do it in the form of diminishing others. So likewise, what many non-elite persons perceive is that, through various overt and subtle messages, that elites broadcast that they are better than non-elites. Perhaps through acts like social exclusion or hiring discrimination. I don't think that instances of a person saying "~~~I~~~ went to Harvard, and ~~~you~~~~ didn't so nyah" are all that common (but they do happen).

I think the author gets this and does in fact rail against this practice as a form of bullying.

ok, this is your most convincing post yet. i concede defeat, on two main points ...

1.) i can now understand why my intro regarding high school grades led people to make certain assumptions about what i was trying to say; again, horrible choice of intro

2.) i don't think my definition of elitism or elitist behavior matches up with the commonly-accepted definition, so that is where lots of conflicts seem to be arising

could you please email me at the address i posted on my webpage? (i haven't figured out if you can private message on HN yet, sorry) i want to ask you something personally ... don't worry, it's nothing scary or bad :)

Live and learn. You've suffered a withering attack here, but you've continued to engage. I like that, upvoted for balls.

At the very least it was a popular and thought provoking article that warranted lots of passionate debate. Borderline trollish, but with enough elements of truth as to make for interesting forum fodder!

Email being sent if I can figure out this Internet thing with the education I received from a 2nd rate school ;)

His arguments are not built on that axiom. Never does he claim that the "only the smartest" people make it into the top schools. His argument is based on signals (such as grades and pedigree), not actual intelligence.

His claim is that some people who lack one signal (academic pedigree) will try to compensate with another signal (elitism).

The central claim of the article

"Given two people with comparable levels of intelligence and technical skills, the one with less-reputable external marks of status will be more likely to display outward signs of elitism, arrogance, and snobbery."

and the content are in conflict.

Before the first paragraph is even over Mr. Guo has provided his actual claim

"the most arrogant and academically-snobby kids in the classroom were the ones who were undoubtedly smart but not the smartest. _The smartest kids in the class had reputable externally-recognizable marks of status --- their top-ranked grades on exams and homeworks --- and thus did not need to assert their intelligence._"

I'm not really sure how much more clear that needs to be made. The parallel he then draws is:

"As adults, one common external mark of status is the reputation of one's college. Just like how there are name-brand clothing lines and electronics products, there are also name-brand colleges: What college-educated person hasn't heard of Harvard, Yale, or Stanford? Thus, I assert that given two people with comparable levels of intelligence and technical skills, the one who did not go to a name-brand university will be more likely to display outward signs of elitism, arrogance, and snobbery as a form of compensation for his/her lack of visible status."

The argument is clear and I stand by my statement. The elitism in the article is clear, and it's not the tier 1+n schooled folks. You'll have to recheck your receiver because the only signal I'm getting from this is, "hey state school, did I give you permission to talk? The grown ups can't hear each other over the racket you're making."

Just because it's couched in fancified language like "externally-recognizable marks of status" doesn't change what he's saying.

thanks for that post, scott_s!

that beautifully sums up the thrust of my article way better than my article actually did ;)

sorry for seeming like i'm sucking up, but i think that comments on HN are amongst the highest quality i've seen on the web ... perhaps there should be an online service where an intelligent crowd reads articles and tries to summarize them succinctly in one sentence or paragraph. i think that this organically occurs with lots of articles posted on HN ... amongst the dozens of comments, there will be a few awesome summaries.