I got my start at Glendale Community College (number 4 on that list). From there, I went on to UCLA, NASA/JPL, and, now, Google. It has been quite the journey. I wasn’t born in the US, nor was I from a wealthy or educated family (at one point we were on foodstamps, but reached ‘middle’ class by the time I started high-school). Though, in comparison, my parent’s journey has been a much longer one, where they were born in a third world country as second class citizens—-into the life of subsistance farming in a remote village on land they did not own.
The “inferiority complex” is real until you get to your new destination, and realize the people at UCLA or JPL or Google aren’t very different from you. Furthermore, projects/institutions that you have put on a pedestal since childhood are a lot less “magical” once you have seen how the sausage is made.
I’ve met exceptional people from Cal State schools and people I wouldn’t hire from MIT. At this point, I find the school a person graduated from, for undergrad, to be a weak signal at best; and in many cases their grad school as well.
The “inferiority complex” is real until you get to your new destination, and realize the people at UCLA or JPL or Google aren’t very different from you. Furthermore, projects/institutions that you have put on a pedestal since childhood are a lot less “magical” once you have seen how the sausage is made.
I’ve met exceptional people from Cal State schools and people I wouldn’t hire from MIT. At this point, I find the school a person graduated from, for undergrad, to be a weak signal at best; and in many cases their grad school as well.