How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Talent (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/science/which-matters-more-talent-or-practice.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Carnegie Hall, specifically, is known for enabling sub-par performers to rent the space (along with all its prestige and history, of course). Yes you can "get to Carnegie Hall" on talent alone - OR you can just pay your way in. Rentals start at just above $1,000 (for one of the smaller auditoriums on a weekday) and go up to $20k (for the main Stern auditorium on a Saturday night). To put this in perspective, if you get the most expensive rental and sell out its 2,800 seats at just $10 per ticket (the rental fee includes ticket marketing and sales by Carnegie Hall, by the way), you will pocket $8k in profits.

In the music world, this is a well known punchline to the "how do you get to Carnegie Hall" joke. Lots of people get in that way, such as the Tiger Mom's daughter, as one famous example. (And let me tell you... as a classical music lover duped into attending these performances because of the Carnegie Hall brand - they suck).

There is an interesting parallel to another front-page post on HN today, _Entrepreneurs don 't have a gene for risk – they come from families with money_ ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10151566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10151566)). This quote fits especially nicely: "So while yes, there's certainly a lot of hard work that goes into building something, there's also a lot of privilege involved - a factor that is often underestimated."

<comment><USER3> These lines of reasoning (it's talent/money, not work/grit/focus) appeal to those who don't want to take responsibility for their own success or failure.

<comment><USER4> The line of reasoning that money or social status play no role appeal to those who have it and who want to think of themselves as entirely "self-made." It wasn't the millions of dollars I got handed or the premium education, no, it was pure grit and hard work.

You see this all the time with rich people. They're the kids of even richer people but yet still are "self-made" who "started out with nothing" and did it through "hard work."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you see a few people with wealthy beginning say that.

You also see plenty of success stories of people with much humbler beginnings say that.

Which you choose to focus on is either going to motivate you to work hard or be an excuse to not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was a professional classical musician for a number of years before getting into programming. I'd say that this article lines up with my experience pretty well. Obviously to be successful you need to have some level of hard work and the more you work the better, but really talent is the main delineator at the very top.

I think there are basically 3 categories of talent.

Top level: I had a friend who practiced about 1 hour a day and now plays professionally in the Boston Symphony. Obviously she had bucketloads of talent. These folks are quite rare.

Middle Tier (this is where I was): Folks who worked quite hard for a decade or more squashing all of their performance weaknesses to get to the level where they could perform professionally. There are a fair number of these people.

Quixotic: Even when these folks practice 6 hours a day, they never progress beyond a certain ability level. They will never be professionals. Sometimes it takes a couple of decades before they give up. I have a lot of friends that fall into this category of talent.

Of course there are people who have top level talent _and_ pour on bucket loads of work. The one guy I knew in college who was like this is now in the Canadian Brass.

I spent a couple of decades playing my instrument before quitting and I can say without a doubt that the idea that talent is _actually_ hard work is complete nonsense.

There are many technical "sticking points" that most people need to overcome before they can perform at a professional level. The most talented performers breeze through most or all of the sticking points that everyone else has.

The non-obvious side effect of this is that the most talented players are often the worst teachers - because they have no idea how to help anyone else get through their "sticking points". But that's another discussion entirely.....

</comment><comment><USER6> I went to music conservatories before getting into this industry.

At least for classical music. As a general rule, the people that get steady orchestra jobs that pay around 100k have a lot of natural talent, practice a lot, use practice time well, and have great teachers.

It takes all of these in US because of supply and demand. There are a lot of very good players and relatively very few jobs.

An analogy might be if the only 100k+ programming jobs in US were at Google, and almost all other programmers had to freelance because no other jobs were available.

</comment><comment><USER7> Relevant Father Ted: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-eXcazOhHk&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-eXcazOhHk&feature=youtu.be&t=123)

</comment><comment><USER8> One thing these debates ignore is the role of talent in making one enjoy the activity. I think talent helps one achieve early success and so enjoy it more and want to practice more. In fact I wonder if what we think of as talent might be a few characteristics, one of which is love of the activity.

<comment><USER9> I think you're right. I made a comment below about Jimi Hendrix. It's debatable how much "natural ability" he had, i.e., he wasn't one of those rare prodigies who picks up the guitar at age 3 and can instinctually make it sound good.

But what's not debatable is his overarching _love_ of the guitar and obsession with learning everything he could to play it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd recommend reading "Talent Is Overrated" [0]

While I agree that innate talent exists I disagree that it cannot be made up for.

[0] - [http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World- Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class- Performers/dp/1591842948)

<comment><USER11> So which great performer, a pianist for instance, 'made up' for lack of talent?

<comment><USER10> Well the idea is what you perceive as talent is actually a lot of hard work.

<comment><USER12> How about the talent is exactly in being able to put the hard work?

That (determination, persistence etc for a particular task) might be something people are born with, or something people develop young and can't much change it.

<comment><USER13> I'm me. I'm more talented at some things than other, even the same domain: I'm far, far better at piano than classical guitar despite having worked far more on the latter.

So, is the theory that I work hard than me? Or, maybe I work less hard than me?

Doesn't make sense. There are talent differences independent of levels of work. This is trivially true.

<comment><USER12> > _So, is the theory that I work hard than me? Or, maybe I work less hard than > me? Doesn 't make sense._

Looks like you missed the whole (emphasis mine):

"That (determination, persistence etc FOR A PARTICULAR TASK)"

You might have worked more hours, but with less effectiveness (because guitar doesn't inspire you etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The paper referenced in the article is available here: [http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/Macn...](http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/Macnamara-et-al.-2014.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> TL;DR "But in the end, the most important factor over which people have control — whether juggling, jogging or memorizing a script — may be not how much they practice, but how effectively they use that time."

</comment><comment><USER16> > _" If you throw all these kinds of practice into one big soup, of course you > are going to reduce the effect of deliberate practice," he said in a > telephone interview."_

I can't help but feel like NYT is just baiting with this headline. The headline talks about talent, but the article meanders through a couple of thoughts and quotes and never arrives at talent. Or anywhere. There's no substance here, just a headline that makes it seem like they're going to make a point they never do.

<comment><USER17> "Deliberate Practice" is a stupid lie. The claims about it are completely unfalsifiable. If practice doesn't show results then you just say it wasn't "deliberate".

<comment><USER18> Untrue. How about a definition? Concentration; slow repetition gradually increased in tempo; no distractions and no false moves. Done over time and systematically, results can be compared to the usual "play it wrong 100 times until you accidentally play it right" technique.

This is clearly possible to do well. And easily compared with any other technique. No need to call it stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Asian tiger mom got her kid to Carnegie Hall - once. (iirc)

</comment><comment><USER20> For a minute I thought this was about literally how to get to carnegie hall. Thought to myself: "surely google maps works better than talent."

<comment><USER21> That's actually the joke. A tourist stops a person on the street in New York City and asks, "pardon me, do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?" The person replies, "talent."

<comment><USER22> You're missing one level of reference here. The usual joke has the person reply "Practice". The article is suggesting that talent is more important, relative to practice, than is commonly thought.

So when you see the headline you're supposed to read the first bit, expect the ending "practice", see "talent" instead, and understand that the article is likewise going to replace "practice" with "talent" somehow. (Or to look back at it after reading the article, see what they were playing at, and be impressed by their wit.)

<comment><USER21> Ah, I suppose I am. I've heard the joke as "talent" or some variation, though maybe people just use talent and practice interchangeably.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Digital Ocean enforcing 'no multiple accounts' policy without exception? - <AUTHOR>

They are saying I must either make each client the  billing contact on their own account or I must use Team Accounts.
Here's my reply:
1. I cannot make my clients the billing contact. They don't want it - they pay me to handle hosting. I don't want it - I'd need to clear every single change in cost with their purchasing department whenever I make a change with cost implications.
2. Team accounts are great but currently they are missing one features that is really impossible to work around: fine-grained control of access. I CANNOT allow outside developers access to the whole account for multiple clients. It would break PCI compliance and local data-protection laws.
Surely you can see that Team Accounts aren't ready for prime time without this? Please revert to the previous flexible policy until you've plugged this major hole in the Team Account functionality.
I've thought of one more huge deal-breaker. I write automated deployment scripts. It's critical that the potential for a buggy script to cause damage be limited to a single client. If I am forced to have all clients on a single account that will be terrifying. <comment><USER2> Hi andybak,

I'm a Product Manager at DigitalOcean. We genuinely appreciate the feedback and are still working on additional features for Team Accounts. I'll reach out via email so you have my contact info and can have a direct line to those of us building new features and even be included in testing future additional features to Team Accounts if you like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Tim,

I think it's really simple - you need to remain flexible on this policy until you've built fine-grained access control into Team Accounts.

Our update/deploy scripts use our Digital Ocean API key which is an 'all or nothing' access token.

So this means that any developer who I need to allow to push changes to any staging server can also push changes to production for every single client I host on Digital Ocean.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on BijectKarma, our YC prototype - <AUTHOR>

As rejection comes with no explanation (understandably, given the number of YC applicants), we'd (unignorant & zaveri) like to ask the critical eyes of HN readers for some feedback. A short description of our idea follows:
BijectKarma is a place where developers, designers, and hackers can request and fulfill services for karma
(our currency). By completing requests, users can build portfolios and form networks while developing an
online reputation. Think of us as Listia.com, but for services.
Prototype url: http://yc.ethanjfast.com <comment><USER2> Not trying to be too harsh, but since you asked:

What makes your site different than a Stack Exchange site?

How do you plan to entice users to do work, for free?

If you plan to entice them with Karma alone (i.e. no monetary pay-out), how do you guarantee that there will be something they wish to purchase with the Karma they earn? (i.e. How are you going to build to critical mass?)

For that matter, if I'm going to do work for others to earn Karma, and then spend that Karma to hire work from others...why wouldn't I just do work for others to earn _money_ , and then spend that _money_ for a whole range of things beyond just what I can find on your site?

 _Edit_ : Just realized I wasn't very constructive there...to expand on my last point: there _are_ downsides to doing work for money (i.e. finding buyers/sellers/clients/contractors, contracts, rate negotiations, tax forms, etc.). So, I'm not saying your idea couldn't work, but as it is presented now, it's just not horribly interesting.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this model how open source development works? How are programmers motivated to do open source work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the concept of trading services based on karma points is good. If I can build a simple site for a plumber or mechanic, to have them fix a broken pipe or replace my clutch, that's pretty valuable. Things aren't that black and white or simple, but this is a start to getting back into a society where people help each other in exchange for services. This might be more of a local (think craigslist) thing too. I do think the name is pretty horrible though.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of a recent HN post that contrasted product vs. technology vs. business. I get your product but not your business.

A business turns something into money. What is it that you are turning into money? How are you turning this into money?

This also reminds me of a not-so-recent HN post describing different business personalities that are needed in a startup: the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. It looks like you're strong in the technician area, but what about the entrepreneurial area? Your video describes how your product works-- that's how technicians think. It doesn't directly address the user's problems --that's how an entrepreneur thinks. What problem are you solving for your users and is their problem bad enough that they will pay someone money to solve it?

</comment><comment><USER6> The video is a bit long. You want to say in a nice way: People offer job and trade karma. People accept job and get karma. I don't need to watch a 2min video with login, logout, login, logout, login, logout to understand that. Otherwise, I like the idea.

<comment><USER7> 2 separate browsers for the 2 users (preventing the login ping-pong) would go a long way

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Prototype url: <http://yc.ethanjfast.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. It's a start, but I think the idea needs work.

What is the upside in completing a job then pitching for the contract vs. pitching for the contract then completing the job?

</comment><comment><USER9> ok, Feedback:

\- great idea!

\- I think the homepage needs to show better what the site is about, above you have a nice start of a blurb, if you can trim that a bit it would make for a nice sub-title

\- Why does looking at the entries for awesome work require registration ?

\- why limit yourself to 'free' ?

\- how will you monetize this ?

\- I don't understand the link between the name and the product. Maybe there doesn't have to be one but then you could pick an easier one!

</comment><comment><USER10> Get rid of the first 5 seconds of the video .. "this will be a small screencast to demo functionality". It's redundant, the information is implicit.

i stopped watching after the first 15 seconds, you gotta get to the juicy parts quicker. Because after first glance i have no idea wtf your site does.</comment>


The Czur Scanner Can Build a Digital Library Five Minutes at a Time - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/02/the-czur-scanner-can-build-a-digital-library-five-minutes-at-a-time/ <comment><USER2> There seems to be a contradiction regarding scan rate. At about 1'30", it says "scan speed less than 5 seconds per page" at about 1'45", it says "60-80 pages per minute", which is potentially 5 times the stated capability.

is one or both statements erroneous? Or, is there a buffering-and-save-for- later-processing going on behind the scenes?

I think more clarity is needed overall: 1) is there built-in OCR capability? 2) What file formats can be produced? PDF? DOC? 3) planned O/S support (Windows, Mac, Linux) ?</comment>


Why We Chose Ember.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.fnaweso.me/why-we-chose-ember-js/?h=n

<comment><USER2> We're at a time where choosing AngularJS for a new large project would be a difficult choice. AngularJS is about to see 2.0 which is a complete redesign. Do you choose to use 1.x which will eventually be deprecated for a brand new project, or do you choose to pick up the new 2.0 which no longer supports IE9? The timing is just not quite good for AngularJS, right now.</comment>


Inkjet Printing of High Performance Transistors (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01391-2 <comment><USER2> Can we inkjet print an RFID tag? People have been wanting to replace barcode with RFID in auto-ID for ages now. If we can print a high-performance transistor could we inkjet-print conductors into a coil on the same substrate?

<comment><USER3> It would be tough because you would need a lot of transistors, at least a few thousand even for the simplest of RFID tags. In this study they only managed to print about 200. Given that you can buy RFID stickers for ~0.1 USD the economics don't really stack up.</comment></comment>


Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian' - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/asians-college-strategy-dont-check-asian-174442977.html <comment><USER6> I would advise an asian college applicant to an elite school to strongly consider not checking the "asian" box. It is absolutely true that they're in competition against the other asian applicants. It's also absolutely true that the asian applicants have extremely common profiles in terms of activities, test scores, grades, and points of view.

When I was an admissions office for a short time, my advice to asian applicants looking to be noticed was to go to clown school, perform as a semi- professional magician, or even excel at sports.

Violin, cello, piano, essays about translating for your immigrant parents, computers, math, science...all that stuff blends together after awhile and makes it hard for an admissions office to remember you when sitting around the table voting on applicants.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious. In your experience, was it just those activities (Violin, cello, piano, etc) that were beaten to death and no longer desirable, or was more about the uniformity of Asian applicants?

For example, if a white kid had the same piano + math achievements as an Asian one did in the same year, would he stand out more?

<comment><USER6> The white kid might stand out a bit more, but he'd probably get lost in the crush, too. There's got to be a twist, there's got to be an angle.

So a kid with incredible credentials who plays the violin and is awesome at math....who grew up in an igloo is going to get extra attention.

That same kid who went to a math/science academy in NYC has a tough path in front of him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was 13, I think, when I went to compete in the all-Ukrainian math olympiad, back a bunch of years ago when it was called a "republican" olympiad because Ukraine was a republic in the USSR and not a separate country. It was a long event: delegations from all the regions came and were housed in a sort of summer camp for two weeks. As we were getting registered, one of the organizers who was getting everyone's details for the official forms told me she needed to know my ethnicity.

I was pretty naive, and after thinking it over for a few minutes I decided to ask her for advice. I said to her: "Well, I'm really not sure what to tell you, see, my mother's Jewish, and my father's Ukrainian. Can you write them both? Or am I supposed to choose somehow? What do you think?" I'd actually thought it through a bit more and was ready to continue telling her how my parents were divorced and I was living with my mother so I should probably choose that side... but I decided to wait for her response first.

She looked at me a bit funny (I think now that she was trying to see if I was being ironic. I wasn't). She held a pause. And then she said firmly: "Let's just write you up as a Ukrainian, shall we?"

<comment><USER9> It reminds me: I believe in Feyman's day, Jews were fighting a similar problem to Asians now.

I'm pretty sure that SAM (a Jewish frat?) was gone by the 80s at MIT, as a calibration point.

Edit: I was a little confused, he was turned away from Columbia for being Jewish. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota>

<comment><USER10> I remember reading an article in ... I believe it was the New Republic ... that said that the "holistic admissions process" of today, with the essays, activities, etc. supplanted the earlier more test-scores / grades-centric approach at the Ivy League precisely in an attempt to admit fewer Jews.

<comment><USER11> _I remember reading an article . . . that said that the "holistic admissions process" of today, with the essays, activities, etc. supplanted the earlier . . . approach at the Ivy League precisely in an attempt to admit fewer Jews._

The much-cited article on the subject is by Malcolm Gladwell, and was first published in the New Yorker.

<http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html>

The article is a review of a book by Jerome Karable, which gives many details of the history of admission policies at selective United States universities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently went through the b-school admissions process (admitted to several 'elite' schools but, ultimately, decided not to enroll). It was a remarkable experience. Remarkable in that it made me feel completely inadequate and commoditized...and I was a successful applicant! There's an entire industry built upon the panic and stress of young over-achievers who believe their life will be defined by the rank of their school. It's called admissions consulting...and the rates they charge. oh, brother.

I feel supremely sorry for any 16-year-old trying to get into a top ranked school right now. As a fairly stable 26-year-old it made me depressed like nothing before. It's a broken process that's been spoiled rotten by the bottom feeders who will tell a kid "you won't get in unless you pay me five grand to help you." (i couldn't afford it...)

If you want to see some people really freak out over race and admissions, talk to some Indian B-school hopefuls (note: I am not Indian). They are absolutely bucketed and compete against one another.

<comment><USER13> As a 16-year-old who will be applying to these elite schools next year, I can vouch for the things you're saying. The competition is insane, and it puts the prospective applicants through a lot.

On the topic of race - It's no unusual occurrence to hear some HYPSM reject at my school (pretty average/ordinary California high school) say "I was rejected because I was Asian/White/Indian/whatever." It really bothers me because these kids never had a shot at those top schools anyway. They were above-average at an ordinary high school. They really had nothing to differentiate them from any other applicant. It was the same "Smart kid with good grades and an SAT score above 2000 who was loosely involved in a club or two."

The mentality is, if you get a 2000+ SAT score, then certainly you are some sort of genius who belongs at Harvard. You participated in _two_ clubs?! Wow! You got A's in a few of your AP classes?! Look out Stanford!

They think there is some formula to admission, where it's just a stats competition. If you have the right stats, then you're in. But their goal numbers are weak, and they detract from what really matters, and that is being amazing and following your passion (see here - <http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/esse-quam-videri>).

And when they get rejected, their first reaction is to blame the black kid. It bothers me because there were other people of their race accepted, and they were accepted because they proved their worth to that college, just like the black kid did. The sore losers complaining don't see that they offered nothing unique or notable to the college that any one of the other thousands of Regular Genius Kids(TM) didn't. All things considered, and race not considered, it's the _amazing_ and truly notable kids who get accepted. Whether white, black, Asian, or whatever, those amazing individuals proved that they themselves could offer something truly valuable to the college, and they were accepted as a result. There are no average Asians at MIT. There are no average black people at MIT. There are no average anyone at MIT, they're all amazing in some way.

EDIT: Disclaimer, I'm white.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages.

They don't reject high-performance black athletes for lower performing, asian athletes. I've never once heard anyone complain that their university's football team had a disproportionate number of non-asian people.

Serious double standard there.

<comment><USER15> When someone offers the opinion that rejecting high-performing Asians is a "serious double standard" I ask myself a few questions.

Do Asians have considerably higher academic performance than most other ethnic groups? Yes, they do.

Do I believe Asian people are inherently more intelligent and capable? No, I do not.

Do I think that colleges should admit students based on academic performance or intelligence and capability? I think intelligence and capability are clearly more important qualities.

The only conclusion I can draw is that academic performance is clearly a bad indicator in some ways, if it so severely favors one racial group. Therefore colleges' unwillingness to judge Asians with the same standards of academic performance is a reasonable policy to me.

<comment><USER16> This is plain silly.

How do you plan to measure "intelligence and capability"? By this logic, a brilliant-slacker-underachiever should be the most sought after candidate. Who cares about results, after all, when all that matters is someone's raw intelligence (regardless of whether or not it has been or will be applied to anything at all).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Stories like this irk me, because they overlook the larger injustice of continuing to think about elite schools as meritocratic institutions, when they are plainly not. At Harvard, for example, the bottom half of the income distribution makes up 6.5% of students.[1] When we consider the most selective schools in aggregate, we see that nearly _three-quarters_ of incoming freshmen at those schools are drawn from the top quartile of incomes.[2]

The illusion of merit that graduation from these schools imparts leads to a false sense of mastery amongst those who've been able to scale the pyramid of achievement, a self-deception that has had pretty profound consequences for the country since, oh I don't know, say 2008 or so.

[1]: [http://chronicle.com/article/Pell-Grant-Recipients- Are/12689...](http://chronicle.com/article/Pell-Grant-Recipients-Are/126892/)

[2]: [http://books.google.com/books?id=4JyQus8r9JYC&pg=PA150&#...</a>

<comment><USER18> According to this study ([http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat- scores-and-...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and- family-income/)), there's a clear correlation between students from high income backgrounds having higher scores versus students from lower income backgrounds having lower scores as well.

<comment><USER17> I suggest this piece [1] by David Leonhart. As he points out in the final paragraph:

        [...] all else equal, a low-income applicant was no more likely to get in than a high-income applicant with the same SAT score.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhar...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, > perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in"

Why is asking for ethnicity even legal?

<comment><USER20> ive never seen anything like it, is it a compulsory question?

we often have "are you a aboriginal or torres strait islander" but that is always clearly marked as optional and only used for measuring progress in improving the absolutely disgusting state of education for indigenous australians.

really i always thought america was better then this... TIL

<comment><USER21> They have always been optional in my experience (hence the whole point of the linked article). Perhaps you don't see questions like this as much because Australia is less diverse (92% white)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> According to PBS, Race is an Illusion: <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>

Jared Diamond concurs: [http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/0...](http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/001377.html)

If you believe their arguments, there is no scientific basis for categorizing someone on the basis of race. Appearance is particularly hazardous.

Therefore, why can't Asians mark black on the application? Who is to say they are not black if they self-identify as black? According to PBS, Jared Diamond, and many sociology departments, it is impossible to administer a genetic test that distinguishes African Americans from Asians, so self-identification is the only measure that matters.

So: why would Asians simply self-identify as white? Why not self-identify as black?

If race just a sociocultural construct, well, many Asian Americans certainly are into rap music and cultural markers that are associated with socially constructed category of African American. So why aren't they black?

<comment><USER14> I haven't read much on the subject, but the idea that races can't be separated based on genetics is either false, or due to the fact that we don't have enough sensitivity in the measurement.

Phenotypically, I can easily identify a black person vs. an asian person, with nearly 100% accuracy. What I'm seeing are phenotypic differences in hair type, skin colour, facial structure, etc. that are all defined by genetics.

It's ludicrous to think that I can't sort people into groups based on these apparent differences(and I'm talking broad racial categories, not Ukranians vs. Russians or anything). Ignoring that might be PC, but it's definitely not realistic.

Just to be clear, I'm not insinuating anything about intelligence, ability, or whatever. I'm just saying that to deny that there are distinct categories that humans can be classified into is unrealistic. There may be edge cases, but nobody would mistake one of China's 1.6 billion people for an east African.

<comment><USER22> You are 100% correct, and anyone can verify for themselves that you can predict geographic ancestry from saliva to an incredible level of detail:

<https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/origins>

Nevertheless, if you take for the sake of argument the fallacious concept that "geographic ancestry has no connection to genetics", then there is and should be nothing stopping an Asian American (or a European American for that matter) from self-identifying as an African American. Is a university going to start administering blood tests?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My friend (Asian wife) hopes that his son might get into MIT. His son is not a superstar but has done quite well in math competitions. His son was a pretty good baseball player until they had to decide between Math competitions and sports. I always tell him that his son has to become more interesting - <USER2> one-dimension Math/Science stud - like Cal Newport talks about on his blog. And that some schools for MIT could be looking for a few good baseball players.

The interesting thing is that the cutthroat high school his son is enrolled at - the AP weed-out courses, the hardest ones are the humanities. Courses like Modern European History.

> For these students, extracurricular activities play a different role than > for their peers. They don't use activities to signal their qualities, they > use them instead to transform themselves into more interesting people. In > other words, what's important about an activity is not its impressiveness, > but its impact on your personality.

[http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/02/18/want-to-get-into- harva...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/02/18/want-to-get-into-harvard- spend-more-time-staring-at-the-clouds-rethinking-the-role-of-extracurricular- activities-in-college-admissions/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Serious question: Is there any reason not to just lie about your ethnicity? Why not put "black" or "native american" on your app to really up your chances?

I mean, I'm sure the school would reject you if they knew you were lying about it, but there really isn't any way for them to tell, is there?

<comment><USER25> They'll know when you show up for class. At best, that seems like a bad start for the year, if anyone from admissions happens to match your name and face.

<comment><USER26> This isn't true. Lots of people don't look their race for one thing

<comment><USER15> Not to mention how politically incorrect it would be to try to call someone out on it: "Hey, aren't you Louis Smith? You said you were black on the application, but you don't look black at all!"

I can't imagine it happening.

<comment><USER25> No, they're not likely to _say_ it, but they'll know you lied about it, and that will color their perception of you. It just seems to me like a bad idea all around.

<comment><USER24> It seems unethical, sure. But a "bad idea"? Consider that all of the following must be true for it to affect how you are perceived by a non-trivial number of people:

1) someone on the admissions committee must come to know you (that is, match your face to your name)

2) they must then remember that you were one of the people who identified as black on an application

3) they must then assume that you aren't actually black based on appearance alone (knowing that there are indeed many half-black people who don't look obviously black)

4) they must then decide to tell other important people about this

This just seems really unlikely in any reasonably sized school. If you really want to be careful, find out who is on the admissions committee and avoid them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Full disclaimer: I'm a sophomore at Yale, my adviser last year was an admissions officer, and a friend of mine works in the admissions office. I'm also friends with the girl photographed, but that's irrelevant :)

This is roughly how admissions works at Yale:

1\. An officer reviews your application for 20-25 minutes. 1a. Some kids are clear rejects. 1500/2400 SAT and a 2.7 GPA, with no activities usually does the trick. The director (or an experienced officer) reviews these. 1b. Some kids are clear admits. These are incredibly rare - something like 20 kids out of 26000 I think? The director also reviews these but they're pretty much auto admits - think multiple gold medalists at IMO, IOI, and IPhO, stuff like that.

2\. The officer writes a summary sheet that contains what the officer feels about you, good points, etc, if they like you. If they don't, you get put in the "no" pile. 2b. I believe most of these "no" applicants are reviewed by another officer, but not as deeply. The goal is to find false negatives - <USER3> people in the "no" pile stay there.

3\. The application goes to a committee of 3-4 officers. They all read your profile and debate about whether or not to let you in. Your admissions officer is supposed to argue in your favor, and the others can argue for you or against you. Usually, most candidates at this point are solid, so the officers argue about possible negatives.

Something like 70% of applicants are qualified to attend Yale, so it usually breaks down to what you'll contribute to the campus community, what kind of a person you are, etc. A lot of admissions officers were former Yalies, so I imagine they even ask "would I hang out with this person?".

4\. If you're accepted, you're golden. If you don't make it past committee, you usually don't get in. Some people get waitlisted. They also review several of the "no's" to avoid false negatives, and some people might be brought to committee again. If you're borderline between "admit" and "reject," you will usually be rejected or waitlisted. There's just too many really good applicants.

There is no EXPLICIT comparison of Asians to Asians. Nobody looks at your application and says "Oh, another Asian, let me turn on my asian scale!" What happens, subconsciously, is that the stereotypical asian profile is "high scoring, high gpa, piano/violin, tennis, math/science."

So a lot of qualified asians get rejected because their admission officer can't find enough good arguments for them. Regardless of how qualified you are individually, Yale is trying to build a diverse class, so if you do the same thing as 1000 other candidates, it's very hard to vouch for you. "What do you bring to the campus that this other kid doesn't? , and that's the end of it.

I don't think checking "Asian" or "not Asian" makes a huge difference, because in the end, it's your activities, recommendations, and essays that differentiate you. Once your scores are high enough, nobody is going to say "well Bob and Melinda are both cool, but Bob has a 2310 while Melinda has a 2270, so we should clearly go with Bob." That's just absurd - they always go with the person who will contribute more to Yale.

I hope that dispels some of the myths you see and hear. Correlation does not imply causation. People don't get rejected because they ARE Asian - it's usually the lack of differentiation. Again, I don't represent Yale or anything like that, and this is just what I've heard, but I believe it's fairly accurate, and for most Asians, they'll figure it out by your name, so a box isn't making a huge difference.

Edit: Legacy students (parent(s) went to Yale), recruited athletes, and under- represented minorities have higher admission rates than the overall pool. I don't know why or by how much or anything like that. This exists at almost every elite school.

<comment><USER28> Yale has an explicit, declared policy to discriminate by race in admissions and hiring decisions. Sorry, it felt at least a little relevant towards the question of whether Yale racially discriminates.

You can review, but not make copies, of this written policy. It is kept at - <USER4> kid you not - the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs.

<comment><USER29> Don't most admissions discriminate? For example, <http://yale.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/1011/>

Play around with the year/school. Clicking on data points shows self-reported profile information. It's pretty clear there is a shifted standard in many cases.

<comment><USER30> Yes, they do. The university I attended for undergraduate studies, Tulane in New Orleans, had a minor blowup when I went there because they were very much trying to make the school less lilly white and explicitly declared they had a pro-diversity admissions policy. Now they can do whatever because it's a private school, but it was still very controversial. It was actually heavily based on the Yale policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> An asian high school senior here. I'm currently in the process of applying to colleges. In most college applications, demographics are listed under the section where they say the information you provide won't hurt your change of getting in. I have not and will not lie about my race on any of the applications. I understand that, statistically, it will hurt my chance of getting into a top-tier college, considering I don't have perfect SAT score and GPA. But I believe that the admission officers would be wise enough to evaluate a person as a whole instead of just puting "tags" on him/her.

<comment><USER32> > I understand that, statistically, it will hurt my chance of getting into a > top-tier college, considering I don't have perfect SAT score and GPA. But I > believe that the admission officers would be wise enough to evaluate a > person as a whole instead of just puting "tags" on him/her.

Er... what? So you believe putting the wrong tag on yourself will hurt your evaluation by the admission officers; but you also believe they are wise enough to not just put tags on yourself.

You're saying something here, but I don't know what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't see why colleges should even be allowed to ask that on applications.

<comment><USER6> No one has to answer.

<comment><USER34> But can they figure out by inspecting your parents (as it says in the article) ?

Additionally if they have a pic that would it give it away.

<comment><USER35> Historically that's why many schools asked people to submit a picture

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, > perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in," Olmstead says.

I didn't know there was a quota on how many Asian students a college could accept.

And besides, doesn't a college want the best students in their college, regardless of ethnicity?

<comment><USER12> 'best student' != 'best score/gpa'

<comment><USER37> Thank you. It is insane how many people think college admissions is the official scoreboard oof high school, and not something to do with choosing students who are well matched to the college.

<comment><USER38> It's not insane. It's simply objective. How do you define "best match"? The gut feeling of the admissions officer? You need an objective measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder how it would work out if Asian applicant self-identifies herself as African-American?

<comment><USER40> This guy "won him the title of president of the Black Student Union, despite not being, well, black" [1]

[1] <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/bill-nguyen-startups>

<comment><USER39> Thanks. So Bill Nguyen proved that it's possible to self-identify yourself under different race.

University Admission Committee may not mind such "self race re-branding" practice too, because university ratios of admitted minorities would be improving as well.

<comment><USER40> The article talking about high school, not college.

Anyway I find, that Americans a little bit confused about things like race, ethnicity and nationality.

Asking to fill nationality in official documents is legitimate. Asking for ethnicity is borderline. Asking to fill a race is barbaric.

<comment><USER41> Have you ever dealt with an academic bureaucracy? Barbarism is a good description!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I went to a high school in NYC with an Asian plurality, and it was pretty well known among the students and the counselors that being Asian was not something that would help you get into college.

In any case, there's a suit 'Fisher v University of Texas at Austin' which experts think will be heading to the Supreme Court sometime in 2012, and may have a good chance of bringing education a little closer to the meritocracy it should be: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sunday-review/college- dive...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sunday-review/college-diversity- nears-its-last-stand.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Seeing that it is optional to report your ethnicity, I'm kind of surprised that _anyone_ (other than those who get an advantage) would do so. The admissions system is already arbitrary as hell.

<comment><USER44> If your last name is Asian then would omitting your ethnicity gain you anything? I would doubt it.

<comment><USER45> I'll admit that I know nothing about the college admissions procedures as far as the selection process, but it seems to me that applicants should only be known by an arbitrary ID number. That is, admissions committees simply shouldn't have access to this sort of (possibly discriminatory) information. Name, ethnicity, etc.

Why not just hide it from them? I suppose there are certain parts of an application which could give away information that's meant to be hidden—being president of the Asian-American Student Club would pretty well give away the applicant's ethnicity.

<comment><USER9> > _but it seems to me that applicants should only be known by an arbitrary ID > number._

And then there's the whole "legacy admit" thing.

<comment><USER46> Thanks. Haven't heard about [legacy admit](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences>) before - That's some serious nepotism at play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When asked for your race, answer "mongrel" <http://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html>

Quoting from the anecdote:

All of my known forebears came from Europe, mostly from Southern Germany with a few from England, Ireland, and Scotland. A glance in the mirror, however, indicated that there was Middle Eastern blood in my veins. I have a semitic nose and skin that tans so easily that I am often darker than many people who pass for black. Did I inherit this from a Hebrew, an Arab, a Gypsy or perhaps one of the Turks who periodically pillaged Central Europe? Maybe it was from a Blackfoot Indian that an imaginative aunt thinks was in our family tree. I will probably never know.

As an arrogant young computer scientist, I believed that if there is any decision that you can't figure out how to program, the question is wrong. I couldn't figure out how to program racial classification, so I concluded that there isn't such a thing. I subsequently reviewed some scientific literature that confirmed this belief. "Race" is, at best, a fuzzy concept about typical physical properties of certain populations. At worst, of course, it is used to justify more contemptible behavior than any concept other than religion.

In answer to the race question on the security form, I decided to put "mongrel." This seemed like an appropriate answer to a meaningless question.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think the basic thing is, if you are of race X, you would prefer it if race X continues getting admission in reasonable numbers to the status-branding factories of America (i.e. colleges). That preference is thoroughly, whole- cloth racist, but I think it is valid.

If it happens to be the case that race Y dominates admissions (or race Z can't seem to get a leg up), whether that domination be through genetic or cultural factors (or both), it is arguably racist to handicap admissions by appeal to soft factors. But consider:

Let's imagine (e.g.) global warming has destroyed US agriculture so all the gringos in the US have to migrate south to Mexico. The University of Mexico is (say) the premier university of Mexico, the Harvard all the best Mexican students want to attend. Historically, whites outperform latinos on admissions numbers (SAT and GPA). Would it make sense then for the University of Mexico to cease accepting latino-Mexicans (or substantially decrease their admissions rates) in favor of the new white-Mexicans with higher numbers? Would that be the fairest thing to do? Or would the U of M admissions board say things like "yeah whites have good numbers but they all kind of look the same to us. All from the same middle class families, all played tennis and hockey in high school, all want to be business/psych majors and join greek fraternities. We look at other things than just numbers."

I'm not entirely sure it's unfair to handicap asians, or assist blacks, if we've essentially industrialized the production of status-signalling - <USER5> the recommended amount of prestige and job offers a person should receive for the rest of his life at age 18 - and have to determine some means of doling it out.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think race acts as more of a red herring when it comes to this matter. This entire thread just sounds like privileged or talented people(nothing wrong with being either) fighting over admittance to elite universities. After all, people qualified to get into Yale, and this is a large number of applicants, will still get into a very good university.

Maybe the problem is that going to an elite school matters too much for arbitrary social reasons. We've all heard and read about how hiring at places, such as elite financial institutions, will simply discard any application from a person who didn't go to an elite university. No one wants to lose out on opportunity.

Why can't elite universities increase enrollment to increase the number of opportunities? They have the endowments for it. I'm not aware of any Ivy struggling to pay its bills.

If society thinks that people who attend these schools are a better value, then wouldn't it be of benefit to try to expand capacity?

It seems like an artificially created scarcity. Do top schools feel their brand is diminished if they start accepting 2k students vs 1.5k?

<comment><USER50> Because their brand CAN be diminished if they start accepting more students. More students need more professors, and it might be hard fighting over who gets to hire the best professors. It might also change the student community. I go to a university that is considered prestigious in my country, and what I like the most about it is how it's so easy to find incredibly smart people on the campus, with which you can have great intellectual discussions. If there were more people, it could be harder to find who these great people are. It's a Brazilian public university, which means it's free, and while recently it was created a quota for black and public school students, the majority of students is accepted in a completely color, name, cultural blind manner.

<comment><USER49> The university system has created a surplus of people with phds who are qualified and intellectually capable of being university professors. There are a lot of good articles about how the job market for those wanting to become professors is terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Race/ethnicity unknown" is the fastest-growing category reported for enrolled students in United States colleges and universities, with more than 1 million students so reported to the federal government in the most recent year.

[http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Programs_and_S...](http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Programs_and_Services&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=42703)

The federal regulations on the subject

[http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2007-4/10190...](http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2007-4/101907c.html)

require all colleges to ask, but no students to tell, which of the federally defined race or ethnicity categories

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_1997standards>

they belong to. A growing number of students decline to answer the questions, which are clearly marked as optional on all college application forms. Harvard

<http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard>

reports 12 percent of its enrolled undergraduates as "race/ethnicity unknown," and several other selective colleges have higher percentages of students reported as unknown race or ethnicity. Several state university systems, by state law, may not consider student race or ethnicity at all as part of the admission process.

The definitive online FAQ on the issue of race and ethnicity self- identification in college admission in the United States

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/12282...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html)

links out to other relevant laws and official definitions and news stories, and gives links to reported enrollment figures for a wide variety of colleges.

After edit: A comment at the same comment level as this comment appears to be referring to a college's claimed rationale when it says:

 _I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages._

They don't. Indeed, it is strictly illegal to have admission quotas by race, since the Bakke decision decades ago. If you look at the actual enrollment figures, linked to from this comment, you will see that that is not what happens in practice either.

Another comment mentioned an applicant's view that he should not "lie about his race." This view motivates my children NOT marking anything on the forms, because the form questions are optional for applicants, and because my children think it is a lie to describe themselves as belonging to any narrower category than humankind. (From an old-fashioned American point of view, my children could be described as "biracial," but we prefer the term "human" and accept the term "postracial.")

I'm a baby boomer, which is another way of saying that I'm a good bit older than most people who post on Hacker News. I distinctly remember the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated--the most memorable day of early childhood for many people in my generation--and I remember the "long hot summer" and other events of the 1960s civil rights movement.

One early memory I have is of a second grade classmate (I still remember his name, which alas is just common enough that it is hard to Google him up) who moved back to Minnesota with his northern "white" parents after spending his early years in Alabama. He told me frightening stories about Ku Klux Klan violence to black people (the polite term in those days was "Negroes"), including killing babies, and I was very upset to hear about that kind of terrorism happening in the United States. He made me aware of a society in which people didn't all treat one another with decency and human compassion, unlike the only kind of society I was initially aware of from growing up where I did. So I followed subsequent news about the civil rights movement, including the activities of Martin Luther King, Jr. up to his assassination, with great interest.

It happens that I had a fifth-grade teacher, a typically pale, tall, and blonde Norwegian-American, who was a civil rights activist and who spent her summers in the south as a freedom rider. She used to tell our class about how she had to modify her car (by removing the dome light and adding a locking gas cap) so that Klan snipers couldn't shoot her as she opened her car door at night or put foreign substances into her gas tank. She has been a civil rights activist all her life, and when I Googled her a few years ago and regained acquaintance with her, I was not at all surprised to find that she is a member of the civil rights commission of the town where I grew up.

One day in fifth grade we had a guest speaker in our class, a young man who was then studying at St. Olaf College through the A Better Chance (ABC) affirmative action program. (To me, the term "affirmative action" still means active recruitment of underrepresented minority students, as it did in those days, and I have always thought that such programs are a very good idea, as some people have family connections to selective colleges, but many other people don't.) During that school year (1968-1969), there was a current controversy in the United States about whether the term "Negro" or "Afro- American" or "black" was most polite. So a girl in my class asked our visitor, "What do you want to be called, 'black' or 'Afro-American'?" His answer was, "I'd rather be called Henry." Henry's answer to my classmate's innocent question really got me thinking. Why can't individual human beings have the right to be treated as one more member of the general human race?

<comment> steve-howard > She used to tell our class about how she had to modify her car (by removing > the dome light and adding a locking gas cap) so that Klan snipers couldn't > shoot her as she opened her car door at night or put foreign substances into > her gas tank.

I doubt there are many young people today who have that kind of dedication. I wish I did.

<comment><USER51> People rise to the occasion. There isn't much need for that kind of dedication domestically today. As for abroad, most of the thousands killed in various military adventures over the last decade were pretty young. Whether you agree or disagree with the greater view of those adventures, many of those young people gave their lives for what they viewed as something worth dying for.

Disclaimer: I served in the US Navy and have many friends and family members who served or are serving in various branches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> If a few Asians don't tick Asian as their ethnicity when asked, that's going to reduce the stats for the number of Asians attending the university, effectively creating a negative feedback loop.

</comment><comment><USER53> True story: my wife is Asian (from the Philippines). She's done with school, but some of her friends are not. When they ask me for advice on this point, I tell them to check "Hispanic" instead of "Asian." Most Filipino ancestry is a combination of Chinese, Spanish, and Malay, but since the Philippines was colonised by Spain in c.16, it usually works like a charm in differentiating them from the mass of students with Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ancestry.

</comment><comment><USER54> So, if a private school shouldn't/can't discriminate on the basis of race, should they be able to discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation/belief?

I ask this as a graduate of a Christian liberal arts college, which discriminates on the basis of religious beliefs. It's not entirely on topic but I think the "logic" still applies. Or does it?

</comment><comment><USER55> Is it possible to be admitted to a top-tier US university as a non-US resident (I'm Swedish)? How does that work with SATs and stuff then?

Also, is it possible to be admitted if one is outside the typical age range of applicants (ie 18-19)?

I just don't know how these things work for you in the US, so I had to ask :)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is what I would like to see: Two comparative histograms of SAT scores for Asian and non-Asian applicants to Ivy League schools. One for all applicants, and the other for those accepted.

Here is my suspicion (or what I would like to hear): Asian students are significantly higher-scoring, in both histograms. Such a result would go a long way towards vindicating the college admission process, and suggest that universities don't explicitly judge those who mark "Asian" by a different standard but rather choose to largely discount SAT scores (and by proxy academic performance).

Similar studies were used to discredit claims that engineering and science departments were practicing gender discrimination against women. Does anyone have a reference to a study on race in undergraduate admissions that takes this approach?

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd love to be able to explain my identity this way:

Asian [x] - If you're more "white"

White [x] - If you're more "asian"

Both [x] - If you open minded or PC

Neither [x] - If you want me to pick a side

Hapa [x] - If you'll allow me all of the above

Identity depends on where you stand.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is inherently true. Unless you're at a very white dominated school ie Notre Dame where it helps to be a minority.

</comment><comment><USER58> If you're half Asian and half European, why is checking 'White' considered hiding half your identity? That only makes sense in the background of US racial views, where Barack Obama is known as Black due to 50% of his heritage. So, if you're not 'pure white', you're not 'white', according to society. I feel it is worrisome that such an old style racist line of thought is ingrained into our culture in a way that few question.

</comment><comment><USER59> "a member of HAPA, the Half-Asian People's Association" I was under the impression that Hapa was a Hawaiian word for "a person of mixed race." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapa> When did the Asians at Harvard decide to steal that one?

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm curious how carefully these things are checked. Like many white people with ancestors from Appalachia, I'm sure I'm at least slightly Native American. Is it fair to mark Native American (and white?) on these forms?

<comment><USER11> As is mentioned in the official federal definitions, mentioned in the online FAQ linked to from a comment above,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309338>

the federal definition of "American Indian or Alaska Native" is "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment." In other words, if you don't have community attachment to an Indian tribe, or formal legally recognized tribal membership, you are not a Native American or Alaska Native.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> That article is in desperate need of citations.

</comment><comment><USER62> By any chance, is this a honey pot post? Flag.

</comment><comment><USER48> If I were Asian, my "college strategy" would be to not apply, since I wouldn't want to be an indentured servant for the next 15-20 years of my life paying off usurious student loan debts to crotchety Western institutions that are currently enjoying bubble tuition rates without offering remotely commensurate value.

<comment><USER63> Which is exactly what wouldn't happen should you go to any of the "elite" schools. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and others go to great lengths to provide adequate financial aid, all of which is provided in the form of grants, not loans.

I'm very curious to know what could provide a greater return on investment than spending four years at Harvard for free.</comment></comment>


What could convince a developer to invest their time in your platform? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestartuptoolkit.com/2011/10/why-would-a-developer-invest-time-in-your-startups-platform/

<comment><USER2> "Because if you can't make that first wildly successful product, nobody will care about your platform."

Pretty much the money quote.</comment>


Investigating Gmail's "This message seems dangerous" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@healthchecks/investigating-gmails-this-message-seems-dangerous-a94f21163f8e <comment><USER2> Happening to my company all of a sudden; we've got low bounce rate and historically very high deliverability. We send through mailgun. We've got DNS set up correctly, and they're just transactional e-mails (purchase receipts, password resets, new device sign in confirmations, etc.). Very frustrating.</comment>


Lean on Me to offer anonymous venue for student support - <AUTHOR> http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N2/leanonme.html <comment><AUTHOR> We've spent the last several months building this service for MIT. Check us out at [http://lean0n.me](http://lean0n.me)

We think all universities could use a peer support network like this, and we'd love to hear what you think :)

<comment><USER2> Great work. You might get more feedback if you post it as a Show HN instead, linking to your site, then add the background (including a link to the news article) as a first comment in the thread. Email email@example.com if you need any guidance about how to do that. Good luck!

If you do repost it, email us a link at the same address, so we can make sure it doesn't get flagged.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone have success using cold e-mails for B2B sales? - <AUTHOR> Obviously it depends on the price point, product, target customer etc etc, but I was interested in hearing from startups here that sell software online to business/enterprise customers.<p>Has cold e-mailing worked at all? Cold-calling? Of course, nothing is as good as a qualified, warm lead, but is it worth spending time on e-mail as a means to getting a meeting? <comment><USER3> I ran a company some years ago where development of our product was delayed, so our investor got anxious. My co-founder knew a guy that ran a one-person telemarketing shop and suggested we give it a try.

His task seemed insurmountable: Cold-call people in the advertising industry, where people constantly call with new products, and get them to buy ads on a non-existing new network with an unproven hardware technology that he couldn't show to the potential customers because it hadn't been produced yet. All he had was a few powerpoint slides.

Within a month he had contracts for a few months paychecks, and our investor was reassured.

So the morale of the story is "Yes, coldcaling definitely works, but it's a pretty difficult artform". Me or my co-founder would never have been able to pull it off. It's about trust and building a personal relationship.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great story - are you able to share details or contact info about your telemarketing star? Would love to hear more (shafqat at newscred dot com).

<comment><USER3> I haven't talked to him for two years or so, but I'm sure he would love the business.

Unfortunately he only speaks Danish, which probably makes him less valuable to you :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't been doing cold email...but it's pretty close. I have Google alerts setup for the names of our Open Source products. When a hosting provider is using Webmin, and advertises that fact, I send them an email offering to set them up as a Virtualmin reseller, and listing a few of the benefits they'd get from offering Virtualmin GPL, with the option to upgrade at any time to Virtualmin Professional. I've only done this four times, so far (still refining the reseller experience, so moving slowly), but it's been very effective. At least a 50% success rate (and I wouldn't rule out the other two signing on later, as neither was negative on the idea...just hesitant to change or commit to anything).

</comment><comment><USER5> The smaller your niche, the more receptive your potential customers are going to be to your emails.

</comment><comment><USER6> I worked once in company (adv agency) for which it was common tactic. But market was ready for such practice (low availability of service, and large audience of potential clients).

It depends on Your product. If it's innovative give them chance to know You. I agree with prakash be short, and show them in short why it may become useful. I would add that You will hear "no" plenty of time. Don't discourage. Customer don't pay attention, they have enough their problems.

best

</comment><comment><USER7> Not a start-up, but still a B2B database (then later internet) company. We were an "early adopter" of email marketing when we started. It used to be fantastic - there wasn't much spam in them early days so people were quite receptive to the emails and we would make lots of money from them. Hey - <USER2> were free to send and they make you lots of money - what can go wrong with that?

Well, unfortunately that formula is a bit addictive and it gets to the point where if sales are low, the top management start demanding to know how many thousands of emails we have sent that week. What they don't realise is that the days of just email marketing your way to success is over - email marketing is now spamming and people hate it.

Nevertheless, send 10,000 emails and we might make one sale which is still worth a few thousand so how can we resist?!

What isn't appreciated is that this strategy is overall damaging the company. People now associate us with "those people that send spam". It was only relatively recently that we moved to a proper email marketing service with an opt-out option and as a result I managed to get us removed from a significant email filter black list (which, ironically, we subscribe to).

Anyway, do I have any useful advice? Check the legality re: data retention etc. I'm not actually 100% on the rules but I do think they differ between the US and Europe for example, which I think might depend on where you are based, rather than where you are sending to.

Email marketing /should/ be opt-in, not opt-out. However, I guess giving your business card must be considered opting in as I always seem to start getting more marketing emails after a conference. It's ok though as they all do it properly and have an opt-out link in the email...

Just sending marketing is a bit of a fail imho. Nobody thinks to themselves "ooh I can sign up here to receive marketing material!" Have an interesting newsletter talking about your industry, or publish white papers and thought leadership articles. Be subtle and demonstrate your expertise. That is much more powerful than some email saying "buy this!"

Good example: <http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/home.aspx>

If you do just want to talk to someone about a specific product, do as the poster below says, keep it short and specific. In that sense make it personal too.

HTH.

</comment><comment><USER8> If there are companies you feel you have to reach out and don't know anyone that can introduce you, call or email.

Keep it short, reference why your product would be useful, ask who you should get in touch with for a call/meeting.

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried it on a small scale and it totally failed for me. Actual cold calls, if targeted correctly, can work and did drum up some good leads, but it's tedious.</comment>


Ask HN: Homebrew equivalent for windows? - <AUTHOR> I would be using windows for development and am considering using scoop as against chocolatery , but which is better from your experience? <comment><USER2> I prefer scoop since it installs in a central folder, so you know where things are installed, and you can make your own "Bucket"(1) which is essentially a bunch of JSON manifest files in a git repo

also there is a comparison in the scoop wiki about the differences between it and chocolatey if you missed it (2)

1) [https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Buckets](https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Buckets)

2) [https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey- Compari...](https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Comparison)</comment>


The PC is dead, and this year's CES proves it - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/08/the-pc-is-dead-and-this-years-ces-proves-it/

<comment><USER2> Nope! For consumers - may be yeah. But for creators, its simply not dead. The entire engineering industry works on PC. So calling it dead is a lie. You can't bend a piece of metal without PC. That hood on your car. Yeah, YOUR car! The contours, the optimized aerodynamics....etc are all due to PC.</comment>


Show HN: I Made an In-game Companion App for CS:GO - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cs-go-companion-in-game-companion/id945956691?mt=8

<comment><USER2> I wonder how large the overlap of people on HN and CS:GO players is. Either way, I fall into that description. Let me play with the app a bit and I'll return with some feedback. My initial concern is with immediately tapping the bomb timer, sometimes that half a second makes a difference. It'd be cool to do some sort of audio processing to listen for bomb plant audio... but I play with a headset so probably not feasible either.

The app looks great though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Promo codes: [http://tokn.co/8uqqnxgu](http://tokn.co/8uqqnxgu)

[http://tokn.co/nvmcvnsz](http://tokn.co/nvmcvnsz)

[http://tokn.co/0ecwd9c3](http://tokn.co/0ecwd9c3)

[http://tokn.co/bcx876yn](http://tokn.co/bcx876yn)

[http://tokn.co/h6wk4u8a](http://tokn.co/h6wk4u8a)

</comment><comment><USER3> How are sales going?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty good so far, thanks for asking. The CS:GO community seems to like it but it only launched two days ago so I'll need to wait a bit longer to get some in depth feedback. Need to do some price testing for the next few weeks. If there are any CS:GO players on HN I'd love to here your feedback/suggestions.

<comment><USER3> Very neat, how are people finding your app? How did you promote it to begin with?

<comment><AUTHOR> So far I've been promoting it on reddit and telling friends who play the game. I'm going to try and get some reviews done and reach out to some streamers on twitch. Do you play CS:GO?

<comment><USER3> Yeah but not competitively, just for fun.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>