Scholarships From FOSS Organizations? 348
Athaulf writes "I'm a high school kid with big dreams of prestigious technology schools like MIT or Cal-Tech. The problem is, my upper-middle class family had more down to Earth plans for me and my college choices (about $30,000/year more down to Earth, actually), so financial aid and college savings won't come anywhere near MIT's price tag. However, I've been programming in C for a while now, and might release a GPL'd Linux app soon. With this self-taught programming experience, academic merit, and plenty of extra curricular activities, are there any FOSS supporting organizations who might grant me a scholarship for my contributions? Do companies like Google or Red-Hat offer scholarships to big name schools in return for a few years of work after college?"
MIT's website... (Score:4, Interesting)
MIT's website says financial aid is guaranteed for admitted students.
http://web.mit.edu/sfs/financial_aid/mitgo_undergrad.html [mit.edu]
I suppose I don't have an answer to the original question, but get their financial aid folks on the horn and see what they have in the way of work study, internships, etc. Whatever you got back on your FAFSA probably isn't the last word in the matter.
Might work better if... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's easy to get your Free software out there. It would probably look better if you had something you could show prospective sponsors, and this is where the versioning comes in. If you've got a horking great Subversion repository full of your code, with maybe a few checkins a day, then it shows the process by which you work. It's like showing your working on a maths problem - if you get the answer right but don't show your working, you won't get full marks. If you show your working and get the answer wrong, quite often you'll get fairly good marks anyway if the working is right but the mistake was a little arithmetical slip.
So in short, show them the code. And let us know if it gets you into college.
Re:Don't be such a downer! (Score:4, Interesting)
I almost agree with some of what you said. MIT is a generic school compared to The School of Hard Knocks, depending on your goals. For me, Hard Knocks University worked out quite well because I never had a desire to be an employee. I most certainly was an employee for a number of years during that education. It taught me how to do things better and be a good employer.
I only speak for me, but the thought if being an employee my whole life is abhorrent and I say that having had some very good jobs in IT with no college education at all. I earned what I got by educating myself and working hard on the job. There are exceptions, but for the most part I think college is a circle jerk.
The point you make about the dedication and perseverance that employers are looking for... I think you're right. But I find it twisted and sick. I can assure you that building a business or three from scratch - for that matter, working your way into a Fortune 100 job with no degree - takes far more dedication and perseverance. It costs far less in terms of wasted time and money.
Ultimately, I'm motivated by a desire to be free. I'm living my dream with no classroom education beyond high school and I'm in my own classroom every day - on my terms and my schedule. Usually on my couch, but when I travel, I'm making money anywhere I have an internet connection.
I believe, in most cases, college is a sucker play. If you want to learn how to be a really good peon, it can certainly work for you. The valid exceptions are technical professions that require it. But the latter does not describe most college students. Most college students are there because they're willing to sell 40 years of their life and take orders for a reliable paycheck.
When I hire, I try really hard to not hold a college degree against anyone. It's a challenge. I spent too many years in corporate IT amongst those who graduated with honors from good schools with degrees in CS and still were coming to me multiple times a day for help because they didn't know how to do their jobs.
I'll hire a high school drop-out (or student) with a hunger to learn and an understanding of how to do it independently over a worthless diploma from a college every time. (And no, it's not because they're cheap. I pay very well and only hire the best.)
Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You're just paying for the brand name. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also note, different schools teach different approaches. I watched a presentation on Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" a few years ago. The folks there from the legal profession were fascinated by the repercussions, and liked the idea of protecting their client's intellectual property. They were also courteous to the presenter, lauding the presenter's previous work and qualifications. The MIT person there (also an FSF member, as it turned out) rose up on his hind legs and went down the list of legally protected fair use applications that would be blocked, and how it would interfere with common uses that the presenter had utterly ignored.
It was funny to watch.
Re:trust me don't do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, school up to the PhD is a pyramid scheme (currently failing):
"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein (Vice Provost CalTech)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html [caltech.edu]
The end result is "disciplined minds" who will not step out of line politically:
http://disciplined-minds.com/ [disciplined-minds.com]
Or journalistically:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051207.htm [chomsky.info]
"By the time you've gone through, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here you could say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and even less fancy places, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things that just wouldn't do to say, and that's what a good deal of education is. So the people who come out of it - and there are many filters, if people go off and try to be too critical there are many ways of discouraging them or eliminating them one way or the other. Some get through, it's not a uniform story.
The reason schooling exists in its current form is to teach these seven lessons:
"The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm [aol.com]
in order to prepare most people for a life of servitude to the military or factories (and to not be very thoughtful about consumption or politics either).
"The Prussian Connection" -- Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/7a.htm [johntaylorgatto.com]
And from:
"A conversation with historian and author James Loewen. Sort of."
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/18/loewen.html [stayfreemagazine.org]
"We like to believe schooling is a good thing. But when it comes to understanding any problem with historical roots, we might expect that the more traditional schooling in history that Americans have, the less they will understand it. Students who have taken math courses are better at math. The same is true for English, foreign languages, and almost every other subject. But in history, stupidity is the result of more, not less, schooling."
Still, studies have shown that the only people who really get economic value out of an Ivy League degree or equivalent are those from lower middle class backgrounds. All other things being equal, for most other people it's not worth the money as an investment. See the book "Class" for some other details:
http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253 [amazon.com]
Otherwise, consider:
"College is a Waste of Time and Money" (1975)
http://www.grossmont.edu/bertdill/docs/CollegeWaste.pdf [grossmont.edu]
"College, then, may be a good place for those few young people who are really drawn to academic work, who would rather read than eat, but it has become too expensive, in money, time, and intellectual effort to serve as a holding pen for large numbers of our young. We ought to make it possible for those reluctant, unhappy students to find alternative ways of growing up, and more realistic preparation for the years ahead."
And consider those years ahead following Moore's Law will include computers 10000X faster than what we have now for the same price in 20 or so years.
http://www.transhumanis [transhumanist.com]
Re:C/S Degree Enormously Beneficial (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not saying this as a blanket statements, there are different kinds of people out there w/ or w/o a degree, but not having one can very well be a problem. Actually, I don't have one, but I did get 140 credits out of 180 you need here for a degree, so I actually know most of the important stuff anyway. It's my experience that people around 100 credits out of 180 begin to have most of the needed knowledge. So to be more specific about my claim, I'd say that theoretically about a bachelors degree is what you need. Of course a higher degree could open more doors.
There's also the thing about the kinds of people you end up w/. In a good university you are likely to enjoy the companionship of very intelligent people, and this, I believe, is absolutely priceless. Most of the skills I have I possess almost completely because of these people w/whom I studied and worked w/ from my university. Actually, I just got one these friends to work w/me at the latest project at my new job, so on it goes. I will probably work in some form w/these people for the rest of my life. And all of these people just get better and better each day, because they're very talented and driven. Knowing these people has made me a lot better in C/S, and it will continue to do so. I can only hope that knowing me has been as useful to some of these people, as well.
Re:You're just paying for the brand name. (Score:5, Interesting)
They must be, after all you've gone out of your way to post about 10 replies where you praise MIT (and the army up to some point) as the creme de la creme of the higher education you can get. I have this feeling that the way you're defending MIT, you are being a little too overzaelous.
At my previous workplace we had a rule "your degree and where it came from don't matter". I've seen a guy with a university degree in CS be outsmarted on a technical matter by someone who studied history but had a passion for what he was doing. We had a guy fresh out of high school who wanted to work a couple of years to earn some money before heading off to his higher education, and he was better at programming than some "educated" people I've had the "pleasure" to work with.
My point is that while many companies have a tendency to focus on a degree, a lot of companies don't. If you have a talent and you're willing to put that to good use, you'll be presented with enough opportunities. Yes, a degree is important, but 10 years from when you have obtained that degree your experience and achievements are much more important.
Re:trust me don't do it. (Score:2, Interesting)
In such a situation, while you are not getting guaranteed work, you can easily jump ship to a contractor. My friend did contracting and was offered twice as much as he was getting at the contractor from a client (it saved the client $100 an hour).
Re:trust me don't do it. (Score:4, Interesting)
My own story agrees with you here. Nobody pays huge money for the unproven person, unless university, in that employer's mind, is proof enough. That's hard to find, though.
When I started working, I started off at $38k as a programmer trainee. Within 6 months I was promoted and got a $5k increase. Since then, I've made 30-60% jumps every time I changed jobs. Now that I'm toward the top of the programmer pay scale, I've gone into management because there's a higher ceiling. The key is to keep moving, learning new things, and don't get too stuck to any one thing because it'll limit you.
The point is that people shouldn't expect to get top-of-the-market rates right out of school. There's a reason those rates are top of the market, and they're reserved for the best in the field -- which most college kids aren't. What you can expect is that, if you work hard, you'll move up pretty quickly.
A side note regarding my comment about about not getting stuck on any one thing. There will be people here who say they program for the love of it, not for the money, and that money isn't everything. Great. Fine. There's no problem with that, if those are your priorities. Some people do it for the money, and that's what I'm talking about. I go to work for the money, and no matter what I do there, I want the most money possible for the time I spend there. If that means I'm in meetings all day and don't write a single line of code, that's ok. I fulfill my love of programming and try to stay sharp by working on little open source apps at home and some side consulting. It's not an either-or proposition.
Re:trust me don't do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok
If you're smart, you're smart and don't need college full time. If you're not, the college degree gets you past the HR screener to someone that can figure out whether or you have some skills they might be interested in.
I'm also fucking tired of college kids trying to justify their waste of money by saying 'we are well rounded' or 'we learned critical thinking'. No one gives a crap about that. Can you write code with any degree of skill?? That's all I care about.
To all the CS majors out there, I need someone that can take an 8 year old program that no one has touched in years and the original author is gone, find all the missing header files, get it compiled and fixed. Today. Not next week, today. You don't get to work on the fun stuff the day you start working. Get over it. I need someone with debugging skills and the humbleness to listen when I tell them 'you really don't want to code it that way' and present a more maintainable and stable alternative. Not some crap your college professor thinks works. I'll give you an opportunity to explain why you want to do it, but the end result is I have 20 other developers and I need all the programs to be maintainable, not some creative crap.
To all the high school kids out there
All that said
Re:You're just paying for the brand name. (Score:1, Interesting)
I went to MIT around 1970 and do not recall this at all. Perhaps things have changed. I stayed in the East Campus dorm, and people stayed in their rooms alone for untold hours on end, studying by themselves and working out problem sets. When they came out, it was to socialize to relieve tension and not to study. Sometimes they would talk about a problem or two with others taking the same course, but it wasn't like we "studied in groups." The only thing we did in groups was to plan and execute hacks like mysterious sodium explosions during rainstorms and other things I won't divulge in case my IP address is traced.
Now, the people in frat houses (and some other dorms) did behave a lot differently with their drunken parties and all, and I really don't know if they "studied in groups". They did have a reputation for keeping the solutions to previous problem sets handed down from one generation to the next, so maybe they did. In my dorm we were pretty much on our own.
As for inspiration, it was a handful of teachers who provided me with that. I actually don't recall a single peer who I would say "inspired" me - perhaps a few I was jealous of and competed with, but that's about it.
Those were crazy times with the distractions of the war protests, hippies, drugs, etc. that some people couldn't handle at the same time as the homework required. A certain percentage of people dropped out for assorted reasons. Sometimes they just became completely alienated and stopped studying, or joined up with a radical movement, or fell into drugs, or whatever. The successful ones where those who kept their nose to the grindstone.
Re:trust me don't do it. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:You're just paying for the brand name. (Score:3, Interesting)
In smaller schools you get the same education but opportunity is easier because you are just the best in your program. People like to bring out the success of their grads. But what portion of them are Successes and What portion are still working as an entry level programmer for some big company while threatened that some kid with an undergrad at a state school who got a job with a small consulting firm will take over his job.
I live down the Road from RPI an other big tech school and while you are working with a lot of people who are Technically brilliant you are isolated from "normal" people those guys who get business degrees and become your boss, or in other fields who become your clients. State schools tend to have more diversity and you learn from some of the those business majors that they are not all Evil out to make Millions. Or the person studying Theology is actually knowledgeable about many things.