Why I made the questionable decision to join a 'startup' university: My options

My options

When I graduated high school I had a few options, of which I seriously considered (i) economics at the top economics program in Brazil (Fundação Getulio Vargas, or FGV henceforth), (ii) mathematical economics at UPenn, (iii) and Minerva, which offers 5 majors.

Okay, I lied - I didn’t seriously consider UPenn. The amount of financial aid they offered was far too low for me. But I like to think I discarded the Ivy League school for reasons beyond financial strain. We’ll get to those.

Cost of attendance

This is the first place where I might alienate American prospective students. After all, UPenn's average cost after aid isn't that much higher than Minerva's - especially if you're American, since Minerva is (was?) need-blind for international students and UPenn, like the vast majority of institutions, isn't. This means a lot of Minerva's aid has historically gone to students from poor countries who can't afford almost anything upfront, driving down their average cost after aid. But some American students are cost-sensitive. Is Minerva worth the money?

For me, it was. I did not seriously consider getting myself into $200K of debt to go to UPenn. That choice could be worth it, if you have clear career and income goals after graduation, and can achieve them. Looking back, mathematical economics could have been a field that paid that off. As for FGV, I had a full ride scholarship and so only had to pay for living costs. Minerva was on the border of discomfort for my financial prudery: I could attend taking the capped $5K loans per year ($7K for senior year), and graduate with $22K in debt. Grants covered much of tuition and rent, work-study covered living expenses, the rest was a sacrifice from my parents I can hope to repay. That’s manageable!

Choosing subjects

But why had I applied in the first place? Minerva had been my top choice for a year and a half. I was particularly keen to attend because of the option to pursue a double major in unrelated fields: economics and computational sciences.

Economics because it explains too much, and is therefore fascinating^{[citation needed]}, and CS because I really wanted a quantitative/STEM education. One offered “social physics,” the other was “important, I guess” to an insufferable zoomer who wanted a job.

I didn’t know what options I would have at UPenn, though I did know people who attended for CS and robotics. In Brazil, some of the econ students had put together a programming club and several were making decent money interning for banks. But Minerva had the clearest path to integrating CS into my education: I could just try it, and major in it if it worked out.

Teaching/learning structure

Amusingly, I applied to college thinking that the point of it was learning. It turns out it's only one of its many purposes, but it was what I thought people agreed universities were for.

Classroom structure was a deciding factor for FGV. The Sao Paulo School of Economics (EESP) uses problem-based learning (PBL) in most of its undergraduate courses, akin to many MBA programs. At the end of each class, the professor would assign a problem for the next session. Students would then do the assigned readings and try making progress on the problem. At the next class, the room would work together to solve the problem using what everyone learned. Grades were based on participation but mostly on exams. It was an active learning method, and I liked it much better than lectures.

Minerva advertised its platform as the “Active Learning Forum” back then, today renamed to just “Forum.” The whole premise of the university was using 50+ years of education research to improve learning outcomes. Stephen Kosslyn, the cofounder with Ben Nelson, was a chair of the Harvard psychology department before Minerva was started.

What’s not to love about learning more efficiently? After completing a few courses in the PBL format, I was convinced lectures sucked. That confidence was higher than warranted, but it made the “outcome-based teaching methodology” Minerva offered more appealing.

As for UPenn, I just thought they did lectures like everyone else. I learned from alumni that most classes in your first couple of years would likely be lectures with hundreds of students, and you’d get smaller classes with more faculty interaction only in your junior and senior years. Why go $200K into debt for that? Was UPenn just that wonderful a place to be and to have on your resume?

Vibes

The Ivy League stamp didn't mean much to me when in high school. So I was surprised when I was added to the "Ivy League admits"-type Facebook groups and got to see what my more active peers liked posting.

It was distateful. Lots of humble-bragging, lots of dunking on Cornell, and an amount of elitism to which I was not used. A tad annoying, but no deal-breaker for most. Facebook was my window into UPenn’s vibes, however unrepresentatively abhorrent a window it may be.

FGV was a more positive and upbeat place by comparison. The economics class was small, only ~70 students would enroll and less than half would graduate. I was invited to a conversation with the EESP dean, and talked to a couple of students before enrolling. Despite the small class size, economics students still managed to win all the inter-departmental semester competitions and were overrepresented as student org leadership. Alumni spoke highly of the program and the network and had relatively prosperous careers, mostly in finance. The researchers were reliably some of the most cited economists in Brazil, as FGV is a relatively rare bastion of orthodox neoclassical economics in the country.

As for Minerva, I relied on Ascent - the weekend for admitted students. Minerva covered most of the cost of attendance including airfare. There were people from all over the world huddled together in one dorm. Some students had directed marketing campaigns at Apple as interns, others had worked on movies, one wrote and recited an impressively long poem about a past crush as his personal talk. The density of diversity was astonishing, especially for a relative bumpkin like me.

Enter Ben Nelson. The cofounder, who was Minerva University’s de-facto chairman for its first 8-odd years, loved dunking on all traditional and elite schools. During the weekend, he told tales of students who exaggerated summer research projects and got into Princeton, because “[Princeton] don’t care at all” about the claims applicants make. Those students didn’t survive Minerva’s background checks, we were told. Could this place really be as selective as top universities?

Students from all walks of life, passionate founder, somewhat-tangible “culture of inquiry.” All in San Francisco, which helped soak the picture in sunshine and fashionable fog. Ascent was effective: it gave any attendant ammunition to turn the natural impression of a scam/cult into a movement you could join.