[HN Gopher] Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engi...
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       Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering
        
       Author : curioustock
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2025-07-29 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (poetsandquants.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (poetsandquants.com)
        
       | lisper wrote:
       | This particular clickbait title formula -- The X No One Has Heard
       | About -- drives me nuts because it is so manifestly self-
       | defeating. Obviously _someone_ has heard about it. At the very
       | least, the author of the piece has heard about it, and now all of
       | their readers have heard about it too.
        
         | cadamsdotcom wrote:
         | Ah, the classic "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded"
         | :)
         | 
         | HN titles generally shouldn't be clickbait.. what would you
         | suggest instead?
        
           | lisper wrote:
           | In this case I would have gone with something like:
           | 
           | Management Science & Engineering (MS&E): Stanford's
           | interdisciplinary hub
        
             | taude wrote:
             | ha, no one would have clicked on that title. Needs some cta
             | and pep in it.
             | 
             | But Claude gives me:
             | 
             | "Stanford's 230-Student Program That Produces More Unicorn
             | Founders Than Most Schools"
             | 
             | "Why Stanford Engineers Are Choosing MS&E Over CS: A
             | Technical MBA That Actually Works"
             | 
             | "Stanford's MS&E: The 7.8% Acceptance Rate Program Behind
             | Instagram, Gusto, and Sourcegraph
             | 
             | "How Stanford's MS&E Became Y Combinator's Secret Feeder
             | Program"
             | 
             | "
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | You could have gone with something a bit catchier, "The
             | Stanford Program that few people know about" which would
             | have the same sentiment and would definitely get more
             | clicks than your suggestion.
        
               | lisper wrote:
               | I guess that depends on what you think the purpose of
               | these titles is: to get people to click, or to tell them
               | what the article is actually about so they can make an
               | informed decision whether or not to click. If your goal
               | is the former then just go with "The secret to
               | everything! Best article ever written! Must read!" no
               | matter what the actual content is.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Do you want people to read the thing or not. Giving the
               | exact course name as the title guarantees very few people
               | will read it. Telling the potential reader there's a
               | class few people know about has a better chance. I think
               | we can all agree that the point of any written text is
               | for _someone_ to read it at some point. How many books
               | have titles that are descriptive of the contents and not
               | something just to get you to at least pick it up and read
               | the jacket? How many titles of movies or music albums as
               | well? Just so as we are all clear that your attempt to be
               | pedantic on a title definition was very much ignoring
               | anything but something like a news headline
        
           | Obscurity4340 wrote:
           | This is an extremely amusing turn of phrase
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | Oh man, if you liked that, then you should read up on more
             | Yogisms:
             | 
             | https://yogiberramuseum.org/about-yogi/yogisms/
        
           | hyghjiyhu wrote:
           | > no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded
           | 
           | This seems like a paradox but actually isn't.
           | 
           | The trick is to correctly interpret what is actually being
           | said. No one goes there anymore - this is clearly meant in a
           | casual imprecise way not literally 0. So how can we precisely
           | state what is meant?
           | 
           | I would interpret it as the proportion of some group of
           | people going there is now very low.
           | 
           | On the other hand that it is crowded is a different thing. It
           | says that the absolute number of people going there is too
           | high. Furthermore, those people may be different from the
           | group in the first part.
           | 
           | Two example scenarios:
           | 
           | * None of my friends go there anymore, the number of tourists
           | is too high.
           | 
           | * As the city has grown, the place has reached capacity
           | meaning that a smaller proportion of the city can visit.
        
         | alankarmisra wrote:
         | It's like the secret beaches in every south-east asian nook and
         | crany. They're so secret there's signs pointing to them every
         | where and they are overrun with tourists.
        
           | sas224dbm wrote:
           | Tony Wheeler has a lot to answer for
        
         | junar wrote:
         | Pretty sure any Stanford student would have heard about it. For
         | students graduating in 2023-2024 year, Management Science and
         | Engineering was the 9th most popular bachelor's degree and 7th
         | most popular master's degree.
         | 
         | https://irds.stanford.edu/data-findings/degrees-conferred
        
         | tomhow wrote:
         | We've de-baited the title now.
        
       | apparent wrote:
       | Of the famous founders, over half were Stanford undergrads and
       | therefore likely were "coterm" students. That means they just
       | added a year to their degree and got this degree tacked on. That
       | saves lots of time and money compared to going to Stanford as a
       | master's student. There are a lot of things that are "worth it"
       | if you don't have to move apartments/cities and get it for half
       | the price -- but which are not nearly as worth it if you're
       | paying double and add the friction of moving to the area in order
       | to enroll.
        
         | m-ee wrote:
         | I'm not sure how it factors into the overall admission
         | statistics but getting accepted for a coterm is, or at least
         | was, significantly easier and more straightforward. In my time
         | it just meant a GPA above a certain cutoff, a letter of rec
         | from a professor, and non embarrassing GRE scores. A very good
         | letter of recommendation could make up for deficiencies in the
         | other two. It's not exactly a super selective elite club like
         | the article implies if you're already there for undergrad.
        
         | TMWNN wrote:
         | Can Stanford undergrads coterm in MS&E with any undergraduate
         | major?
        
           | m-ee wrote:
           | Yes, I knew people who cotermed in MS&E (and other masters
           | programs) with a different undergrad major. I think you just
           | need to make sure you fulfill whatever prereq courses they
           | ask for but my knowledge is old at this point. I imagine
           | you'd be fine going from any engineering major to MS&E, but
           | if you were an English major who happened to take a bunch of
           | math and physics that would probably work too.
        
       | constantcrying wrote:
       | Maybe it is because I am not from the US and from a country with
       | a very different work culture, but this whole thing seems
       | ridiculously narcissistic. A person with such a degree becoming
       | my coworker or my boss seems like a nightmare. Even talking to
       | someone who "made it through" such a degree is something I would
       | rather avoid.
        
         | mocmoc wrote:
         | this industry is rotten
        
           | lenerdenator wrote:
           | Things rot from the head down, and Stanford arguably counts
           | as the head.
        
       | coupdejarnac wrote:
       | I've taken a few graduate courses at Stanford MS&E through their
       | non degree program, and I give the experience three thumbs up.
        
       | mathattack wrote:
       | I've met several of these students. It's like an MBA, but less
       | social networking and more math. (And can be done co-term or in a
       | year)
       | 
       | So does it add some value to someone who is already getting a
       | bachelors in EE, CS or similar? Sure.
       | 
       | Would I put a history major with an MS&E degree in charge of
       | anything significant? Probably not.
       | 
       | I suspect that the admissions rate of 7% is independent of
       | coterms.
        
       | TexanFeller wrote:
       | > Management Science
       | 
       | It's jarring and galling to see management and science put
       | together in a way that's suggestive of management being a
       | science. It reeks of stolen valor.
       | 
       | Obligatory Feynman on "sciences":
       | https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo?si=SYTZSNA0G-RZDguA
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-29 23:00 UTC)