Makes YC sounds fairly easy to get into, as long as you have energetic founders from good schools. I'm currently trying to find out what the Kalvin's had achieved before applying.
Among other things -- Kalvin and I started a nonprofit while in college that funded 800+ microfinance loans to developing world entrepreneurs and Randy was a hacker at Scribd (YC S06).
I think beyond that, they really appreciated how well we worked and functioned together as a unit (having been roommates and friends before YC), with differing but complementary skill sets and personalities.
If it's easier to apply to YC than to Harvard, acceptance rates don't necessarily mean much.
(I suspect it's true that YC is harder to get into than Harvard, but I don't know how to measure that difficulty. Perhaps start by asking what % of people who get into YC would get into Harvard, and vice versa?)
My team of four got into YC with not a college degree between us. Two of us had most recently gone to community college, one of us dropped out of the University of Washington, and one of our teammates had just done six months at USC. Granted, USC is a "good school," but if you have a strong team that can demonstrably work well together, you have a good shot of getting into YC. In our case, we'd been on a very competitive high school robotics team for four years and had done other tech projects together.
Good read tho. Thanks.