honest question: do you think that in a job market where it seems to be ridiculously hard to land that junior corporate job maybe starting your own thing is a increasingly valid alternative? I'm not sure this is aligned with the properties that YC is necessarily shopping for (they seem to compete with companies eager to hire the same people) but maybe if you're a newish grad from a lesser-known school? My sample size of one includes someone who did that in the 90's and built a $B+ valued company.
VC investment has rebounded but it's also been extremely concentrated in AI in the last couple of years.
"Starting your own thing" in a vc-backed way (need a big exit, or bust) as a fresh college grad who now has to come up with a thing and sell it to a lot of customers within a couple of years sounds incredibly hard.
Especially when framed as "you won't have to look for a job" - not having the hustle skills to be at the top of the pack in the job-hunt vs your classmates doesn't really give a good signal for your hustle-and-build-and-sell-a-VC-startup alternative.