Is it better to be a "Big Fish in a Small Pond" - Gladwell's Elite Cognitive Disorder

[Anonymous]

I think Malcolm Gladwell's EICD theory is very interesting food for thought for DCUM, which seems to over-weight prestige in college over anything else. Malcolm Gladwell has a theory that he calls Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder (EICD). In general he states that we put too much emphasis on elite institutions (especially education). Because people really care more about relative status than absolute status, the "worst" students that go to Harvard end up doing poorer in their fields than the "best" students at a much lesser institution even though they are way better than students more anywhere else.

Malcolm Gladwell gave this talk in CA a few years back, and wrote a book "David and Goliath" that he draws from. You can read the transcript of his speech here:

https://www.neil.blog/full-speech-transcript/why-did-i-say-yes-to-speak-here-by-malcolm-gladwell

Essentially, he brings evidence and analysis to the idea that you fare better and are better off if you are in an environment where you are outperforming your peers and those you are being directly compared to, rather than just squeaking into a very elite, competitive institution where you perform in the bottom third.

Here's just one brief excerpt from this speech. The whole speech is quite interesting (https://www.neil.blog/full-speech-transcript/why-did-i-say-yes-to-speak-here-by-malcolm-gladwell):

"Mitchell Chang at UCLA recently did the numbers and he says, as a rule of thumb, your odds of graduating — successfully getting a science and math degree — fall by two percentage points for every ten point increase in the average SAT score of your peers.
So if you’re a kid and you have a choice between Harvard and University of Maryland, and University of Maryland is your safety. University of Maryland has 150 -- on average SAT scores are 150 points lower at Maryland. That means your chance of graduating with a STEM degree from Maryland is 30% higher than it would be at Harvard.
Right?
Now -- so if you choose to go to Harvard and not Maryland, you are taking an enormous gamble. You are essentially saying “This STEM degree,” -- by the way, the most valuable commodity any college graduate could have in today's economy — “I am going to take a 30% gamble in my chances of getting that degree just so I can put Harvard on my resume.”
Is that worth it?
I don't think so. Right?
But how many kids, given a choice between Harvard and Maryland, choose Maryland?
Not that many.
Why?
EICD.
Now, why does EICD persist if it is so plainly irrational?
Well, I think it is because as human beings, we dramatically underestimate the costs of being at the bottom of a hierarchy.
Let me give you another really remarkable example of this.
This is from a paper that was, just came out from a guy named, two economists, guy named John Connelly and Allie Sundy -- Allie Under, rather. They looked at graduates of PhD programs, economics PhD programs at American universities. And what they were interested in was “What is the publication record of these graduates in the six years after they took an academic position?”
So as you know, the principal way by which we evaluate economists is how often and how well do they publish. So what these guys did is they did a little algorithm, took the top economics journals, and weighted them according to their level of prestige, and came up with a number of how many -- your score after six years of graduation.
So we get this chart here.
What you can see, first of all, look at the 99th percentile. So what this says is, the kids who are in the 99th percentile of their PhD program at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago -- the 99th percentile, that's what they publish.
The Harvard students publish 4.31 journal articles in their first six years after graduation. That's amazing. Right?
Astounding number.
Same with M.I.T at 4.73.
All the way down the list.
What we see here is that the best students at the very best schools are extraordinary, and that comes as no surprise. You just saw Larry Summers here. I don't know where he went. Larry Summers, that's Larry Summers, right?
Brilliant. Genius. We knew that.
Let's look at the 85th percentile.
Now, the 85th percentile at these schools, these are schools that might take two dozen PhD students every year. So if you're in the 85th percentile in the MIT economics program, you're the fifth or sixth best student in your class. That's really smart, okay?
The 85th percent student at MIT -- or at Harvard, let's do Harvard — publishes basically one paper in their first six years versus 4.31 in the top student. So the gap between one and five is enormous, right? It is 5X.
Now, let's go down to the 55th percentile at Harvard. So the 55th percentile at Harvard is the -- let's say, the, uh, 12th best person at the greatest economics program in the world. They could arguably say they are one of the 20-top PhD economic students in the world, right?
Look what their publication rate.
0.07.
Basically they're not publishing at all.
By any standard by which we judge academic economists, these people are complete failures, right?"

[Anonymous]

What about the branding power of Harvard or MIT? Even if you were at the bottom of your class. Wouldn’t you still typically get a job easily with higher salary compared to a top engineering student at UMD?
Also, isn’t everyone at Harvard or MIT really smart to begin with?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about the branding power of Harvard or MIT? Even if you were at the bottom of your class. Wouldn’t you still typically get a job easily with higher salary compared to a top engineering student at UMD?
Also, isn’t everyone at Harvard or MIT really smart to begin with?

No, some of them are smart but not outstanding. No employer wants someone from the bottom of a class.

[Anonymous]

This is pretty toxic!

"Big fish in a small pond" emphasizes on competition.

In elite schools there are far more going on than competition. Kids can be collaborative and community minded. The connections they established there help them far more than their gpa in their future career.

If you are the only big fish in the small pond, where are you finding your peers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about the branding power of Harvard or MIT? Even if you were at the bottom of your class. Wouldn’t you still typically get a job easily with higher salary compared to a top engineering student at UMD?
Also, isn’t everyone at Harvard or MIT really smart to begin with?

The college name can get you an interview, but if you're not good enough to pass the interviews, you're not getting the job no matter if you're at Harvard or Wyoming State

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Malcolm Gladwell's EICD theory is very interesting food for thought for DCUM, which seems to over-weight prestige in college over anything else. Malcolm Gladwell has a theory that he calls Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder (EICD). In general he states that we put too much emphasis on elite institutions (especially education). Because people really care more about relative status than absolute status, the "worst" students that go to Harvard end up doing poorer in their fields than the "best" students at a much lesser institution even though they are way better than students more anywhere else.

Malcolm Gladwell gave this talk in CA a few years back, and wrote a book "David and Goliath" that he draws from. You can read the transcript of his speech here:

https://www.neil.blog/full-speech-transcript/why-did-i-say-yes-to-speak-here-by-malcolm-gladwell

Essentially, he brings evidence and analysis to the idea that you fare better and are better off if you are in an environment where you are outperforming your peers and those you are being directly compared to, rather than just squeaking into a very elite, competitive institution where you perform in the bottom third.

Here's just one brief excerpt from this speech. The whole speech is quite interesting (https://www.neil.blog/full-speech-transcript/why-did-i-say-yes-to-speak-here-by-malcolm-gladwell):

"Mitchell Chang at UCLA recently did the numbers and he says, as a rule of thumb, your odds of graduating — successfully getting a science and math degree — fall by two percentage points for every ten point increase in the average SAT score of your peers.
So if you’re a kid and you have a choice between Harvard and University of Maryland, and University of Maryland is your safety. University of Maryland has 150 -- on average SAT scores are 150 points lower at Maryland. That means your chance of graduating with a STEM degree from Maryland is 30% higher than it would be at Harvard.
Right?
Now -- so if you choose to go to Harvard and not Maryland, you are taking an enormous gamble. You are essentially saying “This STEM degree,” -- by the way, the most valuable commodity any college graduate could have in today's economy — “I am going to take a 30% gamble in my chances of getting that degree just so I can put Harvard on my resume.”
Is that worth it?
I don't think so. Right?
But how many kids, given a choice between Harvard and Maryland, choose Maryland?
Not that many.
Why?
EICD.
Now, why does EICD persist if it is so plainly irrational?
Well, I think it is because as human beings, we dramatically underestimate the costs of being at the bottom of a hierarchy.
Let me give you another really remarkable example of this.
This is from a paper that was, just came out from a guy named, two economists, guy named John Connelly and Allie Sundy -- Allie Under, rather. They looked at graduates of PhD programs, economics PhD programs at American universities. And what they were interested in was “What is the publication record of these graduates in the six years after they took an academic position?”
So as you know, the principal way by which we evaluate economists is how often and how well do they publish. So what these guys did is they did a little algorithm, took the top economics journals, and weighted them according to their level of prestige, and came up with a number of how many -- your score after six years of graduation.
So we get this chart here.
What you can see, first of all, look at the 99th percentile. So what this says is, the kids who are in the 99th percentile of their PhD program at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago -- the 99th percentile, that's what they publish.
The Harvard students publish 4.31 journal articles in their first six years after graduation. That's amazing. Right?
Astounding number.
Same with M.I.T at 4.73.
All the way down the list.
What we see here is that the best students at the very best schools are extraordinary, and that comes as no surprise. You just saw Larry Summers here. I don't know where he went. Larry Summers, that's Larry Summers, right?
Brilliant. Genius. We knew that.
Let's look at the 85th percentile.
Now, the 85th percentile at these schools, these are schools that might take two dozen PhD students every year. So if you're in the 85th percentile in the MIT economics program, you're the fifth or sixth best student in your class. That's really smart, okay?
The 85th percent student at MIT -- or at Harvard, let's do Harvard — publishes basically one paper in their first six years versus 4.31 in the top student. So the gap between one and five is enormous, right? It is 5X.
Now, let's go down to the 55th percentile at Harvard. So the 55th percentile at Harvard is the -- let's say, the, uh, 12th best person at the greatest economics program in the world. They could arguably say they are one of the 20-top PhD economic students in the world, right?
Look what their publication rate.
0.07.
Basically they're not publishing at all.
By any standard by which we judge academic economists, these people are complete failures, right?"

Did anyone actually read this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about the branding power of Harvard or MIT? Even if you were at the bottom of your class. Wouldn’t you still typically get a job easily with higher salary compared to a top engineering student at UMD?
Also, isn’t everyone at Harvard or MIT really smart to begin with?

Not true for Tech. Especially employers are leaning toward skill based hiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is pretty toxic!

"Big fish in a small pond" emphasizes on competition.

In elite schools there are far more going on than competition. Kids can be collaborative and community minded. The connections they established there help them far more than their gpa in their future career.

If you are the only big fish in the small pond, where are you finding your peers?

Do you know kids at elite schools? They will be nice but do not associate with those they consider beneath them either socially or academically. Some really nasty people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about the branding power of Harvard or MIT? Even if you were at the bottom of your class. Wouldn’t you still typically get a job easily with higher salary compared to a top engineering student at UMD?
Also, isn’t everyone at Harvard or MIT really smart to begin with?

No, some of them are smart but not outstanding. No employer wants someone from the bottom of a class.

On the other hand, I've never had an employer ask my class rank.

[Anonymous]

It really depends on the person, I guess. I was a whale in a small pond, and it did not feel good at all, and I also don’t think it helped professionally. Sorry, if I were to do it again, I’d aim for a better school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about the branding power of Harvard or MIT? Even if you were at the bottom of your class. Wouldn’t you still typically get a job easily with higher salary compared to a top engineering student at UMD?
Also, isn’t everyone at Harvard or MIT really smart to begin with?

Of course there is stronger branding power at MIT, Harvard. But what good does branding power do if you struggle with confidence and feel like a failure/imposter/low self esteem compared to competitive peers that are outperforming you consistently. It impacts confidence, initiative and mental health which can impact how you come across in a job application/interview compared to peers or might have you consider dropping out, taking time off, switching to an easier major, using substances to manage depression, and all of that can impact outcomes more than branding power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It really depends on the person, I guess. I was a whale in a small pond, and it did not feel good at all, and I also don’t think it helped professionally. Sorry, if I were to do it again, I’d aim for a better school.

I don't think you want a terribly unmotivated or poor peer group by any means (as your "whale in small pond implies") but being simply a bigger fish or top quarter of a school sounds good. Still many students like you that can feed off each other but you're not getting defeated by being in the bottom tier or being the only smart person in the entire school.

[Anonymous]

this is a fascinating read!

[Anonymous]

Those who worry about being a small fish in a big pond couldn’t get into MIT or Harvard anyways. So it’s an invalid question.

[Anonymous]

I think it all depends on both one's ability and personality. I have 1 uber driven super smart kid who got a full ride to a top college, graduated at the top and scored top internships and jobs - as we expected bc he is crazy self driven and peer group is irrelevant to them. College was super easy for this kid with no competition. Kid #2 also crazy smart, more of an a academic snob but not prof driven, went to an ivy - also graduated at the top and great job but more low key. Kid #3 also at an ivy - this kid does best when surrounded by accomplished peers - thrives and excels with competition and admits that it pushes them and normalizes the hard work. 3 different kids in different size ponds. All happy and leading independent lives.