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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Nonsense. People get overwhelmed and switch to easier majors at both schools, all the time.

[Anonymous]

What is the lowest ranked graduate at West Point called? Sir.

What is the lowest ranked medical school graduate called? Doctor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the lowest ranked graduate at West Point called? Sir.

What is the lowest ranked medical school graduate called? Doctor.

Some would say that’s why it’s important to attend an undergrad school where you will certainly be able to complete the premed requirements, rather than getting weeded out because you're merely a 99th percentile student instead of a 99.99th percentile student.

[Anonymous]

I think elite colleges are great if your kid got in easily and knows they will be in the top half and thrive.

For others, they had to work like crazy and work to exhaustion just to reach into a top school. When they get in, they want and need to exhale but can't because they are surrounded by so many competitive uber performers and they feel imposter syndrome and its a crushing blow to self esteem which leads to all kinds of issues with coping mechanisms.

If you think your kid may be in the 2nd group, that is the group to worry about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the lowest ranked graduate at West Point called? Sir.

What is the lowest ranked medical school graduate called? Doctor.

Some would say that’s why it’s important to attend an undergrad school where you will certainly be able to complete the premed requirements, rather than getting weeded out because you're merely a 99th percentile student instead of a 99.99th percentile student.

True.

[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.

+1

[Anonymous]

This is a very real phenomenon. The hit that you take to your confidence and sense of your own abilities can be very hard at a top school. It’s best to be where you are challenged but also fit in. This happened to me in college and I often wonder what my path would have been like at a different school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a very real phenomenon. The hit that you take to your confidence and sense of your own abilities can be very hard at a top school. It’s best to be where you are challenged but also fit in. This happened to me in college and I often wonder what my path would have been like at a different school.

I agree.

[Anonymous]

The ability to know yourself is part of growing up. Some kids were deprived of this chances because of helicopter parenttings

[Anonymous]

I like Malcolm in general but think he is off in his comparison of Harvard and UMD in terms of likelihood to graduate. Reasons are: (i) an unhooked kid who isn't among the top 15% or so at UMD most likely won't have the stats to get into Harvard, and (ii) a kid who IS among the top 15% at UMD almost certainly will graduate from Harvard if admitted.' Thus, Malcolm's formula of "2% less likely to graduate for every 10 points increase in average SAT score" applies to nobody because kids of type (i) above won't be at Harvard, while kids of type (ii) above won''t fail to graduate at Harvard.

[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 imagine there's a sweet spot, or sweet range, where you're not struggling, surrounded by people who are performing at a much higher level than you, and also not exasperated because the people around you (and therefore the professors) aren't engaging with the material at a level that satisfies and challenges you.

I want to find that sweet spot for my kid so he can be challenged, growing, happy and confident.

[Anonymous]

Regarding economic research and publications, in the first few years after finishing the PhD programs, they are basically from the PhD thesis, which are guided by the Harvard or MIT professors. These professors are likely the editors and referees for the topic academic journals, who will decide which papers are important and publishable. Whether it is through merits or through network, Harvard or MIT graduates will have a significant advantage compared to UMD graduates in terms of publishing their papers, particularly in the first few years post-PhD. Just saying as someone who is publishing at the economic academic journals ... and I am not from Harvard or MIT ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

No. And Malcolm Gladwell is over.

[Anonymous]

Theory doesn’t hold up in law because of hiring practices. It’s nearly always better to be bottom of your class at Yale than #1 in your class at University of Arkansas. And it’s definitely to be bottom of the class at Yale than 75th percentile at any school outside of the T14.

[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?"

The larry summers example didn't stand the test of time