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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

except for confidence and how you ae willing to put yourself forward. that matters A LOT after the first rush out of the gate. My child switched for a high profile private where he was middle of the pack to a mid tier public where he stands out. Its night and day how he talks about himself and how confident and he is. He is finally the smart kid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1

And if they do, and your rank isn't all that, just answer: "I, ma'am, am one of those that makes the Top 50% possible."

Our oldest went with the Big Fish approach but is pursing one of those professions with a state/national exam. Pass it, and you get the title/initials to go with it. Has plenty of internship and research opportunities and loves the school. YMMV and I say to each their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

It’s not “fail to graduate” tout court, but failure to graduate in the STEM major. Harvard has a high graduation rate because it slides the less-successful students out of challenging majors into humanities majors, which have a higher curve, but worse post-graduation employment. His point is essentially that it’s better to be a biochemistry major at Maryland than an anthropology major at Harvard—and if you’re in the bottom 25% of biochemistry majors at the beginning of freshman year at Harvard, odds are you’ll wind up in anthropology.

[Anonymous]

I'd be more interested in salaries and % graduating within 4-5 years. I bet the phd economist who graduated at the bottom of the class is making bank bc they went into something more lucrative than a think tank where you write and publish papers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

except for confidence and how you ae willing to put yourself forward. that matters A LOT after the first rush out of the gate. My child switched for a high profile private where he was middle of the pack to a mid tier public where he stands out. Its night and day how he talks about himself and how confident and he is. He is finally the smart kid

It really doesn’t go far in legal hiring. Employers care about law school, class rank, law review, and clerkship. And it continues to matter into your career. Is it dumb? Absolutely. But it’s reality.

[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.

If you were a whale and it didn't help professionally, you weren't using your resources wisely or maximizing your potential in situ.

[Anonymous]

There is some cache with the Ivies and maybe a very few top schools, but beyond that, I think Gladwell is right. I don't think there is ANY benefit to worrying about going to x well-know "really good school" vs. y not as well-known decent school.
If DC is happy, thriving, moving forward and learning, that's all that matters.

[Anonymous]

The dude has to sell books.

It he has to spout some new bullsh@t. He can’t keep writing the same thing.

A kid from Harvard is going to have more opportunities than a genius at CNU. Duh

[Anonymous]

I think most of the bad outcome derives from the poor experience of the student in the bottom percentile at an elite institution. That student feels like an impostor. Unable to cope. Not worthy of the credential. Turned off by their field, their major, their life choices. After working hard just to get there. It must be tremendously deflating.

I’d liken it to young adults entering a bad job market. Some of the documented lifetime income loss comes from lack of work. But I bet a lot of it stems from that feeling of incompetence. Why am I living in mom’s house? Why can’t I even get a job at Walmart or Starbucks? Am I really an adult?

Just one thought on the internalized harm from having a hard time in college.

[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?

Fairy tales belong in kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

I tend to agree with his argument based on examples of people I've known at work and in my personal life.

My niece went to Brown and did graduate and is working as a graphic designer and only making 5 figures salary, living frugally. She went through several depressive episodes in colleges feeling like she wasn't doing as well as she should be (or her peers were) doing - both socially and jobwise. She's mostly happy now but it wasn't like a Brown degree automatically led to strong job prospects. And my brother sacrificed a lot to pay for her Brown degree.

[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.

Exactly I had a friend who got into the BA/MD program at BU but turned to down for Stanford because she felt like you can’t turn down Stanford. She then struggled in premed classes at Stanford and dropped premed. She is not a doctor now and doesn’t particularly love her career.

[Anonymous]

I think what Malcom Gladwell said is much more true for Stem majors than humanities majors. If my kid really wanted to be an English major, I’d feel better if they were going to do that at an Ivy. But if they really wanted to be a scientist, it wouldn’t help to go to Yale and have to drop out of being a chem major when they could have been a successful chem major at U of MD.

[Anonymous]

At the end of the day it comes down to who you know.

[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?"

Well it seems kind of obvious to me. Go somewhere you are in the top 10% and will be able to flourish and take advantage of the resources. Versus having to fight with everyone else, who are all strivers and all used to "being at the top". College is about learning and experiences. Someone at a school ranked 30-60 who is in the Top 10-15% will likely have a resume/be qualified for a T25, and have the drive and motivation those students have. They will still be surrounded by smart kids, just not all the kids will be that smart. Much easier to excel and shine thru. easier to be a TA or get research when you are competing with only 25-30% of the students versus 95%. And a student who gets to do meaningful research, help TA, meets with profs to discuss their field outside of class will go much farther than the students who dont .