<p>Correction, when you went to Harvard. Even though it is fairly easy to get a decent GPA at Harvard it is common knowledge that getting the top GPA would involve serious, sometimes described as cutthroat competition. You can't be talking in the past whether it be 20 years ago (in NSM's case), or 200 years ago (in Mozart's case). Today there is virtually no one who is attempting to achieve something no one else is. Just look at "Chances" threads and "Regular Decision" threads on CC. Even among the kids who get into HYPSM and the like their "stats" and "ECs" are all in the same tune. Not unless you're doing something totally original, which I said is unlikely, probably impossible, there's no way you can get to HYPSM without actively looking to beat someone else at something.</p>
<p>Fred;</p>
<p>That's just silliness. I teach at a large university, and I can assure you that there are people who work hard at bettering themselves giving others no thought whatsoever. Those who do give it a lot of thought are quite often cheaters.</p>
<p>Just because you aren't creative doesn't mean others aren't.</p>
<p>"beating" people is NOT the same as learning, being intelligent, speaking up, writing well, and coming across as someone other then a number chaser</p>
<p>why do you think that the Ivys talk about how many 4.0s and 2400 they reject</p>
<p>and as for Cut Trhoat competition for grades at colleges.....um, no, that is for a few people who have no other standards for themselves for success but a grade,</p>
<p>First of all, Harvard rejects only a quarter of 2400s whom apply. As for 4.0s, we all know not all 4.0s were created the same. I personally know people who go to Harvard now who say to achieve the top grades the competition is fierce. I never said anything about being a numbers chaser. I said being an achievement chaser if that's a word. Being one of the best at what you do, that is what you must strive for. Also, Tarhunt, most people who give no thought to what other's are doing are not as successful as those who see what their peers are doing and see how they can improve themselves. I don't know what the comment about creativity is, but again look at the chances threads and accpetance threads at competitive schools. Most of them got good grades and test scores and did quite similar ECs. It is very rare that any EC on CC surprises me.</p>
<p>Fred:</p>
<p>Well, that's very interesting, Fred. I had a student who did his thesis on the psychology of successful entrepreneurs. It was pretty darn good stuff. His conclusion was that they were almost completely focused on building something (and, in fact, not at all focused on managing something once already built, for the most part). Interestingly, when asked to fill out a questionnaire on what drove them to become successful, items dealing with getting ahead of others were among the lowest of the factors.</p>
<p>My own experience around highly successful people is that usually have their own visions and pursue them with single-minded purpose.</p>
<p>You think William Faulkner became such a great writer because he wanted to "beat" William Shakespeare? Really?</p>
<p>"Today there is virtually no one who is attempting to achieve something no one else is. Just look at "Chances" threads and "Regular Decision" threads on CC. Even among the kids who get into HYPSM and the like their "stats" and "ECs" are all in the same tune."</p>
<p>I would bet that the majority of students who are accepted to places like HPY are not posting chances threads nor scrutinizing CC for ideas of ECs to pursue to get into places like HPYS. Instead, they are following their own bliss, not forcing themselves to march to others' drum beats.</p>
<p>The hundreds of active ECs on Harvard's campus illustrates the fact that H accepts students with a wide range of interests, something that you can't tell by seeing the cookie cutter applicants who post on CC.</p>
<p>I believe that people who post chances posts and ask CC members of advice for how to get into places like H are far less likely to get into H than are intellgent people who are following their own passions, not trying to game the system by hanging out on CC.</p>
<p>First off, again you are comparing people who lived very long ago. That comparison does not make sense because they weren't "competing" for the best readers. But when it comes to college admissions you are competing against extremely bright applicants. Furthermore in business, on NPR (public radio), it says the best leaders (business and otherwise) surround themselves with people brighter than them so they can take their knowledge from them and utilize it for their own use. And, while we are still talking about businees, would you say Rockefeller didn't care who is competition was? He actually didn't beat them, he destroyed them. The only point I'll concede to you is that in the creative arts (writing, painting, and acting to an extent) there is not that kind of competition. But it would be foolish to not attempt to beat others if you're in nearly any other field.</p>
<p>Even if they aren't on CC, the bulk of people in HYPSM and the like did participat e in similar ECs and were nationally or at least regionally ranked in them. NSM, you have even said it yourself, nationally ranked people in ECs have an advantage at these colleges. There's nearly no way, unless based on amazing, prodigious talent, that one would some how find themselves ranked high without trying to beat their competition. Take sports, the most popular EC in which people can be admitted to these competitive colleges, they compete nearly everyday. There is a very, very rare few, that follow their bliss 100% and can display it effectively on an application. I will grant this though, those people have good chances at competitive colleges.</p>
<p>Fred, my good man. I am a cognitive psychologist who, after a very short stint finding out I didn't want to be a clinical psychologist, chose the field of human motivation as my life's work. I started out with military organizations, doing my thesis on the Golani Brigade of the Israeli Army, humping around Lebanon in the 80s. I can tell you from my own work, and from thousands of studies done by others, that a man or woman's willingness to engage in horribly dangerous work and take on the risk of being horribly wounded or being killed has absolutely nothing to do with competing with his/her fellow soldiers.</p>
<p>I still do some occasional work for military organizations, but most of the consulting I've done has been to large businesses. It's been known for some time that one of the most highly motivating factors in daily work is self-competition/self-goal-setting. This was established years ago in the Hawthorne exeriments in the relay assembly room, though pop motivational speakers tend to get the real lessons from Hawthorne very, very wrong.</p>
<p>The fact is, modern business organizations that have people who are highly competitive with each other tend to produce internal behaviors that hurt the organization's effectiveness. For instance, in these organizations, highly effective employees are often fired because they represent competitive threats. Work is often sabotaged because it might make another employee look good. Cooperation is at a minimum for the same reasons. Sure, salespeople tend to be motivated by competition with peers, but they are a different breed from most employees, and it is well known that effective salespeople most often make terrible sales managers.</p>
<p>Fred, you may be able to convince others on this thread, but you can't convince me, OK? I'd say that you could convince me with strong data, but I think I know practically all the seminal studies out there, so I know you won't find what I'm asking for.</p>
<p>But, by all means, believe what you want.</p>
<p>one of the most highly motivating factors in daily work is a bonus. Do you know how you get a bonus, by performing exceptional work, often far outclassing your peers. Furthermore, your examples make little or no sense once again. The Isrealis weren't competing with each other or even inwardly "setting goals" as you would say. They were doing it for their country/religion and knew that the first war they lost would be their last. It's good that you bring up salespeople. Salespeople hype up their goods to make a sale to the consumer. Let's take college applicants. College applicants hype up their achievemnents to "sell" themselves to a college. And a college applicant has to prove that they are at least as good if not better (in the case of HYPSM) than their fellow applicants. You even said it yourself:
**
I like competition too, and I like to win. But I also like to play people who are much better than I at some things and learn from how they play.**
Competing effectively involves cooperation, Tarhunt. A person who isn't that smart or talented will miss out on this important part of competition. These people are similar to those that sabotage other workers. They'll be seen as a fraud and a cheater and will ultimately fail. As you can tell from my posts, I enjoy competition very much. However, I enjoy teamwork as much if not more than competition. It's not even a matter of convincing people about my "idea", it's speaking the truth.</p>
<p>fredfredfred, those people that Lived a Very Long Time Ago, are the very people making decisions about who gets into the schools....and its THEIR experiences, training, thought processes that matter most in the admissions process</p>
<p>those people can see when a person was more focused on apprearances than any real depth of learning or wanting to learn</p>
<p>no school wants a bunch of grade grubbers, or people that want to beat everyone, college is about being in a group environment, learning to work together and maturing</p>
<p>and as for the "bonus" no one earns a bonus by 'beating everyone" most people that earn bonus's do so because they have learned to be team players, learned to work well with others, learned to appreciate those that help them</p>
<p>If a sales person is so competive and cutthroat, well, others often don't want to help them because the salesperson is acting like a jerk</p>
<p>And Fred, if the "goods" have no real value, the smart buyers won't buy them, or trust the salesperson</p>
<p>THere is competitive, and there is cut throat - being competitive at the expense of real accomplishments will indeed show through on an application, through recommendations, essays and lack of anything much else</p>
<p>beat others- kind of sad if that is your motivation in life</p>
<p>Certainly that's not my motivation in life. My motivation is to become successful. To be successful you need to beat others. Also, you forget one important thing, those people with real accomplishments are also competitive. And if you look back to my first post on this topic, being competitive or "liking to beat others" does not mean that you disrespect your peers or treat them as unequals. Being a fair and moral person will show in your essays and recs. I think the only "risk" in being competitive is becoming one of those people who sacrifices friendship and manners for being competitive. Those people don't get into very selective colleges.</p>
<p>People earn bonuses by peforming significantly better than their average employee. I'm not sure if you've ever gotten one, or even if you have a job, but that's how it is. If you want that bonus you must perform significantly better than their average employee. Cgm, you assume that being very competitive makes you a jerk. Often the most successful competitive people are fair and moral. Those qualities are respected by nearly everyone. You fail to realize as well, that one should be competitive to achieve the most not necessarily get the best grades/test scores. People who achieve the most have "goods" of real value.</p>
<p>Fred, I have a great deal of contact with Ed Lawler of USC (of Berkeley when I met him) who is the foremost expert in extrinsic rewards in the workplace (in other words, pay and other reward systems). He doesn't agree with you (nor does anyone else in the field) except in limited circustances. You can read one of his 34 books on the subject if you like, but let's just say that, even in the early 70s, he published a book on the motivational psychology of pay in which he acknowledged that the expectancy/valence model of human motivation was entirely inadequate for explaining most organizational behavior, and tried to meld (unsuccessfully) Maslow's hierarchy of needs with an expectancy/valence model to explain most behavior. Unfortunately, none of that works without the other two models, drive/habit and consistency theory. He has since modified his work to take these into account.</p>
<p>But all research on the subject was once based on observed behaviors, surveys, and the like. Now, we have brain imaging techniques that tell us what parts of the brain are stimulated by various incentives, and the outcome is very, very clear, and it's the same as suggested by Hertzbug's study in the 50s or 60s. Pay CAN be so closely associated in a person's mind with other desirable outcomes that it can be a strong motivator, but only for certain people. For most, pay is a dissatisfier, but not a satisfier.</p>
<p>As for the military, you are wrong. SLA Marshall proved pretty conclusively after WWII what soldiers already knew. One might join up for "country" or (less often) "religion," but what motivates people to stand and fight IN AN ACTUAL COMBAT SITUATION is strongly tied to the pack/herd instinct. That's why military training is so strongly based on building strong affect with one's buddies. The primary reason people stand and fight in actual combat is to keep from letting their buddies down. All that abstract stuff like "country" goes out of mind pretty quickly when you're in actual combat, but perhaps your combat experience is different? I've been in the midst of one firefight and on the periphery of two others. You may have more combat experience than I.</p>
<p>Salespeople who sell in transactional sales environments tend to be strongly motivated by money as it translates into being more successful than one's colleagues. This is why annual sales meetings manipulate that factor so much. Good transactional salespeople, however, are rather a rare bird, and good transactional salespeople generally make horrible consultative salespeople. </p>
<p>I think you'd probably make a good transactional sales person and will probably make a lousy manager. You seem incapable of understanding that not everyone's mind works the same way yours does. To you, the way you see the world is "truth" (your word, not mine) and the actual research that refutes you is ... well ... I don't know what you think that is.</p>
<p>Anyway, organizations made up mostly of Fred's tend to fail miserbly unless they're pyramid sales organizations or the like. Successful businesses require cooperation, and highly competitive people generally don't like to cooperate with anyone. In fact, sabotage is more the order of business.</p>
<p>
[quote]
People earn bonuses by peforming significantly better than their average employee.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No Fred, that's not true in every case. First off, many, many jobs are structured with variable pay in order to keep fixed costs down. Bonuses are expected, and given, in any year in which the company does well enough to pay them. And then, there are team bonuses, gainsharing, successsharing, small group incentives, open book management, and a number of other variable pay designs that reward team and not individual success. </p>
<p>At the executive level, cash compensation is most often structured so that base pay, plus a target bonus, yields market competitive compensation. So, those people get bonuses just for being "market average." Generally, there is an upside if they "perform" better than average, but measuring better than average performance can get awfully, awfully difficult, if not impossible.</p>
<p>W. Edwards Deming makes a strong case for the fact that the vast majority of individual performance comes from statistical variation in outside conditions over which one has no control. For instance, a salesman gets a big account because one of his best customers moved to a new job in a large corporation, or loses a big account because one of his best customers moved outside his sales territory and the new person wants to work with a different vendor. Or, a CEO takes over a company right when an economic upturn occurs, so his stock options are based on a depressed price and he becomes a billionaire. </p>
<p>I know brilliant people who have spent their entire working lives in consulting firms specializing in measuring, incenting, and rewarding performance, and they struggle with all these issues. </p>
<p>Maybe they should hire you.</p>
<p>I don't know how many times I have to say this, being competitive does not mean you won't cooperate with others. Furthermore, I don't need research to tell me that pay is an extremely big motivator as to why most Americans have jobs. Pay, money, is necessary to live ultimately and support one's family. Obviously there are exceptions to the competition as I had admitted. And ultimately, when it comes down to the OP's position, he is not a manager but a salesperson. As for the stuff in the middle of your post, I won't pretend to be an expert in the field of psychology, however I have seen that those who are most competitive achieve the most. I guess you could say it's ancedotal evidence, which would be quite understandable. Furthermore, even if you could bring up research that "refutes" my ideas, I know that if I were accomplished in the field of psychology I could find research that "refutes" yours. Considering you know a lot about research, basically research in any field that's not exact (and even sometimes in exact fields) will be refuted by other research. Thus, while I do not have the knowhow to fully refute what these psychologists supposedly believe, I have no doubt that another psychologist on this board could also draw leaders in his/her field and refute your claims.</p>
<p>How does the company perform well? By competing with it's peers. Without competing well there would be no bonus to give. Thus you're always competing with someone. And in regards to the OP's attitude, will you not agree with me that he's a salesperson in a way?</p>
<p>
[quote]
even if you could bring up research that "refutes" my ideas, I know that if I were accomplished in the field of psychology I could find research that "refutes" yours.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ahm, no. The broad outlines of motivational behavior are very well known and agreed upon. What we don't have is a unified theory that will predict individual behavior because of the various parts of the brain that can take over behavior in given situations. We also don't have good enough measurement of mass factors to always predict, accurately, the way given populations will react given cognitive inputs. But to say that you can find research that refutes what I have said is like saying you can find research supporting a flat earth: doubtless, it's out there, but it's not credible.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>so do you enjoy learning at all or just the competitiveness of a school? Because if you go to somewhere like Stanford, you would suddenly NOT be the best student, everyone would be a valedictorian, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
How does the company perform well? By competing with it's peers. Without competing well there would be no bonus to give. Thus you're always competing with someone. And in regards to the OP's attitude, will you not agree with me that he's a salesperson in a way?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Fred, do you know the difference between transactional and consultative sales?</p>