<p>No offense to Malcolm Gladwell, but his explanations are so glib as to be somewhat comical.</p>
<p>His statistic is likely sound- if I had a dollar for every kid I’ve known personally who claims at age 17 that they’re going to med school, I wouldn’t need to work. But I don’t believe this phenomenon is correlated to top ivies or top publics or anything remotely close to that. The typical teenager has very little understanding about how adults earn a living. They’ve seen teachers and dentists and doctors and depending on the socio-economics of their community and parents, they’ve seen what other folks do.</p>
<p>I got to Brown back in the dark ages and to me 'business" was the guy down the street from my parents who owned a carpet and linoleum store.</p>
<p>So kids who are good at math and science get told by their teachers, “oh you should consider medical school” which of course is a giant leap forward from the 1940’s where my mom reported that girls who were good at math and science were told, “you should become a HS math teacher”. (no knock on teachers.)</p>
<p>But my point is that a huge number of kids show up at college with the default option of “STEM” major. Whether they are truly interested in a STEM career is irrelevant, and for many of them, knowing little about the career paths (either in medicine, physical science, engineering, or in fact, non-Stem disciplines) the decision to major in STEM is akin to a 6 year old wanting to be a fire fighter.</p>
<p>Many of the “formerly known as STEM majors” in college that I know personally, didn’t get turned off by STEM. They just got turned on by something else. Linguistics, Econ, Agronomy, Ethnomusicology- kids don’t get exposed to these during “career day” at school. Could some of them have become fabulous physicians/researchers? No doubt. But that doesn’t mean they came from toxic STEM environments.</p>
<p>I graduated from Brown during the dark ages (1970’s) and most of my friends were either engineers, applied math majors, or eventually, became physicians. I don’t know a single one of the current doctors who majored in a STEM discipline- Brown encouraged taking the required courses for med school admissions but majoring in something you truly loved, since there was ample time to double down on cell biology in grad school. I don’t know if that’s still the case today, but my kids (all graduated from colleges during the 2000 decade) knew dozens of kids who are now in med school, or are completing residencies, or in a couple of cases, already practicing or working as researchers (a couple of MD/PhD’s in the bunch) and many (not all of them) majored in non-STEM. Music, philosophy, literature, history.</p>
<p>Agree 100% that if your confidence gets shattered easily you don’t belong in medicine. Whether it’s good or bad for our society, our style of med school education really requires a sort of stony confidence-- just getting in is a marathon.</p>
<p>If this were my D (and I realize it’s not) I’d be encouraging her to find a U where she can soar intellectually. What that means for your D is personal to her— but the “best outcomes” I’ve observed come from kids who show up at a campus charged up and ready to take on the world. Sometimes that means tilting at windmills- and no doubt there are frustrations at being the little fish in the big pond and having to prove yourself. But I see kids arrive at college already somewhat deflated with their path for the next umpteen years already crafted (get a 3.0 GPA, apply to med school, graduate from med school, claw my way into a good residency. Lather rinse repeat) and I can’t imagine a kid as talented as your D wanting that path.</p>
<p>A superstar from my son’s college class is an epidemiologist. He would have made a fine physician or researcher- brilliant guy. But he discovers that he loves the application of his interests in healing to huge populations and data-sets; loves knowing that instead of curing 1 person or 8 people or 15 people a day, as he would in practice, he has the potential of curing millions at a pop.</p>
<p>Take that, Malcolm Gladwell.</p>