<p>Younger siblings are famous for doing worse than older in college admit and career, but higher in grades. I always wonder why, so I was reading about motivation and it seems they did a test where they just told one group of people to do a creative problem solving task, and they offered a separate group of people a reward for doing the same thing based on how fast they did it. The people who were just told to do it, no reward and no pressure to get it done faster got it done faster. I'm thinking younger siblings don't do as well because they are so focused on doing better than their older and a=have more extrinsic motivation for recognition (grades) not just doing it cause they like it (college, career)</p>
<p>Eh not necessarily. I’m a younger sibling and I like to compete with my older sisters and I still like school and stuff. Also couldn’t one compete with their older sibling about who gets into the best college and who makes the most money?</p>
<p>I think it is a general trend, and I think the difference is in exactly that, you compete with your sibling in career, so to do that you use the most visible markers, but these markers do not highlight your best path 100%, they don’t test underlying characteristics that cause the markers. Like younger siblings do get better grades and get similar salaries, but they are less likely to make breakthrough accomplishments in science, or reach CEO positions. As you get closer to the true underlying qualities that make success or better definitions of success the gap closes, but that requires a lot of insight that people usually do not gain until later in life.
When you’re eight you’re sitting there trying to just get good grades in every class to compete
when your sibling was eight they were just experiencing things and making choices based on what they liked and what would get them what they want
the second strategy is better because to lead your own life you can’t be waiting to see what someone else does and react/compare to it</p>