This is a very interesting take on students entering elite instutions
Please don’t make us watch a video. What’s the gist of it?
@pizzagirl you really need to watch the video. I really cant do the video justice.
The gist of it is that people severely overvalue an institution’s prestige and undervalue class rank within an institution. Gladwell names that “Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder” or EICD, and it leads people to do irrational things like go to Harvard when you know there will be lots of people there smarter than you.
The bell curve of achievement is the same at every college/graduate program, regardless of admission selectivity. The top economics PhD from the University of Missouri outperforms someone at the 85th percentile level from Harvard, and the 55th percentile students at Harvard are barely distinguishable from those with equivalent rank elsewhere, notwithstanding that everyone accepted in the Harvard economics PhD programs had better credentials going in. The chance of graduating from college with a STEM degree is similar: Comparing Harvard and Hartwick College in Utica NY, the best predicter of success in obtaining a STEM degree is not absolute math SAT score but math SAT score relative to classmates. STEM degree persistence for the bottom quartile (by math SAT score) at Harvard is the same as for the bottom quartile at Hartwick, and the persistence for their top quartiles is the same, too, notwithstanding that the bottom quartile at Harvard is better in absolute terms than the top quartile at Hartwick.
No she doesn’t. It’s Malcolm Gladwell speaking about the concept of relative deprivation, which is the theme of his latest book. The conclusion is that a student should never attend the best school he is admitted to, but rather go where he will be at the top of his class.
If it’s the same Malcom G.argument about college choices that I’ve heard before, it is this:
It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than the opposite. Attending the most selective school that accepts you generally is a bad strategy (unless you are really, truly so exceptional that you would be among the best students even at a tip-top school).
http://www.businessinsider.com/malcolm-gladwells-david-and-goliath-2013-10
You’ve got two kinds of people going to the top schools. The first kind goes there to drink from one of the finest educations available; to challenge themselves with the faculty, students and expectations that come with such an institution.
The second kind of person goes there because they hope some of the magic will rub off on them. And it does. Sometimes, even before they get admitted, it pays off in the response they get when they tell someone they are applying there. And, it certainly pays off once they can say they actually got admitted and are a student there. But, the attention is fleeting.
On the first day of class these students are nearly indistinguishable. Each one is determined to do well and make their mark. But, before long, it begins to sift out like it always does.
The first group usually does well because they seize challenges and make the most of them.
The second group continues to wait for the payoff to come to them and it rarely does.
Ehhhh. Really depends on the kid, I would say. I keep thinking of the guy I know who graduated with a sub-2.0 GPA from UChicago (because he partied all the time when he was in school) and went on to do well on the Street (likely getting the benefit of the doubt because he’s a U of C grad; he is smart). Would he have been better served going to Rutgers? I doubt it.
And is the bell curve of absolute achievement really the same at each school? Various alumni achievement metrics make me really doubt that.
I ‘cognitively’ understand what Gladwell is proposing,but I don’t buy it. He does not take individuals into consideration and slam dunks his conclusions as what is best for everyone. There will always be a bottom third in every college class no matter the institution, but does that mean those bottom third would have been better served elsewhere? That is not necessarily true. How can he propose to know what those individuals learned and experienced? I find his conclusions very one dimensional, based solely on perceived ‘success’ and relative rank. There are many ways to grow as an individual, and I feel he does not address the positives to taking risks in life that may lend to not being the big fish in the small pond. If everyone took his advice, and played it safe, the bottom third, no matter where, must have made the wrong choices to have landed there. Really very narrow minded
@JHS: About that econ PhD productivity study:
It occurred to me that the results found in that study could happen because of at least 2 reasons. The first is that Gladwell’s “small fish big pond” theory has validity. The second is that it might just be that the top econ PhD programs are terrible at judging which undergrads will become great research-producing faculty. If econ PhD programs are as good at forecasting future research productivity as the average investor is at beating the market, then you would see nearly similar talent distributions at the top 30 econ PhD programs.
And that’s assuming that the very best econ PhD candidates all want to go to the higherest-ranked PhD programs.
That may also not be true. I’d heard it said that when it does to getting a PhD, when you are comparing top 30 programs, it’s much more important to find a faculty advisor with whom you mesh well (in terms of research interests and personality) than to pursue rankings.
With the PhD study, I think he was overcharacterizing the data. As I understood it, it looked like the study was essentially measuring likelihood of a prestigious academic career. (Actually, it was measuring academic publications, weighted by journal prestige. But to me, you are not likely to be publishing in prestigious academic journals unless you are writing academic articles and trying to get tenure, so the index is really a proxy for an academic career.) Also, I don’t think it was comparing grades in graduate school to productivity after graduate school. It was simply looking at who was the most productive (in academic terms) graduate of Harvard vs. elsewhere. So, the very most productive graduates of sub-top-30 economics programs were about as productive as the 90th percentile of Harvard graduates, but that’s not so surprising. Most of the graduates of all programs didn’t have academic careers at all, and the study wasn’t measuring anything so crass as how much they earned in their alternative careers.
Thank you, JHS, for summarizing it.
Here’s the PhD paper: https://ideas.repec.org/p/van/wpaper/vuecon-sub-13-00009.html
The data’s interesting and, as I’ve come to expect from Gladwell, he does shape conclusions that aren’t strongly supported by the numbers.
So yes, the 99th percentile at UMD/UIUC/BU/USC do better than the 75th percentile at Harvard/Chicago/Northwestern/Yale . . . but the 85th percentile at Harvard/Chicago/Northwestern/Yale do better than the 95th percentile at UMD/UIUC/BU/USC.
Also, some programs (MIT, Princeton, Rochester, and UCSD) outperform their peers while some others (Cal, UMich, UCLA, NYU, Cornell) underperform.
This is I interesting. Thnx.
A student seeking a career in academia should ignore his advice: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/02/university_hiring_if_you_didn_t_get_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_university_good.html
Have heard this argument before. Sorry, Malcolm, but my kid preferred to be challenged by attending a school with peers of equal ability. I am not concerned about her success.
This CC thread (and the study that inspired it) offers an argument that endorses the bigger pond:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1748559-better-off-being-worst-student-at-a-four-year-college-than-going-to-a-community-college.html#latest
Obviously, there are competing theories about the big pond/small pond reasoning, and I honestly have no idea who is right.
@profparent, I really do believe that it depends on the kid. BTW, the conclusions drawn from the CC study have some issues as well.
Some kids do better when they are the big fish and everyone treats them as special (and worse when they are not).
Some kids do better when they’re surrounded by high-achieving kids (and worse when they are not).
Did the paper even mention graduation rates? I suspect they are significantly higher at Harvard than Missouri, which should make a big impact.
I am a huge fan of Gladwell and I will read the book. But I am confused about one thing, which is the mathematics of it.
Assume that the bottom third of any school is better off going to a less selective school where they will be the top third. Then, after the shift has happened, in the second school we have a new top third, the old top third becomes the new middle third, and the old middle third becomes the new bottom third.
But now, the new bottom third should leave the school and go to another less selective school. Everyone will keep doing it till there are no schools left and all the kids are out of college. That’s the only mathematically possible steady state, as in any other state there will always be a bottom third at any school who needs to move.
How would Gladwell solve for that?