Assuming this is the old Google lecture that has been posted many times, as I recall the conclusion used something like the steps below:
A STEM degree is the most important thing a student can have. All students want to be STEM majors.
At both highly selective and less selective colleges, STEM majors tend to have SAT scores higher than non-STEM majors.
Therefore the students who are on the lower end of the SAT score at highly selective colleges all want to be STEM majors, but aren’t likely to become one. If they had attended a less selective college where their SAT score was higher than peers, they would likely have been STEM majors.
Many of Gladwell’s college theories I’ve heard use similar logic that starts with a false statement or has some faulty logical steps, which appears to support to an counterintuitive conclusion. He then finds cherry picked examples to support those conclusions. I expect that he realizes the weaknesses in these logical steps. However, Gladwell is an author trying to boost book sales, not a researcher. I t can be interesting to discuss his theories, but I wouldn’t assume everything he says is accurate.
For example, if you were to compare the % who say they want to pursue a STEM major in the Harvard freshman survey (or similar at nearly any highly selective college) to the % who do complete a STEM major, I expect you’d draw a completely different conclusion.
It sounds like you missed the larger point about students’ confidence, motivation, and ability to self-advocate, the importance of which is supported by more than 50 years of research.
As I’ve posted many times on the forum, some students thrive as a big fish in small pond, while others get pushed to new heights that they would not otherwise achieve, when surrounded by high achieving peers. It depends on the student. If you are claiming something different, do you have examples of the 50 years of research supporting that claim?
I commented on this earlier in this thread. It’s not about being a big fish in a small pond.
I’m not interested in debating the point, so I won’t ask you to post research to support the claim that less competitive students are pushed to greater heights by their higher achieving peers.
Gladwell undercut half the advice given on CC in response to, “Which school should I go to?”, where the recommendations are to go to the highest ranked or most prestigious school or program.
Thanks for posting. I always find him very thought provoking. More importantly, he looks at social science data and is open to novel interpretations. He’s a big thinker in the mold of what we used to have rather than repeating points that are commonly held. Whether I agree with a particular argument or not, I always find him interesting.
It’s not a simple the students always have a better outcome if they choose a relatively less competitive college or a relatively more competitive college. Instead it depends on the particular student. Some students absolutely perform better when surrounded by highly motivated and high achieving peers. And some absolutely function better when they are towards the top of the class than when they are a small fish when in a pool of high achieving peers (or whatever other wording you’d instead choose). There are too many variables to make a simple blanket statement.
If you extend this to “elite” colleges, choosing the biggest reach a student can possibility get in to is not always going to have a good result. However, always avoiding reaches and choosing a college where you’ll be towards the top of the class by scores is also not always going to have a good result. Some students will function better in the former and some in the latter.
Just because what somebody says fits your preconceived notions or your ideas of how the world should work, does not mean that it’s true. Just because somebody says something that sounds reasonable to you, doesn’t mean that it is reality.
Gladwell is not a researcher, nor does he have any experience in research. He is a person who presents his opinions in compelling and interesting ways. Unfortunately, “opinion” is not the same as “reality”, and “writing in a compelling manner” is not the same as “presenting compelling data and analyses”.
Gladwell did not put the time and effort into learning how to actually research these processes on which he opines, and it shows. That is why he faces continuous criticism from people who have the expertise in research that he lacks.
Again, he may be right and he may be wrong. But he does not actually make a compelling case for those people who consider “compelling case” as “has a compelling set of reliable data and correct analysis to support his claims”.
On the other hand, people who consider “compelling case” as “presents some interesting anecdotes and some cherry-picker research results from other people to support his claims” will have different opinions.
If I had an idea which I sounded great, but it wasn’t really supported by any strong evidence and was not obviously false, I would choose Gladwell to write a book about it. He would popularize it, and have a large group of people touting it as reality, and changing their lives because of it…
Did you even read the study he cited in the video? Or look at the stats he used? I did and I went and read the reviews of the research study. You are arguing in the abstract and not addressing any of the very good points he made, for which he cited research that many peers found compelling. Like all research studies, there was some criticism, but it’s not junk science. Speak to the research instead of your own preconceived notions.
Yes, essentially he always does that. He creates a new way of thinking that challenges whatever the current narrative is. It drives some people bonkers because their main source of information is the evening news/or the same tired old web sites. He’s novel and that scares many, many people. I don’t think he cares. At all.
Gladwell didn’t even go to a good school. He went to the lowly University of Toronto. Those of us who hold our noses up high discount what he says simply for that reason.
I think some people here sent their dogs to University of Toronto. Though thinking about it further, maybe it was their neighbor who sent their dog there. And thinking back further, I think there was some disbelief here that they would let their dog attend there.
I listed some specific in my initial post to this thread, such as not considering that different prospective majors have different SAT score distributions as incoming freshmen . Or not controlling for countless relevant factors that are likely to be influential to switching majors. Or more simply not tracking a significantly sized sample of individual students (aside from cherry picked examples) and looking at percent who dropped out.
If you’d like to see an even more extreme example for “elite” colleges, try listening to Gladwell’s podcast at Food Fight | Revisionist History in which Gladwell using a similar series of questionable statements and logical steps to conclude that cafeteria food is a key driver for the different SES distributions at Bowdoin and Vassar. It’s an entertaining podcast and there is some useful information and elements of truth, but some of the claims obviously wouldn’t hold up to critical analysis.
It’s disappointing that some posters have to hijack the thread to make ad hominem attacks against Gladwell, taking the thread completely off topic. If someone doesn’t like Gladwell or think it’s not worth taking seriously anything he speaks to, why post on the thread? Why not just skip the thread.
The point of this thread was to initiate a conversation on whether we should pay more attention to how a student fits into the relative intellectual prowess of a potential student body s/he is considering joining. The corollary of this is the idea that confidence, motivation, and self-advocacy are the things that ultimately determine one’s success even more so than academic training and education. If so, then a choice of college should perhaps place major importance on whether any particular community of learners and professors will in fact enhance these qualities.
What Gladwell thinks about these issues is really irrelevant here. His talk was simply the stimulus that raised these points for discussion for anyone here who is interested in discussing them. It’s too bad that Gladwell himself instead becomes the topic of discussion.