<p>Excellent Article. The message is well delivered by compelling leaders in business and industry. Being a Mom of a senior high schooler, sometimes the anxiety of the parents is passed along to the children. Great message not just for the kids but for the parents too. A reminder that their kids are just as wonderful and rejection is just a stepping stone to a higher personal goal. They still can and will go on to being highly successful, doctors, lawyers and “buffeters”…</p>
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<p>Absolutely. And let´s also keep in mind that most of the people who went to Harvard or another Ivy League school did not found multi-million dollar companies, become famous journalists or entertainers, or become president or even senators. </p>
<p>Really, people need to look at their definition of success and, of course, what we convey to our children about who is “successful”. My sister graduated from Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law School and now is working in a stable, moderately-paid, government job (along with lots of non-Harvard grads) in which she has been able to have a shortened work week so she could spend more time with her three little girls. She will never be rich, never have a high-powered career, and never be cited as one of America´s Most Accomplished. But she is happy. And she IS very successful.</p>
<p>“I didn’t get into the top college so I had to settle for a top 20.”
Utter hypocrisy.</p>
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<p>therein lies the fatal flaw in your argument. there’s no point speaking in terms of absolute numbers if you really want to make a comparison between the norm for a Harvard grad and the norm for a non-Harvard grad. There are SO many more non-top school grads than top-school grads - even if say 10% of top school grads were “successful” and only 1% of non-top school grads were “successful”, OF COURSE you get more successful people who didn’t go to top schools. Question: Does that matter when you evaluate an individual’s chances of “success”? No. I would rather have a 10% chance than a 1% chance any day.</p>
<p>Again, I completely agree that getting rejected from a top school is not the end of the world. Nobody should be despondent over that. It doesn’t mean at ALL that you’ll not be successful. Ultimately, Harvard doesn’t cause you successful - you yourself do, and Harvard is just one (not infallible) statistical indicator that you’re good. And the people I respect most in my life - none of them were exceptionally brilliant academically and none went to top schools. But people who stupidly turn this into a cause for celebration, or point to some random examples and take them to mean that getting rejected from Harvard means they are statistically MORE LIKELY to be successful, are just… let’s just say it becomes obvious why they didn’t get in. I know that you didn’t go to a top school for undergrad, but I sincerely hope you’re not still bitter about that fact and letting it cloud your judgment.</p>
<p>I see that you’re a professor. Your students want their money back.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the article but thought it focused awfully heavily on Harvard rejections. Almost everyone is rejected at Harvard at one time or anyoher–it would have been interesting to get a bit more of a distribution in terms of famous and successful people who didn’t apply there at all or went to schools other than Brown or Columbia disappointment. On that front, Meredith Vieira came off great–she has been a warm supporter of her alma mater, Tufts, at times on the Today Show. Similarly, the Northwestern Mutual chief exec who went to Carleton made a much more interesting case than the plain-vanilla Ivy men. Still, the article made a good and very readable point, just too bad it had to be quite so narrow in its approach.</p>
<p>Screwitlah, there is nothing wrong with my argument: what is wrong are your assumptions about the point I was making with it. You not only misunderstand my argument but actually the entire point of the thread. </p>
<p>A gigantic set of factors go into determining one’s ultimate success, and you are attributing far too much predictive power to the undergraduate school one attends. A recent study by some folks I know provides evidence that actually after controlling for actual student abilities, the college doesn’t really explain much if anything. </p>
<p>I should also add that a much larger predictor of future success is emotional. Given the slamming nature of your posts, often with angry insults thrown in for good measure, I think you might want to start taking this aspect into account. Very seriously.</p>
<p>To me, if you were to print the WSJ article & cross out all the college names mentioned it would still be worthwhile for the basic message of perseverance and perspective. I especially liked this -</p>
<p>"If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. “The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place.”</p>
<p>Good advice if you ask me.</p>
<p>Timeflew…I agree. It’s the message, not the names of the schools. The message is a wise one no matter where you apply to college.</p>
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<p>But YOU – the given individual – have the same chance of “success” regardless of where you go. That is, if you define success as loving what you do, being financially self-sufficient, having good relationships and being generally content. </p>
<p>All these hs seniors and college freshmen on CC have a lot of growing up to do, since they really don’t seem to realize that the bloom of where they went to school fades on the first day of their subsequent jobs. At that point, it’s all up to you and your own smarts and desires, and no one is going to look at you afterwards and say, “Oh, well, he went to [insert top school], he must be smart.” You’ll be judged on how you perform. And everyone knows that within the traditional achievement echelons, people who have fancy-schmancy degrees and people with no-big-deal degrees work side by side, and no one really thinks twice about it because it’s what you do with it that counts. Sure, that may be different for IB but that’s such a minute slice of the total work world that it’s irrelevant.</p>
<p>Obviously the WSJ is just writing for its audience.</p>
<p>Thanks for the article. :)</p>
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<p>The assumption is there are high achievers in both realms, even though the percentage of successful people in the “non top school” category is relatively smaller, which might be explained because of the fact that many of the people who get into top schools are high achievers and self-select their school.</p>
<p>Here’s an op-ed piece from the LA Times written by the Admissions Director at Stanford from a few years ago with similar sentiment (I doubt Shaw wrote the headline!):</p>
<p>[Rejected</a> by Stanford? You’ll live - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/30/opinion/oe-shaw30]Rejected”>Rejected by Stanford? You'll live)</p>
<p>3 main points:
- Many of the applicants were qualified for admission Stanford. They just couldn’t all be offered admission.</p>
<p>2)“…celebrate the bigger picture. Despite the constant media buzz about the turbulent state of youth today, most of the applications I reviewed – as well as those reviewed by my colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere – are truly remarkable”</p>
<p>3) “Education is what a student makes of it. Of course, certain schools have resources that others don’t, but they all offer opportunities to learn and to grow.”</p>
<p>I really liked the final line…good advice for this week and next:</p>
<p>“What parents of college applicants across the country need to remember this week is that the news their children are about to receive, whether good or bad, is but a single step on a much longer journey.”</p>
<p>I have been rejected. Do I have to wait until next spring to apply for other journalism grad schools?</p>
<p>Robert Oppenheimer was rejected by Harvard, which had too many Jews on the books that year, so he went to MIT instead.</p>
<p>Trivia aside, the only worthwhile message I got from the article was that one should not let a college rejection become a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the article but it was depressing that instead of going to Harvard, many attended Columbia and Brown instead. They should have gotten better examples!!! Shaw’s article in the LA times is much better in my opinion: Someone quoted parts of it in this thread, but consider reading it in its entirety.</p>
<p>Thx for sharing this!
It really made me rethink my situation and realize that I just didn’t work hard enough and had been thinking too highly about myself.
Though I didn’t get into my favorite school, now I believe that I can achieve success no matter where as long as I’m determined to. =]</p>
<p>I just got rejected from my favorite school on thursday( northwestern). I was also rejected from another before that. I’ve given my last four places up as a bad job. As a consequence I have found an investor to put a serious amount of money in to a business that I’ve had since I was 16. ( I was still upset but it definitely eased the pain ! )</p>
<p>Terrible article. “waaah i didn’t get in to harvard” and then everybody they name end up in other ivy league institutions. That is not rejection.</p>
<p>great article but i find it funny how they got rejected from Harvard but made it to Columbia, Brown and Tufts.</p>