<p>According to Malcolm Gladwell (really interesting concept)</p>
<p>Malcolm</a> Gladwell - Zeitgeist Americas 2013 - YouTube</p>
<p>This was really interesting. I’ve always maintained a sort of similar idea in that when you go to a school where you are likely to do slightly better, you become more interested in the subjects and as a result end up more functional in your major in the long run, but he puts this into much more real terms.</p>
<p>It is so counter intuitive to think that your worst school choice could be going to Harvard (unless you are absolutely brilliant and likely to graduate at the top of your class).</p>
<p>However, grade inflation is generally higher at more selective schools, according to [url=<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5DNational”>http://www.gradeinflation.com]National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities<a href=“list%20of%20schools%20at%20the%20bottom”>/url</a>.</p>
<p>That said, it does appear the most people think of safeties as undesirable afterthoughts, instead of putting some effort into finding one that they actually like. Going to a safety that one genuinely likes is a lot different from going to an unwanted safety in a let-down situation of getting rejected from every school that one likes.</p>
<p>When UC Statfinder was up, it was clear that students tended to favor attending the more selective schools that admitted them. The yield rates got higher as the students’ academic stats got lower.</p>
<p>it all depends on what the safety school is. If your safety school is your state’s flagship, you’re fine. If it’s a local school where everyone who wasn’t accepted elsewhere goes, if you’re not in the honors program or if there’s a pervasive drug/alcohol culture leading to dropping out, it can be a big problem.
One problem is peer pressure or peer expectations. If you like intellectual stimulation, think carefully before going to your safety “for the easy grade”. First, it may not happen, for the reason UCBAlum explained above. Second, it’s difficult to keep your grades up when it seems you’re the only one who cares (and might be marginalized for it - high school style, alas). I’ve seen bright kids who stopped participating because they were the only ones who had done the reading, who had questions, who were interested in learning and thinking. Nothing is worse than a discussion section where half the class is either drunk, high, or barely awake, and almost no one has done the homework. There are schools where students routinely turn in their papers late and wonder why it’s a big deal, because they never did any work in High School and think it shows how committed they are to their studies that they actually did the work. There are schools where many students have so many other obligations than school (often, absolutely legitimate obligations) that school is something they’re both passionate about and forced to consider secondary. This kind of safety wouldnt be a smart choice.
That’s why finding a safety that’s a less selective good “fit” should be a high school student’s first action. :)</p>
<p>Although I find Gladwell’s writing entertaining, when you really think about this theory, it doesn’t hold up. First off, there’s a limited supply of being the Top Dog in your class. (We’re talking about his PhD econ students here.) And there’s no guarantee of being Top Dog, even if you drop down. And what are the consequences of missing at a lower school vs. missing at the best schools? That wasn’t explored, but I can guarantee you that in the real world, although it’s better to be Top Dog at Alabama than the middle of the pack at Harvard, it’s better to be middle of the pack at Harvard than middle of the pack at Alabama. You can’t change the world, people want Harvard grads!</p>
<p>Here’s the other problem with his presentation regarding STEM degrees. He treats them as all the same. But are they really the same thing? Yes, they both say BS, but is it the same course work, the same grading, the same peer group? If all you want is the piece of paper, then yes, they’re the same thing, but in the real world, they’re not. One is much harder to get because it’s a more rigorous degree.</p>
<p>Let’s extend the theory one step further back. Do people who graduate further down the class rank at a rigorous high school do worse than equal test score graduates of lesser HS schools, where they could come out on top? After all, they’re both high school diplomas, therefore, they should be the same thing. </p>
<p>I think we know the answer to that.</p>
<p>Perhaps the answer is not to drop down to your safety, but for lesser graduates of more prestigious institutions to realize “I may no longer be Top Dog, but I’m still pretty damn good”. Fight the tendency to think less of yourself just because someone else is better, and you’ll be fine. Being Top Dog of the 582nd best college may make you think you’re something special, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re well educated. Taken to it’s logical extreme, if we all went to colleges of two, half of us would be Top Dog, therefore, half of us should all be wildly successful. </p>
<p>I don’t think it works that way.</p>
<p>@MrMom62
The people in the middle of the pack at Alabama aren’t going to be in the middle of the pack at Harvard. The people in the middle of the pack at Alabama are going to be flunking out of Harvard. What good does that do them?</p>
<p>The people in the middle of the pack at Alabama are not even getting into Harvard.</p>
<p>Malcolm Gladwell is over-reaching. He gathers evidence that choosing an overly competitive doctoral program adversely affects post-doctoral publication performance of the less-than-top students at top schools (the 80th percentile graduate students at Harvard), allegedly due to “relative deprivation”. From that he makes the leap that choosing an overly competitive college adversely affects post-baccalaureate performance of the less-than-top students at top schools. He does this without even establishing what post-baccalaureate performance we’re measuring. </p>
<p>Pick something like medical school admission. Is it the case that above-average (but not tippy top) Harvard undergraduates have worse med school admission outcomes than tippy top undergraduates at average schools? When less-than-tippy-top Harvard students do get rejected from med school, is that the end of the story? Do they wind up on their parents’ sofas? Or, does their education lead to other kinds of success?</p>
<p>
Regarding med school admissions, I looked into this earlier. Among accepted MDApplicants members who had a 33-35 on their MCAT, the difference between the median GPA of those accepted to med school and the estimated average GPA of the overall undergraduate class for various colleges is below:</p>
<p>Stanford : -0.02
Harvard : 0.03
Brown : 0.04
Princeton : 0.2
MIT : 0.2
Cornell : 0.22
Berkeley : 0.36
Texas : 0.61
Arizona : 0.62</p>
<p>At Stanford and Harvard, there was no significant difference between the GPA of accepted med school apps and the estimated average GPA of the full undergraduate class, suggesting that it’s quite common to be accepted to med school with average grades or even somewhat below average grades. This is consistent with my experiences at Stanford pre-med. However, at Texas and Arizona, there was a huge difference between the applicants who were accepted to med school and the overall class (~3.85 vs ~3.2), suggesting one needs to be towards the top of their class. Selective colleges with less grade inflation fell somewhere in between.</p>
<p>IMHO, I think Gladwell’s work is creative, but overrated, including his work on outliers. He comes out with interesting ideas, expands on them without a lot of valid research, and because they hit a nerve for a lot of people, they gain acceptance. </p>
<p>I get the sense that he is trying to appeal to people whose academic abilities don’t come as easily, gives them hope that they, too, can be just as successful, and perhaps even has an agenda to diminish the significance having innate ability, or in this case, the value of highly academically challenging schools. Again, just my opinion.</p>
<p>Hear hear maggiedog! So far as I can tell, he comes up with a thesis that he thinks will sell well–and he’s good at selecting them, I admit–then hunts far and wide for anecdotes that supposedly prove the thesis, even if they sometimes have to be twisted like pretzels to do so. He writes well. I just wish he’d use his talents for more legitimate purposes. My book club read one of his books, and I was astonished at how taken everyone was with his writing. He’s quite the snake oil salesman.</p>
<p>^ Agree. Malcolm is glib and he comes up with interesting examples that seem to support his theories. Occasionally he comes up with a very interesting nugget - 10,000 hours to become world class in ____ (whatever it is). That is interesting. I don’t know that his scientific method (if he has one) stands up to close scrutiny.</p>