I'm not so sure about that. Most people I've met who actually got into PhD programs weren't particularly ambitious, and didn't have a precise idea what they wa

I'm not so sure about that. Most people I've met who actually got into PhD programs weren't particularly ambitious, and didn't have a precise idea what they wanted to do with their prospective research careers. They'd just been raised as academic perfectionists and gone onto the "obvious" next step in academic perfectionism.