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I went to Harvard (for grad school) and taught there as a TF; I also have lots of experience of other private and public schools. I don't think Harvard's lower

I went to Harvard (for grad school) and taught there as a TF; I also have lots of experience of other private and public schools. I don't think Harvard's lower tier students are as smart as the top tier students at an average school. Let's set aside the egregious legacy or athletic admits. Is the second-lowest quintile of Harvard students smarter than the top quintile of "average school" students? More polished, yeah, sure; more cunning (not necessarily in a negative sense, but in the sense of understanding how to work the system, how to give evaluators what they want), sure. And maybe by the end, there's more difference than there was coming in, thanks to competitive motivation and other network effects. But admissions are something like a lottery, and I would say that the mean "smartness" of Harvard students is not much different from that of a generic selective private school (let's say, Harvard's second-lowest quintile would be the middle quintile at another reasonably selective private school), and that the top percentiles at a generic public school would perform quite comparably to Harvard's top quintile (even if Maryland has a lower mean, as Gladwell notes). Are there very smart people at Harvard, and other prestigious liberal arts universities? Absolutely. But there are lots of people who are merely above average and lucky, by dint of birth or chance, and some people who aren't even above average. (FWIW MIT and Caltech have much better claims to being filled with the smartest people in the world -- rigorous standards of admission, no legacies, NCAA Div3 athletics, etc.)

DANK_YACHT 4y ago
I went to a mid-tier school. The low-tier Harvard students are assuredly smarter than the top-tier students from my school. One reason is that students don't exist in a vacuum. Your peers influence your intelligence. Being surrounded by smart people, i.e. people with novel and interesting ideas, makes you smarter. The second reason is that the choice to go to Harvard is itself a smart choice. So people who make that choice are likely smarter than those who don't make that choice. I was in the top-tier of my school. The first time I was exposed to people from top-tier universities is when I entered the industry. I was absolutely blown away by the quality difference. The experience permanently readjusted by aptitude scale.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  > The second reason is that the choice to go to Harvard is itself a smart choice. It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in. > The first time I was exposed to people from top-tier universities is when I entered the industry. I was absolutely blown away by the quality difference. I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school.
  - DANK_YACHT 4y ago
    > It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in. But not all top students in mid-tier attempted to go to Harvard. So if you were basing the "smartness" of these two populations based on this single decision alone, then the low-tier students at Harvard would be smarter because 100% of them attempted to go to Harvard, which was a smarter choice than the choice made by some of the students at mid-tier universities who chose not to apply to Harvard. > After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school. In my experience, peoples' first few years out of college has a huge effect on their career trajectories. People I know who had high salaries out of school continue to have high salaries. People who didn't get good entry-level jobs continue to struggle (relative to the rest of the pack, they're not starving).
  - universityguys 4y ago
    "I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school." Have you considered that the students whom you are working with were among the bottom quartile at their alma mater? The very best tend to take unique paths.
- 4y ago
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
I used to glorify these schools until I worked in finance, where basically everyone went to a top 5 usa school. They were quick, organized, efficient with their work, on the ball, competitive. But intellectually superior? Not really. They were definitely smart, but the traits that got them into those schools werent raw intellect.
- taneq 4y ago
  This is really interesting, because it feels like it lines up with my own experience but I'd like to see how someone else quantifies it. What do you mean by "intellectually superior"? What does "raw intellect" even mean? What are these nebulous not-intellect-but-contributing-to-GI-score traits?
  - imtringued 4y ago
    I once did an online IQ test and then got interrupted by someone else after five minutes and I quit the test, my score was apparently 88. I don't trust online IQ tests, I only did it because someone annoyed me into taking it and someone annoyed me out of taking it. I honestly think IQ scores primarily measure how much you want to score well on an IQ test. You can improve your scores by 10 points according to scientific papers just by being more motivated and not quitting, not being distracted and so on.
    - taneq 4y ago
      I don't trust online IQ tests because the scores I get on them range from 110ish to 180ish and despite my robust self-esteem I don't see a score of 160+ as especially credible. :P Real (ie. official medical) IQ scores seem to be heavily skewed around age and speed. So the same performance would get you a super high score in a 5-year-old and a mediocre score in a 10-year-old, which is weird because the questions are explicitly trying not to test language/knowledge type stuff that would change a lot between those ages. And the same answers would get a far higher score if you bashed them out in 15 minutes than if you took 2 hours on them. I haven't gone back to re-examine it but I remember thinking that you were way better off smashing through the questions as fast as possible and getting a few right than carefully considering the questions... which is an odd way to define intelligence.
javajosh 4y ago
I worked for JPL/NASA on contract for a few months, the place is packed with Caltech grads, but most of them performed much like any science-y person in a big bureaucracy. This probably says more about what you're trained for vs what you do -- I mean, how many working programmers need to know what Bessel functions are? The answer is 0 because those analytical jobs are inevitably farmed out to experts anyway. My own interpretation is that there's a certain (middling-high) amount of capability you have to demonstrate, and once you've done that the extra doesn't matter.
- garciasn 4y ago
  Bureaucratic behavior within a government agency has little to nothing to do with an individual’s background, intent, or otherwise; but, instead, it has to do with the brutal constraints of their environment.
Arete314159 4y ago
I went to Harvard for 2 years, and started out strongly considering CS as a major, but eventually went into the humanities. I definitely did get discouraged. I think for me the biggest part was that their intro class at the time was for both complete novices and people who'd done the computer science AP. Meaning it was SUPER fast and super stressful. And things just continued from there. The point of taking these classes was just to flail around and try not to drown, while having more coursework than my other 3 classes combined. If they had had an "intro for beginners" and "accelerated intro", I would have probably stayed in the program. Also if their upper-level courses weren't like 60 hours of homework per week for one class. At a certain point I realized I just simply didn't have the stamina to do 60 hours for one class and all my other classes. So it was sort of like applying to be a doctor -- you know one of the prereqs is rotations where you don't sleep for 2 days straight, and if you can't do that, then for some reason, you can't be a doctor.
mitchdoogle 4y ago
I think the only point Gladwell is making is that the Harvard test scores are higher. I.e. 50th percentile of SAT scores of Harvard students is equal to the 90th percentile at state schools and such

DANK_YACHT 4y ago

I went to a mid-tier school. The low-tier Harvard students are assuredly smarter than the top-tier students from my school. One reason is that students don't exist in a vacuum. Your peers influence your intelligence. Being surrounded by smart people, i.e. people with novel and interesting ideas, makes you smarter. The second reason is that the choice to go to Harvard is itself a smart choice. So people who make that choice are likely smarter than those who don't make that choice. I was in the top-tier of my school. The first time I was exposed to people from top-tier universities is when I entered the industry. I was absolutely blown away by the quality difference. The experience permanently readjusted by aptitude scale.

PretzelPirate 4y ago
> The second reason is that the choice to go to Harvard is itself a smart choice. It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in. > The first time I was exposed to people from top-tier universities is when I entered the industry. I was absolutely blown away by the quality difference. I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school.
- DANK_YACHT 4y ago
  > It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in. But not all top students in mid-tier attempted to go to Harvard. So if you were basing the "smartness" of these two populations based on this single decision alone, then the low-tier students at Harvard would be smarter because 100% of them attempted to go to Harvard, which was a smarter choice than the choice made by some of the students at mid-tier universities who chose not to apply to Harvard. > After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school. In my experience, peoples' first few years out of college has a huge effect on their career trajectories. People I know who had high salaries out of school continue to have high salaries. People who didn't get good entry-level jobs continue to struggle (relative to the rest of the pack, they're not starving).
- universityguys 4y ago
  "I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school." Have you considered that the students whom you are working with were among the bottom quartile at their alma mater? The very best tend to take unique paths.
4y ago

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

I used to glorify these schools until I worked in finance, where basically everyone went to a top 5 usa school. They were quick, organized, efficient with their work, on the ball, competitive. But intellectually superior? Not really. They were definitely smart, but the traits that got them into those schools werent raw intellect.

taneq 4y ago
This is really interesting, because it feels like it lines up with my own experience but I'd like to see how someone else quantifies it. What do you mean by "intellectually superior"? What does "raw intellect" even mean? What are these nebulous not-intellect-but-contributing-to-GI-score traits?
- imtringued 4y ago
  I once did an online IQ test and then got interrupted by someone else after five minutes and I quit the test, my score was apparently 88. I don't trust online IQ tests, I only did it because someone annoyed me into taking it and someone annoyed me out of taking it. I honestly think IQ scores primarily measure how much you want to score well on an IQ test. You can improve your scores by 10 points according to scientific papers just by being more motivated and not quitting, not being distracted and so on.
  - taneq 4y ago
    I don't trust online IQ tests because the scores I get on them range from 110ish to 180ish and despite my robust self-esteem I don't see a score of 160+ as especially credible. :P Real (ie. official medical) IQ scores seem to be heavily skewed around age and speed. So the same performance would get you a super high score in a 5-year-old and a mediocre score in a 10-year-old, which is weird because the questions are explicitly trying not to test language/knowledge type stuff that would change a lot between those ages. And the same answers would get a far higher score if you bashed them out in 15 minutes than if you took 2 hours on them. I haven't gone back to re-examine it but I remember thinking that you were way better off smashing through the questions as fast as possible and getting a few right than carefully considering the questions... which is an odd way to define intelligence.

javajosh 4y ago

I worked for JPL/NASA on contract for a few months, the place is packed with Caltech grads, but most of them performed much like any science-y person in a big bureaucracy. This probably says more about what you're trained for vs what you do -- I mean, how many working programmers need to know what Bessel functions are? The answer is 0 because those analytical jobs are inevitably farmed out to experts anyway. My own interpretation is that there's a certain (middling-high) amount of capability you have to demonstrate, and once you've done that the extra doesn't matter.

garciasn 4y ago
Bureaucratic behavior within a government agency has little to nothing to do with an individual’s background, intent, or otherwise; but, instead, it has to do with the brutal constraints of their environment.

Arete314159 4y ago

I went to Harvard for 2 years, and started out strongly considering CS as a major, but eventually went into the humanities. I definitely did get discouraged. I think for me the biggest part was that their intro class at the time was for both complete novices and people who'd done the computer science AP. Meaning it was SUPER fast and super stressful. And things just continued from there. The point of taking these classes was just to flail around and try not to drown, while having more coursework than my other 3 classes combined. If they had had an "intro for beginners" and "accelerated intro", I would have probably stayed in the program. Also if their upper-level courses weren't like 60 hours of homework per week for one class. At a certain point I realized I just simply didn't have the stamina to do 60 hours for one class and all my other classes. So it was sort of like applying to be a doctor -- you know one of the prereqs is rotations where you don't sleep for 2 days straight, and if you can't do that, then for some reason, you can't be a doctor.

mitchdoogle 4y ago

I think the only point Gladwell is making is that the Harvard test scores are higher. I.e. 50th percentile of SAT scores of Harvard students is equal to the 90th percentile at state schools and such