[lisper]

> Maybe it was just that year you applied there was stiff competition.

Yes, that's possible. It's also possible that all of the other experiences that I have had during my decades-long career, all of which have supported my conclusion, have all been aberrations or part of an elaborate conspiracy.

But I'll give you long odds against.

> All that matters is what you do, the choices you make, the actions you take, the work you do.

OK, I'm not going to try to dissuade you from this. If that approach works for you, then more power to you.

[Maursault]

> If that approach works for you

I'll admit I'm speaking more broadly than graduate acceptance when I say what matters is what you do, not who you know, because in the grand scheme of things, who you know is incidental, but what you do is foundational and defines who you are. So it is not a matter or whether it works for me, this is instead just how it is. If we knew you murdered someone, we'd know you were a murderer. If we knew you built rockets, we'd know you were a rocket scientist. It all we knew about you was that you were a friend of a professor that got you into your graduate program, we could not possible think much at all of you. I choose to believe you are a rocket scientist.

[lisper]

But none of these things are true. You are wrong about all of it.

> If we knew you murdered someone, we'd know you were a murderer.

That's a tautology. Imagine if I were accused of murder. Do you not think that you would be more inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt that I might be innocent if you knew me than if I were a stranger?

> It all we knew about you was that you were a friend of a professor that got you into your graduate program, we could not possible think much at all of you.

What if the professor told you that I was worth admitting? Would you not lend credence to their assessment?

> I choose to believe you are a rocket scientist.

Why? Because I said I worked at NASA? How do you know I'm telling you the truth? Even if I am telling you the truth, how do you know that I got my position at NASA on my merits? For the record, I did not. I got it because I knew someone. And the person I knew got their position because they knew someone.

This is not to say that I was unqualified, or that my boss was unqualified, or that we got our jobs purely because of nepotism (though that does happen as well). The situation was that JPL was actively recruiting people, and one of the department heads recruited my boss because they were grad students together at Yale, i.e. they knew each other, and my boss was my Ph.D. advisor, and so he recruited me because he knew me.

Personal connections give you access to opportunities that you would not otherwise have had (might not have even been aware existed) and the benefit of the doubt if you screw up. It's not like you can just go have a beer with a professor and get in to Stanford without doing anything else. But personal connections tilt the scales very heavily in your favor, and vice versa.

[Maursault]

If you just want to skate through life on the coattails of doers, that's up to you. But I think the time is long overdue that you hunkered down and grew up. Hope you can appreciate inappropriate sarcasm.

You've reminded me of an anecdote told to me by a relative from a previous generation. He said a friend bragged to him he could get 250 people on the street just by making 10 phone calls. The relative told him he could do the same with just one call. His friend asked him how. He told him, "I'll call you."

We're not actually in the same argument. Who you are has very little to do with who you know. Who you are is what you have done. Hopefully in the distant future, your obituary will give a summary of what you have done, then list your surviving immediate relatives. It may detail an occasion of you meeting someone notable, like a President. But an obituary will rarely if ever list the people you know because who you know is incidental and an accident of fate. And chances are pretty good if these influential people you know have advanced your career, it is probably because of what you have already done and not because you incidentally are acquainted with them.

[lisper]

And what have you done?

[lisper]

[crickets]

Yeah, that's what I thought.