[HuShifang]

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]

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.

[jrockway]

I agree with that. I went to a low-ish tier school (UIC) and was not particularly motivated to do anything. My classmates just wanted to be drunk 24/7, I wanted to go build robots and stuff. It wasn't the experience I was looking for and dropped out. I wish I had at least chosen UIUC. The corn fields aren't that bad, in hindsight.

I did get to take a Unix Security Holes course with DJB. That was the first semester I was there, and that was kind of another mistake. When you're doing 400 level classes your first semester, it sucks when you have to go back to the basic 100 level classes to complete an arbitrary requirement for your degree. (Had to take "Intro to Java" taught by a chemistry professor. He did not know how to program. Huge waste of time and the state's money.) I have avoided a number of security pitfalls in my own work because of what I learned in that class, though, so it was definitely worth taking. Set me up for a career of accurate and bug-free code ;)

(Incidentally, what precipitated me dropping out was the Unix Security Holes course. The homework for the class was to find 10 security flaws in existing software. This was quite the easy task back in 2004. I found a bug in the course registration system. The vendor that made it was infinitely appreciative, patched it instantly, and sent me an iPod as a thank you. The school was very mad at me and tried to have me expelled for violating their computer use policy ("hacking"). It was a client-side XSRF issue though, so technically their computers weren't used, and I obviously investigated the flaw responsibly; the system wasn't destabilized, no production data was changed, etc. DJB fought hard for me and I didn't get expelled. Also got one of the highest grades in that class! The school did silently block me from using computers in computer labs and using the course registration system, though, after DJB's rage had blown over. I didn't have the will to fight it, so I just left.)

TL;DR: go to the best school you can get into and afford. You won't regret it.

[heresie-dabord]

> go to the best school you can get into and afford

A sad (albeit true) reality of democratised education adjusted for profit.

[guiambros]

If anyone was also unfamiliar with the acronyms:

DJB = Daniel J. Bernstein [1]

UIC = University of Illinois at Chicago

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein

[ABCLAW]

>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.

You might be conflating class signaling with intelligence. I've dealt with plenty of people from Harvard that did not impress in the slightest, but oh boy were they good at getting their suits tailored.

[Arete314159]

I second this notion. I was actually super well-qualified for Harvard, because I happened to go to a feeder prep school and I took calculus, Latin, and Greek. But I had some class gaps if you will, and sometimes kids with worse grades and qualifications made me feel stupid.

One snobby rule there that some kids had was to always pretend like you know more than you do, and never show weakness. So you have to say "Whaaaat? You've never heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?" -- even though you only learned about it last week. You psych out the competition so that you don't have to compete on a level playing field.

[DANK_YACHT]

I’m not conflating class signaling with intelligence. It says something about your worldview that you would take that away from what I said. My point was that college involves the exchange of ideas, and each student’s intelligence is a combination of their baseline intellect combined with the ideas they’re exposed to. Most of this idea exposure comes from other students. If the students you are surrounded with have good ideas, then the quality of your own ideas improves.

[empraptor]

the few ivy league graduates i've worked with were idiots with no original thought who constantly needed handholding. they were good at parroting other people's opinions & ideas and at schmoozing with the boss so maybe those are the good ideas that students at their school had.

[ABCLAW]

>It says something about your worldview that you would take that away from what I said.

Yeah, probably says I know something about normal distributions work.

[somethoughts]

If you can get beyond the clickbait title - what Gladwell is really trying to say is there are likely many highly qualified students who enter top tier university as STEM majors but select themselves out of STEM majors and into a generic liberal arts degree.

He's essentially saying at a societal level/personal income level - a STEM degree from a mid tier school > generic liberal arts degree from a top tier school. Particularly if the recipient is not truly passionate about the liberal arts degree and is using it as a backup plan.

I think what you are experiencing is a bit related to survivorship bias. You are being exposed to the people who passed the gauntlet of getting into the top-tier school and graduating in presumably STEM. Of course those folks are smart and there are reasons you'd be blown away by them.

[PretzelPirate]

> 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]

> 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]

"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.

[kevstev]

What specific differences did you see? I was also at a mid tier school, though I did have a scholarship, and was intimidated when I got a job working alongside an MIT grad and a PHD from Yale. The MIT grad was a very good solid guy, and the Yale guy was also solid, I'd be happy to work with or hire either again, but there was no 10x difference, maybe more like a 1.3x difference at best between the team average and the MIT guy.

In general the phds I've worked with were tbh below the average- they always seemed to be big on ideas but less so on actually implementing them and following through.

This was from my days in the finance industry, working in algo trading/hft, but I will admit I was definitely in a tier below the groups that were absolutely minting money, but these were coveted jobs.

[DANK_YACHT]

The biggest difference was that most people were interested in something. One friend was really into robotics. He introduced me to a lot of robotics concepts and he had a plan on how to pursue a career in robotics. Personally, robotics wasn’t my cup of tea, but I ended up with a lot of exposure to the subject. Another friend wanted to study AI, specifically neural networks. This was over 10 years ago, so neural nets weren’t widely deployed like they are today. Another friend was into music, and wanted to play music all the time. Even through I wasn’t super into any of these topics, each interaction was enriching to me and expanded my mind to include new and interesting aspects of computer science and software engineering.

Regarding phds, I totally agree that they are not effective workers usually. The desire to get a phd is almost like a mild form of ocd where people get obsessed with one particular problem and are willing to dedicate ungodly amounts of time to the topic. This is usually the opposite of what you want when trying to deliver something in the commercial sphere.

[strikelaserclaw]

A lot of ivy league kids come from upper middle class families where it is kind of expected that you set high academic goals and try to attend prestigious institutions, their parents generally take an enormous amount of interest their success and continually guide them.

[fdgsdfogijq]

I actually found the opposite...

[Arete314159]

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.

[javajosh]

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]

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.

[fdgsdfogijq]

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.

[heresie-dabord]

In every professional environment that I have known, good habits have beaten genius, whether real genius (a very rare property) or assumed genius.

[taneq]

In my experience, good habits beat genius 9 times out of 10 (maybe even 99 out of 100).

That other time, genius recreates the entire playing field and good habits are left sitting around staring at each other trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

[Supermancho]

> In every professional environment that I have known, good habits have beaten genius, whether real genius (a very rare property) or assumed genius.

In every successful startup I worked at (3 of 20ish), I observed the opposite.

[urthor]

How so?

Curious on your perspective why professionalism and good work habits beat "genius" at startups.

I would have assumed the opposite. My view of startup life was that it's about managing your money, your hiring/firing, your sales, and what you focus on.

That's about good prioritization and productivity per minute.

[heresie-dabord]

Assuming the good faith of the poster, he or she may have worked with (a) real genius several times, or (b) with several real geniuses.

(a) is more probable. Sustainable business start-up success of the non-banal order requires high general intelligence. It does exist. But 9 times out of 10 hard work and people skills will win.

[Supermancho]

> (a) real genius several times,

Perceived genius (or more appropriately, assumed genius) would be more accurate. The people who are the least scrupulous, most creative, and technically competent are very successful. Startups aren't usually successful because of sweat hard work, but realizing a combination of opportunity and reach, rather than contracting as much software development labor as possible.

[kube-system]

Ivy Leagues’ admission process rewards students who are outgoing and do a lot of different things.

You can’t tell from a high school transcript whether someone got an A because they’re brilliant and didn’t have to study at all, or whether they got an A because they studied hard.

Most of my friends who went into ivy leagues were outgoing and did tons of extracurriculars and studied hard. My friends who were naturally brilliant either stuck to the subjects they liked, and ended up getting their doctorate at a state school, or they had had their success derailed for some other reason.

[Aeolun]

> My friends who were naturally brilliant either stuck to the subjects they liked

When you know you are smart there is no reason to prove it to yourself by going to a fancy school.

Unfortunately you need to prove it to other people later, and going to the fancy school is a very simple signal.

[rowanG077]

So being smart somehow absolves you from wanting validation from others? Why?

[taneq]

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]

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]

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.

[achenatx]

hard work can compensate for a lot when you are solving problems that have already been solved with known answers (e.g. school) . When you are solving totally novel problems with no known solutions things get much harder and you start to be able to separate high performers.

[taneq]

99.99% of everything is (re-)solving problems that have already been solved with known answers. It's those curly edge cases that have to involve us weirdos.

[mitchdoogle]

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