David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

College 62.1% 678 22.6% 583 15.4% 8. Occidental College 49.0% 663 32.4% 573 18.6% 9. Kalamazoo College 51.8% 633 27.3% 551 20.8% ...

would benefit from the prestige of the university. She might have more interesting and wealthier peers. The connections she made ...

decrease in the university’s average SAT score.^4 The smarter your peers, the dumber you feel; the dumber you feel, the more lik ...

are plentiful and highly paid. That’s a very large risk to take for the prestige of an Ivy League school. Let me give you one mo ...

you are at least a little bit skeptical of that position. Shouldn’t a Big Fish at a Little Pond be worth at least a second look ...

have published in those elite journals. To figure out the best hiring strategy, then, Conley and Önder argue that all we have to ...

PhD programs in North America—all of which are among the very top programs in the world: Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Columbia ...

Columbia2.901.150.620.340.170.100.06 Stanford 3.431.581.020.670.500.330.23 Chicago 2.881.711.040.720.510.330.19 I realize that t ...

somewhere around two dozen PhD students a year, so if you are in the 80th percentile, you are roughly fifth or sixth in your cla ...

be considered disappointments. Next let’s look at the graduates of mediocre schools. I say “mediocre” only because that’s what s ...

99th95th90th85th80th75th70th Univ. of Toronto 3.131.850.800.610.290.190.15 Boston Univ. 1.590.490.210.080.050.020.02 Non– top 30 ...

Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and Chicago. Are you better off hiring a Big Fish from a Tiny, Tiny Pond than ...

ambitious. Why is it that the majority of these successful applicants, who were winners and did all the right things up to the t ...

students and demoralizes them. By the way, do you know what elite institution has recognized this very fact about the dangers of ...

demoralizing the Big Pond was to everyone but the best. To Glimp’s mind, his job was to find students who were tough enough and ...

Exactly the same logic applies to the debate over affirmative action. In the United States, there is an enormous controversy ove ...

What all three groups take for granted is that being able to get into a great school is such an important advantage that the sma ...

their law school class and almost three- quarters fall in the bottom 20 percent.^6 After reading about how hard it is to get a s ...

person would say that the solution to her problems would be for her to go to an even more competitive school like Stanford or MI ...

how rarely the Big Pond’s downsides are mentioned. Parents still tell their children to go to the best schools they possibly can ...