Malcolm Gladwell on Ivy League Universities Being "No Different" than Modeling Agencies

but Harvard is actually a lot more like a modeling agency and it's like the Marine Corps and the reason is that that study that just talked to you has got a problem and the problem is that just because two kids have the same SAT score doesn't mean they're similar right if one kid with 1400 gets into Harvard the other kid doesn't what if it's because of all kinds of other traits that fourteen-year-old 1400 student has that don't show up in his SAT score what if he's ambitious and hardworking and personable and outgoing and is always kind and that's why Harvard let them in right so what if those traits are the reasons why at the end of the day this kids doing so well upon graduation what you really need to do is to look at two kids both of whom got into a selective college and one decided not to go right that's a comparison right what happens when you do that when you compare when you have matched pairs one of whom chooses to go to the select effective college or one of whom doesn't well what happens is that the income bonus associated with going to a elite school completely disappears there's no more treatment effect it's just a selection effect give the meet the points worth going over it's this really interesting Penn Penn State right both in the same state one's Ivy League one is a state school right there are actually lots of kids is a very large pool of kids in the state of Pennsylvania who get into both schools and there is a very large pool of kids who get into Penn and choose to go to Penn State as a result right what happens when you look at their salaries 10 and 20 and 30 years out no difference what matters was getting into Penn not going to Penn if you can get into one of these schools you're the kind of person who's gonna succeed in the world right you're like a interesting important ambitious intelligent outgoing person you don't have to go to Penn to get those trades you have those traits all Penn is doing is acting like a modeling agency they're just scooping up all of the attractive people but they're not responsible for the attractiveness right they're just accumulating the attractive No let's go back to the Penn State Penn thing again because you would think it's a very interesting piece of analysis you would think that the kind of kid who got into Penn like was just I'm in pretend throwing that I should don't we all share a bias in favor of selective schools which may not be true many of you may actually have a great deal of problems with selective schools but let's assume this kid who gets in dip and chooses to go to Penn State why does he do that well maybe he's not that confident or he's not that ambitious school doesn't matter to him he's like I know like my parents live closer to Penn State like the football program I don't want to go to some school where there's lots of go getters and get challenged I just want a Melvin drink beer you would think in other words that the kid who got into Penn but chose to go to Penn State would have a series of character traits that would profoundly handicap them in the real world next to the kid who actually you think that getting independent going to Penn would be a marker of something valuable that would make a difference ah doesn't make a difference you would think that there'll be all kinds of contacts that you would make at Penn that would put you ahead of going to Penn State well actually no this turns up is probably just as many contacts at Penn State's a bigger University and and maybe the whole notion in other words that there is something special about the people that you meet in these institutions is fastly overblown that you can go to just about any college in America that's reasonable and as a reasonable academic standard and meet people who will help you in later life what elite schools are our selection effect institutions masquerading as treatment effect institutions right they're modeling agencies

Channel: hudsonunionsociety

Views: 39,941

Keywords: Malcolm, Gladwell, The, Tipping, Point, Blink, Outliers, New, York, Times, Bestseller, Best, Seller, High, Achievers, Yorker, princeton, yale, harvard, ivy league, university

Id: Yx7K-2oJq7g

Length: 3min 45sec (225 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2009