Reddit reviews David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
We found 10 Reddit comments about David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Little Brown and Company
Check out the book David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. In it he talks about students in this very situation. Apparently research shows it is way better to be a big fish in a small pond then a small fish in a big pond. That is to say while being at a better school seems like it would be better for you, it's actually better to be a very good student at a less good school.
David and Goliath...Allegedly.
Link to Source
>How did David defeat Goliath? According to the Bible, it was because God was on his side. But according to Malcolm Gladwell, it was largely because Goliath had a disorder known as acromegaly, a tumor on the pituitary gland.
This disorder, identified in the late 19th century, manifests as gigantism, and it may affect vision. Gladwell lays out his case in his new book, "David and Goliath." Acromegaly could account for Goliath's unusual size, he writes, and the vision problems it can cause could explain a range of details in the Bible: Goliath's slow movements; his request that David come to him rather than the other way around; his need for an attendant to walk with him onto the battlefield; even the fact that Goliath taunts David by saying, "You come against me with sticks?" in the plural, when, in fact, David is carrying but a single stick. This analysis isn't original to Gladwell. Dictionaries of ancient Judaism, biblical commentaries and medical handbooks alike use Goliath as an interesting and well-known example of this potent condition.
Overall, the book is not his best work, but certainly very interesting.
Also consider that attending the more prestigious university does not necessarily mean you will higher earning potential.
Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in one of his books. Googling big fish in a small pond also gives some good results.
In regards to this specific situation OP, it sounds like the big draw of the out of state school for you is that London program. I would encourage you to consider what comparable opportunities the public institution offers, especially to those who are really willing to go out and seek them. Maybe you can find a comparable experience for a lot cheaper? Many schools offer support for study-abroad semesters that would cost much less in the end.
Your questions would be valid... if you actually watched the video (or better yet read the book the video is an excerpt from). His argument is against ranking schools. He argues that the ranking of schools is essentially irrelevant because statistically through a series of correlations I won't get into in a Reddit comment, every college falls into the same uneven distribution. The "enforced" version of this is, in fact, grade deflation.
The name given by psychologists is "relative deprivation theory" and it basically means you judge yourself based on your peers, not by the system as a whole. This means that a "top tier" bottom percenter, even though they may have SAT scores higher than the top percentile of an average college, will have significantly less confidence, are much more likely to drop out, and are less likely to show quantifiable measures of success, than the top percentile of an average, or even less than average college.
Grade deflation essentially forces relative deprivation on students by saying that even if you would have gotten an 100% at community college, you have a B- in this class, and falls right into the "Disorder" part of Gladwell's coined "Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder."
If you want more examples and the studies to back them up I'd suggest his book, David and Goliath, but if you couldn't even watch the 20 minute summary then just know his arguments of uneven distribution transcend ranking, meaning you're arguing a different question. I think the argument of defining tiers in the current system is a valid one and one to be had, but outside of the scope of what this argument is about. In this case the language of "top tier" is only a qualifier when comparing statistics and pulling out samples for comparison.
You raise good points, but I think Malcolm Gladwell has the best grasp of this issue than anyone else I've heard thus far. I'd encourage you to watch his 60 Minutes interview and read his book "David and Goliath" on the subject of Ivy League degrees. It's a thought-provoking insight.
“Don’t worry about your children; they are going to be alright. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail, for they are not only doing a job for themselves, but for all of America and for all of mankind.”
Это его слова. Краткий разбор полетов здесь
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_childrens_crusade/
или очень хорошо здесь
http://www.amazon.com/David-Goliath-Underdogs-Misfits-Battling/dp/0316204366
(очень советую эту книгу, особенно в свете противостояния с ввх).
Еще есть критика этих событий от Malcolm X.
Еще здесь
http://books.google.de/books?id=FrRwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT107&lpg=PT107&dq=birmingham+campaign+did+martin+luther+king+put+children+in+danger&source=bl&ots=avjUfeyGRo&sig=yd2ruQuZzBgEGuqYg5hMpJeczag&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OoNvVNypIsbVywOL2YHoDg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
Забыл сказать - заметьте, я его не осуждаю. Наоборот даже.
I don't have the plain text in front of me, but I remember in Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath he details the importance of peaceful protest versus an aggressive response, such as the civil rights movement and Birmingham, Alabama. Basically, the visual of a peaceful protestor being repressed by water cannons and police dogs is about as powerful a statement you can make.
The UBC engineering program is one of the best in Canada. U of S is great if you want to get into Civil Engineering, but is still very competent for Mechanical. I did quite a bit of research on this before I decided to go to SAIT for their Mech Eng Tech program instead; but limited to those two choices based on school performance alone, I would most definitely choose U of S.
"Wait, what?" I hear you saying.
Well, that's the thing. Your friend's daughter is likely not thinking about post-school factors even while she should be. In chapter 3 of the book David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell, he explores this specific issue. What school you choose to go to as a young person determines almost everything about the rest of your life. A lot of research has been done on this concept, but the part that he chooses to focus on is based on the Big Fish-Little Pond effect theory. Essentially, if you go to a bigger, more prestigious school (Gladwell uses the example of UMaryland vs. Brown), you can reduce your chances of graduating by almost 30%. Given that the engineering discipline is already high-stress and a significant percentage of students do not finish their degrees, why would you make it tougher on yourself than you have to? All engineering programs, more or less, will teach you the same maths and concepts, and it's going to depend more on your motivation to learn them than anything else. In the book, Gladwell goes on to explain that students who graduate at the top of their class in smaller schools have better job prospects than those of the same initial SAT marks who went to 'prestigious' schools.
But seriously, buy your friend that book and make the girl read it before choosing. And tell her to go to U of S.
Please.
Edit: I may have found a PDF of the book online. This is probably not legal. I'll just leave it here on the internet for all to see.
>The fact they come in with a blank check means that administrators are free to charge basically whatever they want because they know they will get paid as the government will bankroll you.
OK, I'll play Devil's Advocate.
How does one go about getting approved for one of those "blank check" loans? If you've ever reviewed a loan application and gone through the approval process, as I have, then you would know that people have to have sufficient income to get approved for any loan amount. Aside from billionaires, the vast majority of people I've ever seen get approved for a loan were not that wealthy. Go talk to a loan officer if you don't believe what I'm saying on this point. Should student loans be capped? Why not?
Second, tuition rates aren't determined at the individual level, they are based on what university administrators deem to be an appropriate amount, not unlike the way corporations set their product/service pricing. Do some of these people shoot for the moon on what they set those prices at irrespective of what people can afford? Without a doubt! However, when they "shoot for the moon", it's rarely the result of considering whatever loan a person can get to pay for their education/product/service. Instead, they keep raising the price bar until customers and students don't buy whatever they're offering. That is where supply and demand actually come into play on this issue. While I'm on this topic, I tend to agree with Malcolm Gladwell when he says that what some prominent university's now charge for education exceeds the value of it (see his book "David and Goliath" where he covers this topic).
One final point, part of the reason tuition rates have spiked over the past 30 years is because Conservatives choked off the educational subsidies that the public sector used to provide in order to make education affordable for most people. As a direct result, universities were forced to raise tuitions and other fees to make up for the revenue shortfall that Conservatives created. How do you think Reagan and subsequent Conservatives "offset" the tax cut impact they wanted? That's right, by screwing younger generations of students and their families. If the government were to cut loans, or what you consider the solution, it would have the very same financial effect that the reduction of public sector subsidy reductions had...it would RAISE the cost of tuition and higher education because their operating costs won't go away and they'll still have to meet their revenue goals in order to remain in operation. It's finance 101.
You appear to have bought into the austerity nonsense that Conservatives mistakenly think is the solution to every problem facing this country. That's a tragic mistake. People, companies and universities all have an operating cost requiring a certain level of income to sustain. There's only so much of that operating cost that can be cut before the affected party being harmed. While some universities have room to cut their operating costs, they can only go so far without affecting the quality of education offered. That should be the line in the sand which is never crossed.