Any advice on gap years?

[Lisafuller]

I took a gap you after my second year at Uni. By that time, I had some sense of what I wanted to do, as well as some idea to enrich my experience above my peers.

It was actually an industrial placement - ‘Sandwich year’ in the UK. My Uni wasn’t really receptive to it, but 2 years after I did it, they started to offer it.

It was fun, I built a very nice network and made some interesting lifelong friends.

Of course, very different to traveling around the world and experiencing cultures…this I do as part of my day job. Must be one of the best jobs in the world ever - I choose where to go, speak to extremely smart people, set up studies and see the fruits of such benefiting patients….sorry, I digress


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Where did you go to college? If you’re not comfortable sharing the exact school, maybe just share the country?

[Lisafuller]

She realized that being a non-degreed female meant poor career opportunities, and whereas she had mediocre grades her first two years, when she went back she was a straight A student.

You’re exactly right. It’s the same for my daughter - whether or not she wants to attend college she acknowledges its importance in securing a respectable, secure job. Where did she go to college?

[Lisafuller]

Edit:
A Florida teen who applied to some of the nation's top universities, including Harvard, MIT and Johns Hopkins, said he got accepted into all 27 schools on his list.

I guess people are free to apply to as many schools as they want (their time and money). But this also clogs up the system and makes it harder to review applications (and in the end you can only accept one).

Will never happen but if there was a common application system and students were limited to say 10 choices, it would make people pick i) a couple dream schools, ii) many where you have a reasonable chance (relative to the overall acceptance rate), and iii) a couple of backups. Schools would also spend less time evaluating whether the student will "actually accept" there since they'd have fewer lottery tickets outstanding. Even among bucket i), you would filter out which schools students really want vs. just applying to all the elite hoping to land (at least) one admissions ticket.

I'm sure there are some cons to such a system as well...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/flori ... b584a3c2b2

Would be much better, similar to the system in the UK where kids can only apply to 5 universities, and only Oxford OR Cambridge. Helps to keep applicant pools smaller and give everyone a fairer chance.

[Lisafuller]

I think both students and parents attach too much significance to school brands. I know plenty of senior execs at my employer (a Fortune 100) who didn’t go to a brand name school — made absolutely no difference.

True for the most part - unfortunately there are some careers where employers only recruit at top colleges, for example law and medicine.

[Lisafuller]

I think both students and parents attach too much significance to school brands. I know plenty of senior execs at my employer (a Fortune 100) who didn’t go to a brand name school — made absolutely no difference.

Success in a job is usually some combination of a) good at a particular skill/area, b) passionate about it, and c) people skills (as you progress). Very few jobs reward knowledge, or perhaps simply output, that produces 8-10 A1s across various subjects.

That being said, recruiting to certain jobs/industries is still quite concentrated in a particular rung of schools (if you are targeting these areas). Still, 10-20 years later the distribution of who's doing well may look a lot different.

Real world success is also tied to risk taking and dealing with ambiguity, and these traits are not always measured within academics.

Yup, completely agree. It’s more important to have good people skills and to be skilled in your area of specialization than it is to have graduated from a top school (this of course, excludes those careers where employers only recruit at top institutions).

[Lisafuller]

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a good section on this (David vs Goliath?).

Choose to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond.

The former tends to give as good if not more opportunities to excel and work with top tier people.

The latter sets one up for failure with far more frequency and higher risk of dropout.


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Part of the issue is that going in, nearly everyone thinks they will be "above average."

For the latter, I think much of it is one's mindset. There are kids in "top" schools that are "average" or below average within that specific cohort, but they are still doing well (relative to the total population) and enjoying themselves. At the same time, there are kids that are top 10% or top 25% in these same environments but they are miserable because they can never "catch up" to some of the other kids there.

I do believe that what one does with whatever opportunities they have is more important than just being at school/uni A vs. school/uni B.

True. I think once you’re in the top school, just being average is not bad at all, in fact I think it’s far preferable to being miserable but thriving academically.

[Swn4]

More than 30 years ago, my Dad gave me great advice before I left for college. He told me to get used to being average in College because my classmates would also have been top students at their high schools too. He also said, the pace in college classes would be much faster - what got covered in an entire year in high school physics/math would get covered in a few weeks, so don’t feel bad if you feel overwhelmed initially, everyone does.

In some ways, colleges are kinder to their students now, I think incoming Freshman at many colleges in the 80s heard the same welcoming(?) speech, “Look to your left and look to your right - one of you won’t be here by the end of Freshman year….”.


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[Lisafuller]

Exactly, at some point it’s unreasonable to expect to be at the top. Accepting that you might just be average sometimes is a great way to have peace and focus on having fun learning.

[Myasis Dragon]

She realized that being a non-degreed female meant poor career opportunities, and whereas she had mediocre grades her first two years, when she went back she was a straight A student.

You’re exactly right. It’s the same for my daughter - whether or not she wants to attend college she acknowledges its importance in securing a respectable, secure job. Where did she go to college?

Texas A&M University. "Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be Aggies."

[PNGMK]

I think both students and parents attach too much significance to school brands. I know plenty of senior execs at my employer (a Fortune 100) who didn’t go to a brand name school — made absolutely no difference.

GE pretty much exclusively recruited at the Ivies in my time for exec roles - mostly Harvard business school. I don't think it did them any good looking at the problems they had. It was like an echo chamber in there.

[Lisafuller]

She realized that being a non-degreed female meant poor career opportunities, and whereas she had mediocre grades her first two years, when she went back she was a straight A student.

You’re exactly right. It’s the same for my daughter - whether or not she wants to attend college she acknowledges its importance in securing a respectable, secure job. Where did she go to college?

Texas A&M University. "Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be Aggies."

Very good school, but yeah I always thought most of those who attended were there to study agri/something related.

[Lisafuller]

I think both students and parents attach too much significance to school brands. I know plenty of senior execs at my employer (a Fortune 100) who didn’t go to a brand name school — made absolutely no difference.

GE pretty much exclusively recruited at the Ivies in my time for exec roles - mostly Harvard business school. I don't think it did them any good looking at the problems they had. It was like an echo chamber in there.

Pretty sure most of the top companies still do. Certain fields are incredibly elitist and insular (Law, Tech, Med).

[BBCDoc]

I think both students and parents attach too much significance to school brands. I know plenty of senior execs at my employer (a Fortune 100) who didn’t go to a brand name school — made absolutely no difference.

True for the most part - unfortunately there are some careers where employers only recruit at top colleges, for example law and medicine.

Medicine understandably is tied to high patient traffic with complexity of diseases.

I’ve never heard of a great US medical school in Beverly Hills, but most tend to be in the roughest areas so the students have the most practice. Gunshot Wound practice is high on the curriculum in Johns Hopkins…

A reason why Singapore Med schools aren’t the greatest…too little disease diversity here.


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[Lisafuller]

I think both students and parents attach too much significance to school brands. I know plenty of senior execs at my employer (a Fortune 100) who didn’t go to a brand name school — made absolutely no difference.

True for the most part - unfortunately there are some careers where employers only recruit at top colleges, for example law and medicine.

Medicine understandably is tied to high patient traffic with complexity of diseases.

I’ve never heard of a great US medical school in Beverly Hills, but most tend to be in the roughest areas so the students have the most practice. Gunshot Wound practice is high on the curriculum in Johns Hopkins…

A reason why Singapore Med schools aren’t the greatest…too little disease diversity here.


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That’s an excellent point, never thought about that before. Most med students here must learn a lot of theory rather than through experience.

[Swn4]

It is really competitive this year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-get-int ... 1650546000

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