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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Now a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller! How do you REALLY get accepted to Harvard, Yale, and the Ivy League? Told from the fresh and personal perspective of 26-year-old Crimson Education CEO and Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford graduate Jamie Beaton, Accepted! is an honest and practical guide on beating the odds and getting into Ivy League and other elite schools - the smart way. Beaton takes you behind the doors of the world's top college admissions offices, revealing the highly strategic selection processes applied by institutions whose reputations depend on the number of students they admit, or more pointedly, the tens of thousands that they don't. In Accepted!, Beaton delivers the ultimate insider "how to" and disrupts cliched admissions advice with savvy strategies like: * Moneyballing the university rankings and increasing your chances of admission * Class spamming your way to academic supremacy and acceptance * Playing the early application dating game and understanding how institutions are using it to their reputational advantage Packed with real-life examples from the thousands of students Beaton has helped land a spot at Harvard, Stanford, and other esteemed universities, Accepted! is a never-before assembled culmination of secrets, insights, and application strategies guaranteed to maximize your chances of "getting in" to the school of your choice. From ambitious students and their supportive parents to academic advisors and admissions professionals, Accepted! is the must-read guide to demystifying the often-convoluted and increasingly competitive world of elite college admissions.
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Seitenzahl: 358
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Signaling, the Hunger Games, and McHarvard
Notes
Chapter 2: Class Spam
Notes
Chapter 3: Early Decision and the Dating Game
Notes
Chapter 4: Morpheus Wins
Notes
Chapter 5: The Extracurricular Results/Effort Ratio
Notes
Chapter 6: Not A School Leader? Go Build Your Own Empire
Notes
Chapter 7: Don't Be Fooled
Notes
Chapter 8: The Kingmakers
Notes
Chapter 9: It's All Optional!
Notes
Chapter 10: Powerade, Burger Patties, and the Perfect Personal Statement
Note
Chapter 11: Dual Degrees and Why Double Dipping Opens Doors You May Not Know Existed
THE HUNTSMAN PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
JEROME FISHER MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
BROWN–RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN DUAL DEGREE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY'S MANAGEMENT, ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM
HARVARD–NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
COLUMBIA–JUILLIARD
STANFORD COTERMINAL MASTER'S PROGRAM
3 + 2 ENGINEERING PROGRAMS
VAGELOS LIFE SCIENCES AND MANAGEMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
DIGITAL MEDIA DESIGN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Notes
Chapter 12: What the Rich Get Wrong
Notes
Chapter 13: Why Student Athletes Need to Compete with Their Heads
Notes
Chapter 14: Managing Your Toughest Adversary—Your Mind!
Note
Chapter 15: International Students and the Even More Uneven Playing Field
Notes
Chapter 16: Moneyball
Notes
Chapter 17: Harvard's Legacy, My Legacy, and Your Legacy
Notes
Chapter 18: The Personalities of the Ivy Leagues and Which One May Be Right for You
Note
Chapter 19: For Parents Only!
Epilogue
Appendix: Bonus Round
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 16
Table 16.1 Ranking 1: Cross-Yield Ranking
Table 16.2 Ranking 2: Yield-Adjusted Acceptance Rate
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
Begin Reading
Epilogue
Appendix: Bonus Round
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
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“This revelatory, insightful, brutally honest book will actually help you! That's because Jamie Beaton has more experience than anyone, from his personal journey as a New Zealander to Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Yale to his pioneering role as founder and CEO of Crimson Education, which has helped thousands of students crack the code of Ivy League admission. ACCEPTED! is the real deal—and fun to read to boot. Tiger Mother approved.”
— Amy Chua, John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. New York Times bestselling author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Triple Package
“No one knows more about how to get into a top school than Jamie Beaton. This book is filled with actionable advice for improving your odds.”
— Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again, Originals and Give and Take. University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business top-rated professor for 7 straight years. Recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune's “40 under 40.”
“Higher education has always been exclusive, and in the last 5 years it has become even more so. Lean on Jamie and his experience to get into the best programs in the world.”
— Scott Galloway, NYU Stern Professor of Marketing and New York Times bestselling author of The Four, Algebra of Happiness, and Digital IQ Index. Elected to the World Economic Forum's “Global Leaders of Tomorrow,” which recognizes 100 individuals under the age of 40 “whose accomplishments have had impact on a global level.”
“I spent 20 minutes with Jamie Beaton some years ago and jumped at the chance to invest in Crimson when it was a small company with huge success in New Zealand. He was not your typical 19-year-old. At an early age Jamie understood the importance of receiving the best education possible, and has tried to avail that to tens of thousands of students worldwide. Jamie is a force of nature who exudes passion, energy and intelligence during almost every hour of the day.”
— Julian Robertson, Founder of Tiger Management, and known as “The Wizard of Wall Street”
“When I was growing up in country Australia, it was understood that you'd go into one of two careers: dairy or beef. The chance to attend a great university opened a world of opportunity for me. I hope this book will help bright, ambitious high school students from around the world shoot for the stars through higher education.”
— Kevin Rudd AC, Former Australian Prime Minister
“If you spend any amount of time with Jamie Beaton, you will find him to be an exceptional and tireless individual. He figured his way from New Zealand to the best universities around the world. He systematized his insights and created Crimson Education to help aspiring students understand the college admission system. Now he brings those insights to ACCEPTED!, his very well-written and entertaining book. If you value entrance to a great university, this book is compulsory reading.”
— Alfred Lin, Partner, Sequoia Capital & #1 Venture Capitalists Globally in Forbes Midas 2021
“Jamie is a true pioneer in the education landscape. Through his own experience studying at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, as well as the almost decade working alongside some of the world's most ambitious students, Jamie and the Crimson team have become the global leader in the University and College Admissions landscape. Jamie's innovative approach to working with students at the individual level, bringing together teams of industry specialists, has helped thousands achieve their dream admission result. Jamie is leading the way for others to follow.”
— Rt Hon Sir John Key: Former NZ Prime Minister
“ACCEPTED! unveils Jamie's exceptional college admission strategies, which have helped numerous students worldwide go to their dream colleges. The book transforms our perspectives on college admissions and arms students with productive ways to envision their future life. It's a must-read for students as well as their parents!”
— Tomohiro Hoshi, Head of School, Stanford Online High School, Lecturer Stanford University
“For any student entering this brutal selection process this is a must read book, as it is for any parent who wants their child to receive the missive ‘Accepted’. Congratulations, Jamie, on such a practical and pleasure-to-read book using your experiences of being a Rhodes, and a graduate of Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, sharing your brilliant and truly extraordinary journey with us.
— Emeritus Professor David Buisson, University of Otago; Sloan Fellow MIT; Former Regional Chairman and Educational Counsellor for MIT undergraduate admissions
“Jamie is a great source of inspiration, a visionary entrepreneur and above all, my life-long mentor and my dearest friend. I met Jamie at the end of high school when I desperately needed a scholarship to afford my college education, for which Jamie generously offered his guidance. Because of Jamie's support, I was fortunate to receive a full-ride scholarship from the Australian National University for my undergraduate study followed by master's degrees at Stanford and the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua. The last eight years of growing Crimson with Jamie has been an extremely rewarding journey and a truly transformative experience – lots of which you'll be able to discover in this book!”
— Fangzhou Jiang, Crimson Education Co-Founder, HURUN 30 Under 30
“Don't just apply… stand out! In this fascinating book, Jamie Beaton shows how to position for admittance at the world's most famous universities. I wish I had this book when I was applying.”
— David Meerman Scott, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of 12 books including The New Rules of Marketing and PR
“Jamie encourages students to maximize their potential and become inspirational leaders. Through his life, Jamie embodies the qualities that are most important in an educator - remaining a learner and embodying his teachings. His life's lessons are packed into this book, making it a must-read.”
— Ed Matsuda, Founder of Teach For Japan, The Most 100 Influential People in Japan (Nikkei Business), Crimson Education Japan - Country Manager
“The first conversation I ever had with Jamie changed the course of my entire life. In the span of one hour, Jamie had turned my childhood dream of attending Harvard into a precise actionable trajectory that led me to gain admission to Harvard, Stanford, UPenn (Huntsman Program), Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth, and more recently has led me to building a venture backed company. His book ACCEPTED! is an extremely punchy collection of the many kernels of wisdom Jamie has shared with me over this multi-year journey - an absolute must-read for anybody thinking about applying to competitive US/UK universities.”
— Soumil Singh, Harvard University, also accepted to Stanford, University of Pennsylvania (Huntsman Program), Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth
“Jamie has taught a generation of students that the impossible is possible and now ACCEPTED! Is the playbook for that vision. This book will give you the insight of what it takes to aim for a target on the moon and hit the bullseye every time – accounting for the physics of moon-gravity and space junk that may come in the way. ACCEPTED! Is a rare look into the mind of a master strategist and how this mindset moulded an ambitious kid to a global leader.”
— Rahul Sood, Wharton / UPenn CAS ’20, Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management summa cum laude
“ACCEPTED! offers unparalleled, practical and ‘can't-find-anywhere-else' insight on the ever shifting and increasingly competitive top college admissions landscape. I am evidence that Jamie's advice is golden. I never dreamed, when starting my applications, that I would have three Ivies and Stanford to choose from. There is no way I would be where I am today if not for what Jamie describes in this book. Read it and take his advice - it works!”
— Claudia F., Princeton University, also accepted to Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth
“Jamie is exceptional — full of energy, ideas, and passion. He's the kind of person you go to when you have a wild, or rather, statistically improbable vision, and he possesses the conviction and skills to make it happen. At age 16, yearning for a community of intellectuals and change-makers, I aspired to go to one of the US's best universities. While I started knowing close to nothing about the nuances of the admissions process, I ended up receiving a Likely Letter from Stanford! Three years later, my sister also worked with Crimson and is now studying at Oxford. For our family, working with Crimson and Jamie has elevated our futures to new heights — enabling social mobility, world-class opportunities, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”
— Rizina Y., Stanford University, also accepted to Princeton, Yale and Oxford
“Jamie has blown my wildest dreams out of proportion: I'm now living them. Following Jamie's advice, I was offered admission to my dream school - but also a full-merit scholarship that I wouldn't have dared to imagine myself capable of. Jamie will help you reimagine your possibilities. He's a visionary, but also a relentless pragmatist. There is no one more knowledgeable, passionate and hungry when it comes to college admissions.”
— Jia D., Robertson Scholar at Duke University, 3 x VEX Robotics World Champion, also accepted to Princeton, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon
“A thorough and thoroughly interesting guide to a world we think we know all about - wonderful!”
— Oscar E., University Of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, also accepted to Yale and Cornell
ACCEPTED!
Secrets to Gaining Admission to the World's Top Universities
Jamie BeatonCEO, Crimson Education
Copyright © 2022 John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved.
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COVER DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY
Foreword
Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt. Hon. Sir John Key
My mother learned the hard way the value of education.
She was 16 and living in Austria when the growing Nazi threat against Jews prompted her recently widowed mother to send her to safety in England. Although her mother survived the war, many of my extended family members died in concentration camps. People commonly talk of the “dark clouds” that were gathering over Europe in the prewar period. To my grandmother, mother, and the many family members I never had a chance to meet—and to millions of other people—the threat to their homes, livelihoods, friends, and families was very real. Those who could, fled.
My mother, Ruth, was an intelligent woman and she may well have had a good education in Austria had her life not been so brutally altered by World War II. Instead, she arrived in England speaking almost no English and with no way to further her formal education. In time, she married an Englishman and moved to New Zealand. I was the youngest of their three children. When my father died—I was at primary school—my mother once again set about rebuilding her life. And once again as an immigrant.
My mother instilled in me the need for a good education. Having herself lost the security she had depended on, first as a teenager, and then as a young wife and mother, she understood its value. This is a common thread in the story of many refugees and immigrants. A person and a family can lose almost everything—their home, their job, their friends, their citizenship—but they still retain their character, their education, and their skills. It's these that have allowed many people to start new lives.
Education is the ladder that can enable people to climb to heights otherwise thought unachievable. Education is also a currency that has value the world over. Like currencies, some education has more value than others.
This book focuses unashamedly on elite education. It's about how the cream of the world's universities select from some of the best and brightest students graduating from high schools around the world every year. The maths, as any of these bright students will tell you, are not on their side when they apply to Harvard, MIT, or Oxford. But in this book, Jamie Beaton generously shares his own firsthand and professional knowledge to help students tilt the table a bit more in their favor.
Students aspire to attend elite universities for a whole range of reasons, including the fact that a degree from one of them opens doors to employment at similarly elite global companies. These universities' selection processes, as you'll read in the following chapters, are so thorough and rigorous that employers of choice know much of the sorting task has been done for them.
It would be wrong to think anyone can simply game the university entrance system by trickery. That is not Jamie's argument here. Intelligence, hard work, and creativity remain the key requirements. But there are strategies, from course selection to choice of part-time jobs, that might increase a person's chances, and Jamie canvasses those in the following pages.
I am a graduate of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and had a great education there. It would be remiss of me to not remind ambitious young people that there is more than one pathway to success. Not getting into an elite overseas university might end one dream—but it needs to inspire another. In New Zealand, the worth of a person is not measured by which university they attended, if any. But it's true that what degree you complete, what grades you get, and where you studied will be something employers look at. Some of the global financial firms I worked in would hire graduates only from a select and prestigious group of universities. That didn't always sit well with me as a Kiwi who believes strongly in opportunity. But choosing graduates from selected schools was clearly a guaranteed way of tapping into a hugely impressive pool of highly talented people.
Countries like Singapore and South Korea, which, as nations, took deliberate steps to lift their economic game and to become more competitive, are in the same market for that talent. In the competitive market for skills, and with the increasing technological sophistication of even the most basic tasks, the desire by corporations and nations to feel confident that they are hiring people with the right answers is only getting stronger. Borders tend to melt away for those with the right education and skills. Their market is the world.
This book, based on the experience of Jamie and the thousands of students assisted and nurtured by Crimson Education, will help students and their families understand the selection systems of the world's top universities. It doesn't tell you what to do with your education once you have it—wherever you end up getting it. My message to students, like my mother's message to me, is to value whatever educational opportunities you have. Embrace challenges. Say yes to opportunity. Learn, and learn more. No knowledge is wasted.
If, like me, you have the opportunity in your career to give back to your community or your country, do so. The world is facing unprecedented environmental challenges and social strain is evident everywhere. Education has a private and a public benefit, and an elite education is likely to enhance the opportunity to build wealth and security for yourself and your family. But some of the greatest rewards and satisfactions in life come from using your education and achievements to lift up people you might never meet. You don't have to have an education to do that but, as in most things, it will certainly help.
To everyone reading this book, I wish you luck in your endeavors, and lots of caffeine at exam time.
Rt. Hon. Sir John Key
Introduction
When I was 15 I bumped into my school valedictorian on a train.
It was a chance meeting, but I took the opportunity to say hello, given the guy was my academic role model and being valedictorian—or as we called it dux—at King's was on my list of high school ambitions.
We stood and chatted as the train rocked and my backpack pulled on my shoulders and bumped into the back of another book-laden kid standing behind me.
I didn't say much, mostly listened, and if you asked me now exactly what this older kid said to me, I couldn't tell you.
But what I do know is that, when I got on that train I had my future all figured out: valedictorian, high school graduation, medicine at the University of Auckland. But by the time I got off, my entire plan had been shot to pieces and replaced with another, and all because this kid told me that he had gotten into Yale.
At this stage, of course, I had no idea what I was doing.
The best plan I could come up with was this: more is definitely more. Although other kids took three A Levels, I took ten. If my peers were making Top in New Zealand, I set my sights on making Top in the World (I made it for English Literature). If my older mate managed to get into Yale applying to a handful of schools, I figured it was best to hedge my bets and increase my chances by pure volume, and so I applied to many of the world’s top universities.
Of course, no one was more surprised than I was when I got into all of the greats I applied to: Harvard, Yale, Wharton (Hunstman), Cambridge, Yale-NUS, and more! I was just a skinny kid from the bottom of the world who narrowed the odds by going overboard.
So would I do it the same way again, given what I know now, given the people I've met and the places I've studied and the questions I've asked of scores of my mentors and peers at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford?
The answer is yes and no.
We're all told time and time again that there is no secret formula of guaranteeing a spot at an Ivy or Stanford or MIT—and that is true, but only to a point, given like any highly sought-after goal, sooner or later you start to see a pattern. I started Crimson Education with my then-girlfriend at 17, on the floor of our respective parents' living rooms, and even then, I knew there was an art to what I'd done that went beyond any talent or element of luck that I'd unwittingly tapped into.
It is true that acceptance rates at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton hover around the 4% mark—but 4% still get in. The trick is building an application that puts you in that 4%, and if you have the talent and the right strategy you can increase your chances significantly.
More may still be more, but these days tens of thousands of kids do that “more,” so the secret lies not just in what you do, but the intricacies of detail behind it.
It's about the support you get, the mentors who engage, the time line you set, the strategy behind your application list, and knowing how to make every grade you achieve, and every written word on your application, count.
There's a reason the students we work with are up to four times more likely to get into an Ivy than the general applicant: they're bright and hard-working, but so are many thousands of kids out there with whom they're in direct competition.
As human beings we all like to think there is one secret solution to a frequently asked question such as “How do I get into Harvard?” But the truth is, that doesn't exist. What there is, however, is a set of secrets that align to increase your chances significantly. Think of it as getting on the train at one stop, ticking off a list of very specific stations, talking to the right people, shifting your balance so the ride is smooth and steady, and getting off at the other end with a whole new realization of what's possible.
So how will reading this book help you make your start?
ACCEPTED! is the embodiment of the best part of 25 years of high-intensity academics navigating the most difficult competitions required to get in and study at Harvard, Stanford, Yale Law School, the Rhodes Community, and more, as well as my experiences navigating the careers and education pathways for thousands of students across more than 20 countries.
Think of it as your own train ride from here to there, with “there” being admission to one of the best universities in the United States.
Ready to get started?
Jump on board!
Chapter 1Signaling, the Hunger Games, and McHarvard
From the moment we are born, we are trained to compete for all things—for food, for partners, for a place to live, for our beliefs, and more. As our economy and education system has gone global, competition has only increased, and the returns to success have grown and grown as talented individuals can access much larger markets than ever before.
Certain countries like China and Singapore lean in on competition. From a young age, children in China prepare for the rigorous college entry exam—the Gaokao—which force-ranks a nation of learners and precisely determines which universities and even careers they can access. In Singapore, children are streamed at each stage of learning, creating a gladiatorial system that at the highest levels in schools like Raffles Institution Singapore produce exceptional learners.
The biggest mistake made in the Western world, which I suspect will have more of an impact on why countries like China continue to grow in prominence at mind-blowing speeds while countries like the US appear to trend sideways, is hiding from the competition that made these nations great in the first place. The classic story of the child at his weekend soccer game who may lack talent in that particular sport but is given a participation trophy for turning up because no one would want to shake his confidence seems kind and encouraging. But ultimately we have to ask if this approach leads to a false perception of reality, and more importantly, if it might dilute that child's ability to engage with the real world.
The real world is competitive. Colleges assess you on paper and look at your personality, extracurriculars, academics, and references to determine whether they will accept or reject you from their gates. Employers offer generous salaries to those individuals who pass this initial college admissions officer assessment—those who get in—effectively handing these students access to jobs and post-graduate degrees others will simply not have access to. Venture capitalists will invest millions behind a few select young people who have risen to the top of a competitive hierarchy and have identified trends in the market others haven't spotted.
Although it is nice to imagine a world in which the results of our youth do not meaningfully affect our future or an environment in which everyone is judged by their merits and on nothing else, this is terrible parenting advice for a young person. The reality is there is no launchpad that can propel you into a career of success, significance, and impact with the same consistency as a college degree from a top institution.
I've sent more than 1,000 students to the world's best universities, and like clockwork they land jobs at the types of institutions that offer life-changing opportunities: Blackstone, the world's largest private equity firm; Google DeepMind, the world's leading artificial intelligence lab; McKinsey, the world's most prestigious management consulting firm; Goldman Sachs, the world's most competitive investment bank. Despite the fact that these companies have massive resources, they can't go on a worldwide talent search for every single position. Rather, they inevitably gravitate to recruiting from the same pool of highly selective colleges. These colleges have already done a lot of the heavy lifting for them in assessing vast swathes of young people and deciding who can get in and who gets rejected. The colleges take the process even further: forcing their students to compete head-to-head, ranking them numerically with a grade point average that enables firms to easily assess who thrived and who struggled once they hit these bastions of competition and academic excellence.
As a young person, you can tell yourself that college doesn't matter or that high school has nothing to do with your career, but the reality is, in virtually all scenarios, the easiest and most effective path to success is getting into an elite college and making the most of that opportunity.
Many critics have asked why these elite colleges are important. Does Harvard have the best teachers? A lot of classes are taught by graduate students. Do the endless laboratories and resources really change the experience of the average student? I never set foot in one in my time there. Does Harvard have the best career advice? I never went into the on-campus career services—not a single time.
The answer to why these colleges are so important sits with a Nobel Prize–winning, human capital theorist, Gary Becker. Becker coined the phrase “signaling,”1 which refers to the power of a student's education credentials to act as a signaling device to future employers or postgraduate admissions officers as to their superior innate abilities. In a busy world, no one has the time, money, or knowledge to be able to actually audit people's real ability. As a result, they rely on signals of quality in order to proxy real ability. The college degree is the ultimate signal of ability. How many times have we come across an Ivy League “genius” in a Hollywood movie like the Yale-educated data scientist played by Jonah Hill in Moneyball? Or the aspiring diplomat who happens to be a Rhodes Scholar (check out Charlize Theron in Long Shot)? Or as the ferocious corporate lawyer from Harvard Law School (Harvey Specter in Suits)? Nothing is a faster proxy for ability, skill, and academic firepower in mainstream media than your university education.
Now, let's get something straight. Is it true that the world's best 1,600 undergrads for a given year are all sitting in Harvard's seats? Absolutely not. Many of the world's best young people may not know that Harvard's financial aid policy means anyone who gains admissions can get enough funding to be able to attend. Many would never have considered applying. Many more may not have the opportunity to attend college because they have to financially support their family (which says reams about their character).
Regardless, the market is an efficient sorting mechanism that doesn't try to get everything right but get it approximately right. On average, will a Yale Law graduate be a fantastic lawyer? Probably, yes. On average, will an MIT artificial intelligence PhD be able to convince the public of the importance of some new data privacy laws over your average Joe? Probably, yes. On average, will a Stanford undergrad seem like the kind of person who could be the next unicorn founder in Silicon Valley? You bet (thanks Evan Spiegel!2).
Signaling goes beyond just a college degree. There are signals on signals on signals. McKinsey can charge out their case teams at $1 million/week. Why? It might start with their nickname of “McHarvard” where they recruit seemingly endless numbers of Harvard graduates, Rhodes Scholars, and other talented young people from brand-name schools so they can market every case team as being full of “whiz kids.” A million/week for primarily 22- to 26-year-olds with limited work experience on your most pressing business issues? It sounds like a scam. But these young people went to a top college. Okay, then that makes sense.
Now let's think about Silicon Valley. My cofounders at Crimson have been able to raise more than $US60 million before our 25th birthdays. This is our first business. We have no track record. Prior to going to Harvard, I really genuinely thought entrepreneurship was what you said you would do if you found yourself unemployed. This is rare but it is by no means a major exception. The most popular schools of unicorn founders (companies valued above $US1 billion) in the US were Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School of Business).3 As a venture capitalist writing big checks with other people's money, being able to assure your investors that your entrepreneur is “investable” (a term I first heard from GGV investor Hans Tung, that is, they have impressive academic credentials that give a good clue that the person is of substance and likely to succeed) captures the power of signaling perfectly.
Fast-forward to a corporate boardroom for an executive appointment at a major technology company. A partner from one of our venture capital firms said to me that they only consider an executive at this level for a strategy role if they have been trained by one of the greats: Bain, McKinsey, or Boston Consulting Group. Hold on? If these management consulting firms hire based on the signal of a college degree and now it is indeed those firms that are acting as the signal for executive hires—what does that mean?
The answer is obvious. Your college degree is incredibly important. It sets up a reputational snowball that will affect every facet of your working life. It may even affect your dating life!
When I first wrote about this at the age of 16 in our student newspaper at King's College, my wonderful English teacher told me to shelf the article because it was “too depressing.” Why? I'd wondered to myself.
As long as you as a young person or a parent go into education with eyes wide open, understanding the Herculean high-stakes competition in front of you and how to beat it, knowing this is one of the most impactful things you can do for your motivation, then it is not depressing but just a situation you know you need to negotiate.
Once negotiated, the rewards are limitless and all the effort expended are not just worth it but life changing in more ways than you can imagine. So let's dive into the nitty gritties starting with my first piece of strategy advice on class spamming—the ultimate case of when more means more.
Notes
1
. Becker, Gary S.
Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education
. 2d ed. New York: Columbia University Press for NBER, 1975.
2
. Evan Spiegel is the cofounder and CEO of Snap. His estimated worth is $US13 billion.
https://www.forbes.com/profile/evan-spiegel/?sh=7b5a3b4f529c
3
. Parker, Tim. Where Do Unicorn Founders Go to College?
Investopia.com
. Updated August 17, 2020.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/small-business/021017/where-do-unicorn-founders-go-college.asp
Chapter 2Class Spam: Deadly and Effective
Many students spend hours and hours trawling online forums, asking friends, mentors, and alumni of top universities: what activities do I do to get into a top university?
The best answer to this question is comically simple but brutally effective.
As an 18-year-old, I applied to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Wharton, and Cambridge and gained admission to all of them. I beat students who were smarter than me, had Mathematics Olympiad Medals, were head students of their school, and had a wide variety of other achievements. What was my strategy?
Take the maximum possible academic subject load and do more than any other student around you.
But what exactly does this mean? At my school, King's College, a well-to-do private boarding school where I was studying on a scholarship, the typical student would take three to four A Levels (in the Cambridge curriculum).1 But I did 10.
Taking a subject load that was 2.5 times the median student and more subjects than anyone else in my school's history showed that on one very important dimension—academic capacity and work ethic—I was demonstrably able to beat everyone else. I didn't take on all that extra work simply to lay claim to this record, it wasn't about “winning” for the sake of winning. I simply had my sights set on top US or UK university admission, and at the time, doing more sounded like the best way to increase my chances of getting in. Which ultimately it did, and for other students still does. One of my students in Shanghai this year just finished his 17th AP subject. (Update: he was accepted into Harvard in the 2021 admission cycle.)
So why does this work? Many universities like Stanford seek to test intellectual vitality.2 Broadly, this means they want to know that you are interested in a wide variety of fields, are open to discovering new subject areas, and that you pursue academic initiatives outside of school that you weren't forced to take in the classroom.
Naturally, you could try and show Stanford that you like business and economics by listing a bunch of books that you have read (I like AI Superpowers3 and Freakonomics4 myself), but what is the most efficient way to show you mean business? Take an accredited subject in that field. It could be AP Microeconomics, AP Macroeconomics. It could be A-Level Economics or A-Level Business Studies. This is the most efficient way to communicate to the university that you are passionate about the subject, trained in the subject, and cared enough to go through the ordeal of sitting a whole additional exam in the subject.
In high school, I took extra subjects in Further Mathematics, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Thinking Skills, French, English Literature, Business Studies, and Economics. I took the science subjects, maths, and English in school (these subjects were referred to inappropriately as the “Asian 5” for being the most serious subjects) and then proceeded to take subjects such as Economics outside of school (“self-studied”).
Self-study, as I define it, refers to taking a subject outside of your traditional school. You could self-teach it, you could enroll in a part-time course offering like Crimson's online high school, Crimson Global Academy, or you could hire a tutor for it. The point is, you aren't taking it as a student in your traditional school. You're choosing to do extra.
Why is this strategy so effective? A university is trying to guess at who the most competent students are. When they read about your extracurriculars they may ask themselves, what does this mean? How legitimate is this organization? Did this really take much time? How passionate is this student? The main issue with extracurriculars and most other activities is there are very few universal standards that can clearly translate to an admissions officer exactly what you've done. (Not that extracurriculars are not crucially important to the college admissions process—they are, and we will get to that later. But they are viewed alongside your academic record, which you have to nail first.) When an admissions officer sees you've written an independent report on business in Japan, they will be intrigued but they will have limited comparability when they evaluate you against other students—when they place you head-to-head.
That is why this subject strategy is important. If you have completed 20 AP classes—and your best competitors have 17 or 15 all with similar grades, the university needs to actively find a reason to admit the other students over you. You will be the default pick because on the most clearly understood qualification you are ahead, and so on a risk-adjusted basis, your typical university will choose you.
