Reflection On Outliers

Growing up, I was surrounded by competition and was always pushed to have good grades and to study often. My parents always told me that going to a University would make them proud. Every time they mentioned colleges, they would always talk about “UC’s”. My parents believed that obtaining a degree from a prestigious or high ranking University would guarantee me a high paying job in a wonderful career field. Aside from getting a fantastic job, I always thought that that student’s with the highest grades or highest IQ’s were the most successful ones. In the book Outliers, Gladwell slowly began to crumble my faulty beliefs and starts to show me that having the highest IQ doesn’t necessarily mean one will be successful and that you can achieve success no matter what college one goes to. Society began to embed in my mind that I needed to attend a school of high ranking so that I could be successful. How does a school get ranked when they all offer the same Bachelor’s or Associate's Degree? This belief started to break down as I began to become more independent during high school. I’ve realized that we are all so focused on this number that society has placed that we are ignoring reality. If we all receive the same degree at the end of the day, who cares? “But take a look at the following list of where the last twenty-five Americans to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine got their undergraduate degrees,

It simply doesn’t matter what our IQ is as long as our IQ is high enough. Gladwell explains that IQ has a threshold and that it’s very similar to height in basketball. “Does someone who is five foot six have a realistic chance of playing professional basketball? Not really. You need to be at least six foot or six one to play at that level, and, all things being equal, it’s probably better to be six two than six one, and better to be six three