https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Kz1Whhuf5ZM
When I taught in Boston at Harvard, one of the things I noticed was that the students there were, you know, they were pleased to be at Harvard. There was no doubt about that, but it was extremely competitive implicitly. And I suppose that’s part of the consequence of it being essentially based as much as it could be on competitive merit. And so it was also the case that many of these students had been outstanding where they had come from. They were class fellow Victorians and usually had at least one or two other major accomplishments under their belt. But then when they got to these intensely selected institutes, they were also in some sense average instantly below average in many ways, because you know, no matter how smart you are, the probability that you’re the smartest person in your class at Harvard is pretty damn low. And so the implicit level of competition was extremely high and people tend to compare themselves to their immediate peers, not to the broader world.