David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

broadest possible context, but locally—by comparing ourselves to people “in the same boat as ourselves.” Our sense of how deprived we are is relative. This is one of those observations that is both obvious and (upon exploration) deeply profound, and it explains all kinds of otherwise puzzling observations. Which do you think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all? Answer: the so-called happy countries. It’s the same phenomenon as in the Military Police and the Air Corps. If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don’t feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face? 2
    Caroline Sacks’s decision to evaluate herself, then, by looking around her organic chemistry classroom was not some strange and irrational behavior. It is what human beings do. We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves, which means that students in an elite school—except, perhaps, those at the very top of the class—are going to face a burden that they would not face in a less competitive atmosphere. Citizens of happy countries have higher suicide rates than citizens of unhappy countries, because they look at the smiling faces around them and the contrast is too great. Students at “great” schools look at the brilliant students around them, and how do you think they feel?
    The phenomenon of relative deprivation applied to education is called—appropriately enough—the “Big Fish–Little Pond Effect.” The more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities. Students who would be at the top of their class at a good school can easily fall to the bottom of a really good school. Students who would feel that they have mastered a subject at a good school can have the feeling that they are falling farther and farther behind in a really good school. And that feeling—as subjective and ridiculous and irrational as it may be— matters. How you feel about your abilities—your academic “self-concept”—in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It’s a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.
    The Big Fish–Little Pond theory was pioneered by the psychologist Herbert Marsh, and to Marsh, most parents and students make their school choices for the wrong reasons. “A lot of people think that going to an academically selective school is going to be good,” he said. “That’s just not true. The reality is that it is going to be mixed. ” He went on: “When I was living in Sydney, there were a small number of selective public schools that were even more prestigious than the elite private schools. The tests to get into them were incredibly competitive. So the Sydney Morning Herald —the big newspaper there—would always call me up whenever they were holding their entrance examinations. It would happen every year, and there was always this pressure to say something new. So finally I just said—and maybe I shouldn’t have—well, if you want to see the positive effects of elite schools on self-concept, you are measuring the wrong person. You should be measuring the parents.”

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    What happened to Caroline Sacks is all too common. More than half of all American students who start out in science, technology, and math programs (or STEM, as they are known) drop out after their first or second year. Even though a science degree is just about the most valuable asset a young person can have in the modern economy, large numbers of would-be STEM majors end up switching into the arts, where academic standards are less demanding and the coursework less competitive. That’s the major reason that there is such a shortage of qualified American-educated scientists and engineers in the United States.
    To get a sense of who is dropping out—and why—let’s take a look at the science enrollment of a school in upstate New York called Hartwick College. It’s a small liberal arts college of the sort that is common in the American Northeast.
    Here are all the Hartwick STEM majors divided into