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

three groups—top third, middle third, and bottom third—according to their test scores in mathematics. The scores are from the SAT, the exam used by many American colleges as an admissions test. The mathematics section of the test is out of 800 points. 3
    STEM majors
Top Third
Middle Third
Bottom Third
Math SAT
569
472
407
    If we take the SAT as a guide, there’s a pretty big difference in raw math ability between the best and the poorest students at Hartwick.
    Now let’s look at the portion of all science degrees at Hartwick that are earned by each of those three groups.
    STEM degrees
Top Third
Middle Third
Bottom Third
Percent
55.0
27.1
17.8
    The students in the top third at Hartwick earn well over half of the school’s science degrees. The bottom third end up earning only 17.8 percent of Hartwick’s science degrees. The students who come into Hartwick with the poorest levels of math ability are dropping out of math and science in droves. This much seems like common sense. Learning the advanced mathematics and physics necessary to become an engineer or scientist is really hard—and only a small number of students clustered at the top of the class are smart enough to handle the material.
    Now let’s do the same analysis for Harvard, one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
    STEM majors
Top Third
Middle Third
Bottom Third
Math SAT
753
674
581
    Harvard students, not surprisingly, score far higher on the math SAT than their counterparts at Hartwick. In fact, the students in Harvard’s bottom third have higher scores than the best students at Hartwick. If getting a science degree is about how smart you are, then virtually everyone at Harvard should end up with a degree—right? At least on paper, there is no one at Harvard who lacks the intellectual firepower to master the coursework. Well, let’s take a look at the portion of degrees that are earned by each group.
    STEM degrees
Top Third
Middle Third
Bottom Third
Percent
53.4
31.2
15.4
    Isn’t that strange? The students in the bottom third of the Harvard class drop out of math and science just as much as their counterparts in upstate New York. Harvard has the same distribution of science degrees as Hartwick.
    Think about this for a moment. We have a group of high achievers at Hartwick. Let’s call them the Hartwick All-Stars. And we’ve got another group of lower achievers at Harvard. Let’s call them the Harvard Dregs. Each is studying the same textbooks and wrestling with the same concepts and trying to master the same problem sets in courses like advanced calculus and organic chemistry, and according to test scores, they are of roughly equal academic ability. But the overwhelming majority of Hartwick All-Stars get what they want and end up as engineers or biologists. Meanwhile, the Harvard Dregs—who go to the far more prestigious school—are so demoralized by their experience that many of them drop out of science entirely and transfer to some nonscience major. The Harvard Dregs are Little Fish in a Very Big and Scary Pond. The Hartwick All-Stars are Big Fish in a Very Welcoming Small Pond. What matters, in determining the likelihood of getting a science degree, is not just how smart you are. It’s how smart you feel relative to the other people in your classroom.
    By the way, this pattern holds true for virtually any school you look at—regardless of its academic quality. The sociologists Rogers Elliott and Christopher Strenta ran these same numbers for eleven different liberal arts colleges across the United States. Take a look for yourself:
    School
Top Third
Math SAT
Middle Third
Math SAT
Bottom Third
Math SAT
1. Harvard University
 53.4%
753
31.2%
674
15.4%
581
2. Dartmouth College
 57.3%
729
29.8%
656
12.9%
546
3. Williams College
 45.6%
697
34.7%
631
19.7%
547
4. Colgate University
 53.6%
697
31.4%
626
15.0%
534
5. University of Richmond
 51.0%
696
34.7%
624
14.4%
534
6. Bucknell University
 57.3%
688
24.0%
601
18.8%
494
7. Kenyon College
 62.1%
678
22.6%
583
15.4%
485
8. Occidental College
 49.0%
663
32.4%
573
18.6%
492
9. Kalamazoo College
 51.8%
633
27.3%
551
20.8%
479
10. Ohio Wesleyan
 54.9%
591
33.9%
514
11.2%
431
11. Hartwick College
 55.0%
569
27.1%
472
17.8%
407
    Let’s go back, then, and reconstruct what Caroline Sacks’s thinking should have been when faced with the choice between Brown and the University of Maryland. By going to Brown, she would benefit from the prestige of the university. She might