Clubs and Fests: Hidden Differentiators of Elite Colleges

The Secret Ingredient of Top-Tier Colleges

It's a crisp autumn afternoon at Harvard University. As students hustle between classes, the campus hums with activity. Flyers for upcoming events flutter on bulletin boards. Music spills out from a dance club's rehearsal. Laughter rings from the ground where the Quidditch team (yes, Quidditch team!) practices.

Now pan to a different campus, one lacking the same vibrant energy. Students here attend lectures and dutifully complete their assignments, but something is missing.

So what's the secret ingredient that separates top-tier colleges from the rest? World-class faculty? Cutting-edge research facilities? Mammoth endowments? While those certainly play a role, there's an overlooked factor that's just as crucial.

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The Software Paradox in Developing World Colleges

Software: Revolutionizing the College Experience in the West

In today's digital age, software has become an indispensable part of the college educational landscape, particularly in colleges and universities across the developed world. From learning management systems to collaboration tools, software solutions have revolutionized the way students learn, interact, and succeed in their academic pursuits. The benefits of software in education are numerous, ranging from increased efficiency and accessibility to enhanced learning outcomes and campus life experiences. Let's take a closer look at some of the key benefits.

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More Role Models

The Transformative Power of Visible Examples

The world runs on role models. This is a truth we've seen play out time and again across different domains. In sports, once a record is broken, it's often shattered multiple times in quick succession. Take the milestones in a 100-meter sprint—the 10-second barrier and the 9.5-second barrier, for example. The same pattern repeats itself in competitive exams, professional achievements, world records, and more. Sometimes, just knowing something is possible unleashes a new level of motivation in the human mind.

Also, think about communities that dominate particular professions. While inherited knowledge and resources play a role, there's something more fundamental at work: the power of visible examples. Consider how many kids pursue the same careers as their parents or close relatives, not because they're forced to, but because they genuinely want to. Could we fall in love with a certain type of work simply by seeing others do it with passion? [1] Imagine how many more of us could achieve more in life if we were better connected with others like us who have done it before.

For every trailblazer who achieved the "impossible" because they didn't know any better, there are thousands more who succeeded precisely because they saw someone else do it first. And it's a whole lot easier when that someone resembles them in more ways than one. And it's not like the trailblazers didn't require inspirational role models in their early days, before they became groundbreakers.

Brag, sometimes

This essay is going to be a tad bit personal. It's an attempt to share an important viewpoint I hold and explain something about myself. This essay is also one that could serve as my response to Peter Thiel's famous question: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"

If you've read my blog's about-me section or visited my company's about-us page, you've probably noticed that I frequently mention my volunteering efforts. I mention them in my essays and post about them on my Instagram as well. Some might find this off-putting, which raises interesting questions: Why do I continue to talk about it openly? Why do I believe others should do the same? And perhaps most intriguingly, why does this make some people uncomfortable?

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Deep Work and AI

There's an interesting parallel that I found in the mechanism that Cal Newport has proposed to quantify 'shallow work' in his book 'Deep Work' and in the mechanism that Andrew Ng has proposed to gauge what current LLMs (think ChatGPT, Google's Gemini or Microsoft Copilot) can or cannot do in DeepLearning.AI's course 'Generative AI for Everyone.'