Discuss the validity of this statement.

legendofmax
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:18:45 +0000

It depends.

I honestly get really tired of people bringing up outliers as if they are somehow indicative of a trend – “Oh, such and such never went to college and look how far he got,” etc. People never seem to be willing to look at these situations and assess WHY such people didn’t need college or a good school to get ahead.

Even at that level, for every school-less overachieving superstar you show me, I can show you thousands more successful people who did go to school. Do you need an Ivy to get ahead? No – of course not. Many Ivy League students came from well-to-do families to begin with, and so those networks/resources have a certain sense of self-leveraging.

But if you’ve got a creative mind and a decent intellect, I don’t think it’s always enough. Getting a good education is the best way to take those ideas and channel them in a way that creates successful impact.