I've lived in Los Angeles for over seven years now. One of the very first things I noticed was just how incredible the weather is, sunny all year round. But right behind that, I noticed that people here never asked me a question that I was asked all the time on the East Coast, and that is, "Where did you go to school?"
I think I've only been asked that question twice in all my years here whereas on the East Coast, that might be the most popular question that I would get asked.
The underpinning of this question is that there is something fundamental based on where you went to school. Who you are, how smart you are, and to a large extent, how good of a life you could possibly expect for yourself.
Harvard was better than Yale which was better than Dartmouth which was better than Northwestern which was better than NYU which was better than Boston College which was better than Penn State which was better than Montclair State. My friends and I would obsess over this so much that we would debate the stack ranking of the Ivy League schools. It would go: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, and finally, UPenn.
If you think this is weird, it is. But there are people on the East Coast who know this, believe this, and hire based on this.
The crush of expectations in my family was strong. I remember one time, I think I was in eighth grade -- I had fallen in love with Duke basketball. This was the years of Danny Ferry, then Christian Laettner, then Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill. I would dream of basketball and particularly, Duke basketball. On one blazing Saturday afternoon, as I was riding with my brother and my father in his Lincoln Town Car, I scooched up to the middle seat and dutifully announced, "When I go to college, I'm going to Duke."
My father quickly retorted, "If you go to Duke, I won't pay for it."
The shock of this hit me hard and I could feel the tears welling up inside of me. Duke, apparently, wasn't good enough for me. I would have to strive higher. Or at least strive for my dad's perception of what an elite school was.
This back and forth would play out throughout my early high school years as I worked moderately hard but broadly found school staggeringly boring. I was getting A's, but my A's weren't quite high enough nor consistent enough for my father. So he would call me in on a regular basis to tell me I was wasting my life. I was 14. I feel like he viewed these lectures as some sort of intervention. Only instead of having found a bag of pot, he found a French quiz I got an 86 on.
At some point before my junior year, and I don't think this was because of my father, I made a concerted effort to just put in maximum effort. I kind of wanted to see how good I could be. Also, I was a little tired of cutting things too close. This extra effort helped propel me to a really strong GPA, set of extracurricular activities, and recommendations.
I had my sights set on Princeton. The clear reason was because my brother went to Princeton and loved it. I would visit him, walk around campus, and imagine myself being one of them. They wore scarves, looked sophisticated, and ate in eating clubs. I would be surrounded by amazing people who would do amazing things and my life would be wonderful from that moment forward.
So I applied early decision. But then my best friend, Adam, also applied early decision to Princeton. And I was worried. I wanted Princeton all to myself. Even worse, Princeton couldn't possibly take two of us from the same high school, let alone a public high school. Also, how would they choose? Adam and I, because we were best friends, had almost the exact same resume because we did all the same activities... because we were best friends! We were both tied for first in our class at the time, we took nearly all the same classes so our recommendations were from largely the same people, and we were both captains of the cross country team.
Back then, Princeton's Dean of Admissions was Fred Hargadon, Dean Fred. A man the New York Times once described as "the dean of deans". He was a legend and he was also well known for sending out letters to accepted students that said at the very top, "Yes!" All us Princeton hopefuls dreamed of this Yes! letter. We would also have a hint of the answer from the outside. Small envelopes meant no while big envelopes meant yes.
When early decision letters started arriving, I would drive home immediately after school every day and sit by my bedroom window, like a cop on a stakeout, just waiting for the mail truck to arrive.
Then one fateful day, the mail truck came and went and I raced outside. I opened the mailbox and there it was. Princeton University. Big envelope. Oh, this is it. I tear it open. Yes! I got in! I'll never forget that moment because I literally felt... nothing. I was stunned. Why did I feel nothing? Why wasn't I elated? I was so confused that I ginned up false emotions and forced myself to run around excitedly yelling. It's like when Taylor Swift wins an award and acts surprised... She's not really surprised, and I wasn't really happy.
I played coy with the news knowing everyone else was waiting to hear and not knowing who would get in where, most importantly Adam. He didn't hear for a couple of days but then he got the envelope. A small one. He was deferred to regular admissions. This was bad news. Early decision applicants who were deferred almost never got in. Adam was out. I was secretly elated. I now had Princeton all to myself.
While Adam never expressed it to me, Adam and his family were mad. How could he not get in and I did? We had the same resume. I've long thought about this and I think there are a few potential reasons. The first is the obvious one. Legacy. Legacy is, if I remember the application correctly, if your parents or grandparents went to Princeton. Princeton cares about this. They partly care because of endowment purposes -- Princeton has one of the highest giving rates among universities and the unstated assumption is they take care of their own. You're still more likely than not not to get in, but legacy does help. Technically, legacy didn't apply to me. My uncle got his physics PhD from Princeton -- did that count? Nope. My brother was a current student -- did that count? Nope.
But, my brother made sure that they knew who I was by writing Dean Fred, who he was friendly with. Also, my brother was not nobody. He would go on to graduate with highest honors in his department and be a Fulbright Scholar. He was one of Princeton's best.
The second difference was our essays. I don't know what Adam wrote, but I thought long and hard about my essay and came up with a concept that I loved.
Here was my problem. I had a good application. I had good grades, played sports, good extra curricular activities. But so did everyone else. I was not extraordinary in any way. I didn't win Westinghouse, or play the violin at a world class level, or run a mile in under 4:20. And I would be competing against people who had.
So inspired by a short story I read years earlier, I wrote about a day in my life. But the take on it, really, was that my day wasn't extraordinary. I was just a kid who grinded it out. Who people laughed at when I went out for sports. Who when I wanted to study economics and it wasn't offered, came up with an independent study program. Who would fall asleep at my desk studying nearly every night. I hoped perhaps that that might resonate with them.
The last difference is, while I never read Adam's essay, I did see it from a distance and it was... written. I typed mine. This may sound like a preposterous and infinitesimal difference, but I liken it to the people who say that as soon as they find a spelling mistake in a resume, they throw it out. I remember relaying this fact to my brother and he immediately said, "Yeah, that probably cost him Princeton."
Adam ultimately went to that backwoods of a college known as Harvard. I remember actually being relieved when he got in because someone as talented as Adam should go to a place like Harvard.
I ended up hating Princeton and seriously considered transferring within my first month. Some of it was just the unease of being in a new environment, some of it was a crushing class schedule, and some of it was just a fundamental mismatch.
Ironically, I would've had a much easier go of it if Adam had also gotten in. Adam, on the other hand, just loved Harvard and had an amazing time and most of his best friends to this day were his classmates. At his wedding, his wedding party was his brother, me, and his Harvard classmates.
It's sometimes strange to me thinking about this experience. I guess it falls under that rubric, "Be careful what you wish for." And I remind myself of this when things don't go the way I want -- because maybe it just wasn't meant to be or just because you set a goal and achieve it, it doesn't mean that that was a good goal in the first place.
What I should've done was visited a lot of schools, applied to a lot of places, and then see what felt right. Not lock in so early and become doggedly determined to simply go to my top choice. Maybe that's what I was feeling when I was feeling nothing. How could I know that Princeton was the right place when I knew about no other?
Because I applied early decision, I have no idea where else I could've gone, but given any choice, I think I would've preferred Stanford -- for the weather, lifestyle, and proximity to Silicon Valley or maybe, if I had the guts, MIT -- for the technical rigor.
But most of all, I'm torn about the underpinning of that question, "Where did you go to school?" How much of the success I experienced later was tied to having gone to Princeton?
I used nearly nothing of what I learned at Princeton at Amazon or Google. But surely it helped me get to those places, right?
I like to think of myself as a scrappy person. That all things are possible. But I can't deny that that Princeton stamp means something.
At Google, I was on two hiring committees and yes, the schools people went to mattered. It doesn't mean nothing. But sometimes I think it should. Or at least that's how I tried to process candidates.
After all, it's what you know, it's not just brand association. But when you don't know the person, it's hard not to give undue weight to some seal of approval, which is what these universities are ultimately selling.
A few years ago, my brother was giving a lecture at Amherst and I tagged along. Walking around the campus, I was struck by it in a way I don't think any other campus has ever struck me. It felt... perfect. Idyllic, homely, safe -- a place where you could read and research, think and fail. An academic haven. I would've loved to have gone there. But then I said, "Even knowing I would've been miserable at Princeton, I still would've gone, because I wouldn't have been able to pass up Princeton."
It's strange to me to think about how much effort I expended for something which no one around me cares about. No one asks about it, I have no connection to other alums, it doesn't affect my career in any meaningful way.
So is it true? Did where I go to school affect who I became, what I was able to do, how good a life at least in the past few years, I was able to have? Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes.