Malcolm Gladwell's warning explained (Image credit: Getty)

For years, science students have been taught a simple equation: the harder the institute is to enter, the brighter the future that awaits outside. The assumption runs so deep that questioning it can feel almost heretical.

But Malcolm Gladwell — a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker — has never been particularly interested in reassuring ambition. He is more interested in examining what ambition does to people when it collides with reality.That is why his latest warning — blunt, uncomfortable, and aimed squarely at elite universities — has struck a nerve.“If you’re interested in succeeding in an educational institution, you never want to be in the bottom half of your class.

It’s too hard,” Malcolm Gladwell told in a recent episode of the Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know podcast, according to a Fortune report. “So you should go to Harvard if you think you can be in the top quarter of your class at Harvard. That’s fine. But don’t go there if you’re going to be at the bottom of class. Doing STEM? You’re just gonna drop out,” he added.He also advised students to consider their second or third choice institutions instead.

These, according to him, are places where young aspirants are more likely to perform at the top rather than struggle at the margins.What makes the remark sharper is that it is not new. Gladwell has been making the same case for years: STEM persistence is shaped as much by where you stand in the room as by how smart you are.“If you want to get a science and math degree, don’t go to Harvard,” Gladwell said in a Google Zeitgeist talk in 2019 also, Fortune reports.

“Persistence in science and math is not simply a function of your cognitive ability,” . “It’s a function of your relative standing in your class. It’s a function of your class rank,” he added.It is a line that sounds provocative, almost reckless. But Gladwell is not attacking Harvard University. He is questioning something far more foundational: Whether prestige-heavy academic environments help most science students persist long enough to succeed.

Why Gladwell keeps sounding the same alarm: The ‘big fish, small pond’ problem

Malcolm Gladwell’s argument has always been about psychology, about what happens inside students long before grades translate into careers. When he warns science students against placing themselves at the bottom of elite classrooms, he is not making a comment on intelligence or effort. He is describing a behavioural pattern he believes quietly determines who persists and who gives up. In highly competitive academic environments, Gladwell suggests, students do not measure themselves against global standards or long-term potential.