Elite Universities Are Breeding Grounds for Insecure Overachievers
End the cycle by building an A-team of friends
In college, I dreamed about getting into Stanford Business School. That seemed like the ticket to a successful and good life. Then, in 2002, when the then dean of admissions called to tell me I had been admitted, I hung up and cried — it felt like the culmination of years of schooling and hard work, stress, and determination.
If only true “success” were as simple as attaining big goals. Sadly, nearly 15 years after graduating, I’ve come to believe that institutions like Stanford Business School are breeding grounds for unfulfilled lives.
What astounded me at our 10th reunion was how many classmates expressed often feeling unfulfilled, lost, lonely, and very stressed. A few classmates had “made it” big in conventional MBA success terms: two co-founded an online real estate company that was acquired for over $3 billion, another was reportedly paid $100 million not to leave Google, while others made a lot of money as investors.
Yet, now in our early forties, only a handful of people out of this class of roughly 390 seem genuinely and fully fulfilled with their lives and careers. If a person can’t be happy as a Stanford Business School graduate living on an upper-middle-class income…
