I disagree with the sentiment "do not compare yourself to others".
Do compare yourself to others when comparison will provide useful information.
Don't beat yourself up for not being #1. Have some humility and some decorum.
This entry makes several statistical observations about the current reality of academic competitiveness. I make no judgement about how you got where you are, including the advantages and disadvantages you've had along the way. I also present this information for the sake of clarity about the way the system is today, not the way a theoretically "ideal" system might be someday. The purpose of this entry is to empower you to make career decisions, not to judge your career decisions or the career decisions of your peers.
Do compare yourself to others
Comparison often provides useful information for decision-making.
If you don't compare, you'll have no idea how your CV stands relative to your peers.
Future potential employers will be comparing your CV to those of your peers when you compete for the same job so it really helps to get a sense of where you stand relative to your peers!
If you ain't first, you're last!
Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights
There will always be someone operating at a level beyond your level.
You should still compare! With comparison, you can calibrate your understanding of what level you occupy. If you compare and discover that 80% of people are beyond your level, you'll understand that you have very different career opportunities than if you compare and discover that only 5% of people are beyond your level.
Understanding your level is important information for your career plans!
Someone in the bottom 20% of academic-oriented qualifications probably won't be competitive for academic positions, which tend to be particularly competitive due in part to their limited availability. Someone in the bottom 20% would be wise to focus on non-academic career paths, which generally prioritize completely different CV goals (i.e. skills over publications). While publications are crucial in academia, publications don't mean much outside of academia. Outside of academia, you need a CV full of demonstrable skills and a portfolio that shows off what you can do. Non-academic career paths have a different set of qualifications and you can become very competitive in that field if you plan your PhD accordingly.
Don't beat yourself up for not being #1
If you finish your PhD, congratulations, you're in the top 1% most-educated people in the world!
Nobody should feel bad for operating in the bottom 20% of people with a PhD.
That still puts you in the top 1% most-educated people in the world!
If you got accepted to grad school, congratulations, your investments of time and money during the application process paid off!
If you applied and haven't been accepted to grad school, your investments of time and money haven't paid off.
If you're considering applying, ask yourself whether the cost of the attempt is worthwhile.
Sometimes the cost is absolutely worthwhile! Frankly, some very qualified people that should apply still don't get in. The application process is not "fair": life isn't "fair". Sometimes, you make a reasonable assessment of your skills and abilities, then apply, and don't get in. This can happen multiple years in a row and this can be devastating. It is possible to do everything right and still get rejected.
However, many applicants probably shouldn't have even tried.
Being very generous, imagine we say that the top 50% of applications "had a chance". They could be worthy candidates if there were more positions to fill, but it didn't work out for them. It was reasonable for them to apply and pay the cost of applying. That very generous case still leaves the bottom 50% of applications: they "didn't have a chance". For this bottom 50%, we could say that their time and money was genuinely wasted. They would have been better off saving their time, money, and stress by trying to do something else.
How could an applicant know whether they should apply or not?
By comparing themselves to their peers.
Concretely, it would be reasonable to say that any person with a low grade point average (GPA) that applies and gets their application rejected would have been wiser to compare themselves to their peers, realize that their grades were not competitive, then decide to do something else. It was unwise to spend time and money on applications or for various standardized tests, such as the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). While such a person may feel disappointed after realizing their application would not be competitive, isn't that disappointment, without spending time and money, preferable to the disappointment they would feel after they got rejected and spent hundreds of dollars, dozens of hours of time and effort, and experienced all the stress of developing and submitting graduate applications? If you think, "but they had to try!", remember that we're talking about the bottom 50% of applicants who "didn't have a chance". They were always going to get rejected, whether or not they tried. In such a situation, isn't it wiser to save one's money and spend one's time considering alternative careers? Or even just relaxing rather than stressing over doomed applications?
The same logic applies at higher levels of education as well.
The person with the low GPA would be wise to consider non-academic career options.
The person operating in the bottom 20% of graduate students would also be wise to consider non-academic career options.
There is wisdom in facing reality: you can plan to do something else.
Index
Return to Start Here