Este es un libro bastante interesante. Si bien se enfoca en el sistema Estadounidense de educación superior, en particular de las escuelas Ivy League y de élite, el autor toca temas bastante personales que son de interés para cualquier estudiante de pregrado y posgrado, incluso de bachillerato.

El autor argumenta que las escuelas de élite (y también se extiende el argumento a las demás universidades, en mi opinión) forman "excelentes ovejas"-- personas altamente capaces de hacer todo lo que se les diga, pero con poca creatividad e iniciativa. Dice que las universidades buscan inflar sus números y ganar "prestigio" a expensas de las vidas (académicas y personales) de sus estudiantes.

Los puntos más personales son los más impactantes para un estudiante. Habla de la motivación y las elecciones de carrera y de vida. El libro logra a su vez ser inspirador a intentar algo nuevo, creativo y riesgoso, pero sin inflar la idea de "puedes hacer lo que quieras". Por un lado dice "tu carrera debe ser aquello que haces cuando deberías estar trabajando", pero por otro lado dice "independientemente de tu elección de carrera, así sea tu carrera soñada, tendrás que pasar momentos tediosos y aburridos que te harán reconsiderar si en verdad eso es lo que quieres". En breve: vas a comer mierda de todas maneras, haz que valga la pena haberlo hecho.

Si bien no comparto todos los puntos del autor, me pareció un excelente libro. Un must-read para estudiantes desde bachillerato hasta posgrados.

Just glanced at, got the point

I started off loving this.

In the first half or so of the book, Deresiewicz exhorts students to think, to eschew choices made for the sake of money and convenience and propriety; he goes off on biting rants about parents and systems with very limited definitions of success. I flagged page after page for to use for future reference, when I'm arguing in favour of heading halfway across the globe to pursue passions that have nothing to do with practicality or career paths or top-tier schools.

But if I look at my copy of the book from the side, I see a big cluster of turned-down pages in the first 40 percent of the book. Then...nothing. Then three pages turned down where Deresiewicz references books I wanted to look up. Then more nothing. He lost me as the book went on and his focus, and audience, changed.

I'm on board with a lot of his points and ideas -- it boggles my mind to think how many Ivy League graduates go straight into consulting or banking (and frankly, I'd expect so-called 'best and brightest' students to try things that are a little more interesting), I'd much rather have students studying things they love than things they think they should study, and yes, the education system needs an overhaul. But I wonder whether there are just too many ideas for one book. By the end he seems to have come to the conclusion that to fix the (elite) higher education system (or at least that at research universities?) we need to change the structure of universities, change the way admissions are done, overhaul primary and secondary education, change taxation, slice the defense budget... Is he wrong? Not necessarily. But it's a lot more than can be covered in this volume.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck on an anecdote Deresiewicz tells, of a student whose friend applied for the Rhodes despite his GPA being below the cutoff. Deresiewicz takes offense at this; without a high enough GPA, he says, the friend doesn't deserve a Rhodes. He hasn't earned it. But when one of the points of the book is that grading systems are becoming less and less reliable as grade inflation continues, isn't that kind of beside the point?

On another topic entirely, I'm not sure how far outside the box Deresiewicz is advocating that students (or people in general go). He's sufficiently pragmatic to realise that Ivy-bound students aren't going to go to state universities instead, on the say-so of one book -- but if there's a call to action for students, it doesn't seem to go much further than the bounds of university. Study things that inspire them, yes. Don't be so hung up on grades that you forget to learn, yes. Don't rush into status-conscious jobs (but also don't do the low-paying things that are secretly status jobs). But...then what? Not to counter-snark or anything, but studying English at Columbia doesn't seem that far outside the status box to me.

Interesting in parts but not, to me, as a whole. I wish the second half had made me think as much as the first half.

I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.

Similar to [b:Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania|22675976|Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania|Frank Bruni|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1421011608l/22675976._SY75_.jpg|42179977], this book took so much weight off my shoulders, exposing the absurdity and elitism of college in America.

Reading Excellent Sheep was like getting backstage pass to the admissions process at Ivy League schools by a Yalie professor. The chapters on the history of the admissions process of Ivy League schools were fascinating to read. Seeing Deresiewicz pick apart the system of Harvard and Yale was nothing short of satisfying, and I left feeling convinced that the quality of education between an Ivy League school and a small liberal arts college were evenly matched.

Unforutnately, Deresiewicz took things a little too far. In Excellent Sheep’s final section, I was hoping that Deresiewicz would wrap things up with a hopeful plea for the reformation of education for the betterment of society. I was surprised to see him bashing President Obama, Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and many others; claiming that they are incapable of connecting to the poor on a personal level and worse, that they are incapable of thinking outside the box. Instead of feeling refreshed and hopeful, I left feeling like Deresiewicz was kind of bitter about the whole system that he could not get over his first point. Yes, I get that Ivy League schools are corrupt, but what should we do about it?

I didn't love every moment of this--moments, for example, that veer into platitudes or seem to romanticize the past--but these are small critiques of a book that all teachers and, really, anyone who knows a teenager (or is a teenager) should read. That last chapter is scathing in the best possible way. I want to include a quote, but it's hard to choose just one. Hm. How about this one, appearing in one of the last chapters:

"Is there anything that I can do, a lot of young people have written to ask me, to avoid becoming an out-of-touch, entitled little shit? I don't have a satisfying answer, short of telling you to transfer to a public university. You cannot cogitate your way to sympathy with people of different backgrounds, still less to knowledge of them. You need to interact with them directly, and it has to be on an equal footing: not in the context of 'service,' and not in the spirit of 'making an effort'... The only way to treat somebody as an equal is to realize that that's exactly what they are" (222).

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