This is a linkpost for https://medium.com/@owenshen/the-ancient-god-who-rules-high-school-e0645b100ae6
Exactly, you gotta differentiate. How hard is it really to build a fusor like the Taylor Wilson kid the article references did as a teen?
Just have a hook, make the news, and you'll be golden. You can't just be a smarty pants, you have to be a smarty pants and an 'oh isn't that interesting'.
When you're in a terrible game with a perverse incentive structure...either play to win or don't play. If his blog took anonymous comments, I'd suggest starting an 'Irvington community college' with the kids who didn't want to go to low prestige schools, passing the hat in that community could pay real dividends and in a generation, it might become one of those high prestige schools...I mean, if that kid is average for his high school...
Hey, author of the article here.
I actually think it'd be probably net-positive if we had people trying to go lots of different routes to differentiate themselves. This seems like the sort of positive competition that leads to good externalities. (There's an example somewhere where Luke and Scott got into an arms race for writing good articles...)
Anyway, I'm interpreting the above to say that...students at Irvington should go to community college, which will have net benefits in the long run? Not 100% sure I'm parsing the second half of your third paragraph.