Back when I was applying to colleges, I remember hearing horror stories about notoriously ruthless schools where students would constantly try to out-compete each other, even if it meant resorting to sabotage. Dartmouth, on the other hand, tried pretty hard to distinguish itself from those schools. With its reputation of having a laidback and amicable student body, the College offered an opportunity to avoid enduring four years in a competitive nightmare, which was probably one of the reasons many of us chose to come here.
However, somewhere along the line, most students come to realize that Dartmouth is not the completion-free paradise that some of us had once imagined. Natalie Colaneri lamented this fact in her column last week, in which she recalls an encounter with a competitive pre-med student who refused to lend her some biology notes ("The problem with Pre-Med," Jan. 12). While these overtly cutthroat bad eggs are few and far between, many of us no doubt share Colaneri's disillusionment at the general competitiveness that permeates our lives.
Whether it's pre-meds trying to overcome the astronomical odds of attending an elite medical school or corporate recruiting hopefuls vying to snag one of the few openings on Wall Street, Dartmouth is full of ambitious and motivated students striving to achieve goals that ultimately can only be attained by a select few. This creates an unavoidably competitive atmosphere that we, unfortunately, must come to accept, no matter what college we attend or what career path we choose to pursue.
At the end of the day, scarcity makes competition an inevitable aspect of life. The scarcity of food and mates provides the basis of competition and the survival of the fittest in nature. Similarly, the scarcity of spaces at Harvard Medical School, Goldman Sachs and Google means that only the best and brightest are able to walk their hallowed halls, let alone excel at the next level of intense competition present in these sought-after institutions. In a sense, being able to survive round after round of people being weeded out and still managing to stand out among the competition is at the core of our meritocratic, capitalist society.
However, even though competition is a natural part of our society, it does not mean that the only people able to succeed are the mean and brutally competitive who are incapable of cooperation and compassion, as Colaneri suggested. Of course, it takes a great deal of motivation, hard work and perseverance in order to achieve the lofty life goals that many of us have. Yet being driven doesn't prevent a person from being nice and collegial. In order to succeed in most professions, a person generally needs to be both.
In fact, competition and cooperation are not mutually exclusive concepts. Cutthroat people, such as the unfortunate pre-med that Colaneri described in her column, might treat others who share her goals as annoying obstacles that could potentially block her path to success. However, the path to success, whatever that may entail, is almost always too daunting to go at alone. If we have not encountered it already, somewhere along the line, we will find ourselves needing the help and cooperation of others including the so-called "competition" as we work to accomplish our own goals. The overly competitive pre-med might have won a short-term victory by undercutting her competition on the biology test, and even if a medical school admissions committee doesn't pick up on this personality flaw, there is certainly no way she can make it through the challenges of medical school, residency and eventual medical practice without learning to cooperate with her peers.
Therefore, although competition is an inescapable part of life, so is cooperation. With so many students wanting to become doctors, investment bankers, lawyers and every other coveted profession, there is simply no way of making the system any less competitive. However, there are also many checks in place to ensure that only those who are generally friendly and capable of working with others are able to succeed. As such, while we all would like things to be a little less competitive, there's nothing more we can do other than work hard and support each other.
