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Vivek Ranadivé
Caroline Sacks is a woman who has always believed she would become a scientist. From an early age, Sacks excels in her academic pursuits and takes a special interest in science. As she gets older, this interest only gets stronger, and she takes pride in the fact that she stands out as a stellar student. When it comes time to decide where to go to college, she chooses Brown University over the University of Maryland. This, Gladwell notes, is an easy choice, since most people would opt to attend an Ivy League school over a public state school. However, Sacks struggles at Brown, finding herself discouraged not only by her subpar grades, but by the feeling that she isn’t as academically capable as her peers. By the time she’s a sophomore, she decides to stop pursuing a science degree even though it has always been her dream to become a scientist. Looking back, she says that she would most likely still be in the sciences if she’d gone to the University of Maryland. Gladwell tells this story in order to show readers that it can be demoralizing to be a “Little Fish in a Big Pond.” He then uses this point to suggest that it’s not always beneficial to attend an Ivy League school, since many people end up getting discouraged by such competitive environments and quit before they have a chance to establish themselves. In turn, Gladwell argues that the things society sees as prestigious and sought after aren’t always as desirable as they seem.
Caroline Sacks Quotes in David and Goliath
The David and Goliath quotes below are all either spoken by Caroline Sacks or refer to Caroline Sacks. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3: Caroline Sacks Quotes
In the end, the Impressionists made the right choice, which is one of the reasons that their paintings hang in every major art museum in the world. But this same dilemma comes up again and again in our own lives, and often we don’t choose so wisely. The inverted-U curve reminds us that there is a point at which money and resources stop making our lives better and start making them worse. The story of the Impressionists suggests a second, parallel problem. We strive for the best and attach great importance to getting into the finest institutions we can. But rarely do we stop and consider—as the Impressionists did—whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest.
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“I figured, regardless of how much I prepared, there would be kids who had been exposed to stuff I had never even heard of. So I was trying not to be naive about that.” But chemistry was beyond what she had imagined. The students in her class were competitive. “I had a lot of trouble even talking with people from those classes,” she went on. “They didn’t want to share their study habits with me. They didn’t want to talk about ways to better understand the stuff that we were learning, because that might give me a leg up.”
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Parents still tell their children to go to the best schools they possibly can, on the grounds that the best schools will allow them to do whatever they wish. We take it for granted that the Big Pond expands opportunities, just as we take it for granted that a smaller class is always a better class. We have a definition in our heads of what an advantage is—and the definition isn’t right. And what happens as a result? It means that we make mistakes. It means that we misread battles between underdogs and giants. It means that we underestimate how much freedom there can be in what looks like a disadvantage. It’s the Little Pond that maximizes your chances to do whatever you want.
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Caroline Sacks Character Timeline in David and Goliath
The timeline below shows where the character Caroline Sacks appears in David and Goliath. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: Caroline Sacks
Gladwell introduces readers to a woman named Caroline Sacks, who recalls her childhood as one full of science and wonder. As a young girl,...
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Gladwell asks readers if Caroline Sacks’s decision to go to Brown might seem less ideal when compared to the Impressionists’ decision...
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According to Gladwell, Sacks’s decision to be a Little Fish in a Big Pond costs her. During the second...
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In Sacks’s second semester of her sophomore year, she takes organic chemistry and continues to struggle. She...
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What’s perhaps most unfortunate about Sacks’s experience at Brown is that it shouldn’t have mattered how good she was at organic...
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Gladwell argues that Caroline Sacks suffered from “relative deprivation,” a concept coined by a sociologist studying morale. The term refers...
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What happened to Caroline Sacks is common. In fact, more than half of STEM (science, technology, and math) students drop...
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...up a notch,” since this will simply put them in the same situation as Caroline Sacks.
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...the value of turning away from things that are typically considered advantageous. When Gladwell asks Sacks what she thinks her life would be like if she’d gone to the University of...
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Chapter 4: David Boies
...about positive results. Needless to say, not all challenges are desirable, as evidenced by Caroline Sacks’s experience at Brown. With this in mind, Gladwell asks if dyslexia might be a desirable...
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