Timeline for How to differentiate "imposter syndrome" from actual lack of suitability for grad. school/academia?
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| Sep 16, 2020 at 4:03 | comment | added | Kevin Carlson | The variable of interest (suitability for grad school) is not quantitative or directly measurable. GRE scores don’t count. Grad school admissions are, obviously, not good enough since the characteristic impostor syndrome sufferer is already at a good department. Further, one has to define an appropriate comparison group, and these students compare themselves to the most successful peers they can find. Your suggestion requires picking a reasonable peer group and comparing on objective indicators of quality, which is just the suggestion “don’t have impostor syndrome.” | |
| Sep 16, 2020 at 3:07 | comment | added | Allure | @KevinArlin you pick the metric you care about and plot that. So for example if you care about grades, you plot the grades (or get your percentile in the class); if you care about graduate admissions then you plot the universities your peers are accepted into vs yours, etc. If one is below average then imposter syndrome doesn't apply, since one is genuinely below average (from my point of view that is almost a tautological statement). As for acquiring the data, if one cannot get it from one's institution, there is still standardized exams. | |
| Sep 15, 2020 at 20:13 | comment | added | Kevin Carlson | How would one "plot the performance of all [their] peer group", in practice? And what is the definition of "peer group" for which "above average" means "imposter syndrome?" This student wants to know whether they're well qualified for graduate school, and presumably the people considering graduate school are already well towards the right end of the theoretical bell curve...Do you really think there is a random sample of enough such people for whom the OP has fine-grained grade information (they all get A's!), either all at the same institution or with easy access to normalization factors? | |
| Sep 14, 2020 at 3:32 | history | edited | Allure | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 14, 2020 at 2:22 | history | answered | Allure | CC BY-SA 4.0 |