Seth Godin has two good entries this week about the danger of waiting to get picked (#1 and #2). Here’s the bullet: If you spend all your time and energy working to get picked, whether it’s trying to sell your book idea to a publisher or working like crazy to get into an Ivy League School, you’re giving all the power to a small group of people doing the picking. The better plan is to pick yourself.
No, you can't "pick yourself" to go to Harvard. But you don’t need a prestigious college to pick you in order to be successful. In virtually every career, and in all walks of life, there are happy and successful people who went to hundreds of mostly not-so-famous colleges. What nearly all of those people have in common was the work ethic to get them where they wanted to go, not the luck of somehow getting picked.
If you want to be successful, go do the work it takes to be successful. Put your time and energy into getting smarter, finding what you’re good at, and developing your skills. College is a wonderful place to do all of those things. The harder you work to get there, the more likely you’ll be successful when you do. But don’t give all the power to the pickers. As Seth says,
“If you want to devote your work and your efforts to getting picked, that's your choice, and more power to you. But I think it's dangerous to start with the assumption that you have no choice.”