You Want to Win a Nobel Prize?

    Do you think you need a degree from an elite university to win a Nobel Prize?  One of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell, says no.    

In his 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell discovered that even at the highest levels of research, a degree from elite institution did not matter as much as one might think.  What does matter is getting a strong, solid education to serve as a foundation, regardless of your school.

Gladwell’s strongest evidence is a study of Nobel Prize winners in Medicine and Chemistry, no doubt fields that require a high degree of intelligence.  Gladwell collected data on the undergraduate schools for the last 25 Americans who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.  The list certainly included some Ivies, as well as Antioch, Holy Cross, Hunter, and DePauw. Gladwell politely surmised, “No one would say that this list represents the college choices of the absolute best high school students in America.” (For the complete list see pages 81-82 of Outliers). 

Next, Gladwell looked at Nobel laureates in Chemistry and concluded that while Harvard did appear more frequently than any other school, less prestigious institutions like Notre Dame and University of Illinois also appear on the list.  Gladwell writes, “To be a Nobel Prize winner, apparently, you have to be smart enough to get into a college at least as good as Notre Dame or the University of Illinois.  That’s all.”

This is especially surprising because most Nobel Prize winners work in academia.  If the prestige of a school brand would be a critical factor in any field, you would think academia would be it.  But even in academia, the elites do not have a lock on success.