5 pm — 9am: The Hours that will get you into Harvard
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In 2014 I was attending a Royal Geographic Society talk given by Alastair Humphreys, a charismatic and accomplished explorer who talked about years of enthralling expeditions such as cycling around the world, rowing across the Atlantic and walking 1,000 miles through the empty quarter in Oman. The highlight of his talk, however, was his most recent invention — the micro-adventure.
Micro-adventures are trips you can complete not in a ‘9–5’ day, but conversely, ‘5–9’ — the time you aren’t in work or at school. He said that wherever you live, there are limitless opportunities to find ‘adventures’ to do over a single night. He proved it by showing slides from the previous day, when after arriving in Hong Kong for the first time in his life, he and a friend had packed their bags, slept on a mountainside, and swam in the sea — all between 5 pm and 9 am.
From 9 am to 5 pm, students across the globe attend school with limited options to do anything original. High Schoolers from Alaska to Egypt, from England to Slovenia compete to solve problems within the same framework, whether it be through examination systems or subject areas.
The current educational paradigm has presented universities around the world with a formidable task: to select the best students out of a pool of literally millions within the same framework. This has caused universities to evolve in their selection process; there is now a chasm between the type of students universities are looking for and how students are prepared by secondary schools for university. The classic education idea of rote memorization, recital and encyclopedia-like knowledge is out-of-date. The system we have today has been left in the dust by universities who more and more place emphasis on education in the form of original thinking and initiative.
Universities that are looking to select the best of the best adopt the same philosophy as Alastair Humphreys; they don’t judge candidates on a 9–5 basis, but rather look to the margins: what is a student doing between 5 pm to 9 am? Once again, judging students’ extra-curricular activities is no new surprise. Following the increasing competition within school hours, prospective Ivy League students are founding myriad organizations, becoming virtuoso violin players and captaining the football team all in their time after school. But even these activities rarely point to true originality — once again students are competing in set frameworks — and their competitors remain the millions of students across the globe also in those frameworks.
The best universities in the world are not just judging high school students from 5–9, but also judging those who, in the same sense, work ‘outside’ the frameworks conventionally available to them. Top-level universities will accept as a given that you are strong academically, able to play an instrument or found a club etc., and will judge you on a ‘third’ plane, i.e. what you are doing in the remaining time you have, that speaks to your passion and is truly original.
In the book “The Fountainhead”, Ayn Rand redefines what we think about selfishness. She writes that in order to attain true creativity and success in life, we must be completely selfish — selfish in the sense that we are doing what we deeply feel is correct for us, not necessarily correct for those around us (which would be an act of selflessness). I agree that the best way to pursue true creativity is to think about and do something utterly selfish; something you yourself are deeply and uniquely interested in. In one of the great ironies that define life — despite all the ‘secret recipes’, extra tuition, advice and guidance to getting in top level universities — these days if your goal is to attend a top level university the best way to do it might simply be to follow your own interests.
Are you a student or adult looking to do something truly original this Summer? Check out FoundLo.st, a community where people can find and join incredible expeditions to the furthest corners of our planet. Subscribe to our mailing list to hear about our latest expeditions.
