soc final book report

Joy Marie Prior 5 April 2010 Sociology 112 Section 4 Article Essay

In the book Outliers: The Story of Success the author Malcolm Gladwell argues that it is not simply intellect and ambition that makes people successful but they are influenced by their surroundings and circumstances. A few key concepts Gladwell uses include accumulative advantage: someone starts off with a small advantage over his peers, which leads the individual to another opportunity that gives them an additional advantage over their peers, and that helps him or her to another advantage. Another concept is divergence test: a test that is formed to measure an individual’s imagination. He also uses Intelligence Quotient or IQ used to define someone’s intelligence from a series of standardized tests. Most of the research is taken from surveys of professional athletes birthdates, historical methods of immigrant occupation, and qualitative interviewing. Part one describes Opportunity and focuses on how situations determine the opportunities given to people. One of the lead examples in this section is the majority of professional Hockey players in Canada are born from January to March. Gladwell argues this is because peewee hockey is grouped according to year and they players born in January were twelve months larger than their peers born in December, and this gave through accumulative advantage these players were able to rise to the top because of their opportunity advantages. The second part is entitled Legacy, and focuses on how family and culture can be advantages. He uses the ideal example of Jewish immigrants being educated and trained in Europe unlike Irish immigrants prior to their arrival in the United States. The conclusion is that it is not having a high IQ that makes people successful in the world, but that if someone is given a chance to learn and the right opportunities they too can be successful.
I agree with Malcolm Gladwell’s particular explanation of accumulate advantage used in the Outliers: The Story of Success because of my own personal experiences with scholarships and the continues focus on scholarships. I am an ideal example of accumulated advantage because I was able to enroll in Brigham Young University (to receive an education, giving me advantages in the competitive global market) because I received a few local scholarships. In my freshman introduction class we had server quest speakers who were recipients of prestigious scholarships each speaker emphasized obtaining “small” scholarships before applying to prestigious scholarships. Their logic was that members of the board on prestigious scholarship feel more inclined that you deserve to be a recipient of their scholarship if another board gave you a scholarship also. I know that I am not the smartest person in the world. More significant is that I know that there are many students not attending college in my graduating high school class who are smarter than I am, but because I was given a chance I received a scholarship I was able to attend Brigham Young University. I now feel responsible to give other people a chance, and help provided them with opportunities they cannot obtain themselves.

Gladwell, Malcolm. 2008. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.