The 'It Factor'

With college admissions season right around the corner, the recurrent question of ‘what separates the few from the many’ is more pressing than ever.  In high schools around the world, college seniors are spending their days cramming SAT vocabulary and working through their extensive list of college applications, only to hope that someone behind closed doors on an admissions committee will think that they are one of the best of the best.  Amongst the many thousands of applicants that apply to the top schools each year, with near-perfect SAT scores and GPAs above a 4.0, what makes someone a standout?

There are plenty of students who appear to be qualified for these schools on paper, yet there are only a select number of spots for a mere handful of the very best to turn their dreams of being on top into a reality. While there is no exact formula for getting into the top schools, and no exact phenotypic makeup that deems someone a good fit to be in the next class at Harvard or Yale, there is one thing that recurrently separates the few from the many – and that is the ‘it factor’.  

Whether it be through informally mentoring students who are trying to navigate the complex high school journey, choosing my own friends and colleagues, or conducting alumni interviews for Princeton admissions, I can usually identify whether or not students have the ‘it factor’ after talking to them for only a few minutes.  Not every newly accepted Princeton or Harvard student looks the same – the ‘it factor’ can be packaged in a variety of different capacities, as it is not about product but rather about process.  The distinguishing factor between the ‘good’ and the ‘great’ lies in the journey as opposed to the destination – because the way that a person carves out a path to learn and grow as an individual is something that will continue to make them their own unique person for years to come. 

When you walk into a small discussion-based seminar at Princeton, the twelve students sitting around the table may not be the twelve smartest people you will ever meet; but the majority of those students are more than likely to have the ‘it factor.’  From my experience working with students who may be among the best of the best, I have found the following characteristics to be recurrent in determining whether or not someone has the ‘it factor.’

Grit. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, as long as you are the person in the room who wants it the most.  It doesn’t matter if the road is bumpy or the path undefined, as long as you have the drive to carve out your own path to find the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel.

Curiosity.  Inherent curiosity is something that is hard to fake.  If you are inherently curious, the learning takes care of itself.  This is often something that can only be acquired through reading, understanding yourself, and playing an active role in the world around you.  If you let your inherent curiosity lead the way, you just have to follow your interests and passions and will begin to stumble upon more opportunities than you could ever imagine.

Selflessness. Being the smartest person in the room and acting like everyone else is below you will not get you very far – I’ve learned this from first-hand experience.  It took me a while to develop this characteristic, but eventually I came to see that you can really learn something from everyone.  If you approach life with a ‘no task is too small’ type of attitude, then you will gain the respect of those around you and become an inherently stronger leader and more complete individual.

Authenticity.  The ability to be true to yourself is an unmet quality.  Through identifying your strengths and admitting to your weaknesses, you are building a strong degree of self-awareness that will help you to continue to develop as a person both personally and professionally.  Rather than trying to be the person that you think will appeal to an interviewer, a prospective manager, or an admissions committee, just worry about being the best possible version of yourself. If you wake up with that goal in mind every single day, there is nobody who can beat you out at being uniquely you.

While these four characteristics are not all-encompassing, they are some of the recurrent features that I have identified in individuals who possess the ‘it factor’ across various age spans and industry verticals.  While some of these traits may be inherent, there are always ways to improve as a person through understanding where your time and energy is best spent.  And what better time to start than the present.

The Testing Game

After countless days of cramming, attempting to master the art of data sufficiency questions, I walked over to the testing center where it was finally time to put my skills to the test.  As I toddled into the massive office building, my anxiety was through the roof.  I crept up to the security guard, and told him that "I’m here to take a test.” While the paper had told me to ‘get there early’, he wouldn’t let me upstairs until EXACTLY thirty minutes before my appointment time – as if I wasn’t stressing enough, this just put me over the edge.  So I left the building, only to wander around the block five times, stare at the ping pong players in Bryant Park for twenty minutes, and let my anxiety escalate even further.  When the clock finally hit 3:28 and I was technically allowed to enter the testing center, I walked back around the corner, back up to the security guard, and finally made my way into the elevator.

As I stepped into the elevator with my Princeton t-shirt on and my eighth grade North Face backpack weighing me down, I looked to my right only to see a girl heading to the same floor wearing a Harvard shirt.  Naturally, my instinct was to become extremely competitive.  We glared at each other all the way up to the correct floor, while we fiddled with putting our bags in lockers, and while we anxiously awaited the start of the test.  We didn’t say one word to each other – I had no idea what test she was even taking that day, and yet still, I just needed to make sure that I did better than her.  When the operational procedures were finally winding down and I was assigned to a computer in the testing center, I quickly discovered that there was no air conditioning.  Of course, on the day when I was supposed to take the GMAT, the air conditioner in the testing center had to break.  So inevitably, I was stuck taking a four hour test in about eighty-five degree weather.  Fabulous.

When I thought that my experience couldn’t possibly get any worse, about one section into the test, I got a blaring migraine that only intensified when met with the angst that came with data sufficiency questions. I came into the test thinking that my sole concern would be maintaining a laser focus, and getting the questions in front of me correct; yet, here I was becoming fixated on every potential detail and distraction around me.  As important as the test was for me, everyone had their own agenda that day – the woman moving at a snail’s pace signing me out for breaks, the security guard who made me agitated right before the exam, and the Harvard girl who could very possibly have been thinking the same thing that I was.  Though it took me until about section three of the test to realize it, I came to see that it wasn’t about them, and it wasn’t about her – it was about me. 

I wasn’t in competition with the girl from Harvard, and spending moments hoping that I would do better than her wouldn’t necessarily allow me to reach my own goals.  Though the staff was not helping the situation, they were just doing their jobs.  They didn’t feel the need to move faster or to accommodate my needs because they were not the ones concerned with getting a good score on the GMAT.  But when you are so focused on being in that moment and putting everything you have on the table, it is not unlikely that you may place extra weight on your own needs.

Standardized tests are by no means a walk-in-the-park.  Even more so than testing your intellectual abilities, they test our stamina, our drive, and our ability to maintain laser focus when an infinite amount of stimuli are pulling us in different directions.  Given that I’ve been quite literally buried under books for the past several weeks playing the standardized testing game, I thought I would share some of what I’ve learned before putting my stack of newly purchased test-prep books in the attic for good.

1. Instead of worrying about the people in the room with you, consider the test as a game between you and the test-makers.  Don’t try to find the right answer; try to think like the person who wrote the question you are reading.  After reading almost every brand of GRE test prep books, I came to see that there were a fairly repetitive list of tricks that the test writers were implementing – and the key to getting the question correct is often identifying which of those tricks they are trying to use.  In many ways, once you find the trick in the problem, you can feel good about yourself – you outsmarted your opponent.  The next step is not to find the ‘right’ answer, but to rather look for the answer that they intended to be the ‘best choice.’

2. If you are going through the test and feel like it’s too easy, you’re probably falling into the test writer’s traps.  When I was initially starting to go through test prep questions, I felt like when I was doing a practice section, I was getting the majority of the questions correct. Then I would go to check the answers and realize that I had fallen into many traps. During the times when I have done my best on the actual tests, I have typically felt like it was more challenging and that I was not necessarily breezing through the questions.  Yet, I learned to just take it one question at a time and try to focus on finding the trick in each question as quickly as possible.  Then I made sure that I didn’t fall into the writer’s trap, and solving the problem became easy.

3. When you are working on verbal/reading comprehension questions, try moving your lips while you are reading the questions, almost as if you are talking aloud to yourself.  In the midst of a multiple hour test, it is very likely that you are going to get tired by the time the last two sections come along.  Quietly reading the questions aloud helps you to more actively engage with the material rather than passively going through the motions.

4. As you are preparing, purchase and study from test prep books that are made by the company who designs the actual test.  For example, ETS creates the questions on the actual GRE, so their test prep books more closely mirror the material on the actual test.  Often studying with books from a variety of different test prep companies can become frustrating, because they all teach slightly different strategies and have slightly differing question structures.  This can become overwhelming, so it is often best to stick with the material that most closely resembles what you will see on test day.

5. Spend some time before the test understanding yourself, and what you need to do on the day of the test in order to do your best.  For example, I find that I am significantly more focused if I run right before the test. Develop a routine that you know works for you, and don’t deviate from it on test day.

Ultimately, testing is a game between you and the writers of the test – but it is also a test of your stamina and drive, and a measure of how well you know yourself and understand how to handle yourself in different situations.  When I went to take the GRE the other day, I knew that the test was in the middle of a very corporate office building in Manhattan, and yet I still wore my paisley pajama pants, with no makeup on, and marched right up to the security guard to take the test.  Given that I was wearing pajamas in the middle of an office building, I was inevitably getting stares left and right; yet, I didn’t care.  When you are taking a test, you need to put yourself first and know what you need to do in order to perform at your best.  It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks; put all judgment aside and focus on yourself.  So while testing may initially appear to be an intimidating measure of ‘intelligence,’ it is often those with a strong sense of self, an ability to maintain laser focus, and the most grit who can push through the various obstacles in front of them and come out on top.

In One Ear and Out the Other

You shouldn’t take that job. Your Tory Burch flats are last season.  Don’t chew with your mouth open. You shouldn’t wear red lipstick. Why are you taking notes in pink pen?  Your tongue is blue from the ringpop you ate. Your presentation is dull. There’s not enough color. You should use a line graph instead of a bar graph. Don’t you know how to format? You sound like a robot when you speak in public. You’re swaying back and forth. Stop touching your hair. Look straightforward, stare into my eyes, and don’t let your gaze shift until you finish your closing remarks.

No matter where you are in the world or what you are doing at this very moment, people will criticize you.  They can’t help it. As human beings, it is in our animal nature to measure ourselves up against the competition and to bring down our opponents just enough to make them feel inferior.  But when we criticize people, whether we know it or not, we are doing it for a wide array of different reasons; thus when we receive criticism, we also have to assume that while some criticism is intended to help us grow, other criticism is intended to make us feel inferior or to make us appear weak in the eyes of an opponent. When we have so many comments and critiques flying at us every single day, how is it that we can differentiate between the ones that we should take to heart and the ones that we can allow to go in one ear and out the other?

If you are anywhere near as stubborn in your ways and grounded in your beliefs as I am, it probably takes a lot to get your attention.  Rarely do I take criticism to heart; people can say whatever they want about my work, my outfits, my appearance, my etiquette.  And while I may acknowledge the criticism coming out of someone’s mouth for an all of three seconds, rarely do I allow the critiques or comments to stick in my head beyond that. Because while I know that I’m not perfect and that I have many things to improve upon in my life, I take a data driven approach to almost everything I do.  So for every 100 criticisms I have received, I have received almost double the accolades - so in my head, they kind of cancel each other out.  And rarely does someone manage to stop me in my tracks and make me think twice about my actions.

With that said, it has happened – just this past week actually.  For days on end, I had spent countless hours working on this project that I had to put together, which was extremely out of my comfort zone. I hadn’t done a lot of work of this nature before, so while I gave the project a gallant effort, I knew deep down that even if I put my best foot forward, it probably wasn’t going to be my best work.  After slaving away over my computer for days on end, I finally had a final product that I was marginally proud of – sure, it wasn’t perfect, but I stepped out of my comfort zone and did my best to assume the challenge and construct a noteworthy product.

I rarely share my finished work with a significant amount of other people before I throw it in the ringer for the big dogs to assess. But given this project was out of my normal realm of work, I figured that I would run it by one of the closest people that I have in my life to get a second opinion.  Almost every time that I had sent my work to this person before, he often followed-up with extremely positive feedback, giving me some type of confirmation that my work really was as good as I thought it was.  So in hopes of receiving a similar set of feedback on this project, I made some final edits on the file and sent it over.  While I knew it wasn’t my best work, I never expected this type of reaction – not only did he think that it was bad, but he made it impeccably clear that there was no other option aside from redoing the entire project from scratch.  Well, there went one week of my life – hours of slaving over my computer and working my butt off only to have to wipe the slate clean and go back to phase one.

While it was my initial instinct to want to get yet another opinion of my work in hopes that someone else might feel differently, my gut told me that for one primary reason, his feedback held some truth to it.  After telling me how excruciatingly painful it was for him to even get through my entire project, he did not just tell me how crucial it was that I needed to start over and throw this version in the trash; but instead, he said that he was going to help me redo the entire project, and that he would be there this time to help me along the way.  After trusting what he had said and working through the entire project with him a second time, I pinned the two final versions up against each other, and they were like night and day.  He was right, my initial project was not representative of my best work; yet had he simply criticized me and then retreated like others often do, his words wouldn’t have pulled as much weight.

Though doing my entire project two times was marginally painstaking, the experience really helped me to learn an important lesson about interpreting criticism.  In the midst of so much feedback (both positive and negative) being thrown our way, it is often challenging to know what to make out of everything.  While it is often detrimental to take all criticism to heart when the person criticizing you or your work might not have the purest of intentions, it can also hold you back from reaching certain levels of self-improvement if you put up the blinders and are resistant to feedback in all of its forms.  So how can you determine when to take negative criticism seriously and when to simply nod your head and keep on walking?

For me, there are three main indicators that I have come to take into consideration when making this decision:

Test their reliability: How much do you trust this person? What role do they play in your life? How has their feedback measured up to your outcomes in the past?

Examine whether they are an active or passive criticizer: Is the person who is criticizing you offering to help you improve, or are they throwing words at you and retreating from the situation?

Measure their intentions: Putting the scenario in perspective, does this person have pure intentions? Do they have your best interests in mind? Are they on your side or are they a competitor who may simply be trying to weaken your moral?

Through creating a set of personal criteria to assess whether or not you should internalize criticism, this will give you significantly more control over your self-confidence and you will find it easier to maintain a stronger sense of self.  Just as it is important to assess criticism on the receiving end, it is also important to take these points into account when providing criticism or feedback to others.  If we are evaluating the work of a close friend or colleague, it is crucial that we commit to helping them improve in the area in which we are critiquing in order to have our feedback taken seriously.  Not only will this help others continue to improve, but it will also help us to improve ourselves personally through learning how to turn our words into actions and impact the lives of those around us instead of wasting our breath.