Giovanni D'Antonio

This isn't a critique so much as an observation. It's not a political statement. It's what the world looks like through the eyes of a kid from far outside the circles of power, who fell for all the myths of the "Ivy League education".

A friend once asked me, half-joking, "Are Harvard students actually smart?" My answer was immediate and serious, almost surprising in how fast and naturally it came out

"The average Harvard student is far less impressive than you think."

This isn't arrogance. It's the beginning of understanding. It's the result of objectively looking at the institution and its students regardless of the perception of others.

The Arrival

Once you're on campus, there's a pervasive sense that you've arrived. The dean shouts how good you are. Your parents tell you how good you are. Distant family members you never knew existed emerge to tell you the same.

That feeling of arrival is a powerful drug. Everyone seemed impossibly accomplished. Everyone was, by definition, "smart." I believed I had made it, and that by extension, everyone around me was also destined to "make it."

The first few weeks are a university-mandated blur of mingling. We all sit in the same fancy dining hall, take similar introductory classes, and are told we are the best and the brightest, constantly. The result? The initial impression is one of a brilliant, homogenous group destined for greatness. I could not have been more wrong.

Strivers and Coasters

Harvard is two liquids that refuse to mix. After the first few weeks of being shaken together by the administration, you start to see the separation, like oil and water. You enter the same dining hall door, but the landscape inside changes. Groups become homogenous with startling speed. The wealthy kids find each other. The international students from the important European families form their own bloc. The public-school kids from Ohio and California find their own tables.

It's a social experiment where, no matter how much you shake the container, the oil and water inevitably separate. And this doesn't just happen along lines of class and background; it happens along lines of ambition too.

For the sake of this essay, let's define the two liquids as the Strivers and the Coasters.

The Strivers are the "water." They are the people I thought everyone would be. They take graduate-level classes that stretch them to their breaking point. They spend their nights building projects, not just resumes. They start companies, they work to change laws, they possess a relentless, hungry energy to change the world, whatever it means to them. They are there to become something. They are often, though not always, the ones who had to fight the hardest to get in.

The Coasters are the "oil." This is the other, surprisingly majority group. They are defined by a quiet, pervasive sense of having already arrived. Their goal isn't growth; it's credential maintenance. They are masters of the humble brag, subtly dropping the "H-bomb" in conversation, seeking consensus that the brand name alone will carry them. "The Harvard name is so strong," they seem to imply, "we'll all be fine." They populate the notoriously easy majors deliberately created by the university, engineering their schedules for the path of least resistance. Their academic and personal profiles seem identical from the day they arrive to the day they graduate.

A System Built for Itself

This leads to an obvious realization, one that too many people shy away from saying out loud: the system isn't designed for meritocracy; it's designed to perpetuate itself.

The root cause of the problem is opaque admissions. You hear stories of extraordinary kids getting rejected from every top school. Meanwhile, you learn the statistics: at a place like Harvard, nearly half the white students are recruited athletes, legacies, on the dean's interest list, or children of faculty. Add to that a staggering statistic from The Harvard Crimson: one in every eleven students comes from just 21 elite 'feeder' high schools. Claiming to want diversity through DEI initiatives while making sure the children of alumni have an edge isn't just hypocritical—it's a feature, not a bug. It's the necessary sacrifice made to maintain the illusion of meritocracy while the underlying system of privilege hums along undisturbed.

If Harvard truly wants to be the best university in the world, you'd expect the vast majority of its students to be Strivers. But that's not the reality. The true hunger to build or change things is shockingly rare. It's no exaggeration to say that a majority of students simply coast, content to let four years pass them by.

It's not my goal to trace the full history of how it got this way. The truth is the university is fine with this arrangement. Its primary objective isn't fostering meritocracy; it's maintaining its own power and influence. Thus, the Strivers are just a tool to maintain power, to have the future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gateses ornate the hallways and donate money, while the Coasters enjoy the benefit of a name brand.

The Black Market of Energy

Worst of all, it almost seems like the university deliberately creates majors and classes for the Coasters that require little to no effort. This system creates a dangerous byproduct: a challenge vacuum. By offering paths that require little intellectual investment, the university gives a huge portion of its student body an abundance of one thing: free time.

Childhoods spent in hyper-scheduled, achievement-oriented grinds give way to collegiate lives with vast, unstructured days. This newfound energy has to go somewhere. And when an institution stops challenging its students academically, they will find new, often less productive, ways to compete.

A "black market of energy" emerges to fill the void. The most visible manifestation is "comp" culture—the process, often taking months to get into a newspaper, social club, or "consulting" club. Students compete with staggering ferocity for spots in clubs that have no meaning outside the university bubble. Friendships are strained or broken to get into exclusive social clubs or to land a "VP of Communications" title on a resume. This energy is poured into creating hierarchies and the cult of exclusivity. Endless parties are designed not for fun, but to "network" with the children of donors and the well-connected. The goal is to be seen in the "right circles."

The system even polices itself with unspoken rules. The social scene runs on an underground economy of favors and access, where true relationships are secondary to strategic ones. To this, another layer is added: a rigid set of social and political views becomes a purity test. Expressing a semi-different opinion can lead to being ostracized. It's another tool to enforce homogeneity within the "in-group" and keep others out.

All this frenetic energy, this intellectual horsepower that could be aimed at curing diseases or composing symphonies, is instead poured into mastering a closed-loop system of social engineering. The brightest minds of a generation, according to the same very Coasters, spend their precious time vying for status within a bubble, perfecting the art of networking instead of the art of invention. It's a colossal misallocation of human potential, a diversion of talent into the construction of intricate, meaningless sandcastles that will be washed away the moment they graduate.

The Real Cost

I was a kid who dreamed for so long of being there. I fell for all of it. I've chased the credentials, I tried to impress the wrong people, I mistook polish for substance. But I was fortunate enough to be shaken awake by people far smarter than me. To see the two liquids for what they were.

The fundamental realization is that the place is a bubble, and its internal status games are largely meaningless. You begin to see the tragic irony. The future leaders and innovators we read about in the brochures are, in reality, spending the bulk of their education running in circles. They're chasing hollow titles in clubs that have no meaning outside the campus walls, so busy trying to win a game with no real-world stakes that they forget to learn how to build something of actual value. The system doesn't teach them how to solve problems; it teaches them how to climb ladders that lead nowhere.

The real work, the real hunger, is happening elsewhere—often in quiet corners of campus, ignored by the people scrambling for invitations to the right party, the "right" VC dinners, and the "right" clubs. The worst of all? I have seen even the best Strivers fall for it, sometimes waking up after a year, sometimes permanently scaling back their dreams due to social influence.

Maybe Musk is right that for many, college is just a place to have fun and prove you can do your chores. For the Coasters, this is their truth.

This is dangerous because it's a microcosm of a larger problem. Where is the true meritocracy? If the institutions meant to be the arbiters of talent are, in fact, perpetuating a class system dressed up in academic robes, where are we headed?

My disillusionment isn't anger. It's a bittersweet clarity. This is the top, we tell ourselves.

I am grateful to the Ivy Leagues who accepted me and offered to pay for my education. I am grateful for the Strivers I met along the way that I look up to. I am grateful for the skills and incredible professors the university has given me access to. I know how grandiose Harvard can be at its best and this is why I can't help but feel bittersweet.

So I ask again. Where is the hunger? Why do we accept mediocrity and injustice?

Because for every rich Coaster who makes it here and does not take advantage of the gift fate has given him; there are millions of Strivers, from all social backgrounds, whose life's gift is being negated.

So the next time you see a shiny Ivy League grad, ask yourself: Are they a Striver or a Coaster? There is an abyss in that distinction.