MIT vs Harvard

I’ve been talking to my boys (14) about college because it's never too early to discourage them.  Here’s a variation for when they’re young professionals.
 
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MIT students are allowed to cross-register for classes at Harvard. I did (back in the day) and learned two things.
 
1. Meetings don’t have to suck the life out of you.
 
The signup sheets that professors left on their doors for office hours back in the 90s spoke to two distinct cultures.  At Harvard, the blocks you reserved were an hour long and it was perfectly ok to reserve 2 blocks per visit.  At MIT, the blocks were 15 minutes each and if someone was bold enough to try to reserve 2 blocks, it was culturally acceptable to cross their name out of the second block and scribble in your name.  The nerve!
 
Lesson there (and I suggest we all get tattoos of this): Any meeting that can be finished in an hour can be finished in half the time. If it can’t be finished in 30 minutes, it can’t be finished in an hour.  And if it can’t be finished in an hour, it can’t be finished… ever.  So why torture everyone?
 
2. Your GPA will thank you but your legacy might not. 
 
[Oh and before you Harvard types start your snooty belly aching-- Harvard does have exacting standards relative to the rest of the world.  And you learn a ton in either institution because their massive endowments ($40B and $17B) lead to higher quality everything… except maybe humility.  But…]
 
That two mile walk from MIT leads to better grades.  Period.  Are there exceptions-- ie., impossibly hard classes at Harvard?  Absolutely. But on average, most Harvard classes don’t leave you… what’s the word... traumatized.  
 
The closest parallel to a GPA in business is your performance rating. In that regard, engineering functions continue the MIT tradition (tougher standards and lower GPAs) while the business and management tracks continue to appeal to the Harvard in us all.  
 
Remarkably, the larger the company and the smaller the team (and/or the more specialized the skill set mix), the higher the probability that more people in that group are ranked by their managers as top performers.  
 
It’s not that smaller groups are filled with better talent.  It’s that cross-group, cross-function calibration exercises-- like the cross-Cambridge dynamic between Harvard and MIT-- still struggle with how to compare generalists with specialists.
 
The bottom line is that if you care about your “GPA” at work or in life.... just… don’t.  If you can’t help yourself, specialize, specialize, specialize… join BigCo and find a small group managed by someone with a smoking jacket.
 
But remember that Harvard-- as a metaphor-- is where you land *after* doing your best work.  It’s where we should all aspire to be buried.
 
MIT on the other hand... will break you.  But bruises and scars are marks of resilience; signs that your best days are still ahead.  And they make for better stories.  Even if your story-telling skills lag behind those with better GPAs.