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Author Malcolm Gladwell, in his latest book, “David and Goliath,” provides some fascinating insights regarding the ways in which we all take certain things for granted. The biblical David, for example, rather than being disadvantaged in his fight against a larger, more seasoned opponent, actually might have had the upper hand because, as careful reading of scripture reveals, it is likely that Goliath had both mobility and vision issues. The nimble, sure-shot David, as a result, should have been seen as the odds-on favorite.

Or take the effect class size has on education. The smaller the better, right? Actually there’s a necessary critical mass, according to Gladwell, that encourages intellectual energy and engagement among students. Sink below it and learning suffers, he maintains.

Gladwell also tells the story of a gifted college student who hoped to pursue a STEM curriculum at Brown University. But her assumptions about what life at an elite Ivy League institution would be like, and what she found, were very different: “. . . chemistry was beyond what she had imagined. The students in her class were competitive.”

“I had a lot of trouble even talking with people from those classes,” the student went on. “They didn’t want to share their study habits with me. They didn’t want to talk about ways to better understand the stuff that we were learning, because that might give me a leg up.”

The story isn’t so much about Brown’s academic ethos as it is about the ways in which expectations can impact outcomes. Gladwell makes the point that how we feel depends on with whom or what we compare ourselves. In the case of the Brown student, the comparison was devastating. She felt like a little fish in a big, unfriendly pond and suffered for it.

And therein lies a lesson for all students who are currently in college or getting ready to attend: know yourself, your personality, your capabilities, your preferred learning style . . . and how they may all align — or not — both with your college of choice and, later, with your industry and company of choice. Because that school you think is perfect may have a formal or informal ethos, approach, population or character that may not be right for you. And the same goes for your future employer.

While Gladwell focuses on IQ in the Brown example, more and more employers are also focusing on what’s known as XQ. In fact, TIME’s June 22 cover story asked, “How High Is Your XQ? Your Next Job Might Depend on It.” 

“Convinced by the gurus of Big Data that a perfect workforce can be achieved by analyzing the psyche and running the results through computers, hundreds of employers now insist that job candidates submit to personality tests,” TIME reported.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has also looked at the issue, noting that since 2012 the number of StrengthsFinder users has jumped from 600,000 to 1.6 million a year. As of last year, StrengthsFinder, an online personality assessment tool now owned by Gallup, was used by 467 members of the Fortune 500.

Since 2012 the number of StrengthsFinder users has jumped from 600,000 to 1.6 million a year.

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Can higher education be far behind? Bentley University, for one, has incorporated StrengthsFinder into its Career Development Introduction Seminar, an innovative program that is open to all freshmen and transfer students. But rather than a way to assess fit, it’s viewed as a tool for students to gain insights about their strengths in order to enhance their academic and professional careers.

Could personality tests ever creep into the admissions process? Probably not right away. However, the WSJ did report earlier this year that, “In the past few months, more than 2,000 high school seniors who have been granted deferred admission to Michigan State University have filled out a nearly 100-question online ‘behavioral inventory’ that will help decide which of them gets into the school. At Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., applications soon will include a test with 30 ‘yes or no’ questions designed to gauge how much control applicants believe they have over their own future.”

Gladwell makes the point that so much in our lives comes in the form of accepted wisdom, based on assumptions, misperceptions, and misunderstandings about how things really are. For students who are trying to make important decisions about what comes next, there is both the art and science of exploration to tap. Each of them will need to mobilize the gut, the mind, and the heart in search of places that will encourage their success . . . both internally and in the world around them.

Vic Schlitzer is director of Brand and Content Marketing at Bentley University.