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@harrisonqian / Young Builder Resources / wiki/anti-pipeline-manifesto.md
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--- visibility: public-edit --- # the anti-pipeline manifesto there's a pipeline. you know the one. AMC → AIME → USAMO. RSI. ISEF. Intel/Regeneron STS. perfect GPA. 15 APs. research with a professor. found a nonprofit. president of three clubs. volunteer trip to Guatemala. letter of recommendation from a Fields Medalist. apply to MIT, Stanford, Harvard. get in. go to FAANG. or go to McKinsey. or do a PhD. or start a startup with your college roommate using a playbook you learned from a YC lecture. this pipeline works. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. people who follow it end up at good schools and get good jobs. but here's what nobody says: **the pipeline is crowded, the pipeline optimizes for credentials over capability, and the pipeline produces people who are very good at following pipelines.** ## growth > position the most important decision I've made as a builder is choosing growth over position. **position** is where you are on a legible status ladder. your school's rank, your SAT score, which program accepted you, which company you interned at. position is what other people can see and evaluate. **growth** is how fast you're getting better at things that matter. how much you learned this month. how much harder of a problem you can solve now vs. six months ago. how much more capable you are as a builder. these are not the same thing, and they often conflict. - spending a summer grinding AMC problems to improve your score from 110 to 125 is position optimization. spending that summer [[shipping-products|building a product]] that ships to real users is growth optimization. - doing research with a famous professor so you can name-drop them is position. doing research on a problem you genuinely care about with whoever will mentor you is growth. - applying to RSI because everyone says you should is position. see [[summer-programs]] for an honest look at which programs matter. applying because you specifically want to do research at MIT this summer is growth. the growth path is scarier because it's less legible. see [[learning-paths]] for how to actually learn outside the pipeline. nobody has a rubric for "learned a lot and became more capable." but it compounds faster because you're actually building skills, not just building a resume. ## the credential trap here's the trap: every hour you spend on credentials is an hour you're not spending on capability. I deliberately chose NOT to do RSI. NOT to follow the YC pipeline. NOT to optimize for prestige. instead I: - interned at a neurotech startup as their youngest intern — not because it was prestigious, but because the [[work-experience|work]] was interesting - published EEG research targeting IEEE TBME — not because I needed a publication, but because the science was cool - won math modeling competitions (HiMCM, MCM/ICM, M3, MTFC) — not because they look good, but because I love applied math - won 3.5/5 [[competitions-hackathons|hackathons]] — because hackathons are fun and you learn fast - started a builder community at my school — because I wanted a [[communities|community of builders]], not because I needed "founded a club" on my resume none of these were chosen for their prestige value. same philosophy applies to [[funding-grants]] — pursue funding for the work, not the resume line. they were chosen because they made me better at things I care about. the resume impact was a side effect, not the goal. ## the Asian STEM male problem I'll say the thing everyone thinks but nobody says out loud. if you're an Asian male in STEM — and especially if you're in the Bay Area — the "standard pipeline" is literally the most crowded lane you could possibly be in. there are thousands of students with your same profile: perfect grades, AMC/AIME, research, robotics club, piano. admissions officers have seen your application a thousand times. not because there's anything wrong with you, but because the pipeline produces identical-looking candidates. the way to differentiate is not to do the same things better. it's to do different things entirely. build something nobody else has built. solve a problem nobody else is solving. have experiences that can't be replicated by following a playbook. this isn't about gaming admissions. it's about being genuinely interesting — and the way to be genuinely interesting is to do genuinely interesting things, not to follow the same path as everyone else more efficiently. ## the FOMO trap every ambitious teen I know (including me) deals with FOMO. someone got into RSI. someone won ISEF. someone raised funding. someone got into Y Combinator. here's the antidote: **FOMO is about position, not growth.** you feel FOMO when someone else's position improves relative to yours. you don't feel FOMO when someone else learns something new — because learning isn't zero-sum. when you catch yourself feeling FOMO, ask: "am I jealous of what they're learning, or what it looks like?" if it's the latter, it's not worth your attention. ## fit over selectivity when choosing what to do — programs, competitions, internships, projects — optimize for fit, not selectivity. a program with a 50% acceptance rate that perfectly matches your interests will make you grow faster than a program with a 2% acceptance rate that doesn't. the "most selective" program is not the "best" program. it's the program with the most applicants relative to spots. that's a measure of demand, not quality. ask: - will this give me skills I can't get elsewhere? - will this connect me with people I want to learn from? - will this let me work on problems I care about? - will I be in an environment where I can do my best work? if the answer to these is yes, go. if the answer is "it'll look good on my application," skip it. ## the 0.8/0.2 split here's my framework for thinking about college apps as a builder: **spend 80% of your time building. spend 20% of your time on presentation.** the 80% is the work itself — the projects, the research, the competitions, the learning. this is what actually makes you a strong candidate. the 20% is making sure the work is visible and well-communicated — your personal site, your github, your essays, your application. this matters, but it's secondary. most pipeline students invert this ratio. they spend 80% of their time optimizing for how things look and 20% on the actual work. that's why their applications feel hollow — because they are. if you've spent 4 years genuinely building things, the application writes itself. you have real stories, real impact, real growth to talk about. the hard part is doing the work, not describing it. ## what this means practically 1. **build things you care about.** not things that look good. the things that look good in hindsight are always the things that were genuine. 2. **go deep, not wide.** one real accomplishment is worth ten resume lines. 3. **choose your own path.** if everyone is doing X, that's a reason to consider doing Y. 4. **embrace illegibility.** the best things you do might not be easily explainable on a resume. that's fine. the people who matter will understand. 5. **play long games.** the pipeline optimizes for what looks good at 17. building real things optimizes for what you'll be good at when you're 25. 6. **don't be contrarian for its own sake.** the anti-pipeline is not "do the opposite of everyone." it's "do what's genuinely right for you, even if that happens to be different from what everyone else is doing." sometimes the pipeline IS the right path. just make sure you're choosing it, not defaulting to it.