Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

William Deresiewicz

Aug 2014 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People).

As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively and how to find a sense of purpose. Now he argues that elite colleges are turning out conformists without a compass.

Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz, that college be a time for self-discovery when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it.

“Excellent Sheep is likely to make…a lasting mark….He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America….Mr. Deresiewicz’s book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness” (The New York Times).

Ratings and reviews

Quite ironic that the book basically summaries the majority opinion of the intellectual high brow "elite". Mostly consists of rambling from a guy who is sad his degree has no real use in the real world.

As a Junior undergrad at Penn (and in the business school of all miserable places), I actually felt nauseous at times reading this book, due to Deresiewicz's accurate portrayal of the typical Ivy student, and the games that we all play. This book helped me in psychologically cope with my education in many ways, at the very least by echoing many sentiments I had in my own head. I think he was biased in his view that a "liberal arts education will cure everything" and towards studying English in general, which is understandable. But his greater arguments about finding purpose and developing an attitude of helping society, and not just ways to boost your status and ego during college, were refreshing to hear, given the incessant networking, consulting and banking events that I cannot escape from at my school, for example. A must read for kids with intellectual curiosity that transcends finding a job, and a worthwhile challenge to all "elite" students who think they have things figured out.

Quite insightful and heavily opinionated. Well written.

About the author

William Deresiewicz was a professor at Yale until 2008. He is the author of the landmark essays “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” and “Solitude and Leadership” and is a frequent speaker on campuses around the country. A contributing writer for The Nation and a contributing editor for The New Republic and The American Scholar, he is the author of A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter. Visit BillDeresiewicz.com.