Less Ambitious, Mostly Lucky, Not Elite?

Three surprising things HBSers think 

HBS has surprised me in many ways. I’ve been surprised by how one snow day can bring me so much joy and another so much fury, and by how quickly I abandoned my ranch roots to eat lobster, the rat of the sea. Yet no surprise has caused me to stop and think as much as these three: most HBS students think that HBS makes us less ambitious, that we are mostly here because of luck, and that we are not elites. 

I’m not claiming these answers are wrong. I just think they are incomplete. I’ve struggled with them for two years, so I figured I’d see if my explanations resonate.

First: ambition.

Countless friends claim that HBS has made them LESS ambitious. From the outside, that would sound absurd. This is Harvard Business School, doesn’t this place teach us to make a difference in the world? But I think what people mean sheds light on something encouraging about HBS. 

Part of it is that after two years of cases, protagonists, and guest speakers, we start to feel less intimidated by big things. After pretending to make decisions 500 times and being surrounded by smart go-getters, our old ambitions start to feel reasonable. Not easy, exactly, just doable. That feeling can masquerade as reduced ambition, when really it is increased self-belief. It’s not that HBS has shrunk our goals; we have just grown, so our goals now feel more proportional. 

The second reason might be that HBS does a wonderful job warning us that in 30 years most of us will be successful, but few of us will be happy. That many of us will win the wrong game. With that implicit challenge in mind, we are deciding that we need to invest more in our spouses, pick the right towns, or have a family. That we want less professional success if it comes at too high a cost. That can sound like lower ambition. But being less ambitious is wanting less, and what HBS has done is encourage us to want more. To be more ambitious in life both personally and professionally. 

So, no, I don’t think HBS has made us less ambitious. I think it has empowered us to seek even more ambitious goals (that now simply feel more reachable) while also keeping track of what those goals are costing us (in relationships and happiness). 

Second: luck. 

In RC year, my BGIE professor, Rawi Abdelal, asked our section whether we were at HBS mostly because of hard work or luck. Around five people raised their hands for hard work. At an institution that requires top test scores, experiences, and often years of striving, that answer surprised me.

If you probe, most “luck” believers will say something important. That they are here because of their amazing parents, their high school teacher, or because of where they were born. All factors that deeply shaped our lives, all without our direct control, and thus, all luck. 

That is sensible, but I think it diminishes the work put in. Not only our work, but also the work of those before us. 

I’m incredibly lucky to have my parents and to be born in America. But for me to be here, for me to be an American, my grandfather, who grew up on the streets of Athens, had to cross an ocean, at 16, by himself, without knowing English. His grit and hard work became my luck. 

I don’t think my story is unusual in that sense. For any of us to be who or where we are today, it took a lot of hard work. Our luck is downstream of someone else’s sacrifice, discipline, judgment, and courage. Someone else’s hard work is our luck. 

This is that magical HBS word in action: COMPOUNDING. The compounding of hard work and good decisions by countless people has made all of us extremely lucky. 

So, yes, we are all lucky. But, it feels too easy to say we are here mostly because of luck. More often, our luck is what other people paid for, which is both humbling, empowering, and demanding. Because that means it’s our turn. It’s our turn for our hard work to become someone else’s luck. 

Third: elites.

This is the one that makes people uncomfortable. 

Most HBSers don’t consider themselves elites. I understand why. “Elite” is not a good word. It can imply self-importance, unfair resource allocation, and distance. Being an “elite” can easily slip into being “elitist,” which is something none of us want to be. 

I’ve avoided the word “elite” that often comes with our three letters. I’ve avoided telling my barber where I go to school, and I’ve made sure not to wear a branded polo on the plane. Most of that is just a healthy desire not to be obnoxious. But I’ve avoided the word on the inside too.

We each took up a spot at this elite institution, were taught by elite professors, spoken to by elite leaders, and shaped by an elite peer group. And we are about to graduate with a credential that will open doors and boost our credibility (fair, deserved, or not). Whether we own that word or not, we now move through the world with these elite advantages. 

Being elite is a bad thing, but in other contexts, elite athlete, elite unit, elite performance, it is just a marker of excellence. I think if I bridle a little less at the word and recognize the power it holds, I feel more responsibility to honor our advantages. So maybe the goal is not to claim the noun, but to earn the adjective.

In the end, I am so thankful for what HBS has given me. Maybe part of the education was simply learning to be suspicious of some of those easy answers—especially the ones we like to give ourselves. 

That we are less ambitious. That we are mostly lucky. That we are not elites.

Each contains some truth. But none contains the full truth.

Tom Kourlis (MBA ‘26) grew up bouncing back and forth between his family’s working sheep and cattle ranch in NW Colorado and school in Denver. He never learned to use his inside voice and is returning to BCG post-HBS.