Justin Skycak (@justinskycak): "Many people are misunderstanding the message here. Stated more explicitly: Let's be honest with students about where they stand relative to the caliber of skill they hope to join, not just the caliber of skill in their current peer group. Let's not tell students they're well prepared, when in fact there is some helpful background knowledge that many future peers will come in with, that they themselves don't have. While it's never pleasant to be told that you're accumulating a knowledge deficit and are going to need to put in extra work to catch up later, the psychological gut-punch gets much softer the earlier it's detected and delivered, and the less likely it is to become a knock-out blow. If students don't find out where they stand relative to the caliber of skill they hope to join, until they actually join, then there will likely be a sizeable skill gap, and they likely won't realize that a sizeable portion of that skill gap can be attributed to the outsized background/training of their new peers. If there is a sizeable skill gap, then the student will likely struggle and feel like there is a gigantic gap between them and their classmates. They will likely think everybody is way smarter than them, when in fact only some are, and the rest are just better prepared. Struggling students often do not realize that missing prerequisite knowledge is the source of their struggle (which is not surprising, since it's knowledge they don't know). They often don't realize that they can catch up, and if they do, they often don't know how to catch up. Even if they put tons of time/effort into studying, if the skill gap is large enough and the material too advanced relative to their level, then the study may be ineffective and they may not catch up even with their best effort. Years later, after accumulating some life experience, they may reflect and realize what happened -- but in the moment, when they're young and in the thick of it, they'll likely just think they're too dumb. Don't get me wrong, even if there is a large skill gap, it is typically possible to make it up by working hard and smart. You have agency, but you have to recognize and respect that you also have a breaking point. The less cognitively advantaged you are, the more work there's going to be, and the less motivation you have to learn the subject, the less work you're going to stomach before you break and pursue alternative endeavors. Lots of people like to act as though they're invincible and infinitely motivated, and lack of preparation has no effect on outcomes, only the amount of work necessary to achieve them. They act this way because they so desperately want this to be true and have never had the experience of hitting a breaking point. But, realistically, the likelihood of an outcome decreases with the intensity and duration of work necessary to achieve it, especially when they are high to begin with. (It's like cognitive load. Even if you know what you're doing, your error rate skyrockets under heavy cognitive load, no matter how hard you try. You can exercise your agency to avoid cognitive overload, but you can't exercise your agency to "overcome" it. You can exercise your agency to avoid falling off a cliff, but if you're already falling, can't exercise your agency to overcome the impact.) To recap: everybody has a breaking point, and that breaking point is different for different people, and the thing that keeps you far away from the breaking point is being prepared, not experiencing an insanely high spike of pressure to learn a gigantic amount of material in a tiny amount of time to catch up. The better you prepare yourself during periods when there is more ample time, the more likely you are to make it across the transition zones where the expectations of your commitment and ability suddenly ramp up. What's in everyone's best interest is to be honest with students about where they stand. E.g., if a kid is potentially aspiring to major in math at an elite university, let's make it clear to them that many of their peers a