Agency, Advocacy, and Aggression

The modern world rewards self-advocacy, polite aggression and proactiveness, emotional detachment from failure, and direct, personalized contacting. Mathematically, as long as you are respectful and polite. If you stand up for youself, others are going to respect you.

• In university applications: Emailing, calling and applying to better universities get you a much better chance. You must advocate for yourself in the SOP and not let an agency write it. If you have a below 3.0 GPA and want to apply to MS, you can directly call medium-level R1 schools, and many of them would tell you that you are not automatically denied, and you would get offers.
• In finding a PhD lab: By cold emailing professors from top schools you are interested in, asking for zoom calls, asking for a summer research, and filtering out the unsuitable labs, your chance of getting into a PhD and graduating increases massively.
• On social media: If you put yourself in front of a camera and start a YouTube or TikTok channel, you can gain some fans and likes. No one is going to punish you so you lose nothing.
• In dating: If you ask and DM attractive people, accept rejections cooly, you can generate many dates, and your chance of finding the right, attractive partner drastically increases. Successful men might have a fetish for a specific type, be emotionally unavailable, and simply attraction is not based on objective stats.
• In finding a job: similarly. In almost anything, it works in your favor. You generate massive oppurtunities such as getting into an exchange program or internship.
• We see American politicians in a campaign, salesman generating hundred of leads, lawyers fighting for a case, or an influencer trying to gain fans, etc

Here are the lies

• "I deserve something": The world is not a strict meritocracy, or, your objective stats are only half of the actual "merit".
• "Passively keep your head down and work quietly, and everything will be good." Nothing will be good, nothing gets automatically fixed, and no one fights for you except yourself
• Embarrassment and losing: actually, as long as you respect the other party, you lose nothing. Embarrassment comes from flashing the spotlight on yourself; if someone does that, you are actually more lucky than not

Here is a nuance: the aggression and fearless does not mean you can be externally aggressive. In fact, externally you should be polite and respectful in a business-like fashion. You must still play within the hard rules. You can't insult people or only extract from others without mutuality.