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Without being any real expert, I often get asked for advice on resumes/CVs/cover letters/Statements of Purpose by younger people, and there's a recurrent phenomenon I see: inexperienced folks often highlight mildly positive things about themselves (e.g., they presented a poster at their school science fair), which perhaps counterintuitively might end up being overall negative signals to committees. Putting focus on these "weak accomplishments" might signal that the applicants don't know how to properly weigh things (in my opinion, this should be totally normal, but I fear that we're getting to a point where grad school applicants are expected to show a lot of academic maturity to get into top places), or are not well-calibrated with respect to their target community.

Is there some standard name for this phenomenon? Or some writing about it that I could refer people to? It feels similar to the concept of Damning with faint praise, where a mildly positive recommendation letter ends up also being a negative signal. But the particular case I mention is self-inflicted, and furthermore, seems to be worsened when the praise is not "faint"; if someone talks too highly of an accomplishment that is not perceived as relevant or impressive, it might signal an even worse lack of understanding of the etiquette of the target community.

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    Are you talking about CVs with other, more significant achievements such that the CV is emphasizing the wrong thing? Or about CVs for applicants who lack stronger achievements? Commented Aug 24 at 17:59
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    Are you really interested in finding a name for this phenomenon (why on earth would you care about how it's called?) or did you just want to rant about it? Commented Aug 24 at 20:22
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    @N.I. the ideal would be to have a pointer to a place where it's discussed to easily refer people to it. Even better would be if there's some kind of study on it. I guess you're right that the question of whether there's a name for it is not the most relevant. Commented Aug 24 at 20:45
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    The "Presenters' Paradox" as discussed here seems a match to me: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063231155982 Commented Aug 25 at 2:35
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    "I fear that we're getting to a point where grad school applicants are expected to show a lot of academic maturity to get into top places" -- you present this as something that has changed over time, but has it? Has getting into graduate school actually gotten tougher over the past two or three decades? Commented Aug 25 at 3:42

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Connelly et al. discuss this under the name The Presenter's Paradox. Basically, they claim (and intuitively, I would say this is very plausible) that reviewers of some information average over the perceived strength of different parts of an argument/a presentation instead of updating in the maybe expected Bayesian manner. If that is true, then weak arguments will dilute strong ones.

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