How Raffles Jakarta Stories Guide You Now
Alumni stories are typically treated as decoration. A page of smiling graduates, a few accomplishments listed, and something to reassure parents during an open day. That interpretation understates what is actually happening.
A concrete story about a specific person who started where you are now has a measurable impact on the decisions you make next. Psychologists have named the mechanism, economists have measured its size in a field experiment, and the effect is far greater than most people believe.
Raffles Jakarta stories now guide you by providing concrete versions of who you might become, which psychologists refer to as possible selves and identify as the critical link between how you perceive yourself and what you are motivated to do.
Abstract encouragement accomplishes little. A specific graduate who studied the same program in the same building and then won an award in Milan or founded a brand transforms a hazy hope into a defined and seemingly achievable outcome.
Field experiment evidence demonstrates that the effect is real and significant: brief exposure to relatable role models from the same institution increased students' likelihood of selecting a specific major by 8 percentage points compared to a 9 percent baseline.
The stories serve as evidence of what is possible for people like you, which is information you cannot obtain in any other way.
What a story does to a decision
Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius introduced the concept of possible selves in 1986 to explain something that ordinary self-knowledge could not: how future-oriented ideas shape present-day behavior. Possible selves are people's ideas about what they might become, what they want to become, and what they are afraid of becoming.
They are the cognitive components of hopes, fears, goals, and threats, and they provide specific form, meaning, organization, and direction to those dynamics. Importantly, they serve as incentives for future behavior and provide an evaluative context for how a person perceives themselves right now (Markus and Nurius, 1986). The authors identified possible selves as the critical link between self-concept and motivation.
The word "doing the work" is specific. A vague desire to succeed is not a realistic self and does not motivate much. A detailed image of yourself presenting a collection in Milan or overseeing retail operations for a large corporation is. Possible selves are constructed from personal knowledge, past experience, social interaction, and cultural context, which means they are based on what a person has actually been exposed to.
This is where a school's alumni record no longer serves as a decorative element. It is raw material for creating potential selves that would otherwise never occur to someone. There is another mechanism operating alongside it. Belief in one's own ability is developed not only through direct experience of mastery but also through vicarious experience, which entails watching people similar to oneself succeed through sustained effort (Bandura, 1977).
Watching someone comparable succeed increases a person's perception of their own ability, while watching someone comparable fail decreases it. Similarity is the key variable in both directions. Later work made this a practical intervention. According to research on possible selves, structured programs that assist students in connecting imagined future selves to specific present behavior improve academic outcomes and engagement, indicating that the effect can be deliberately produced rather than simply hoped for (Oyserman et al. 2006).
The size of the effect, measured
Without experimental testing, the theory would be interesting but unprovable. It has been. Catherine Porter and Danila Serra conducted a field experiment to determine whether exposure to role models influenced what students chose to study. They assigned successful and charismatic women who had majored in economics at the same university to random introductory classes. The intervention increased the likelihood of female students majoring in economics by 8%, compared to a baseline of only 9% (Porter & Serra, 2020).
That is nearly a doubling caused by brief exposure to a person. The authors noted that the affected students had previously planned to major in lower-income fields, so the intervention could have changed their future earnings. Two design details have a significant impact on how alumni stories are read. First, the role models were fellow university graduates.
Proximity was a component of the treatment. Second, female students chose them based on their career path, job position, and charisma, indicating that relatability was engineered rather than assumed (Porter & Serra, 2020).
Why proximity beats fame
This clarifies something that appears paradoxical. Reading about a world-famous designer typically inspires less action than hearing about someone two years your senior at the same school. A distant celebrity encourages admiration but not identification. The disparity between their circumstances and yours is large enough that their success reveals nothing about your prospects. A graduate from your own program is unique.
They completed the same modules, were critiqued by the same lecturers, worked in the same studios, and competed in the same job market. When they win something, the accomplishment is evidence rather than fantasy.
Christabell Bellini becoming Southeast Asia's only finalist at the 2025 Mittelmoda Fashion Award in Milan, Angelique Keizia winning the same award, and Geralda Almira Pribadi winning the Harper's Bazaar Asia NewGen Fashion Award and making it to the Mittelmoda finals are all within reach in a way that a story about a European fashion house founder is not.
The same is true commercially. A Business Administration graduate now serving as Head of Retail Operations at Samsung Electronics Indonesia, or Rilla Puspita, supporting executive leadership and financial operations at a major Indonesian online trading company, provides a business student with a specific and attainable goal rather than an abstract desire to succeed.
Raffles Jakarta: The stories are more useful when read as a range
There is a way to read alumni outcomes incorrectly: treat them as a single template to copy. The more useful reading highlights the variety. Some graduates competed and won. Instead of joining an established house, Nicole Lay founded PRSNL, a contemporary women's fashion brand. Sabrina Bensawan was named one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 in Asia for her entrepreneurial achievements. William drives growth at one company while co-owning another and managing a foundation.
Naomi Ivo is a singer, entrepreneur, and recording artist who is also pursuing a Business Administration degree. Farren Tjiu's graduation collection was worn by Isyana Sarasvati and showcased in Harper's Bazaar Indonesia. When read together, these tell a more valuable story than any individual story: the qualification opens up several viable paths rather than just one.
For a student who is unsure of where to go, this is exactly the information they need because it reduces a single high-stakes decision to a choice between several live options.
Turning a possible self into an actual one
Possible selves motivate, but they cannot survive solely on imagination. According to career transition research, people bring their potential selves to life through three channels: activities, relationships, and narratives.
Provisional identities are then put through public trials, which generate both external feedback and internal evaluation, determining whether the person can do the thing competently and whether they enjoy it (Ibarra, 1999). Each of these three is available during the study, not after it.
Activities are the live briefs, projects, and competitions that let a student act as a designer or a marketer before holding the title. Students work on practical assignments, live case studies, and consultancy-style projects guided by industry practitioners.
Relationships come through practicing professional faculty, industrial attachment, and contact with graduates already working in the field, arranged through the Centre of Professional Development.
Narratives are the stories themselves, both those a student reads about others and the account they begin telling about their own direction.
The public trial can be referred to as the exhibition, critique, competition entry, or attachment. Each provides information about feasibility and appeal that no amount of imagination can produce. The evidence supports the value of the attachment in particular: a study based on national graduate survey data from over 76,000 respondents discovered that workplace experience produced measurable improvements in perceived employability as well as foundational, adaptive, and collaborative skills (Jackson & Dean, 2023).
It also creates the material record, because experienced hirers value visual evidence of what someone has done far more than claims about them (BYU Design Review, 2025).
The honest caveat: what published stories leave out
Any serious treatment of alumni stories must acknowledge their limitations, because ignoring them causes students to draw incorrect conclusions. Published success stories are chosen. Every institution publishes its best results, and graduates who did not win competitions, changed fields, took longer to establish themselves, or left the industry entirely are not included.
That is survivorship bias, which means that the visible record overstates the average outcome. Two things follow. A student should read these stories as evidence of what is possible rather than as a prediction of what is likely, because achievable and likely are two distinct claims.
And a student should notice what the stories don't show: the typical sequence of rejected submissions, unselected entries, and slow starts that preceded the majority of them. Nineteen out of twenty entries do not make it to the Mittelmoda runway, and the finalists faced more than 540 submissions in a recent edition (Mittelmoda, 2025).
When read with that caveat, the stories become more useful, not less. They no longer represent a promise and instead serve as a map of actual routes.
Stories also work as warnings
One aspect of possible selves theory is frequently overlooked in marketing materials but is worth mentioning. Markus and Nurius were clear that possible selves include what a person is afraid of becoming, and feared selves motivate by indicating outcomes to avoid (Markus & Nurius, 1986). This is useful for studying.
A student who can envision graduating without a portfolio, industry contacts, or ever having tested their work against an external standard has a concrete image of an outcome to avoid, and that image tends to elicit action more reliably than generic encouragement.
What to do with them now
The research supports a specific way of using alumni stories rather than simply reading them.
Look for the graduate whose starting position is most similar to yours, rather than the one with the most impressive results, because proximity is what makes the effect work. Identify the concrete steps in their sequence, which are typically a competition entered, an attachment received, a brand launched, or a role accepted, rather than a quality they possessed.
Then convert one of those into something you can do with this term. Enter something. Take the attachment. Create the portfolio piece. Also, treat contact with graduates as available rather than distant, because the school runs alumni engagement programs that connect industry professionals with students still in the studio. The market makes timing worthwhile.
Indonesia's creative economy employed 27.4 million people in 2025, accounting for roughly 18.7 percent of the national workforce (Badan Pusat Statistik, 2025b), while youth unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 reached 16.89 percent in August 2025 (Badan Pusat Statistik, 2025a; Tempo, 2025). Knowing which routes exist and who has taken them recently is more valuable in that environment than general optimism.
That's what the stories are for. Not reassurance, but information about what a person from Jalan M.H. Thamrin has accomplished, which serves as the foundation for creating a version of yourself worth working for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do alumni stories affect student decisions?
Because they provide what psychologists refer to as possible selves, which are concrete ideas about who a person could become. In 1986, research identified possible selves as the critical link between self concept and motivation, serving as incentives for future behavior. Specific, detailed examples drive action in a way that abstract encouragement does not.
Is there evidence that role models change what students choose?
Yes. A field experiment exposed students in introductory classes to successful graduates from the same university and found that it increased female students' likelihood of majoring in economics by 8 percentage points, compared to a baseline of only 9 percent. The effect resulted from brief exposure to relatable individuals.
Why do stories from your own school matter more than famous examples?
Because proximity facilitates identification. A distant celebrity inspires admiration while providing little information about your own prospects. A graduate who took the same modules, worked in the same studios, and entered the same job market provides evidence rather than fantasy, which is why the study's role models were alumnae from the same institution.
How should students actually use alumni stories?
Look for the graduate whose starting point is similar to yours rather than the most impressive outcome, identify the concrete steps in their sequence, such as a competition entered or an attachment taken, and turn one into an action for this term. Contact with graduates at alumni engagement events helps to narrow down the route.
Do published success stories give the full picture?
No, and it matters. Institutions publish their best results, so graduates who changed fields, took longer, or left the industry are not included. This is the survivorship bias. Stories should be read as examples of what is possible rather than predictions of what will happen, and they rarely show the rejected entries and slow starts that preceded the successes.
What kinds of paths do Raffles Jakarta stories show?
A range instead of a template. They include winning the Mittelmoda Fashion Award in Milan and the Harper's Bazaar Asia NewGen Fashion Award, establishing a fashion brand, being named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia list, leading retail operations at a multinational, assisting executive leadership at a major corporation, and combining performance and entrepreneurship.
Arman POUREISA Marketing Manager
References
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Badan Pusat Statistik. (2025b). BPS: Creative economy employs 27.4 million workers in 2025. https://www.bps.go.id/en/news/2025/11/17/805/bps--creative-economy-employs-27-4-million-workers-in-2025.html
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