Win gracefully. The person you beat today might be the one hiring you in ten years.

The people you compete against do not vanish afterwards. They become the field you end up working in, so somebody you beat at seventeen could be hiring, recommending, or sitting on the panel at thirty, and what they will remember is not the score but how you behaved in the ten minutes after it. Graciousness is decency, and it is also the practical move. Fields are far smaller than they look from outside.

Go and say something specific and true to whoever came second. Not a platitude, something you genuinely noticed in their performance. It takes a minute and it lasts years.