How to break this perception that my research trajectory will be almost the same as my research senior’s? I am PhD student working in computer science. I am worried about the perception that my research career is going to be almost the same as that of former students in my group. I am not satisfied with this because:


I came from very good university as compared to my colleagues.
While I don’t think I am a genius, surely I am a very hard worker with discipline. To me it appears that I can do much better than other if I work hard for long period of time in academia. 
I could have gone to a slightly better university for my PhD, but here I get to work with a professor who works in the research area I am interested in.


Please note, I am not saying these former students are not in a good place – they now have post-docs in good universities. I also know that I should focus on my research and should not compare myself with others, but this is difficult in practice.

Question: How can I break this perception that my research trajectory will be almost the same as that of the former students in my group?
I hate to break it to you, but after a (very) short time in grad school, once you start making a name for yourself, people will predict your trajectory based on how they perceive you are doing right now in grad school, not based on your previous school and certainly not based on a self-assessment of your work ethics. If you have been there for a non-trivial amount of time, and nobody thinks that you will do exceptionally better than everybody before you, consider that this assessment may be more realistic than your rather rosy outlook.


  How to break this perception that my research trajectory will be almost same as my research senior's.


Easy. Achieve substantially more impressive results than your peers in the same career phase. If you can't do this easily, what makes you think you will certainly do much better than them in latter career phases? If you think you have truly impressive results but everybody else in your institution does not agree, your problem is much deeper. Then you are either surrounded by people who can't see your potential and vision, or you are yourself blinded by arrogance and can't see when you are wrong. Both of these options are pretty bad.