<p>All thought high school, I met students and friends who dont study at all and get A’s, where as I study hard and still get lower grades. I worked a lot harder than the naturally smart people and still got lower grades/gpa. In college, are grades measured by one’s work ethic, or their natural intelligence?</p>
<p>An overly simplistic answer is both. College is nothing like HS. Worlds apart in terms of level of academic challenge. Cal Poly is an academically challenging school. Full stop. You slack, you flunk out. </p>
<p>Check out the reddit Cal Poly thread about AP (that’s academic probation).</p>
<p>r/CalPoly/comments/1gtqed/dat_ap/</p>
<p>I have seen people that are completely brilliant do horribly in Poly due to their lack of academic discipline. I have also seen people with pretty average IQ and through brute force hard work do brilliantly in class. </p>
<p>So you need a balance of both. You can’t be a complete moron and expect to major in physics or engineering, but you can’t expect to sail through engineering or architecture school through sheer IQ alone (especially arch., people in that major don’t sleep for days at a time due to their projects).</p>
<p>My best friend at engineering school is almost a perfect 4.0 GPA (he had 1 B+ so far, everything else are As). He is medically rated as a genius, and he studies like mad. So this is the perfect example of both hard work and talent resulting in outstanding results.</p>
<p>Yeah I guess this question is to broad for Cal Poly because of all the different majors. Like you said, Engineering and Architecture are far more difficult then something like business or City and Regional planning because of the different amounts of work.</p>
<p>I’d say both as well, but in the end, work ethic matters more. No matter how brilliant you are naturally, if you don’t put in any time or effort, you’re just doing the bare minimum. But if you have a strong work ethic, I’ve realized you can learn anything you want. Maybe not become the best at it if it’s not a natural strength of yours, but definitely still become quite good if you are motivated. That’s probably one of the most valuable things I learned in college, that if you believe in yourself, nothing can hold you back. Obviously be aware of your limits, but don’t let them limit you. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true. If I had realized this earlier, I may have tried for a different major, since I was interested in more technical fields, but lacked the confidence to even try certain classes.</p>
<p>The higher up one goes the less one can muscle through on sheer determination. Most people can do well through high school by working extra hard, but in college they start hitting the wall, But in the real world it’s all about work ethic, determination (AND PEOPLE SKILLS).</p>
<p>Depends. I know some naturally… not so smart people who got into good colleges because they worked hard and their parents paid extra money for tutors and extra studying. I am anxious to see if these types of people will strive in college the way they did in high school.</p>
<p>the best predictor of grades in college is… grades in High School. Much moreso than SAT scores.</p>
<p>So, if you struggle to get good grades in High School, unless you do something differently than what you’re doing now, you’ll struggle to get good grades in college… it will just be about a full grade lower.</p>
<p>I think you should look into HOW you’re studying, and maybe avial yourself of any resources you can find online, or at the library, about HOW TO STUDY. It’s not as simple as it might seem. There are methods, techniques, that are worth trying.</p>