<p>I don’t think academic excellence in high school correlates too strongly with how successful you will be in life, but it really depends.</p>
<p>For example, the kids who screw around in high school, don’t take their classes seriously, show up to class high, and get straight F’s… yeah, you probably get the point… obviously, they’re not going to go anywhere in life, unless they start taking school seriously. </p>
<p>There are then those people who aren’t considered actually “intelligent” yet they spend every waking hour and minute studying to get straight A’s. I know several people like this and they may be really good at memorizing physics formulas, but when it comes to street smarts and common sense, they are completely lacking. So what are they going to do when they are thrust out into the “real world”? this is not meant to generalize anyone who works particularly hard in school, by the way. Just my observations.</p>
<p>I myself am an OK student who did well enough to get by in high school, but I am by no means pigeonholing myself into the “failure” category just because I’m not valedictorian or Harvard-bound. I know that I am smarter than what my GPA shows, and while it’s unfortunate that many of my friends see GPA as your true worth and merit in life, I know that there’s more to life than the grade you got in high school algebra II.</p>
<p>So, long story short, no, I don’t think that academic excellence means everything. There is more to a person than their grades.</p>