I loved this article, though it made some assertions I’m not sure are 100% true.
CC folks talk a lot about college GPA and its importance to, in particular, med school. But to many potential jobs as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/college-gpa-career-success.html
Thoughts?
I will say I believe this is true - in HS or college.
I read the opinion piece yesterday or the day before, and I couldn’t help laughing at its over-simplified statements, some of which come off as inanely prescriptive: get “at least one B before you graduate.” Okay, I’ll be sure to tell my kids in college to be sure to get at least one B even if they can easily get an A. That will guarantee much success later in life, LOL. He still teaches at Wharton?
There are thousands of kids who get straight A’s in harder HS classes and are quite creative. Oh, and learn to program in Python.
Not sure if GPA or grades earned by Steve Jobs or Martin Luther King are that relevant today, given how much grades have inflated since they earned their GPA or grades.
In terms of universities, perhaps he should address it specifically to medical and law schools (A is the only acceptable grade if you want to go to a medical school, or a law school from where you are likely to be hired for a law job), and those setting merit scholarship renewal criteria.
In terms of employers, NACE surveys suggest that 70% of employers use college GPA as an initial screen to determine which college candidates to interview, and 60% of those use a 3.0 cut-off, so it is not like employers generally are driving a 4.0-GPA-at-all-costs pressure on college students.
Agree @tiggerdad . But he makes a good case for taking a class that is so challenging you won’t be able to swing an A in it, and still sleep and do whatever else.
I do think there are kids who are grinders without much creativity that get high grades and test scores. Not all high grade/stats students fall into that category, of course. And some people care less about grades, but still can be stellar in the subjects they care about. They might very well be superstar performers in the right career.
@OHMomof2 Agree to that, but too much slavish rehashing and a juvenile re-rendering of what’s been already said in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, by William Deresiewicz.
@yucca10 piece deals with college GPA where students have a lot more freedom to choose courses (and activities) than they do in HS.
I read it to mean, take the hard (graduate course? or one in a subject one isn’t already good at?) , work hard and get the B - and also learn to code in Python 
I see I did add that HS “blemish” comment though, which was a bit of an aside to what the article was saying. My thought was, if you are getting the highest grades possible, you are not taking risks. Whether that means harder courses or more responsibility in ECs or more networking or whatever.
I agree that students should try some monumentally challenging classes and areas beyond their comfort zones during college, but by selectively using the pass/fail option, it really shouldn’t keep them out of med or law school. It is more a matter of strategizing and keeping up with the registrar’s deadlines to manage the GPA. My son (as I did back in the day) often takes the “hardest classes in x department” and decides about half-way through if he is going to p/f or not. Same goes for taking course loads of 6 classes rather than the usual 4.
For my D there was some obvious choices she made that didn’t help her GPA but helped her ability to think and problem solve. Instead of the first level Chemistry, Physics, and Biology classes she took the Integrated Science Curriculum which was much more Quantitative and rigorous. Instead of standard Calc 3 she took the proof-based version - again much more rigorous and not so straight forward. If she had taken the regular class she’d have a near perfect GPA but be less educated.
@dolemite I think those are the types of choices meant by the article - a perfect GPA isn’t worth being less educated, IMO.
My (college senior) D is taking one more intensive writing course even though she’s a STEM major, doesn’t have to take anything at this point, doesn’t enjoy writing and has never gotten a A in the writing classes she has taken - it’s her last chance to improve her skills in that, in college, with the great profs she currently has access to. I support that thinking, 100% - being a great writer will always be important, even in the very quant-ey career she is headed toward.
I admit i didn’t discuss this article with her in that context, just thought of it when you said that about your kid choosing the proof-based class (my D did also, at that point), but I did forward it to her yesterday because she’s feeling really overwhelmed with finals and work and outside projects not being perfect and so I used it to remind her that it’s OK not to get all As. In fact if that costs her networking, job searching, learning - definitely better not to.
I showed this to my ADHD kid the other day and she appreciated it (and related to it). Yes, it’s an opinion piece, and of course there are plenty of straight-A kids who are creative, but it’s good for the kids who do have more trouble focussing on the boring bits to sometimes be reminded that your overall success in life isn’t strictly set by your GPA in high school.
@washugrad - It’s about COLLEGE GPA, though. Specifically. Writer is a college professor.
I think that’s an important distinction, though of course some of these things are true about HS also.
IME the kids with the highest grades also tend to be the most creative within the course whether they had to study a lot or had natural talent within the subject. Kids with the lower grades tend to prefer doing other things to studying the particular subject. I’m sure there are exceptions, but the correlation seems pretty common at the high school level, at least in math and science. I doubt it differs much in college.
When one is actually on the job, so much varies that it doesn’t necessarily compare to academic grades, esp since one adds in “people skills” factors. I know a fair number of academically talented people who lack desired people skills making them less desirable for jobs. It has nothing to do with what courses they took or if they got a B or not.
My freshman year was required Pass/Fail so the freshmen who ALL came in with stellar records didn’t have nervous break-downs about their semester grades. It was funny - the first few weeks everyone said “We’re pass/fail but I’m still going to get As”. By the end of the semester the rallying cry was “We’re PASS/FAIL!!! And D is a PASS!!!”. The work in college is SO much more intense than high school and the cohort is entirely different - if it isn’t you’re taking the wrong courses or in the wrong school. The huge drawback to being a straight A student is your first failure willl hit you like a ton of bricks. Highly creative people take risks - and everyone who takes risks fails in something, eventually. Probably multiple times. I don’t think you necessarily need to have gotten a B in school to be comfortable with pushing the creative envelope but I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that most/all creative genius types weren’t straight A students.
Although he did mention Steve Jobs’ 2.65 high school GPA (which got him into Reed back then; Reed is probably an unrealistic reach for 2.65 high school GPA students now).
In addition to this piece, there is also this one. I don’t care for putting anyone in a box, but I can see some valid points.
http://time.com/money/4779223/valedictorian-success-research-barking-up-wrong/
Assuming these people skills are innate is one thing.
But a kid could increase marketability by taking a significant chunk of time to, say, network (as casually as being on a sports team, or as intentionally as contacting alumni for informational interviews), perhaps refine interview skills or resumes, or do some meaningful-to-the-career EC - at the expense of an A grade, no?
Or just do really interesting out-of-class things that happen to give them something to discuss in job interviews.
If straight-A is your goal, you’ve got a problem. If, on top of that, you have to struggle to get straight-A, you’ve got even a bigger problem. Just like HS, straight-A by itself is not indicative of how well you do in college.