I don’t know about other students, but I know how hard my kids had to work to get As in college. It was beyond just understand what was taught in class or able to do problem sets. They had to understand the material so well and also be able to expand it to do well on the tests.
When D1 took an art history course she thought it was sufficient to compare 2 paintings from a period on the first test. She quickly learned it was a C. She had to do a lot more to earn her final A.
D2 was a philosophy major and what she had to do to earn an A was also over and beyond.
Yes, both of them had to tow the line (conform) in class in order to get an A, but it also served them well at work. They knew even if they disagreed with management sometimes, they still needed to do what was required.
I have doubts about a student being really educated if they cannot get at least a B in a class even when working hard. Likely the material is way over their heads. I wouldn’t mind if my kid gets some B’s in college, but I would mind C’s.
Talking about Jobs, he was certainly a creative and successful person, but if he’d been better educated, he could have still been alive.
Generally I’m not arguing with the article and the phenomenon certainly exists, I just don’t like the author’s attitude towards straight-A students, as if it’s impossible or suspect to be smart enough to take challenging courses and still get good grades.
What These Opinions (NYT and now Money) Get Wrong…
is the misplaced focus on GPA as their central argument points.
The gist of:
NYT opinion: “Straight-A students: Recognize that underachieving in school can prepare you to overachieve in life. So maybe it’s time to apply your grit to a new goal — getting at least one B before you graduate.”
Sounds great, right? Well, guess what? Why don’t you go ahead and “underachieve in school” like Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling and M.L.K, Jr. and see if that will lead you to “overachieve in life”? This author writes as if GPA is the secret to underachieving or overachieving in life.
Money opinion: “But how many of these number-one high school performers go on to change the world, run the world, or impress the world? The answer seems to be clear: zero.”
Sound great again, right? Realistically, though, how many academic screw-ups AROUND YOU have you been privileged to witness to go on to "change the world, run the world, or impress the world? The answer to my own rhetorical question most likely is clear: zero.
The point is that GPA, whether perfect or in Job’s territory, isn’t and shouldn’t be the favorite culprit that these authors like to make out to be. For the vast number of students who go on to top med, law, business and other prof and grad schools, having a great GPA serve them splendidly well for the rest of their lives. Likewise, there are academic screw ups who go on to great things in life. But one thing is clear: there are NO formulaic equations to the secrets of what makes one’s life a success or a screw up. Would Jeff Bezos become today’s richest man in the world (he’s richer than the Harvard, Yale and Princeton endowments combined) if there was no Internet? Would we have even heard of this guy named Bill Gates if personal computing wasn’t in demand at the time? Is being a billionaire an automatic definition of success, even? Could success be suckcess, even? What is success, anyway? Are these authors telling us that having a perfect GPA is a sure recipe for… uh oh… and vice versa, “be sure to get at least a B” a recipe for living Jobs’ life? You know, I read Walter Isaacson’s (he’s a fantastic biographer!) biography on Steve Jobs, and I wouldn’t exchange my life for his, I’m telling you. You can spell success anyway you want, but GPA, perfect or dismal, has very little to do with it.
Seems like grade inflation has become embedded in people’s minds. It used to be that a C grade indicated a solidly passing grade where the student is ready for the next level course, while B and A grades indicated stronger achievement beyond that (while D grades indicated barely passing and not really suitable for preparing for the next level course).
Now, it seems that B is seen as what C used to be seen, and C is seen as what D used to be seen.
So grade inflation may have caused people generally to think that a grade lower than A is less acceptable than it used to be. Martin Luther King’s college record of mostly B and C grades looks awful by today’s standards, but was probably fairly typical for a college student in 1947.
Terrible advice for a kid. At some point in your career, your GPA may be irrelevant, but it can be critically important for getting into graduate or professional school or getting that summer internship or that first job out of college.
@TiggerDad My take away from the Money article was less about the GPA itself and more about the mindset. As I said before, I don’t like generalizations, however, I think the author makes some valid points (though the sample size seems very small).
" Essentially, we are rewarding conformity and the willingness to go along with the system.” Many of the valedictorians admitted to not being the smartest kid in class, just the hardest worker. Others said that it was more an issue of giving teachers what they wanted than actually knowing the material better. Most of the subjects in the study were classified as “careerists”: they saw their job as getting good grades, not really as learning."
The problem is that the students are just a product of the system. In many cases the system is set up to reward the highest GPA and not the other qualities. I was in one of the first classes of the North Carolina School of Science and Math. Back then the admissions board wanted to get the brightest students and not necessarily the highest achievers. They accepted a lot of students that didn’t have the best grades but demonstrated their qualities in other ways. The problem is that quite a few of these kids didn’t make it to graduation because of ‘rules’. High Achievers generally don’t have this problem. Now-a-days many of the types of kids that I went to school with aren’t accepted because it’s not worth the effort. Sure there are plenty of exceptional kids that go there but in addition they are high achievers.
And generally the hardest workers get farther on average. For every Steve Jobs there are many kids who thought they were so smart and creative they didn’t have to work hard, and ended up finding out there are tons of people who are as smart or better and have good grades and work ethic to boot. The thing is, if a student is passionate about something, they’ll naturally spend most of their time on it and maybe their grades will suffer as a result - but not because somebody told them it’s good to get a B. And if they’re not passionate, they might as well work hard in all subjects and see what sticks.
I feel that a lot of traits that earn somebody a perfect college GPA are things that will serve them well in life. College GPAs are pretty hard to game compared to High School (no crazy 5.3 scales or boosts for honor classes).
You need to be a hard worker, you need to be a little bit of a “Renaissance Man” - good in a variety of subjects (especially in schools with large core requirements), you need to have good time management and organizational skills, you need to be a little bit lucky (not ever get the flu before an important test, etc.), and you need to be able to follow instructions and rules. Aren’t those traits you look for in an employee?
I think most students (and maybe today’s parents) have never seen a situation where the grading is honest. It’s so anathema that it’s become an extremely rare and curious phenomenon. At my daughter’s old school more kids will get into an Ivy than will get a 4.0 unweighted GPA. The grading is fairly honest, even sometimes somewhat harsh with an A being nearly impossible with some teachers. The students tend to develop interests rather than 4.0s.
I am still very proud of the C I got in Chem 101. I decided to take the class that was meant for bio and chem majors (in a very, very strong department) instead of the class meant for non-majors (I was in the humanities). I worked my butt off and learned a ton. Still most prouder of that C than all the As I ever got.
Full disclosure - didn’t read the whole thread (but I did read the article). My experience with this is in business, success isn’t about being the smartest guy / gal in the room. You certainly need to be smart enough to be in the room, but then it comes down to leadership, personality / teamwork, relationship building, etc. In general, even in technical fields, the person who has the whole package will rise further then the super smart without the ability to rally the troops.
@kiddie - well said! I know when employers ask me about students they are thinking to hire, they don’t particularly like those who are difficult to get along with or who need their hands held to figure something out. They want smart, dedicated, hard workers. That may or may not come along with a 4.0, but it rarely comes along with the student who doesn’t live up to their potential or who feels they can’t play by the rules.
I can’t think of any of our top students (4.0 GPA) who have ended up destitute or on the police blotter published in our newspaper. I can think of quite a few with not-so-high GPAs. I tend to look every week to see how many I remember.
I think the downfall in the premise is solely concentrating on 4.0. That’s the extreme of the bell curve. At the extremes there aren’t many to consider. Outliers happen. However, I’d prefer taking a chance on the 4.0 student over the 2.65 student in today’s day and age (agreeing that grading in the past was different than today). The outlier who happens to do very well among the 2.65 is far more rare IME. They’re even more rare if their family doesn’t have money to get them started or keep them out of trouble.
Absolutely horrible article (aside from the joke that the answer to the headline is “nearly nothing”).
Worst part: "Getting straight A’s requires conformity. Having an influential career demands originality. " as if they are mutually exclusive. They are not!
And then this: “Straight-A students: Recognize that underachieving in school can prepare you to overachieve in life. So maybe it’s time to apply your grit to a new goal — getting at least one B before you graduate.”
I’ll say this for the author: he sure typed it.
For 99.99% of kids, getting straight A-s requires hard work, the most admirable of qualities judged by any employer, parent or admissions officer. The hard worker wins the race every time. Steve Jobs was an obsessively hard worker (and demanded same from all around him). Do you think if he had been so in HS he would have been less successful in his career?
Of course we all agree that playing it safe to maintain straight A-s is not a good approach. And we all agree that you can succeed in a career without similar success in academics (true of me, BTW). So what is the point, exactly?
There are profound fundamental differences, though, between taking a course in a subject and having a job where you apply that subject. Some of us are very good at whatever skills are required to be a good student, but not so good at the skills required to apply that knowledge in an open-ended dynamic day after day. Good student does not necessarily equate to good employee. In fact, for some of us, it’s just the opposite.
I think the conclusion of the article
" Straight-A students: Recognize that underachieving in school can prepare you to overachieve in life. So maybe it’s time to apply your grit to a new goal — getting at least one B before you graduate. "
is totally wrong based on what was given as evidence.
The real point is that you can have an individual who is so focused on their own personal interests and goals that they over achieve in one area above all others Grades will not necessarily reflect their creativity or special skills.
Those are the ones who maybe made a C in literature because they spent their time designing the next new gizmo and self-studying topics of choice instead of reading the books assigned. That’s the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates people and mostly creative types who know what they want. But maybe they got all "A’s " too.
So the premise is backwards–If you are one of those focused people you don’t overachieve by making a B–you make the B because you were busy overachieving in a totally different topic.
The rest of us jump the hoops that the college has put in place for entrance into many careers. And those demand “A’s” to get into the chosen program.
And “not-so-good” student doesn’t necessarily equate to good employee either. Few employers want the employee who performs at a lower level than others could have whether it is due to boredom, distraction, or inability. There are some who change who they are from school to work, but not everyone.
Overall, the odds tend to be better with good student even though neither are perfect correlations.
Success comes in many forms and to many types of people. I do not think it is either-or, as this article and some comments imply.
Top students like those who became our current Supreme Court justices, the Clintons, the Obamas, etc., were not hampered by their brilliance and top-level academic achievements. Being the best and the brightest is, overall, a good thing.
A less narrow interpretation of the opinion piece is that people can learn from taking risks and occasionally experiencing failure. Generally this is true, but it is also true that not all straight-A students are grade grubbers or averse to taking any risks, and it also is true that not all failures lead to growth— due not only to the person but also to the circumstances.
Not all people who get straight As are grinders. For some students, it’s not all that hard to get straight As, and they do tons of interesting stuff on the side. This is especially true in high school where grade inflation is rampant.
As a person who got As, Bs, Cs, Ds and Fs from high school to professional school and managed to maintain 3.0 gpa, and having hired many workers, high gpa does not translate into great workers.
@ccprofandmomof2 I totally agree. It’s a lot about personality type and not so much about the number on the sheepskin.