I think a lot of it has to do with high expectations from parents and adults and a very narrow definition of what “success” is - get good grades in HS, go directly to college after HS, get good grades there, finish in 4 years, go to grad school and/or get a high-paying job.
These kids are still writing their stories. As far as I can see, none of them have “crashed and burned.”
My husband has a story like this. The long story short, he went to college, performed poorly for four years, lost his scholarship, got into a little trouble with the law, went to the Air Force, served four years, went to Columbia as a non-traditional student, finished his BA in May of last year and is working a good job in an ed tech company now. If someone had judged him 4 years out of high school…he wouldn’t have looked so good.
Student #1 sounds like maybe she was burned out on school after four years with good grades and “lots of extracurriculars,” honors and AP classes and a sport.
- Performance is a spectrum, not a category.
- Standardized tests are not alone a good way to figure out students’ capabilities and talents, especially since we know that they’re correlated with all sorts of non-performance related things like race and socioeconomic status.