You glance at your bedroom wall crowded with academic honors and distinctions you received over the years and let out a sigh of relief. Deep down, you know your perfect grades will be your golden ticket to success – or so you thought.
Well at least that’s the same broken tune parents, teachers and grownups have all sung for as long as you can remember so it must be true, right?
What if I told you it is not the student on the honor roll who is more likely to succeed but the student who shows the most improvement, has the perfect attendance, and presents the best attitude?
I know what many of you are thinking, “but colleges and employers want kids with perfect grades!” This is not true either. The problem is too many people mistakenly equate good grades with future success and this couldn’t be further from the truth.
There has been a major shift in higher education and the workplace as of late with the focus placed on the holistic applicant where academic success is a considered factor but not the determining one – and for good reason. According to the former VP of Google, Laszlo Bock, “GPA scores are worthless as a [criterion] for hiring, they do not predict anything.”
What about to those who claim “it takes persistence and hard work to get straight A’s so what’s your point?” Let’s dissect this statement to better understand its premise.
Yes, while I do agree that both persistence and hard work play a role in getting good grades it is just that; grades reflect effort, not intellectual ability or success.
Problems arise when grades are presumed to be an indicator of mastery rather than the other way around. In theory, once a student masters a topic s/he receives an A; however, in practice, too often do we see students receive an A and assume mastery.
Now a better question to ask is whether this hard work and persistence generalize to other aspects of the student’s life and the answer is not really. Achieving high grades mostly boils down to how well a student can play Simon Says, specifically how well s/he can follow the teacher’s instructions and fulfill their requests.
Points are then awarded based on the degree a teacher “thinks” each student has satisfied these arbitrary set of requirements, which frequently result in students with negligible differences slotted into different categories.
What is it about an 89% and a 90% that is categorically different? Nothing really.
What we often find is that students are conditioned to be selective in how they study and to prioritize material that yields the most points. This focus on how to ace the exam rather than how to achieve a deeper understanding of the material defeats the whole purpose of education: learning.
If schools are the conduits by which learning occurs then learning is the process by which knowledge is gained, but this message is lost when academic success becomes a contest of how many points we can win.
The resulting phenomenon is one teachers are all too familiar with: point scrounging. How many of us can remember passionately arguing tooth and nail with our teachers over a few measly points just because it will boost us to the next grade?
Additionally, many classes are woefully unprepared to ready students for the standardized tests they were designed to teach and this should give us pause.
I enrolled in the AP Biology course during my senior year of high school and received an A. Of course, I was over the moon and the stars because these classes are supposed to reflect my preparedness for the AP exam so naturally, I assumed I was on track to ace it. However, this was not the case as I received a 2 out of 5 on the exam… I was crushed and devastated.
This lack of consistency and reliability shows that grades themselves are not even predictive of each other!
So what’s my point with all of this? Are grades useless? Should we not care about school?
Absolutely not, I am by no means suggesting grades in general are unimportant or do not have a place in education. What I am suggesting, however, is that perfect grades are not the be-all or end-all of success.
Yes, you do need a relatively good GPA to attend the best schools but as I pointed out earlier the focus is on the whole individual and not what perfect grades and test scores can say about you.
Trust me, as someone who went through this process twice and was admitted to my top-choice schools both times, I think I know a thing or two about what colleges look for in an applicant.
I definitely did not have the perfect grades but what I did have were extracurriculars that reflected my commitment to my community, passions, and research interests under my belt. But above all else, it was my mindset that set me apart from my peers.
If hard work is the common denominator between straight A’s and later success then mindset, specifically a growth mindset, is the distinction.
According to Stanford professor Carol Dweck, a growth mindset is the perception that our abilities and traits are plastic and can be further developed through our efforts and the feedback of others. This is the intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning rather than for personal validation of self-importance or intellect.
There is an unfettered desire to try new challenges and any possibility for failure is welcomed as part of the learning process. By the same token, success is attributed to the effort we exert rather than by the merits of our innate abilities.
A fixed mindset, on the other hand, views challenges as aversive because the possibility for failure threatens one’s sense of achievement or “you’re smart” title. These individuals are strongly motivated to preserve one’s idealized self image and are less willing to engage in academic risk taking as a result.
Research suggests individuals with a growth mindset “tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset” and is evidenced by the fact that “our world isn’t run by valedictorians and straight A students” but by less academically inclined individuals. This is, as Robert Kiyosaki puts it, “why ‘A’ students work for ‘C’ students and ‘B’ students work for the government.”
All in all, don’t lose hope if you didn’t achieve that coveted 4.0 GPA because there is so much more to life that college admission officers and future employers look for: your mindset.
Are you a leader? Are you pursuing your academic and professional interests and thriving? How do you respond to challenges – do you put your hands up or dig your heels in? Can you work both independently and collaboratively? Are you constantly learning?
These are the questions that truly define the ideal applicant because there is more to your story than what grades and test scores can infer.
So yes, it is not the award-winning honor roll student who will likely be the most successful but the student who is engaged every day and excited to learn; is the first to show up and the last to leave; is unafraid to fail but is willing to learn from them; and has the mindset that anything is attainable through persistence, effective strategies and the willingness to accept constructive criticism.
And remember, it’s the journey, not the destination that counts. Do well in school but do better in your pursuits.
