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'What Straight-A Students Get Wrong' (nytimes.com)
From a story: Year after year, I watch in dismay as students obsess over getting straight A's. Some sacrifice their health; a few have even tried to sue their school after falling short. All have joined the cult of perfectionism out of a conviction that top marks are a ticket to elite graduate schools and lucrative job offers. I was one of them. I started college with the goal of graduating with a 4.0. It would be a reflection of my brainpower and willpower, revealing that I had the right stuff to succeed. But I was wrong.
The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance.
Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem -- it's more about finding the right problem to solve.
The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance.
Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem -- it's more about finding the right problem to solve.
It is wrong if all you learn is to recite things and become a living database. Learning is all about fundamentals, like the right approach to any given task.
Problem solving is apparently not taught anymore? What kind of courses were these students aiming for A in?
At one point, the article says, in effect, that it's unhealthy to obsess over getting straight As -- and that it's ineffective, because people like Martin Luther King and JK Rowling didn't get straight As. If it's unhealthy to give yourself a hard time pursuing straight As, it's even more unhealthy to give yourself a hard time trying to be Martin Luther King or JK Rowling -- and it's wildly less attainable.
I've worked in a company where GPAs strongly influenced hiring decisions (yes, even after years in the workforce). At that company myself and most of my colleagues had 3.5+ GPAs from top universities. I've also worked at companies where GPA and school meant zero towards the hiring process.
The difference in the quality of personnel was stark. At the high GPA company everyone was incredibly smart, hard working, and overachieving. At the anything-goes companies, *some* people are smart and hard working, but most are just there to clock in their 9-5, get their paycheck, and put in the minimal amount of effort along the way that they can without being fired.