Good Grades No Predictor of Success
“Like intelligence test scores, achieving good grades and high class position are also poor predictors of future success in life. Consider the study that followed valedictorians and salutatorians from the 1981 graduating classes of Illinois high schools. It was found that, while these students had the attributes to ensure school success, these characteristics did not necessarily translate into real world success. By their late 20s, these superior students had reached only average levels of success in life. Only one in four were achieving at the highest levels in their chosen profession and the rest were doing much less well. Karen Arnold professor of education at Boston University, one of the researchers tracking the valedictorians, explains, “To know that a person is a valedictorian is to only know that he or she is exceedingly good at achievement as measured by grades. It tells you nothing about how they react to the vicissitudes of life.”
In the fascinating book, The Millionaire’s Mind, Thomas J. Stanley and Jon Robbin, a Harvard-trained mathematician, did in-depth statistical research to identify which variables caused people to become super wealthy and successful in business. Their research found that, contrary to popular belief, there was no significant statistical correlation between how successful these individuals were later in life and their grades in school, their class position, or their SAT scores.
In another revealing study done in 1998, it was found that 15 percent of the individuals on Fortune’s 400 list of wealthiest people either did not start college or dropped out. Amazingly, these 58 dropouts’ average net worth was not less but more than their contemporaries” and not by a little bit. Their average net worth was $4.8 billion, which turned out to be 167 percent higher than their college-graduating peers, who averaged $1.5 billion. And when these individuals who were not suited to the school system were compared to those who graduated from our most prestigious Ivy League schools, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, it was found that their net worth was 200 percent higher.
The founder of Kinko’s, Paul Orfalea, did poorly in the school system, and he recounts that to bolster his feelings his mother use to tell him, “The A students work for the B students, C students run the business, D students dedicate the buildings.” Consider that five of the most important minds of the 21st century that are shaping the information age did not even finish college: Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft; Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, founders of Apple; and Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers.”
To find out what made some scientists and engineers more productive than others at the famous think tank, Bell Laboratories, Janet Caplan and Robert Kelly discovered a startling fact that they wrote about in the Harvard Business Review. “As it develops, academic type success was not a good predictor of on job productivity nor was IQ discovered to be a factor.”51 Sternberg says, “Many people who get good grades in school have come to be quite smug about their intelligence even in the face of repeated failure outside of the classroom.”57
In the fascinating book, The Millionaire’s Mind, Thomas J. Stanley and Jon Robbin, a Harvard-trained mathematician, did in-depth statistical research to identify which variables caused people to become successful in business and super wealthy. Their research found that, contrary to popular belief, there was no significant statistical correlation between how successful these individuals were later in life and their grades in school, their class position, or their SAT scores. (In another revealing study done in 1998, it was found that 15 percent of the individuals on Fortune’s 400 list of wealthiest people did not start college or dropped out. Amazingly, these 58 dropouts’ average net worth was not less but more than their contemporaries—and not by a little bit. Their average net worth was $4.8 billion, which turned out to be 167 percent higher than their college graduating peers, who averaged $1.5 billion. And when these individuals who were not suited to the school system were compared to those who graduated from our most prestigious Ivy League schools, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, it was found that their net worth was 200 percent higher.50″
Author JW Wilson: http://www.crackingthelearningcode.com/element2.php
