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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are actually studies on this topic. Mega successes - those who will invent and create new valuable things - typically had spiky grades, not straight As. Although the straight A conformists are set up well to be successful middle managers.

https://globalleadership.org/articles/leading-yourself/what-straight-a-students-get-wrong
[/quote]

That’s an interesting opinion piece, thanks for sharing.

I agree with some of the author’s points, especially about the importance of finding interesting problems to solve or the value of taking intellectual risks in college.

That said, I think this business school prof needed more references before claiming so conclusively that “academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence… across industries.” (Also, perhaps some definitions would’ve helped… what counts as academic or career excellence?) There were three references I saw.  One (no link) described a study of 40 architects from the 60s.  That’s a bit too narrow, small, and old to draw big conclusions from, imo. The second was a book discussing a 14 year longitudinal study following 81 high school valedictorians. My understanding is that study showed generally successful but not world changing outcomes. But how many world changing outcomes would we expect in a sample of only 81 by age 32?

To me the third reference was the closest to surprising. That described a study where around 15% of entry level jobs seemed to prefer lower GPAs. I looked briefly at that study. Setting aside the excluded jobs (which included things like too few applicants or too selective a job), the researchers reported that there was a correlation between those jobs that preferred lower GPAs and smaller numbers of applicants, suggesting in their view that those jobs might have been less appealing, so perhaps they didn’t think the recruiters thought that higher achieving students would find those positions interesting or would stay.

Still, a worthwhile read![/quote]

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