Does your grade in school reflect your success in career/life?

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Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
10,247
207
106
They're correlated, but they're definitely not equivalent. It's very easy to game your classes and be an A-/B+ student while learning basically nothing of importance. That said, smart people will tend to have good grades and be successful at work. In my experience, if you consistently show up and aren't retarded it's pretty easy to be liked and fairly successful in a workplace, but even that's asking too much of a good chunk of the workforce.
 

DesiPower

Lifer
Nov 22, 2008
15,366
740
126
So who gets good grades? people who can mindlessly follow the teacher and then successfully regurgitate it in exams. Typically the same people are best at brown nosing and pencil pushing which leads to career success, so yes, I have to say that there is a correlating
 

IEC

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Jun 10, 2004
14,359
5,017
136
So who gets good grades? people who can mindlessly follow the teacher and then successfully regurgitate it in exams. Typically the same people are best at brown nosing and pencil pushing which leads to career success, so yes, I have to say that there is a correlating

Or you could you know, actually master the material and then getting a 4.0 is actually pretty easy given at least a reasonable amount of intelligence and a good work ethic.
 

Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
10,247
207
106
Or you could you know, actually master the material and then getting a 4.0 is actually pretty easy given at least a reasonable amount of intelligence and a good work ethic.

You could, but it's completely unnecessary for most topics, and they way they're taught generally doesn't promote mastery of anything except memorization of whatever it is they (or whatever dinosaur put together their curriculum) want to hear. Trying to get a real and applicable understanding of the material leads a lot of people to burn out because so much of what's taught and tested on isn't applicable to anything current except moving on to the next class, and whatever bits actually do matter are only ever touched on or introduced then left for the student to figure out on their own. There's so much focus on "well rounded educations" and BS like doing integrals completely from memory that there's just not much room left for anything worth mastering, i.e. anything that will ever help a person on the job more than five minutes with Google will.
 

veri745

Golden Member
Oct 11, 2007
1,163
4
81
F- average in school, now I make up to $3750 per month working from the comfort of my own home with no schedule and no upper limit on what I can earn, just click to get started!
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,656
687
126
Or you could you know, actually master the material and then getting a 4.0 is actually pretty easy given at least a reasonable amount of intelligence and a good work ethic.

Depends on the courses. I had a policy for non-core courses (i.e., the required humanities electives):

1. Pick the easiest and most low level courses which would fulfill the requirement.
2. If I walked into the class on the first day and the syllabus said anything about a term paper or research project, I'd turn around, walk out, and drop the class.

Spending any sort of time on courses like that was not in my best interest and I couldn't possibly care less if I mastered that material or not - I wanted to fulfill my graduation requirement in that area with the least effort possible and with an easy A in each course to pad my gpa.
 

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,429
3,533
126
I'd say school grade roughly correlates to career. Generally very good but could be better if I put in a lot more time. In both cases I view my life outside of work\school as more important than putting in the extra time so I don't.

Life success has been on a better trajectory than my grades
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,653
7,882
126
My grades were good in things I was interested in, not so good in others. My life's followed the same course. Success/failure is only applicable to a finite goal. "Satisfied" is the term you want. My life's been satisfactory.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,656
687
126
I'd say school grade roughly correlates to career. Generally very good but could be better if I put in a lot more time. In both cases I view my life outside of work\school as more important than putting in the extra time so I don't.

:thumbsup:

Given my academic background, some would probably have expected more from me. But at the end of the day, I just don't care about a career. I work to afford the things I truly enjoy - work is just a chore I have to do 8 hours per day to get to the fun stuff.
 

elitejp

Golden Member
Jan 2, 2010
1,080
20
81
Generally speaking you get out of things what you put in. And work ethic will carry across most fields of life
 

elitejp

Golden Member
Jan 2, 2010
1,080
20
81
Depends on the courses. I had a policy for non-core courses (i.e., the required humanities electives):

1. Pick the easiest and most low level courses which would fulfill the requirement.
2. If I walked into the class on the first day and the syllabus said anything about a term paper or research project, I'd turn around, walk out, and drop the class.

Spending any sort of time on courses like that was not in my best interest and I couldn't possibly care less if I mastered that material or not - I wanted to fulfill my graduation requirement in that area with the least effort possible and with an easy A in each course to pad my gpa.

That's actually smart because you are prioritizing what will actually help you accomplish what you want accomplished.
 

madoka

Diamond Member
Jun 22, 2004
4,344
712
121
I was a very good student from top five nationally ranked schools (both college and professional school) and now I earn in the 1%. Everything worked out for me.
 

Argo

Lifer
Apr 8, 2000
10,045
0
0
I think you asked the question in the wrong way. You should've instead asked what's a correlation coefficient between good grades in school, and success later in life.

I think it's high, but not 1. And don't get me started on how you define success in life.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,126
1,603
126
Im one of 2 people without degrees at the office. There are maybe 300 or so people here.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,126
1,603
126
Would you consider working in your particular office to be a desirable outcome or an undesirable one? D:

Most of the actual real work is fun, ksh scripting, c coding, playing with oracle and sql, writing ab initio graphs and such ... But there is a lot of politics, red tape, and an overabundance of administrative work.

The downside is really that I have hit the peak of my advancement within the company without at least completing my bachelor's degree. (Dropped out after 2 years of university, back in 2000.) If I wanted to go into management, I would need to complete a BS/BA degree, but there would be even more administrative paperwork to deal with.

I dislike paperwork.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,518
5,340
136
Nope. I'm a late bloomer. Graduated high school with less than a 2.0 GPA. Did poorly in college for a long time as well. Had focus issues & no study procedure. Currently married with kids & a stable, decent-paying job. That meets my definition of success, so I am satisfied. I was fortunate that I was able to eliminate the bulk of my ADD later in life, which helped tremendously.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,518
5,340
136
They're correlated, but they're definitely not equivalent. It's very easy to game your classes and be an A-/B+ student while learning basically nothing of importance. That said, smart people will tend to have good grades and be successful at work. In my experience, if you consistently show up and aren't retarded it's pretty easy to be liked and fairly successful in a workplace, but even that's asking too much of a good chunk of the workforce.

ime, the really smart kids (i.e. gifted) struggled in the real world because they went K-12 without having to work at anything, so they had no idea how to applies themselves in the real world. The ones who were a step below that - smart, not gifted, but were usually studyholics - continued to do well because they had built those work habits through years of practice.

Your last sentence is super accurate. The basic rules for keeping a standard jobs are:

1. Show up
2. Show up on time
3. Do something

An awful lot of jobs just need warm bodies. My job is primarily IT hardware administration, just about anyone with a knack for computers could do it, so it's definitely not special or anything & doesn't pay nearly as well as other specialties do, but I happen to really enjoy hardware & love that I can play with stuff & get paid for it. All depends on what your personal goals are & what's available. And if availability doesn't exist, being willing to move.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,898
12,365
126
www.anyf.ca
I misread the question and voted no, as I don't think grades really have a relevance on how well you'll do. But to answer the question in my case my grades were pretty decent and I've had a successful career as well. Though some courses I struggled with more than others. Math was always my weakness. Anything else technical like sciences I would do well in though. We had an Autocad class, I actually got 99% in it. So many people struggled in that class, I was always helping people lol.
 

thestrangebrew1

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2011
3,488
412
126
Sub 3.0 gpa, but make a decent wage. In my area, it's definitely higher wage than the average so I guess I'm ok. I was fortunate to actually get a job in my intended field and I'm pretty happy so I guess it worked out.
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,816
83
91
I guess.

I was a B student in high school, A student in college... currently living a B+ lifestyle (comfortable, upper-middle-class)
 
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