
How Successful Valedictorians Are After High School - DiabloD3
http://time.com/money/4779223/valedictorian-success-research-barking-up-wrong/
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brownbat
There's a bit of a grades-achievement paradox:

1) Studies show that higher grades lead to higher achievements,[0]

2) Studies of very high achievers show mixed or mediocre grades on average

This article alludes to both of those and then just dismisses the 1st one as
not relevant to "true" success, which I think sidesteps a more interesting
statistical problem.

Imagine dots plotted along an x-axis of "achievement," and a y-axis of GPA.
Can you have a strong positive correlation, but make it so if you sample the
far right end of the graph, you get mediocre GPAs?

Sure, there are lots of ways to arrange the data for that effect.

Imagine grades put a floor on your achievement. So you have people with low
grades and low achievement, low grades and high achievement, but very rarely
high grades and low achievement. So the graph is like a semaphore flag with
the lower left corner shaded. There's a correlation, but the right have the
graph is still randomly distributed.

Or maybe the correlation is clear, but gradually sloping and the variance is
extremely high. So all parts of the graph will tend towards mean GPAs, with
the averages creeping up each quadrant.

Or maybe at the very highest levels of success other factors start to dominate
(connections, location, luck).

The research gives no real hints as to which of these is true, but I think
it's a little early for the article's "just-so" story explanations of high
grades leading to docile individuals poorly suited for leadership or
greatness. This sounds like the myths about Einstein failed at math in
school.[1] There are several millionaires that did fine in school, the data
hardly tell us it's impossible to succeed after getting good grades, that's
reading too much into the averages. For counterexamples, Gates and Zuckerberg
were both admitted to Harvard, ie, probably had above average HS GPAs. Buffett
talks up how he was getting low grades at a young age (and stealing!), but
then "straightened up" after his dad talked to him, presumably getting better
grades in college. Any one of these should be sufficient to disprove the
notion that high grades are somehow helpful for most success, but suddenly an
obstacle to the highest levels of success.

A more thorough investigation of the 700 surveyed "successful millionaires"
would probably reveal more. Maybe a lot of millionaires are harbor pilots,
idly drawing an inheritance, or worked their way up from the mailroom, no idea
without a closer look.

[0] Aside from passing acknowledgement of this research in the article, it's
also covered in more detail here:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/20/heres...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/20/heres-
how-much-your-high-school-grades-predict-how-much-you-make-today/)

[1] [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/albert-
einst...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/albert-einstein-did-
not-fail-at-mathematics-in-school/)

