It’s that time of year when students are applying for university, or college, or a technical institute, and the concern about their marks is at the forefront. Suddenly, a difference of 2% could matter. And while some schools want a personal profile, and want to know more than just marks, the marks matter a lot. But I wonder how many straight ‘A’ students head off to university and then drop out during or after their first year? I bet it’s a higher number than you would guess.
How many students have had their grades spoon fed to them with cookie cutter precision, doing exactly what the teachers want, but not learning what it’s like to manage their own time, or direct their own learning, or manage relationships with people outside the safety of their own grade and school?
Universities don’t find out a lot about a student when they determine entrance by small differences in GPA. How important is a 2% difference in grades, when so many other things factor into success? But if you are short 2% and your application doesn’t get looked at, it actually matters a lot.
Relationships can be the same. How important is: communication; money; sex; balance of responsibilities; work/life balance; diet & exercise; or support in a relationship?
If you are running a deficit in any of these areas, then it matters a lot. If you feel you have balance or your needs are being met, these things don’t matter much. If something is unbalanced or missing, then the level of concern increases. A simple example is money. If you have a little less money than you wish you had, you might not go on as expensive a vacation as you hoped for, that’s a minor issue and money isn’t really important. If you can’t pay rent or buy groceries for the week, then money is a major issue.
It doesn’t matter if it’s marks, or money, or any other concern I did or didn’t list, it’s when there is a deficit that these things become important. We often take advantage of the things that are working in our favour, because they aren’t a concern, and worry about the things that we are missing. While this is necessary for us to meet our desires and needs, it can often be at the expense of living a good life.
What is the price paid by a high achieving student who is so marks focused that they don’t enjoy other aspects of their lives so they can get a 96% instead of a 94%? What about a workaholic who is trying to squeeze out a few more thousand dollars by working a 65 hour week?
How important is it to meet the needs you have, and what’s the true price of meeting these needs? I’m sure in some cases the effort or sacrifice is important enough… but other times it really isn’t, and focusing on the deficits might make you lose focus on what’s really important.
Not always, but based on my experience students who have great marks in high school but have run full out to get them, hit a wall when they get to university because full steam here doesn’t deliver the same results it did in high school. Consequently, their self esteem and self concept can take a beating when they only get Bs in their first semester, and some actually leave. Other students who may not performed as well in high school sometimes still have some unused potential they can draw on when they get to university. They also do not suffer the self esteem issues when they get Bs. And while you are not talking about grad school, my experience there is grades are not always a good predictor of graduate student performance.as grad school draws on a different set of competencies than undergraduate education. Grades carry too much weight but are viewed as an “efficient” means of sorting potential students. You make a good point.
So true Al. I really wish grades carried less weight for Grade 12’s. At our school what we end up seeing is Grade 11’s do far more in depth inquiries than Grade12’s because the 12’s are too focused on marks. But it’s worse in more traditional schools… Where the focus in classes is on the 30-50% of students going to university as a priority… and students not going get dragged along at a pace they aren’t interested in, or need, to be successful in their future endeavours. Meanwhile, the very group that is being catered to include the ones you describe that struggle when they arrive in university.
If marks are such a good indicator of success, then why do universities have whole departments focused on student retention?