Happilywallowing, I’m not sure you are understanding what I intend to communicate which means I am not writing clear enough. Most of the people I know at MIT did not spend their high school years with an eye towards getting straight A’s. They did, by the way, get straight A’s. But their motivation was not driven by the grades. Some people call the distinction “grades” vs “mastery”, in terms of what is driving their efforts.
The people I know at MIT tend to be driven to conquer/ master material. They tend not to be the kind of student whose major motivation was simply to get the best grades compared to others or to please people or to show everyone that they are “smart”. They are the ones who may linger after class to continue to hash out an argument about a controversial point- and they are not staying because the teacher may give a better grade to students who stay a few minutes after class to discuss a “class topic”. If you teach high school students you know what I mean. The kids who are engaged in the topic argue cause they want to convey a point that they believe in, think is important-and they may continue arguing about it through the day. They care about the content/material. The kid who stayed because it may buy brownie points has his/her thoughts on the mall as soon as the next class begins-little or no interest in the actual material just “doing well”. I think there are far more students at MIT who are driven by mastery then by grades compared to other competitive schools.
Incidentally MIT does ask how students handle failure. I don’t believe it is a bench-mark of maturity. I think there are people who are risk averse because they are so concerned about not failing. Such a students may be fine at schools that provide a lot of wiggle room and don’t require students to leave their comfort zone. I think such a person would be fairly miserable at MIT. There are tons of perfectly mature people who live their lives in a way that reduces or eliminates the probability of failure-in fact that can be a driving force for someone’s entire life. I’d see it as a personality dimension rather than a indicator of the individual’s place on a continuum of maturity. Some guy used to write about the type of student who would be very comfortable at MIT in terms of having an approach orientation towards achievement with low fear of failure. That tends to be a fairly stable (across the lifespan) way of approaching the world.