I’m really confused about the premise of this thread. I think personality traits tied to conscientiousness and level of motivation have a lot more to do with college grades than high school experience or stats. The students who stay on top of all their reading, show up to class regularly, and take advantage of resources like profs’ office hours are likely to do better than the students who prioritize their social life. There is probably some correlation between that sort of behavior in high school and in college, but the removal of parental supervision and prodding from the equation can make a pretty big difference.
It has to do with side discussions or assumptions commonly found in other threads about how it is desirable or undesirable to be among the top students* in your college, or whether a college with more or less diversity in academic capability* among the students is better. For example, those who prefer advocate that strong students attend elite colleges apparently prefer not to be among the top students in college, and prefer that college has less diversity in academic capability. On the other hand, some suggest that pre-meds choose a college where they are among the top students*, in order to have a better chance at competing for A grades in college.
*Based on previous academic credentials.
I’d like to offer the perspective of someone who taught in college across disciplines everywhere from community colleges to Ivy League schools. I started paying attention to the dynamics of how students did based on perceptible abilities and personalities when I first met students in class.
There are a range of factors that determine student success in college. Some are innate. Some reflect the student’s experience in high school. Social class, family system, and general interest are visible in the “typical” student who came into my classroom.
What is interesting is that a lot of these factors had little to do with either a) how the student did in my class and b) how well the student did over the course of her/his degree. I saw valedictorians struggle to get through introductory courses. I saw kids who did a lot of drugs in high school excel.
Over time, I came to see two common denominators to success. The first is a willingness to learn. Regardless of how capable a student is coming in, any student who wants to put the work in can improve. One of my best students ever started off writing F papers. She was writing high A papers by the end of class and she went on to graduate with honors. She put the time in.
The second skill is good writing. Someone who can communicate clearly based on logical, organized thinking is going to do well. This is the only skill in college that cuts across all disciplines and career paths. If you can write well, you can succeed.
The challenge for a lot of students is that writing well takes a lot of time (this point very much is an extension of the first point; a student has to be willing to work at it). The good news is that anyone can get there. We’ve got a range of articles here on CC to provide guidance on the lessons I learned teaching students how to write and you can head over to ecree.com to see how we’re encouraging students to build this skill.
A 30th ranked student from a class of 1000 kids at a highly competitive school is usually academically much stronger than most valedictorians from average or smaller schools. Many factors like this than skew outcomes.
However, if you are among top 50 percentile of admits at any college, you should be able to do well if you made decent effort.
My oldest was in the top 2% of his class, and was on the Dean’s list first two terms of college. The college he went to (or at least his sub-school) was full of kids like him. After that he had a much bigger mix of grades, concentrating on what interested him. He had at least one physics course where the TA didn’t like his labs, and another course where he slept through the midterm, but aced the final. He didn’t graduate with any kind of honors, but he’s in his dream job anyway. (CS major.)
Other kid was in the top 6% of his class in high school, although his grades were in the B+/A- range, his SAT scores were such that verbal was top 25% of his class, math bottom 25%. He got a C+ in the most quantitative course he took (economics), and he got C’s in Arabic freshman year. He spent part of the summer after freshman year in Jordon and got B’s in Arabic sophomore year, spent junior year in Jordan and got A’s in Arabic as a senior. I know he went to the writing center at least once as a freshman because he told us what they thought his main issues were. He didn’t get honors either, but that wasn’t helped by the fact that all his junior year abroad grades (straight A’s) weren’t included in his GPA. He was on the Dean’s List as a senior. He’s gainfully employed too.
I don’t know what all that goes to show except that you can’t predict much.
On an individual basis, many individual persons do the unlikely thing.
However, for large groups of people, many things about the group are not beyond prediction, despite a few outliers. For example, between a large group of 4.0 HS GPA students and a large group of 3.0 HS GPA students (who are otherwise similar), the 4.0 HS GPA students are likely to do better on average than the 3.0 HS GPA students (in terms of college GPA, 4- and 6-year graduation rates, etc.). It is not a surprise that more selective colleges have higher 4- and 6-year graduation rates, since they have students with stronger prior academic credentials to begin with.
I think the D students are the ones with the most challenges. They are good enough to attend college but not for significant merit based scholarships. Their parents can’t afford to pay so they either go local if possible, go into significant debt or don’t go to college (or worse some combination of the above). Both of my kids could easily have been Ds if they had been B students. As it was I had one B and one A. It’s worked out very well thusfar.