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Some of the smartest, most successful and most driven people I know are highschool dropouts. It's a shame we put such an emphasis on grades, which really just r

Some of the smartest, most successful and most driven people I know are highschool dropouts. It's a shame we put such an emphasis on grades, which really just reflect someone's ability to spit out things that have already been figured out - not any proof of ingenuity, curiosity, or the ability to learn on the fly. (before the replies - yes I know a lot of dropouts without any ambition or discipline as well - but living in a highly educated community it's easy to note many of the "educated" people really lack ambition and ingenuity whatsoever.) On an anecdotal note, I dropped out of high-school got a job in tech and went back to college - I went to a top 10 university (graduated) and didn't learn much I couldn't have taught myself. It did help me get more interviews though.

sotojuan 9y ago
We put a lot of emphasis on grades in high school. Makes sense - that's what colleges want. But in college, as the slides show, there are so many non-strictly-academic opportunities that a lot people miss out on because in their mind they're still in high school mode.
dahart 9y ago
> before the replies - yes I know a lot of dropouts without any ambition or discipline as well - but living in a highly educated community it's easy to note many of the "educated" people really lack ambition and ingenuity whatsoever. I don't think the argument normally has anything to do with how much ambition & ingenuity college educated people have. Looking at college educated people with low ambition isn't a great reason to drop out of school. The issue is that, statistically, college degrees are strongly correlated with better outcomes. There's a variety of reasons, and of course it does not mean that every dropout will do worse. Most people who drop out don't drop for a positive, because they're doing something better. They drop out for a negative, because they don't like school or authority or it's too hard or they're uninterested or drugs or poverty, etc.. If you're giving advice to someone who doesn't know what to do, going to college and doing well there is hands down the better recommendation on average for most people. If they're driven and strong enough to drop out because they're learning faster on their own, or have something more important to do, or see the potential to make more money now, then they're probably going to ignore advice anyway. The strong driven successful people who don't need a college degree also don't need the advice or any emphasis on grades, because they know what they want, and they've found their own metrics. Everyone else, most people, will probably benefit by staying in school longer. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of...
a_bonobo 9y ago
>and didn't learn much I couldn't have taught myself. I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and I think this could be a fallacy brought on by the weird way we remember things. When I think about what I learned during my undergrad I'd like to say that I learned very little, but then I just know things I must have learned during university. To me, it's really hard to pinpoint when and where I learned something I truly absorbed, and I don't think I'm alone in this. This gives me a very false impression of what I did during university. Could I have learned all of this myself? Would I have known where to look?

sotojuan 9y ago

We put a lot of emphasis on grades in high school. Makes sense - that's what colleges want. But in college, as the slides show, there are so many non-strictly-academic opportunities that a lot people miss out on because in their mind they're still in high school mode.

dahart 9y ago

> before the replies - yes I know a lot of dropouts without any ambition or discipline as well - but living in a highly educated community it's easy to note many of the "educated" people really lack ambition and ingenuity whatsoever. I don't think the argument normally has anything to do with how much ambition & ingenuity college educated people have. Looking at college educated people with low ambition isn't a great reason to drop out of school. The issue is that, statistically, college degrees are strongly correlated with better outcomes. There's a variety of reasons, and of course it does not mean that every dropout will do worse. Most people who drop out don't drop for a positive, because they're doing something better. They drop out for a negative, because they don't like school or authority or it's too hard or they're uninterested or drugs or poverty, etc.. If you're giving advice to someone who doesn't know what to do, going to college and doing well there is hands down the better recommendation on average for most people. If they're driven and strong enough to drop out because they're learning faster on their own, or have something more important to do, or see the potential to make more money now, then they're probably going to ignore advice anyway. The strong driven successful people who don't need a college degree also don't need the advice or any emphasis on grades, because they know what they want, and they've found their own metrics. Everyone else, most people, will probably benefit by staying in school longer. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of...

a_bonobo 9y ago

>and didn't learn much I couldn't have taught myself. I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and I think this could be a fallacy brought on by the weird way we remember things. When I think about what I learned during my undergrad I'd like to say that I learned very little, but then I just know things I must have learned during university. To me, it's really hard to pinpoint when and where I learned something I truly absorbed, and I don't think I'm alone in this. This gives me a very false impression of what I did during university. Could I have learned all of this myself? Would I have known where to look?