The Big Four accounting firms pay huge attention to college grades and it works well for them. Ditto law firms. And in those fields, the mechanical pursuit of g

The Big Four accounting firms pay huge attention to college grades and it works well for them. Ditto law firms. And in those fields, the mechanical pursuit of grades -- independent of actual knowledge -- models the actual demands of the job pretty well. Accounting and law firms are looking for people with the stamina and single-minded goal focus to get document-creation tasks done, one after another, to a high degree of "skill." Getting an A on the test and preparing an SEC-compliant bond prospectus are close cousins of each other. In fields where real-world mastery doesn't have much to do with the orderly routines of getting a 97 on the midterm, employers are less likely to hunt for people who got 97s on the midterm. (John Steinbeck stumbled around Stanford for six years and never graduated. But he got more accomplished as a writer than a whole decade worth of creative-writing majors with high GPAs.)