> Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a disadvantag

> Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a disadvantage. When the majority of your peers are "working in a group" (read: academically sanctioned cheating) and you are not, your grade is likely to suffer. I was able to grasp and learn the material better in the long run, but at the cost of not having a great GPA. You are possibly conflating "working in a group" with "academically sanctioned cheating". There are several situations where working in a group happens: 1. Cooperatively solving an assignment as a group, e.g. a programming assignment where pieces of code are divided amongst the members. In such a scenario, I would argue that if you were solving it on your own, you were being stupid. Sure, you learnt how to solve a technical problem on your own; on the other hand you missed out on learning how to work in a group. 2. Studying together in order to comprehend the material better. I am not even sure how this could be interpreted as cheating. 3. Solving say a theoretical assignment together where in reality one person solves the damn thing and everyone else copies the solution. Most math/theory classes (in a decent school) acknowledge that this can happen and have exams to smooth out the grades. > This situation forces any student interested in maintaining a high GPA to focus more on the grade and not the material. The delicious irony being that students who are most eligible for graduate studies are those least intellectual. Really? Tell me more about these graduate programs that look only at your GPA. If you are so damn well intellectual, you should be out there working with professors on research projects and whatever to show that you are cut out for graduate school.