> only the ability to quickly and precisely do exactly as you are told In my experience, my 4.0 existed because I didn't do what I'm told. If I disagreed with

> only the ability to quickly and precisely do exactly as you are told In my experience, my 4.0 existed because I didn't do what I'm told. If I disagreed with a teacher's answer, I would write in "(e) bsilvereagle's answer" and usually get full credit. Similarly, not once did I write a Bing-Bang-Bongo paper in high school as instructed, yet I got top grades in English because I could independently construct a worthwhile essay. I don't think I ever completed a Chemistry lab as instructed either, I would stop half way through and start tinkering around and could usually come up with a hypothesis/experiment/conclusion that was much better than what the lab set out to do. In short, don't assume every 4.0 you see is going to do exactly as they're told.