Do Grades Matter? A Discussion About Thinking Bigger While at CMU (2016) [pdf]

Do Grades Matter? A Discussion About Thinking Bigger While at CMU (2016) [pdf]
cs.cmu.edu

We see these ideas echoed over and over by intensely successful people. For example, it's the same one Richard Hamming claims in his famous talk, "You and Your Research"[1]. Kayvon's talk focuses heavily on the side of academia, but the claim holds equally well in two other areas:

1. Community involvement.

As an undergrad, over-commitment to classes leaves little time to give back to the "community," for definitions of community like classmates, under-represented groups, the wider campus, etc.

For example, you can't be a great undergrad TA if you don't put close to or more work into the class than your students do. This means TA'ing should factor into your schedule like taking another class. If you're already overloaded on classes and TA'ing a class, how can you hope to contribute something valuable to your students?

2. Self-driven deeper understanding.

In all these discussions, we're starting from the assumption that the student is driven; otherwise, they wouldn't be motivated to take tons of classes in the first place.

By taking fewer classes, there's more available time for the motivated student to read an interesting paper related to the lecture that week--and read it thoroughly. There's more time to think critically about interesting, new problems, and even to discover one's own passions or calling.

As one last note; if you're a student ever in the position to take a class from Kayvon, I'd very strongly recommend it.

[1]: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

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...