Most people think that there are two kinds of people. Those who want to do well within the system (the 4.0s), and those who don't give a *** about the system (the "creative" ones).

I like to think that I fit in the third category: those who simply want to be the best at everything. I strive for the 4.0. I don't have one (damn speech class), but I strive for it, only because it doesn't seem right not to seek the highest possible, whatever it takes. On the other hand, I spend too much time screwing around--I wouldn't have found brazen if I hadn't been screwing around. I have side projects and organizations, etc that I pay attention to. It takes some amount of sacrifice obviously, but to each his own I guess.

Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend NOT trying to get a 4.0 just because Tom Peters says they shouldn't be hired. At the same time, recognize that the 4.0 doesn't mean much on its own.

I understand the point being made, but the punchline is problematic. The problem is that we have an education system that evaluates based on a set of criteria that cannot account for the range of talent, creativity, and innovation people are capable of. Simply suggesting not hiring A students -- even as point-making hyperbole -- merely reinforces the validity of the criteria even as it presumes to subvert it.

Rather than putting forth the suggestion that the system is problematic, it places all the burden upon those who have managed to succeed in it, which includes not only people who "color within the lines" but people who have had the privilege of having innovative educations, people who were smart enough to game the system, people smart enough to color within the lines quickly and pursue their own creative and intellectual interests later.

By simply picking another value on the same scale that still seeks to quantify things that are ultimately unquantifiable continues to suggest that there's only "one way" to be smart, and frankly that's a little, well, uncreative.

Agreed with Xiaochang. You can't knock one criterion for another and assume the issue will be different, although I appreciate the point.

Bear in mind I speak as a former straight-A student who, while outperforming many classmates academically, was constantly either irritating or endearing myself to teachers and authorities for my "creative" side. And who nearly didn't graduate from high school (in spite of a 4.11 GPA) because I skipped too many classes. You can imagine how advisers, teachers, and professors have felt about me over the years - a defiant overachiever? ;-)

But that's why I, too, love the dynamism and creativity of startup work - while also loving good, fundamental skill sets and traits in my colleagues and in myself, too.

This is certainly the model Enterprise Rent-A-Car has always used: Hire "friendly jocks" who mix well with people and are eager to serve customers. They evaluate potential employees more on their attitudes and personalities, than on their grades. It's certainly worked for Enterprise... If you go to business school, I can almost guarantee that you'll read a case study on them!

This is too much like stereotyping and generalization in my opinion.

I think the article is really talking about the correlation between GPA, creativity, and socialness when talking about life successes, well, certainly in business. While I have for a brief period of time gotten 4.0 GPA in high school and briefly in college, I gave up most of my fun social life in order to play by the game and get those achievements, even though they don't help me in life from what I find now. Interesting video though.

I think his point was that people who get 4.0's are masters at excelling under the set of rules set out for them by the school; and that if the perfect GPA is that student's single focus to the exclusion of everything else, he/she not only will likely miss out on other important elements of having a life, but that person will also be too concerned about following the established path to try anything new. Of course it's generalizing--I know several people with perfect GPAs who were also involved in half a dozen extracurriculars, were very outgoing socially, and started their own businesses according to their own rules. But if you look at some of the most successful entrepreneurs, very few fit the perfect-student-at-Ivy-League-School mold.

Response to Mehul Kar: I agree with your critique of the false dichotomy between fitting in with the system and being "creative." However, you argument makes its own assumption - that getting good grades is a true and legitimate reflection of "being the best" at something.

I've seen references (in places like the WSJ and in career counseling literature) to a few common phenomenon that test that premise. On the Big Five personality test, students with high grades have Scored high on Dominance and Affiliation. In other words, the people put effort into getting good grades seem to be those people who have are motivated to best their peers in competition and those people who are motivated by the shared standards of a group. The surprise result - people who scored significantly higher in Achievement than in Dominance or Affiliation tended to get lower grade point averages. When pressed, these students would give priority to, for example, a personal book project over the paper due next week in a required course.

As an employer, I probably do want people who are willing to drop their own goals to take up mine or the team's. The real gem of the employee, though, is the one whose passions line up with my organization's goals and who is singleminded in the drive for that passion.

The WSJ reported an interesting observation about the college transcripts of successful entrepreneurs: As in courses they like or that line up with some objective; low grades - even Fs - in courses that don't. In other words, the ability to prioritize and to simply let go of arbitrary standards.

A story from my own college experience: I was failing statistics due to a bad grade on the midterm. I had the option to re-do the class, but I felt that would be a waste of time. I hunkered down in the Coffee House the day before the final and pulled out a 98 percent, enough to get a D+. Twenty-five years later, I care not that I got a D+! I proved to myself that I could learn the material. I've since used it on jobs. Not in a million years would I trade back the experiences I chose instead for a letter on a piece of paper. (if I had known how easy it was to teach myself, I would have done that in the first place; hindsight is 20/20!)

A 4.0 average is at best one reflection of having mastered the material to a certain degree. Do good grades equate to "best" in any the social sense? I don't think so!

Where I remain stuck is how brainwashed we all are to put so much weight in ANY direction on grade point average.

While good grades certainly indicate that their possessor reaches a certain threshold of intelligence, that threshold is not extraordinarily high, nor does it hold true that people who don't get the grades aren't equally intelligent.

While not getting good grades may indicate "creative" types of screwing around, some people screw around and get good grades, too, while others fail to get good grades because they simply cannot master the material.

Getting good grades can mean a person is disciplined, a good self-manager, and responsible about setting goals and making the commitment to achieve them. Not getting a 4.0 can mean that a person is disciplined, a good self-manager, and responsible enough to have decided that the extra 80% effort for those 20% higher numbers on a sheet of paper was less important than volunteering, taking care of family, starting a business, or any of a number of valuable things.

While Peters may overstate the case, in my opinion, an employer for whom grade point average even makes a top 10 cut (except in the very limited circumstance where the course material applies directly to the job) in hiring criteria deserves an F in Decision Science 101. Unless of course the main trait desired is "willingness to comply."

Former teacher and education activist John Taylor Gatto writes that schools do one thing well: train people to accept absurd commands from people in authority. That 30- and 40-year-old people are still focused on boasting about or defending their record on this arbitrary, rough indicator of worth is supporting evidence for his viewpoint.

I rank getting a 4.0 about with being the BEST at pie-eating contests, growing the world's longest fingernails, etc. My point was that BEST, for me, has to be anchored to something intrinsically valuable. Grades simply are not. It's definitely not learning. One can learn and not get the grades or get the grades and retain nothing.

BEST at a largely arbitrary pursuit is still arbitrary, which is fine. As a proxy for "smart", "disciplined", "responsible", getting a 4.0 is not valid or legitimate. It's a power trip. Though I was not a 4.0 student, I am an "elite school" graduate, and I feel that the advantages I get for that are largely illegitimate, too.

I have been known to leave "Stanford" off my resume!

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What a great speech. I breezed through school because I was very good at rote memorization. How little that helped me when I graduated.

One does not need to have good grades to interact with bright students and brilliant professors! Seriously, I went to Stanford and interacted with some top names in their field. They were available to students regardless of grade point average. In fact, I've emailed a few since college in the course of work or to interview them as sources. Again grades were irrelevant.

Semantics or no semantics - in order to get better than a 4.0, one must have a value that labels that as a good thing. Without that, the world's most brilliant individual simply isn't going to bother with or prioritize those parts of the process that serve no other purpose. Personally, "life is to short to jump through unnecessary hoops" doesn't strike me as a bad value to have. (Whether or not the 4.0 ARE necessary is a separate question.)

Heck, I couldn't "afford" to go there either. I got both scholarships and loans.

I found that two of the things I was not willing to sacrifice for letters on a piece of paper were LEARNING and the LOVE of reading.

I'm not an engineer, so I can't speak for the IT types. But I can't tell you how many college graduates I meet who do not read anymore because of the desensitization exercise they put themselves through reading s*** they did not want to read in order to get better grades.

I read what I wanted to while in college - including many, many, many books not assigned - and did not read what I did not want to. My passion for reading began at age 3, before school came into the picture. I'm happy to say it remains intact.

JRandom42 - I am not an engineer. I'm a writer. Engineering is but one profession among many out there. The list of autodidact writers is long.

Jrandom, I love your comments. My husband is a materials engineer by training turned product manager and he said he studied day and night for his degrees and as you say, it is certainly not an education you can get solely through deductive reasoning. I have friends who have 4.0s during undergrad while working at the same time that are now doctors. I got a 3.5ish while working my way through college. Simply said, it helps to have professional experience before graduating because many grads - no matter what GPA - who haven't worked face a rude awakening, unfortunately.

Credentialism is unfairness only if you don't need those credentials to do the job, or understand the concepts that the job makes use of. In the case of engineers, a broad base of rigorous technical and scientific education is a must, because of the cost of not having one is sloppy, poorly designed products that endanger the public.

Since most engineers are NOT self-taught, or at least self-taught to the rigorous degree you'd find in a decent engineering curriculum, I would say the idea of a 4.0 grade point average, as being a mark of excellence, is that should be recognized and applauded as the achievement that it is.

This may not apply to many career fields, but a number of crucial ones, like engineering, medicine, accounting, and so on, it does.

Grade inflation must be a recent phenomenon, because all my professors took great delight in deflating GPAs with as low a grade as they could reasonably justify. If you wanted your A, you had to not only complete the coursework, but take on independent projects and do those in a rigorous, complete, competent, and comprehensive way that showed your knowledge, skill and imagination.

There were a number of excellent professors that I had, who would not give out more than one or two As a quarter, unless you REALLY showed why you deserved one. They're all retired or dead by now, more's the pity.

I stumbled across an interest theory that relates to this thread. Mastery Goal Orientation vs. Performance Goal Orientation.

People tending towards MGO are motivated by ever-increasing challenges that increase their mastery. The reward is learning and proficiency. They will set very ambitious goals even at the risk of failure.

People tending towards PGO are motivated to either to seek opportunities to demonstrate their competence or to avoid situations where they may fail. Their reward is achieving against an extrinsic standard.

The frosh who takes graduate seminars because the topic is interesting or challenging may indeed end up with less than an A. The person who prioritizes getting As may eschew a learning opportunity if pursuing it puts the GPA at risk.

I think if you agree with this, you might be a C student (or maybe a D...).

What could be an interesting discussion about the efficacy of our current education system model has been condensed down into a "slacker-defense" Tweet.

Unfortunately, Barbara, there isn't any evidence presented in the video to suggest that the C/D comment has any validity whatsoever. It's simply the speaker quoting the mother of a dyslexic child telling her son something inspiring to make him feel better and stay with his studies. There are inevitably successful people of all levels of school achievement... but suggesting scoring lower in school is better is laughable.

While a real discussion about what we are teaching our kids in school and what we are preparing them to do is a really interesting question (there have been some great TED Talks on this very subject that I highly recommend people watch) unfortunately this C/D quotation is flying all over Twitter today but has no evidence of support at all.

The truth is intelligent people don't have to prove they are intelligent. If you to try to prove it, you will come across as arrogant. Just be yourself and those around you will appreciate your intelligence.

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@JRandom - Solving problems at work is solving problems at work. The point of us are trying to make is that "proving my intelligence" as a goal in itself is, frankly, very immature. I worked in one of the "smartest" companies in the world. The people who presented the biggest obstacles to actually making intelligent decisions, solving complex problems, and saving the company money were those so insecure that a portion of their smarts was continuously diverted to the goal of displaying their intelligence - be it through using unnecessarily big words that made their documents and presentations incomprehensible, wasting time on useless activities that did not contribute to the goal at hand, or finding opportunities to broadcast and discuss 20-40 year old accomplishments like SAT scores.

@Barbara, I don't think JRandom was equating proving intelligence to proving superiority or even smarts. I think, and JR can correct me if I'm wrong, what is trying to be said is that professionals have to prove their intelligence continually though their actions. Intelligence is not just knowing a bunch of facts and spewing them back, but having the ability to analyze and make solid decisions/interpretations that can make a substantial difference.

To amplify on what Leslie commented on, it's not only knowing the basic facts, but understanding how they apply to a design, a prototype or a production item. Let's be blunt, does it make sense for someone who flunked metallurgy and materials science to be designing the main wing sections for an airliner?

My point is, if you don't learn the basic facts of your chosen field, and can't at least "spew them back", how is anyone going to know if you really understand them or how they apply?

As for those who did not do well in school or dropped out, how does anyone know if they were even interested in learning the basic foundations of what their chosen career field are?

And as for desperation, the title stated it was focusing on the person's GPA, and I did my best to stay on topic. Unfortunately, mine is over 40 years old and I can't alter that fact. It sucks getting older sometimes.

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