How Not to Get Into College:
The Preoccupation with Preparation

by Alfie Kohn

Copyright 2002 by Alfie Kohn
(www.alfiekohn.org). Reprinted with the author's permission.

(continued from page 4)

Still, some may fear that students will be unsuccessful in life if they haven't been graded or if those grades aren't impressive. After all, most people -- notably admissions officers and employers -- care about those marks regardless of how useless or destructive they may be. There is some validity to this concern, but perhaps less than is normally assumed. In fact, the argument rests upon a chain of assumptions that is only as legitimate as its weakest link.

1. Does encouraging students to get good grades make them share that concern? It depends. Heavy-handed techniques, such as public recognition or other rewards for good grades, may lead kids to feel resentful and to try to reclaim a sense of autonomy by staging a quiet rebellion. The harder you press, the more they resist. One study, by Adele Gottfried and her colleagues, found that parents who push their children to get good grades cause them to be less interested in what they're learning, which, in turn, appears to have negative effects on later school achievement.
2. Assume a student comes to share her parents' or teachers' concern about getting good grades. Does that actually produce good grades? Often, but not always. Some stressed-out grade-grubbers end up undercutting their own effectiveness, while some students who are able to take pleasure in learning wind up with good grades that they weren't directly chasing.*
3. Assume a student does get good grades. Does that translate into acceptance by a good college? Below high school, grades are essentially irrelevant to college admission. (Of course, one could argue that making students work for A's at age seven will create a habit that will be firmly in place by age seventeen -- and more's the pity if that's true.) But while colleges obviously look at high school grades, that is not the only thing they care about, nor does a high G.P.A. guarantee admission to the most selective institutions. Ivy League schools, for example, typically reject most of the high school valedictorians -- and, incidentally, most of the students with perfect or near-perfect SAT scores -- who apply. That's worth thinking about in advance: if acceptance to such a college is the sole reason for sacrificing everything else in high school in order to get straight A's, then what happens if it doesn't work? Of course, we're talking here about the most elite colleges, but that fact cuts both ways: at least half of American institutions of higher education accept just about everyone who applies, so again one wonders about the wisdom of devoting one's early years to a costly, nonstop effort to get better grades.
4. Does getting into a good college ensure financial success? While there is undoubtedly a correlation between the two, that doesn't mean the first causes the second. It may be that certain factors associated with one (such as family income) also happen to be associated with the other. If that's true, then admission to the school of one's choice (or one's parent's choice) may be neither necessary nor sufficient for financial well-being. People without the usual credentials, but possessed of determination and a genuine love for what they're doing, often manage quite well in material terms, while people with superlative credentials may be summarily sacked. (Tough economic times make many nervous parents push their kids even harder to get good grades -- and, in effect, to see education as little more than a credentialing ritual. But if the conventional approach offers no guarantees, perhaps we should respond instead by questioning basic assumptions about the purpose of school and the role of grades.)
5. Finally, we shouldn't forget to ask whether economic success is the same as, or even positively related to, fulfillment or psychological well-being. The degree to which one spends one's life in pursuit of material gain reflects one's basic values. However, researchers have found that the more people are driven by a desire to be wealthy, the poorer their mental health tends to be on a range of measures. (I reviewed this evidence in "In Pursuit of Affluence, at a High Price,"New York Times, February 2, 1999, which is available at www.alfiekohn.org/managing/ipoa.htm.)

In short, the more we're apt to take for granted that it's good to emphasize grades so students will be successful, the more important it is to probe each step in the argument. If there is reason to doubt any of these connections, the ostensible advantage of focusing attention on getting A's -- or a school's decision to give grades in the first place -- may be outweighed by the demonstrated harms of doing so.

* The study of affluent middle-school students mentioned in the footnote in the main text found that "a disproportionate emphasis on children's achievement, not uncommon in upwardly mobile, suburban communities, not only has the potential to engender distress among children but also has real constraints in terms of the capacity to generate the successes so pervasively exhorted." Specifically, the researchers found that students whose parents especially valued academic achievement were less likely than their peers to score high on teacher ratings of academic competence.

Copyright © 2002 by Alfie Kohn. This article may be downloaded, reproduced, and distributed without permission as long as each copy includes this notice along with citation information (i.e., name of the periodical in which it originally appeared,date of publication, and author's name). Permission must be obtained in order to reprint this article in a published work or in order to offer it for sale in any form. Please contact: permissions@alfiekohn.org.