All through grade school, we were taught that good grades are the key to success. If we were to do anything in life, we needed to get good grades... or so they made it seem.
In high school today, kids are so focused on “What is my GPA this semester?" but is that the right thing to be worrying about? A friend of mine (who wished not to be named), was a track star at his high school. He set records and was a state champion. Obviously, Division 1 colleges were looking at him and offering scholarships based on his athletic ability and grades. However, when he finally decided to commit a Division 1 college, the recruiting adviser did not even ask him what his GPA was. All they focused on was his astonishing 32 on the ACT, an assessment for college readiness. This man who was just given money to attend a high class, Division 1 college, was not even asked about his GPA throughout high school. Little did everyone know, my friend's GPA was a 2.2, and according to most standards, a 2.2 out of 4 is not sufficient.
Students are taught they need to show up to school for four years. They are told they need to study extremely hard for tests and spend all night working on homework, but when it comes down to it, the college recruiting and enrollment offices are not even looking at all that homework you did or the A's you got in your hardest classes.
That leads me to my next question: if you believe a college is looking at your GPA, are you really taking the classes to prepare you for the ACT and college? There are students in high school that take easy classes their whole high school career and graduate with a 4.0 GPA, but since all those classes were “Easy A’s,” it wasn’t a challenge to maintain a 4.0. These students feel superior for getting a 4.0 GPA, but receive average scores on the ACT. Because they wanted a report card to look good with a 4.0, they didn't take any rigorous classes, and now these students cannot even apply for certain scholarships due to test scores. That is when reality hits and they realize, “I did not work not my full ability, and I could've done more to prepare myself for college and the ACT," but that needs to come earlier.
Do not get me wrong, I am not saying all students who have a high GPA do not deserve to be recognized for it, but when a college is looking at a student's grade point average, I believe that they need to look at the course the student took and the rank/difficulty of the course. I am not saying that you need to stop doing homework or stop studying for tests either. I am saying that at this point in time, high school is not preparing students to make it to college. Yes, they give you work in high school, and the grades you get count towards something, but high school is on the verge of becoming useless.
Whether you like it or not, millennials are the future, and they aren't even prepared to make it to college. How are they ever going to make it in the "real world"?
