# Valedictorians rarely become rich and famous



## Cal (Sep 29, 2017)

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.bus...ric-barker-millionaires-bad-grades-gpa-2017-6


> Valedictorians rarely become rich and famous — here's why the average millionaire's college GPA is 2.9
> Joe AvellaShana Lebowitz Jun 26, 2017, 11:49 AM ET
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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

Almost two weeks removed from the posting, but thank you for posting this, Rudolph. If this is true, and I'm convinced it is, it long-confirmed something that I've suspected since the age of about 19: academic honors are not inherently worthy of respect. 

(curiously, my university GPA at the time I left was, if I am remembering my transcripts accurately, right around the 2.7/8/9 range. It bodes well for me!)


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

King Wenceslas said:


> Almost two weeks removed from the posting, but thank you for posting this, Rudolph. If this is true, and I'm convinced it is, it long-confirmed something that I've suspected since the age of about 19: academic honors are not inherently worthy of respect.


You've taken completely the wrong lesson from this. Academic honors are incredibly worthy of respect. If anything what's NOT worthy of respect is what it takes to get super rich; being in the right place at the right time and having the right connections. The reason that GPA doesn't matter as much to being a billionaire is because.. a lot of billionaires parents were also mega wealthy or at the very least wealthy enough to get them into Harvard as a legacy. There's no way to become a Billionaire based solely on skill, it requires either tons of luck or tons of nepotism.

Additionally taking huge risks isn't a great idea in life. Working hard at school and getting a good GPA followed by a good job is a VERY HIGH probability of a decent life. Not working hard in school and taking a big risk may indeed be more likely to make you a billionaire, but it's also WAY WAY WAY more likely to make you bankrupt.



King Wenceslas said:


> (curiously, my university GPA at the time I left was, if I am remembering my transcripts accurately, right around the 2.7/8/9 range. It bodes well for me!)


There are more statistics fails in this one line than I can even being to describe.

3.0 is the average GPA for students so you basically have a bell curve around that point and there are significantly more people close to 3.0 than there are at higher grades. Of course the average millionaire won't have a 4.0 GPA because so few people do in general. Again, since 3.0 is average that means that a much higher GPA would be very difficult to achieve for the average of a population. Let's say that we expect a 3.5 GPA for millionaires. Well that means for every 1 millionaire who had a 2.0 GPA (like say a lot of sports stars) there would need to be 3 people with perfect 4.0 GPAs to average them out. Even more important than the mathematical errors you've made is the fact that the average is 2.9 doesn't mean that getting a 2.9 is the best GPA for getting mega rich. The best is likely a perfect 4.0, but again so few people research this level that the mean is much lower. This is why we have other metrics like median and mode to describe average. You would want to know the mode of the distribution, not the mean.


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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

Mr. Anderson said:


> You've taken completely the wrong lesson from this. Academic honors are incredibly worthy of respect.


Why? 



> Additionally taking huge risks isn't a great idea in life.


The future belongs to the bold. 




> There are more statistics fails in this one line than I can even being to describe.the fact that the average is 2.9 doesn't mean that getting a 2.9 is the best GPA for getting mega rich. The best is likely a perfect 4.0


It's not about statistics. What Mr. Barker is saying is that the personality traits possessed by high achievers in real life are most likely to translate into a C+ GPA in college life. 

I can't help but notice the traces of bitterness in your writing, and the serpent with the fruit as your avatar. Serpents have long been associated with the sin of envy. You chose your symbol well.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

King Wenceslas said:


> Why?


Because intellegence and hard work are good traits and should be encouraged. Not sure this is even controversial to state.



King Wenceslas said:


> The future belongs to the bold.


Some people with risk-taking personalities end up becoming wealthy.. but those same sort of personality traits are also found in convicted felons and some of the poor. You're falling victim to survivorship bias. You're looking at the people who took risks and got lucky, but not those who took risks and got unlucky. In terms of career goals do you know what has the highest median income? It's not people who shoot to be hedge fund managers or CEOs, it's DENTISTS. Why? Because 99% of the people who want to revolutionize the world fail whereas most people who want to become dentists.. become dentists and make a good, stable income their whole life. Being bold is not a very good life choice unless you're the sort of person who just HAS to be the best and nothing else could possibly ever make you happy.



King Wenceslas said:


> It's not about statistics. What Mr. Barker is saying is that the personality traits possessed by high achievers in real life are most likely to translate into a C+ GPA in college life.


Having a billion dollars and having achieved something noteworthy are two totally different things. Something like 30% of people who are billionaires simply inherited their money so how they did in school is totally irrelevant to their wealthy. If anything they have no motivation at all to get a good GPA. Again, survivor bias and a focus on money as the only notable achievement in life are blinding you to this.



King Wenceslas said:


> I can't help but notice the traces of bitterness in your writing, and the serpent with the fruit as your avatar. Serpents have long been associated with the sin of envy. You chose your symbol well.


The serpent and the fruit are a symbol of Satan tempting man with the knowledge of Good and Evil. In general it's just a symbol of temptation. The fruit can also often be used to symbolize sexual temptation. I'm not sure this is a normal symbol for envy in Western Civilization.


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## Dan E (Jun 15, 2012)

King Wenceslas said:


> The future belongs to the bold.


I have to agree.


This thread reminds me of the salutatorian from my graduating class. She spent her high school years crying for higher grades and copying smart kids' homework (I was flattered to have been among them). But with that, she ended up with an inflated GPA and, later, a very financially successful position managing an editorial staff. I imagine her "honest" GPA would have been around 2.9 but she was obviously clever in a nonacademic way.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

Dan E said:


> I have to agree.
> 
> 
> This thread reminds me of the salutatorian from my graduating class. She spent her high school years crying for higher grades and copying smart kids' homework (I was flattered to have been among them). But with that, she ended up with an inflated GPA and, later, a very financially successful position managing an editorial staff. I imagine her "honest" GPA would have been around 2.9 but she was obviously clever in a nonacademic way.


So your point is that the reason people with average grades do well is because they are better at cheating..
You might be more right than you know, lol.


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## star tripper (Sep 1, 2013)

Mr. Anderson said:


> The serpent and the fruit are a symbol of Satan tempting man with the knowledge of Good and Evil. In general it's just a symbol of temptation. The fruit can also often be used to symbolize sexual temptation. I'm not sure this is a normal symbol for envy in Western Civilization.


It is not.

--

The reason GPA doesn't matter to billionaires is because wealth is largely inherited. I have made post after post about how I think academics are dumb as rocks, but this article is fallacious.

And a rebel is NOT the antithesis of an academic. Those two identities are not mutually exclusive, and in fact _frequently_ overlap. So it is absolutely silly to take "be bold to get rich" away from this article.

To add my own two cents, I don't think one can use boldness to get rich. Ever. Some people who did bold things ended up getting rich, but anyone who sits there and goes, "I'm gonna do x to get rich," is not making a bold decision. It's... literally the same thing that academics do.

Oh, and this is also a reflection of what society values. I find it really sad personally that an athlete makes more money than a teacher.


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## Dan E (Jun 15, 2012)

Mr. Anderson said:


> So your point is that the reason people with average grades do well is because they are better at cheating..
> You might be more right than you know, lol.


Not exactly. I fully believe in people with average grades who could do well without cheating. 

What I am saying is that there is an overlooked intelligence that identifies an institutional structure for both its benefits and flaws, takes advantage of its blind spots and comes that much closer to attaining their dreams. I don't condone cheating in school but I can't entirely admonish those that play the broken system like a fiddle.


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## star tripper (Sep 1, 2013)

Dan E said:


> I have to agree.
> 
> 
> This thread reminds me of the salutatorian from my graduating class. She spent her high school years crying for higher grades and copying smart kids' homework (I was flattered to have been among them). But with that, she ended up with an inflated GPA and, later, a very financially successful position managing an editorial staff. I imagine her "honest" GPA would have been around 2.9 but she was obviously clever in a nonacademic way.


In this article, she would be considered one of the higher GPA folks. The article doesn't distinguish between "real booksmart folks who got good grades" and "resourceful folks who cheated to get grades."

This feeds into my point that the conclusion of the article doesn't make sense because rebels and academics are not mutually exclusive.


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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

Mr. Anderson said:


> Because intellegence and hard work are good traits and should be encouraged. Not sure this is even controversial to state.


intelligence and hard work are only as good as 1. your morality and 2. the goals you're working toward. I would encourage anyone with bad intentions to be very dumb and lazy. 




> Some people with risk-taking personalities end up becoming wealthy.. but those same sort of personality traits are also found in convicted felons and some of the poor. You're falling victim to survivorship bias. You're looking at the people who took risks and got lucky, but not those who took risks and got unlucky.


High Time Preference is what disproportionately kills the poor and the criminal, not boldness. 



> In terms of career goals do you know what has the highest median income? It's not people who shoot to be hedge fund managers or CEOs, it's DENTISTS. Why? Because 99% of the people who want to revolutionize the world fail whereas most people who want to become dentists.. become dentists and make a good, stable income their whole life.


Well, this is one great big Red Herring.



> Being bold is not a very good life choice unless you're the sort of person who just HAS to be the best and nothing else could possibly ever make you happy


Parable of the talents, Mr. Anderson. I was born to be outstanding; I have a duty to a higher power to be that way, it's not my choice.



> Having a billion dollars and having achieved something noteworthy are two totally different things. Something like 30% of people who are billionaires simply inherited their money


Let me guess: of the remaining 70%, you think the entirety gained it through criminal means or dumb luck. As if you could never become a billionaire by creating something the world ascribes great value to (J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter empire, for example)



> focus on money as the only notable achievement in life are blinding you to this.


If you think that's really my value system, you will never understand me. 



> The serpent and the fruit are a symbol of Satan tempting man with the knowledge of Good and Evil.


Yeah and Satan's the king of envy. His envy that he could not be God destroyed him. Whether someone interprets that as mere mythology or an actual happening is not relevant.


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## star tripper (Sep 1, 2013)

King Wenceslas said:


> Let me guess: of the remaining 70%, you think the entirety gained it through criminal means or dumb luck. As if you could never become a billionaire by creating something the world ascribes great value to (J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter empire, for example)


What is bold about _Harry Potter_?

JK Rowling was a teacher who wrote a book in her spare time that ended up connecting to a bunch of kids (who became extremely attached to it into adulthood).

Writing a book people like (while having a stable job) is not bold and does not take grit.

That's why the article is fallacious. It's attributing traits to billionaires that 1) academics can have and 2) billionaires can lack.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

A lot of the cheaters also have low GPAs. It doesn't indicate that you good by default either. It doesn't surprise me. You educate your way into a job for $75,000 a year. If you don't have that risk taking potential on top of that, you won't be a millionaire. Some millionaires have said that having a degree helped them too.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

King Wenceslas said:


> Parable of the talents, Mr. Anderson. I was born to be outstanding; I have a duty to a higher power to be that way, it's not my choice.


Oh yeah, how's that working out for you?



star tripper said:


> What is bold about _Harry Potter_?
> 
> JK Rowling was a teacher who wrote a book in her spare time that ended up connecting to a bunch of kids (who became extremely attached to it into adulthood).
> 
> ...


Not just that, but something like 30 publishers rejected the book. If one hadn't taken a chance on it then nobody would have ever read it. It took a lucky break for her to become rich and I'm quite certain many other people write just as well and never get that break. There is actually a good study I saw where people took award winning books and submitted a lot of them to publishers as if they were original and then saw what sort of comments they received. Needless to say the vast majority of the times the publishers rejected the books and wrote back about how terrible they were.


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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

If J.K. Rowling is insufficiently bold for your liking, consider instead the rise of Trump and his real estate empire. He was given a large seed and he did the appropriate thing: cultivating a very large garden. 



Mr. Anderson said:


> Oh yeah, how's that working out for you?


Very well, thank you very much, and getting better each and every day. :happy: I sincerely hope you've found at least one thing to excel at, by this time in your life. As long as it's not obtaining a high GPA.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

King Wenceslas said:


> If J.K. Rowling is insufficiently bold for your liking, consider instead the rise of Trump and his real estate empire. He was given a large seed and he did the appropriate thing: cultivating a very large garden.


If you took what Trump inherited and put it in a passive fund that tracked the market it would have been worth more than a billion dollars today. Trump needed to do literally nothing to be a billionaire. Now, he is apparently worth 2.5 Billion so sure he did manage to increase his wealth some, but it's not really all that impressive when you consider the starting point. It's no more impressive than say a kid whose father is a carpenter and he becomes a doctor.



King Wenceslas said:


> Very well, thank you very much, and getting better each and every day. :happy: I sincerely hope you've found at least one thing to excel at, by this time in your life. As long as it's not obtaining a high GPA.


It's been 10 years since I had a GPA.


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## Penny (Mar 24, 2016)

well i can personally attest that having a high GPA in school does not equal fame or billions. so it seems that the richest and most famous/influential people are dullards. haha just kidding. they must make up in creativity what they lack in book smarts. (or "grit" as you have it.) i need to get me some more grit, but you could keep the fame just give me the billions!


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## star tripper (Sep 1, 2013)

MsBrightside said:


> well i can personally attest that having a high GPA in school does not equal fame or billions. so it seems that the richest and most famous/influential people are dullards. haha just kidding. they must make up in creativity what they lack in book smarts. (or "grit" as you have it.) i need to get me some more grit, but you could keep the fame just give me the billions!


I know this is tongue-in-cheek commentary so I'm not talking about you, but this did remind me of something.

- People with high GPAs frequently aren't book smart. They use "grit" to get their high scores.

- It usually takes lack of creativity to get famous lol. This is because you need to be able to connect with a large demographic. Taylor Swift is massive because she's Queen of the Basic White Girls for example. She has some good songs, but the songs that connect to her audience the most are her most generic and unremarkable.

Idk maybe I'm just super cynical about fame and fortune or I was too intimately familiar with both academics and regular folks to see value in either group lol. Actually, as someone who knows both groups, the main differences I see are that academics are more image-driven, resourceful, diluted, and certain. Non-academics are kind of big fat liars, impulsive, uncertain, and frank.

But I'm on a tangent now. Disregard moi.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

star tripper said:


> - People with high GPAs frequently aren't book smart. They use "grit" to get their high scores.


Yea, high GPA has a lot more to do with hard work than it does intelligence. That's especially true in high school where you have a significant portion of your grade in homeowner and other assignments and not all in exams like in college.


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## PiT (May 6, 2017)

I was a valedictorian and this piece just goes to show what I already knew: that academic success is overrated. They try to tell you that you just need to work hard and do well in school and things will turn out for you, but the natural end of that path is academia, with your valedictorian being a poor adjunct, and a small chance of scoring that tenure-track professorship to entice more folks to follow the carrot over the cliff. I realized this and got out of school with my bachelor's degree in hand. 

Schooling is important, but there are other factors that are also relevant and indeed necessary to achieving financial success, such as creativity, charisma, and salesmanship. Schooling doesn't really encourage the development of any of these. We need to stop telling kids that academic success in itself is a sufficient condition for success in life, because it isn't.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

PiT said:


> I was a valedictorian and this piece just goes to show what I already knew: that academic success is overrated. They try to tell you that you just need to work hard and do well in school and things will turn out for you, but the natural end of that path is academia, with your valedictorian being a poor adjunct, and a small chance of scoring that tenure-track professorship to entice more folks to follow the carrot over the cliff. I realized this and got out of school with my bachelor's degree in hand.
> 
> Schooling is important, but there are other factors that are also relevant and indeed necessary to achieving financial success, such as creativity, charisma, and salesmanship. Schooling doesn't really encourage the development of any of these. We need to stop telling kids that academic success in itself is a sufficient condition for success in life, because it isn't.


Academic success isn't the ONLY thing that matters, but it is INCREDIBLY important and acting like it's not is not going to help anyone. Also, as already discussed, a lot of those who are rich but didn't do well in school have rich parents so yes obviously nepotism is HUGELY important in success, but if your parents aren't rich you better work and study your ass off.

It quite frankly disgusts me seeing people act like academics aren't all that important. My parents stressed the importance of doing well in school my entire childhood and as a result I've never had to worry about money once in my whole life. Am a millionaire? No. But I have everything I could ever need.


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## PiT (May 6, 2017)

Mr. Anderson said:


> Academic success isn't the ONLY thing that matters, but it is INCREDIBLY important and acting like it's not is not going to help anyone. Also, as already discussed, a lot of those who are rich but didn't do well in school have rich parents so yes obviously nepotism is HUGELY important in success, but if your parents aren't rich you better work and study your ass off.
> 
> It quite frankly disgusts me seeing people act like academics aren't all that important. My parents stressed the importance of doing well in school my entire childhood and as a result I've never had to worry about money once in my whole life. Am a millionaire? No. But I have everything I could ever need.


Academics are very important, but when I was younger I was more or less led to believe that my academic success would lead me to a secure, well-paying job as an adult. I do have one now, but only as an indirect and purely incidental result of the work I put into schooling.

My primary point is that it takes much more than just getting A's in all your classes to get ahead in life and we do the youth a disservice by suggesting that more schooling is always the answer to being stuck in a rut in your life and career. Do you mean to tell me that you haven't had to worry about money by virtue of your education alone? That would have to be an exceptional case indeed.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

PiT said:


> Academics are very important, but when I was younger I was more or less led to believe that my academic success would lead me to a secure, well-paying job as an adult. I do have one now, but only as an indirect and purely incidental result of the work I put into schooling.


It will if you focus it in the right direction. Yes, putting a lot of academic effort into a gender studies degree won't help you much, but putting effort into a STEM degree will.


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## star tripper (Sep 1, 2013)

Mr. Anderson said:


> It will if you focus it in the right direction. Yes, putting a lot of academic effort into a gender studies degree won't help you much, but putting effort into a STEM degree will.


This is a dangerous myth to be perpetuating.

Because so many students have been told in the past ten years that STEM is the only major that guarantees a job, the STEM market is oversatutated (especially computer science).

Most majors are viable. The problem I've been seeing is sort of what @PiT is alluding to. People think once they get the highly covetous STEM degree, everything will fall into place. The truth is while the degree opens up your options, there's much more that goes into getting a job.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

star tripper said:


> Because so many students have been told in the past ten years that STEM is the only major that guarantees a job, the STEM market is oversatutated (especially computer science).


More like the market is saturated because of the H1-B VISA program.

I guess computer science falls under STEM, but I consider it more of the red-headed stepchild than one of the core STEM degrees. Computer Science is like the easy version of an engineering degree.


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## PiT (May 6, 2017)

Mr. Anderson said:


> More like the market is saturated because of the H1-B VISA program.
> 
> I guess computer science falls under STEM, but I consider it more of the red-headed stepchild than one of the core STEM degrees. Computer Science is like the easy version of an engineering degree.


Specificity helps. My undergraduate degree was in physics, and unless you want to go to grad school engineering is pretty much a better option straight up. Pursuing the graduate route in physics holds substantial promise...once you are well into your 30s. If you have obligations as I do, putting all those years into waiting for the brass ring to come down makes little sense. Not to mention that the academic market is saturated in nearly every field.

In short, computer science and engineering are fields where someone could probably get a good job on sheer academic talent, and it is important to emphasize how exceptional they are in this regard. This quality does not transfer well to other STEM fields. The collegiate system is fundamentally flawed in that it demands 18-year olds to make life-altering decisions that they are mostly unqualified to make. They rely on adults for advice, but these adults give rotten advice because they don't understand the career situation.


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## Mr. Anderson (Nov 19, 2017)

PiT said:


> They rely on adults for advice, but these adults give rotten advice because they don't understand the career situation.


Well yeah, that's a huge problem but again the problem isn't that it's impossible to get from A to B, it's that these people don't know anyone who could tell them how. Literally half my friends in high schools had parents who pretty much told them they would be doctors and they all DID indeed become doctors. Becoming a doctor is virtually all a product of hard work and a minimum level of intelligence. There is nothing stopping anyone from entering that field like there is stopping people from entering a lot of law firms and wall street firms that rely on knowing the right people much more.


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