So if good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success, what are the factors that do lead to success? In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough looks at characteristics they found in students from an underprivileged school where they measured success as graduating from college.
When KIPP started looking at their students who did finish college, they found that instead of being those that were the best scholars while they were at KIPP, “They were the students who were able to recover from the bad grades and resolve to do better, bounce back from [personal conflicts]; could persuade professors to give them extra help after class; could resist the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study.” – How Children Succeed, p 52
Obviously resisting “the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study” relates to self-discipline, but remember that while grades are a measure of self-discipline, good grades alone were not a good predictor of which students from KIPP would go on to graduate from college.…