For a long time, students and parents had the stereotypical belief that students should prioritize grades over all else, but it’s time to shift our mindset and acknowledge the value of focusing on learning. While GPA can be essential in obtaining opportunities, it’s usually only useful in the short term. Hence, as students or academic learners, we should prioritize learning over GPA because academic success isn’t just about grades,  learning skills are more important than grades in the long run, and there is another factor than GPA when company recruiting. 

From common sense and logic, we would think that academic success means mostly just about grades, but in fact, it’s more about our process of learning. Brad Kuntz, a high school teacher, he comments on the action of the student asking for extra credit for focusing on grade instead of their learning content. He explains this kind of mindset is due to past education focused on grades instead of learning, and he argues for academic success “it’s time for us to change the student mindset currently focused on reaching a particular percentage and instead empower them to take charge of their learning and measure their own success” (Kuntz). Kuntz points out students’ fixed mindset on grades and argues this mindset is wrong and needs to shift from focusing on the grade they had. Instead, students should be focusing on learning, it let us and able to reflect on the importance of learning either in our academic success or future career. In addition, academic researchers Moira Cachia, Siobhan Lynam, and Rosemary Stock published a paper related to academic success agreeing with Kuntz’s argument on academic success. They state that some things are more important than grades in measuring academic success, “to feel that you are achieving and growing as an individual (fg1); … knowing who you are… and how you impact other people … (fg2); … getting as much information and applying it in life …, more than doing good at an exam” (Cachia et al.). Cachia et al. agree with Kuntz that academic success expands the concept of  ‘academic success’ as focusing on learning. It is a process of learning ourselves as individuals, from other people, and our environment. Overall, Kuntz and Cachia et al.both come to a common argument that academic success isn’t just about grades, but instead, it means valuing and focusing our learning process over the grades. 

However, we can’t deny the importance that GPA has when it comes to obtaining employment opportunities and other opportunities that have grade requirements. Aditya Vivek Thota, Editor In Chief in The Research Nest wrote about education and career. He reported that “due to enormous competition and limited opportunities, GPA is often used as a filtering or eligibility criteria in recruitment processes so that the number of applications to be screened becomes less” (Thota). This shows the importance of GPA in the recruitment process, if not filling the requirement we wouldn’t even have the opportunity to be selected from the screening.  Yet at the same time, it depicts the attitude of the company when viewing and using the GPA just as a tool for filtering a huge number of job competitors. Furthermore,  Melanie Gaball, a reporter at CSUN’s multi-platform newspaper Daily Sundial, stated that a “ decent GPA matters mainly because it shows the candidate is a hard worker… ‘But it is only important if they are a recent college grad’” (Gaball). Gaball building on Thota’s statement on the importance of GPA in job opportunities, that GPA’s value to the employer proved to them a hard worker, but overall only for the college grad. Similar to GPA use as a screening tool, it is only effective for those college grads who are all in the short term. On the other hand, Thota also stated that “in the long run, it is ultimately the skills you develop outside the classroom that matters” (Thota). Thota highlights the importance of focusing on learning skills rather than just the grades we achieve in a classroom and emphasizes the significance of the long-term perspective in our future careers. Ultimately, the GPA is only a kicker for those who just graduate, while it is important in the long run, coming down to the skill we should have obtained when focusing on learning related to our major or occupation. 

 When a company recruits they look for other factors that rank higher and hold more value than GPA. Academic researchers Michael Jones, Cindi Baldi, Carl Phillips, and Avinash Waikar focused on college student values, attitudes, opinions, and learning and stated that “we have entered a new age—the age of communication… reexamining the kind of characteristics organizations might be seeking in new hires…As a result, we may be seeing the beginning of a paradigm shift, where in the past academic achievement was the key to landing a job” (Jones et al.). Jones and his colleagues consider the factor of changing age influencing the change in desired “characteristics” when recruiting. This also informs us that we should also start shifting our academic achievement instead of just focusing on grades but also learning soft skills like commutation and cooperation skills. Moreover, in their research experiment, the “participants were asked to rate on a scale of one to five (one being the least important and five very important) the importance of twenty-one job candidate characteristics” with a ranking of factor “Positive Attitude” being the highest and most valuable with mean of 4.83 stars and stand deviation of 0.48-star descending to “High Grades” being third to last out of 21 factors (Jones et al.) The data report ranks the characteristics that companies look for when recruiting, and the clear juxtaposition difference between the value of the characteristic of soft skill factor compared to the grades in the rating and ranking.  As society and age change, companies are now seeking different characteristics in potential employees. Similarly, students’ focus has to shift from simply obtaining good grades in the classroom to also acquiring soft skills outside of college that are necessary for employment.

Although many of us hold the mindset that grade is important and it would reflect our knowledge and expertise, the truth is not. According to Starr Sackstein, the Chief Operating Officer at Mastery Portfolio, a company for educators that revolutionizes the assessment and feedback loop to help educators develop the potential of all students said: “Any number of kids can end up with the same letter grade on the report card with a variety of different learning profiles, therefore, communicating very little to students and parents about their learning except the perception of what that letter grade is symbolic” (Sackstein). Sackstein indicates the meaninglessness of our grade, and how it is unable to represent the knowledge and expertise we posed. Adding on, Thota builds up on Sackstein’s statement on our knowledge and expertise “Ultimately everything boils down to your skills, your projects, and your practical experiences… GPA is a secondary parameter.” (Thota). Thota differentiates our skills, project, and practical experiences as major factors that reflect our expertise, and he consider GPA as a secondary parameter that doesn’t hold much value and separates it from reflecting our expertise. Although we can all have high grades, it isn’t enough to consider it to reflect our knowledge and expertise, it only communicates to others what it symbolically, but it misses the skills, projects, and practical experiences. When thinking expertise means being ready and prepared for employment and being able to secure a job, and research Cachia et al. proved that  “Practical tasks with clearly communicated usefulness are more effective in preparing students for employment, rather than traditional assessment methods, such as examinations”. This result proved the traditional assessment methods with grades aren’t that effective in preparing students for employment, not to say reflecting our knowledge and expertise. In addition, Cachia et al. also stated that “academics must also keep their students’ employability in mind” (Cachia et al.). Relating to the definition we have for academic success it means to focus on learning not to say for “academics” Cachia et al. means to focus on learning but keeping “employability in mind”. Therefore, our grades doesn’t reflect our knowledge and expertise, other factors do reflect but in the end, they still turn back to prioritizing learning with a different aspect to keep in mind and better prepared for.

In conclusion, we must prioritize learning over GPA to achieve the ultimate goal of graduating and securing a good job.  We should understand that academic success actually means focusing on the process of learning whether it is in a classroom or outside.  Our GPA only helps us in securing a job in the short term, but the importance is to find security in the long term meaning the focus is on learning and developing the skill. Moreover, our GPA isn’t the major factor but the least in consideration compared to other characteristics an employer looks for, and in our career GPAs aren’t enough proof of our knowledge and expertise. As a final point, we should be reflecting on ourselves, are we still prioritizing GPA over learning, if so should we continue or shift our priorities to learning?

Works Cited

  • Kuntz, Brad . “Focus on Learning, Not Grades.” ascd, 1 May. 2012, https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/focus-on-learning-not-grades. 
  •  Thota, Aditya Vivek. “GPA vs Skills? What’s Important and What Isn’t?” LinkedIn, 22 Dec. 2017,  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gpa-vs-skills-whats-important-what-isnt-aditya-vivek-thota/. 
  • Gaball, Melanie. “Importance of GPA differs with careers.” Daily Sundial, 6 Mar. 2013, https://sundial.csun.edu/64204/news/importance-of-gpa-differs-with-careers/
  •  Sackstein, Starr. “Report Cards Don’t Adequately Communicate Learning”. master portfolio, 2 Jun. 2016, https://masteryportfolio.com/heres-what-one-8th-grader-thinks-about-report-cards/ 
  •  Cachia, Moira, Siobhan Lynam, and Rosemary Stock. “Academic success: Is it just about the grades?.” Higher Education Pedagogies 3.1 (2018): 434-439. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23752696.2018.1462096?needAccess=true&role=button
  •   Jones, Michael, et al. “The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: What Recruiters Look for in Business Graduates.” College Student Journal, vol. 50, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 422–28. https://go-gale-com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T002&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&hitCount=1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CA466783191&docType=Report&sort=RELEVANCE&contentSegment=ZONE-MOD1&prodId=AONE&pageNum=1&contentSet=GALE%7CA466783191&searchId=R2&userGroupName=cuny_baruch&inPS=true