Smart Money

We recently were given an article on how people with higher grades in high school and college end up making more money than people who get low grades in college and high school. The article uses a graph showing the average yearly earnings of a number of people based on their gpa throughout college and high school. The graph makes the valid point on its own that people with higher GPAs make more money. The article then goes on to explain how this is more than likely because of how people with higher GPAs have better work ethic, a greater motivation to get more work done (leading to promotions/raises), and may have better social skills. I can see why this would be the case. The better work ethic would come from taking hard classes and pulling through them with the best grade possible and through this learning that in order to do well one must fully understand what is asked of them and how to efficiently achieve the objective. The greater motivation would come from their achievement of those grades in those hard classes and how they were rewarded for getting those grades by being put in an even better position to succeed in school and in the working world. Then there’s the social skills. Now, several people would argue that nerds/people with high GPAs are usually anti-social, outcast, timid, etc. However, even with the extensively social nerds, who’s to say that they aren’t applying their learning technique that they get through school to social lives and events, analyzing what jokes get the best response, what topics spark interest, and what just flat out doesn’t create conversation and then practicing in private (considering it’s no closely guarded secret that good social skills will get you far in this world).