Higher education, in contrast, did not always keep its promise to develop the talents of even its best students. Left with classroom achievement alone, many students never found a negotiable path to a clearly envisioned career corresponding to their deepest interests and values.

Are schools rewarding the right people as the highest achievers? If the goal is hard-working, productive, adaptable adults, then U.S. high schools are recognizing precisely the correct group.

As valedictorians matured from high school they began to change their views of success from stereotypical ideals such as material wealth or emulating their parents’ lifestyle to an idea created on their own. They now sought balance between money, career and family as opposed to, say, only wealth. Academically and careerwise most of them were traditionally successful.

Are valedictorians successful a decade and a half after high school? Yes is the simple answer to this straightforward question…Yet the answer becomes infinitely less simple when we examine what society and the valedictorians themselves mean by “success.

The record is clear; nothing succeeds like success and there is no predictor of academic success better than a history of academic success.

Extremely talented students face an odd danger: they do so well in the paths they choose that they might not question whether the direction really fits them.

Male valedictorians attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford. Only one woman chose an Ivy League university-Cornell.

Women—and only women—lowered their intellectual self-esteem between high school graduation and sophomore year of college.

For academically talented women, in contrast, school success does not guarantee occupational success. Even the best female college students need people who will support them, encourage them, and – most important—who will connect them to opportunities.