3,849 Quotes About Intelligence

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.

Outstanding students of color arrived on campus without the web of white middle-class family and school structures that provided Anglo students with practical knowledge in such areas as college choice strategies and career planning.

College bonds weakened for students of who lived off campus, took outside employment, and maintained active family commitments. Unskilled in navigating the university, these students were unlikely to enter the personal networks where insiders traded the practical information they desperately needed.