Famous Underachiever - Gifted Issues Discussion Forum

Does this sound familiar to anyone? From a historical figure's college entrance application, we have these perspectives (name redacted by me, see if you can guess who it is before you click the link below):

Originally Posted by High school principal

X has rather superior mental ability without the deep interest in his studies or the mature viewpoint that demands of him his best effort all the time. He can be relied upon to do enough to pass. We have been and are working our hardest to develop X�s own self-interest, great enough in social life, to the point that will assure him a record in college more worth [of] his natural gifts of intelligence, likableness, and popularity.

Originally Posted by Father

X has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault.

It's worth noting that this individual eventually found something interesting enough to apply the full capacity of his brilliant mind, although family connections certainly didn't hurt. The more things change...

More info.

Family connections were the reason for his success.

The dynasty was the creation of his father.

It doesn't sound like he would have got in without the name (but maybe that was normal then) but presumably he must have met the requirements for his degree? Or can they be bought?

He was what you might call a less than stellar student. You can see his grades here. No As, but plenty of Cs and even a D. His average was ~2.5, yet he graduated "cum laude."

It's possible that they didn't issue a lot of As back then, but all those Cs and that D are a bit depressing.

Can someone explain to me how the US GPA system works? I didn't realise you could get a negative GPA.

Oh, not a negative sign (perhaps I should put my glasses on) but still exactly how does it work. I thought I had it then I read of someone having a GPA of 5?

Originally Posted by Val

He was what you might call a less than stellar student. You can see his grades here. No As, but plenty of Cs and even a D. His average was ~2.5, yet he graduated "cum laude."

It's possible that they didn't issue a lot of As back then, but all those Cs and that D are a bit depressing.

Well, his grades would have been even worse if he had been lobotomized like his sister.

Originally Posted by Val

He was what you might call a less than stellar student. You can see his grades here. No As, but plenty of Cs and even a D. His average was ~2.5, yet he graduated "cum laude."

It's possible that they didn't issue a lot of As back then, but all those Cs and that D are a bit depressing.

Well, if he had been lobotomized like his sister, he would have done even worse.

They may not have had GPAs back then; I was doing a conversion based on what's used now. An A gets you 4.0 points, a B is 3, a C is 2, and a D is 1. So I assigned 1, 2, or 3 points to each grade and averaged them. It was only for comparison purposes. These days, a 2.5 is not great.

Grades were not as high in those days. People have studied US grade inflation over the years and found that the number of As has been rising since the 60s. So I don't want to sound too harsh on him! FDR apparently also was an average student but was thought of as above average with grades affected by extracurriculars. Maybe it was the same for JFK.

Originally Posted by puffin

Can someone explain to me how the US GPA system works? I didn't realise you could get a negative GPA.

Oh, not a negative sign (perhaps I should put my glasses on) but still exactly how does it work. I thought I had it then I read of someone having a GPA of 5?

In some high schools, Advanced Placement and/or honors courses get an extra point in GPA calculations, so that A = 5, B = 4 etc. The rationale for this is that the grading standards in such courses may be tougher, so that a B may represent the same quality of work as an A in a non-honors course.

but not all places have advanced or honours courses? And I read somewhere the other day about some areas allocation places by lottery? So for some people their 4 may be equal to someone elses 5? So you only have full grades (at university we had a+, a, a-, b+, b, b-, c+, c, c-, I think a+ was 8 and c- was 0. I never got a c- and I am not sure whether it was actually a passing mark. I thing the GPA was only calculated for awarding honours.