A student's academic success depends more on hard work than on intelligence

A student's academic success depends more on hard work than on intelligence

Education is an important part of life and it what makes people more aware of everything around them. Education has many disciplines and each student will pick their own field of interest, but ultimately whichever discipline is chosen competition is intense. Slow and steady wins the race, is a classic saying that implies that perseverance in a study area will eventually overcome the obstacle and learn it better than one who is innately intelligent. Since high school, many students are always competing against one another to do well because GPA and academic standing are going to determine if they have a chance of getting into a prestigious university. Admissions committees will look at both intelligence and effort put into education.

Firstly, consider when academic success relies on hard work than innate intelligence. Imagine a college laboratory where a major experiment is taking place and there are two students present: the average Joe and the science wiz. The science wiz is under the impression that the average Joe knows nothing about science and tries to out wit him by completing the experiment first. On the other hand, average Joe is going step by step of the experiment by documenting everything in his lab notebook. However, in a matter of time, the lab experiences power failure and the experiment is delayed. After returning to the lab from the power failure the science wiz loses track of his experiment and wastes time to get back on track. Now the average Joe’s persistence has paid off because of his meticulous documentation of procedure, he can now complete the experiment on time. Another example, would be the tortoise versus the hare in a race. The hare is extremely over-confident that it knows the way and runs faster than the tortoise only to run out of breath. The hare takes a rest and in the meantime the slow moving tortoise has caught up and has overtaken the hare through persistence.  In both cases it is evident that persistence and hard work paid off.

On the other hand, diligence doesn’t always pay off and intelligence succeeds. Standardized tests are a common part of a student’s life nowadays. These tests are bridging stones to go to college or get a professional education. Admissions committees will often weight intelligence more than hard work because test scores are viewed as a measure of intelligence. So the person with higher test scores has a better chance of being accepted. Average Joe may spend hours studying for the MCAT or SAT and take many practice tests for test day and still achieve average scores. In contrast, a person of intelligence only needs to minimal work and get a competitive score for admissions. In addition success by GPA and testing scores can be weighted differently in varying schools. For instance in school A, On the other hand, the measure of GPA is rather subjective in that schools differ as far as criteria for testing and other factors. For example, achieving a 4.0 GPA in School A might be equivalent to achieving a 3.5 GPA in School B due to differences in rigorous curriculum and focus on analytical thinking rather than rote memory in School A.

In all, both intelligence and hard work need to be present but in equal proportions. Having extreme hard work ethic or intelligence does not guarantee success. Rather, hard work and intelligence will pay off better than one of these factors alone. To emphasize, intelligence can be viewed as an outcome of hard work rather than as two separate factors.