Do Grades Matter?
By ELLA O’HANLON ‘21
Given that everyone received their interim grades within the past week, I’m sure people around campus are stressing a little bit about their grades. I’ve been at Milton for a little over a year now and I’ve already been told by numerous teachers that, “grades do not matter!” After receiving a quiz that I’ve failed, or an essay that I didn’t do too well on, I’d go up to a teacher, stressing about my grade, frantically asking how I can bring my grade up, just to here once again, “calm down, grades don’t really matter.” Well, in my opinion, they definitely do.
No, this test failing scenario hasn’t played out in my life that many times; but I have received grades I wasn’t happy with and wished to ask my teacher how I could improve my average. Yet, I can think of two specific occasions when teachers scolded me for asking for more information about grade because, according to my teachers, grades don’t matter.
I sent out a survey to the entirety of the upper school, asking a variety of questions regarding high school grades, to which 316 students responded, so that I could see how my fellow classmates felt about the matter at hand. Of the upper school students in this pool, 82.2% said teachers have told them that grades don’t really matter as long as the student understands the class’s content, and that caring too much about grades simply brings on stress. Yet, 96.2% of the upper school students also said that they feel a pressure to get good grades at school. That almost all of the upper school students that responded continue to feel this pressure makes the teachers’ logic contradictory because if people continuously receive bad grades, they will feel even more pressure to bring their grades up. Teachers may feel that students shouldn’t get upset about a grade because grades don’t hold important roles in a student’s life; but, some parents feel differently, putting pressure on students to get perfect grades, despite their teachers’ views.
Although some Milton teachers don’t really appreciate the importance of grades, college admissions officers may feel differently. Most students at Milton Academy want to, at some point, attend college. All but one or two of last year’s graduates planned to attend college at some point, and 98.2% of this year’s students surveyed said they want to attend college. Of these people, 97.9% of them said that they think grades play a huge role in getting into college. Given that getting into a good college leads to getting future jobs which all in all decides one’s path to a successful career, and that grades play a huge role to get into college, we could argue that one’s grades in highschool can be a huge factor in deciding one’s future. CBS writer Lynn O'Shaughnessy wrote about high school grades, stating that, “a high school GPA is the strongest predictor of whether a student will fare well in college and ultimately graduate.” Your future in the college process is important; therefore, grades are important.
No, one grade won’t affect your entire life, but unlike many teachers at Milton atest to, grades do matter more than many adults will claim.