Note 250 — Chapter XXV · EDUCATION

There is a current notion that those who stand highest in their studies at school or in college usually do poorly when they get out into the world, and that those who take a prominent part in school or college activities, even though their scholarship be very poor, are the ones who rise to the top in later life. The evidence is all to the contrary. Every investigation that has ever been made into this matter indicates that in the vast majority of cases the boy who does well at school does well in his college studies if he goes to college; and that students who stand high in their college studies are much more likely to succeed in later life than those who stand low. Three great Eastern universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, gave the nation three successive Presidents during the years 1901-1921, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson. Nobody thought it worth while to mention that each of the three was a scholar of high rank at graduation; but if anyone of them had been graduated near the bottom of the list, we should have heard comment in plenty. The exceptions are too often singled out for notice; the instances that prove the rule are so numerous that they pass unobserved.