20 How Do I Measure Success?

Emma could hardly believe that she was done with schooling. How many years had it been, from elementary and secondary education, through her undergraduate program, and back and forth between graduate programs? When Emma had graduated from high school, she hadn’t even planned to finish college. College had just been the next natural thing to do until she found a good job, married, or had something else show up. Well, nothing had shown up, and so Emma had just trekked on through one school program after another. Yet Emma regretted none of it. And here she was, starting a job she hadn’t imagined in a field she hadn’t even known existed when she started her long higher-education journey. Best yet, it looked like a dream job.

Success

You have many ways to measure your success with studies. That’s the nature of learning, growth, and education: they can have many potential positive impacts. Although you may have clear educational goals in mind, you don’t always know exactly where your education can or will take you. Walk through one door, and several more doors about which you were unaware may present themselves to you. So don’t constrain yourself to only one form of school success measure. Instead, pour yourself into your education, and see where it takes you. Have tentative markers of success, to be sure. Have a goal, have a clear and achievable plan to reach it, and implement your plan with diligence. But don’t narrow your definition of success unnecessarily. You may achieve much greater things through your education than you ever planned. Consider some of the following common and not-so-common measures of academic success.

Advancement

A first measure of your studies’ success is that you continue to advance apace through the terms and years of your educational program. Education is nothing if not progressive. At every level, you either move up or you move out. Instructional programs presume that you remain in them for a relatively short duration, during which you acquire the knowledge, skills, and ethics they offer, and after which you move on to your next challenge in life. Getting held back a year in elementary or secondary school is generally embarrassing although sometimes necessary due to illness, injury, absences, indiscipline, or developmental delays. Taking an extra year to complete a four-year college program may be less embarrassing, especially when changing schools or majors. And delays in graduate programs can be even less disruptive because of their generally more lax contours. Yet you should be advancing steadily, and if you are, then kudos to you for your effective studies. 

Honors

Schools recognize academic success with various honors. While the honors may be competitive and artificial, depending more on the number and skill of the students to whom the school compares you, honors can still be meaningful measures of academic success. Schools may award certificates of merit to the top student in each course each term. They may award dean’s list recognition to all students earning a higher grade-point average each term and honor roll recognition to all students earning at least a certain cumulative grade-point average across terms. They may recognize a valedictorian as the top student in the class and a salutatorian as the second-ranking student in the class. Schools may publish those and other awards, recognize award recipients in periodic ceremonies, and hand out ribbons, certificates, sashes, and even checks in modest amounts in connection with academic awards. Schools and other organizations may also grant scholarships for academic success. If you’re earning one or more of these or other academic awards, more kudos to you. Awards may be relatively artificial, not quite like the good internship, job, and career you may hope your education earns, but they can still be meaningful.

Graduation

Graduation is perhaps the clearest, if not necessarily the most meaningful, measure of academic success. Schools generally only graduate students who have clearly met their requirements for completing the academic program. To do anything otherwise would be to undermine the diploma or degree as a meaningful credential, valued by schools at higher levels and by employers, licensing bodies, and others. You should be duly proud of the diploma or degree that you earn by completing your school program. Schools generally honor their graduates with elaborate commencement ceremonies involving robes, hoods, sashes, processions, speeches, music, prayers, and benedictions. If you are struggling in your studies, keep that promised land in view. Every student who graduates holds the same credential, whether graduating at the top or bottom of the class. And if you’re worried about what your class standing at graduation may mean for your future, then know that studies of some graduating cohorts in some fields indicate that students with lower cumulative grade-point averages generally have greater career success and satisfaction than students graduating with higher cumulative grade points. Strive, endure, and advance to graduation if you possibly can. Doing so is the clearest measure of academic success.

Admission

Admission into your next educational or vocational training program is another measure of educational success. Elementary school is only preparation for middle school and middle school only preparation for high school. For many students, high school is only preparation for college, while for a good number of those students, college is only preparation for graduate or professional school. Many other high school students simply want to get out of high school and into a preferred vocational training program. Gaining admission into the program of your choice at the next level of training or education can be a huge achievement and a clear measure of your prior academic success. Prep academies are exclusive and expensive because of the programs for which they’ll qualify you, not because you’ve already got it made when you graduate. And so if your education gets you into your preferred college, university, graduate program, or vocational training program, then take your admission as a clear and valuable measure of success.

Employment

For many students and their parents or spouses, advancement and graduation don’t mean terribly much unless the education leads to secure, reputable, and rewarding employment. Getting a job after school can be the most practical measure of academic success, at least when the academic program purports to qualify graduates for employment. Accrediting agencies require schools to track and publish statistics on graduate employment because students expect to get jobs after graduation. When you get that first job, especially right out of school and with a preferred employer, you have another clear measure of success, one that is also especially rewarding. The rewards of employment only begin with the earned income and related employment benefits. Employment rewards also include reputation, relationships, standing, structure, and advancement opportunities. If you get a job right out of school, give yourself a good slap on the back. You’ve succeeded on an important measure.

Careers

While a first job right out of school can be a solid measure of educational program success, a rewarding career that follows that first job can be another and even greater measure of educational success. Some programs just want to get you into the workforce. Other programs aim to send you to the top of your field in a long and distinguished career. It may take you a while, but if you eventually stand among the leaders in your field, based on a career of special commitment and excellence, then you’ve got another measure of your educational success. Your education may only be a platform for your career development. But for an especially distinguished career, you’ll need a solid education. Credit your education at least in part for your distinguished career.

Relationships

Education isn’t entirely about attaining more education or about getting a good job or having a good career. Education can also have social goals. The character you acquire through education, the relationships you form in school, and the relationships you carry out of school and through life can be just as significant or more significant than your educational and vocational achievements. Many students meet their future spouse or even marry and have their first children while still in college, the university, or a graduate program. Whatever career success your education may or may not provide you, if your education introduces you to a beloved spouse with whom you have a great relationship and life, then what more could you really demand of your education? Even if you don’t meet a spouse, you may form lifelong friendships with college roommates or with classmates who accompanied you through your program. You may also meet inspiring mentors whose character you model for a lifetime. If you can claim deep relationships out of your education, then you have another valuable measure of success.

Standing

You may be looking for concrete measures of success from your education, like the above examples. Yet education can do less-measurable things for you that are nonetheless significant. Educational attainment can give you standing of a sort. If you are a high school graduate, you have attained a basic credential that makes you the educational equal of a very large number of citizens and second to no citizen in fundamental rights. If you earn a college degree, no one and nothing can take from you that you met every challenge of higher education to achieve its basic measure. Earning a graduate or professional degree can place you among a relatively select population of persevering individuals with specialized knowledge and skills. Standing of this sort may not put a roof over your head and bread on your table, but it can give you the confidence that you are capable of navigating the world effectively. Hold your head high for whatever level of education you achieve. Education can give you valuable standing.

Growth

Perhaps the most-intrinsic measure of educational success, though, is that you have grown by persevering in and completing your program. Your growth may be in general or specialized knowledge. Your growth may be in general or technical skills. Your growth may be in character, virtue, and ethics. Or you may have acquired social or relational skills, grown in confidence, and matured in poise and personality as a result of your education. You may now be able to handle things that you once could not handle, manage relationships and tasks that you once could not manage, and discern wisdom that you once could not see. You may now be able to appreciate art, music, theater, philosophy, politics, religion, history, literature, science, or other subjects that you once disdained. Appreciate most deeply whatever positive growth you’ve seen out of your education because growth in your person and capacities may be your greatest educational attainment.

Reflection

What has been your biggest achievement through your education? What has your education made possible that you could not have done or been without it? What success have you yet to achieve for which you are depending on your education? Do you see any significant obstacle to that success, other than continuing to persevere through your education? Can you do anything to improve your likelihood of achieving that success you most wish, beyond persevering in your education? Have you won academic honors or awards? Can you do something with respect to your studies to increase the likelihood of future academic awards, if academic awards might mean something to you? Do you look forward to your graduation? Do you have any special graduation plans? If not, consider making some plans. You’ll have earned it. Are you expecting your current program to qualify you for another program? If so, how do those prospects currently look? Can you do anything to improve those prospects? Do you expect to get a job out of your current educational program? If so, what do the employment statistics look like for graduates of your program? Can you do anything now in your program to increase your likelihood of rewarding future employment? Do you value your school social relationships? Can you see any of those relationships persisting and even growing beyond graduation? If so, should you be doing something now to foster those relationships? 

Key Points

• You can measure your educational attainment in several ways.

• Advancing steadily through program levels indicates basic success.

• Earning academic honors is a clear mark of program success.

• Looking forward to graduation can motivate program engagement.

• Gaining admission to your next preferred program is clear success.

• Getting a rewarding job right after graduation is practical success.

• You may attribute your distinguished career to educational success.

• School success can also involve forming rewarding relationships.

• Your increased standing within your community is another success.

• Your growth in capacity may be your greatest educational attainment.