As a student, you work your hardest to be successful and get into a great college. After achieving that goal and starting college, the question may be, how hard do I have to try now? In college, it’s possible to get by with average grades and graduate, but it’s not an ideal situation for you to play out. In college, nobody is going to tell you to work harder, and meetings to discuss your grades may not be possible. It’s a realization that freedom is officially here, but it also signifies the need to take responsibility too. Therefore, college is all about pushing yourself to work hard and set up office hour appointments as needed. Getting in and attending college is not the last stop on the road to prosperity. Though it’s the toughest academic journey in your life, grades remain important in college, and can still influence many different aspects of your life.

College grades are only as important as YOU make them. They do reflect a lot about you without having to say it. It shows your work ethic, dedication, and desire to achieve greatness. You can get by and graduate with a 2.0 GPA, or you can use your grades as leverage to show your abilities to anyone, including employers, family, or even yourself. See, earning great grades in college reflects your personal growth, and is a testament to how far you have come in your life starting from pre-school. Think of it this way, why stop working hard in college when you have been working hard just to reach there? Four years of hard work in college is only a small fraction of your entire schooling. Though college work is substantially more tedious and effort-consuming, doing great is more confidence-boosting and rewarding.

If you work hard to get stellar grades in college, you are also developing practical skills for the real world that can be applied during your professional life. Though homework, tests, and some of the content you learned may not be applied in a job, skills such as dedication, being deadline-driven, focus, and motivation can be extracted and used in professional jobs. And since you have been working hard to achieve good grades in college, these skills will naturally become a part of your identity.

There is a difference between needing good grades in college versus wanting them. Needing good grades may be necessary for university athletic programs. Therefore, athletes must balance their academic life with their competitive side of life. Another scenario may be to maintain a scholarship. A scholarship can significantly lessen the stress and amount that comes with student loans, so maintaining top tier grades is a must.

Completely different from needing good grades is wanting them. You may want to get good grades in college because certain companies and their internship programs require a 3.0 GPA as a qualification, for example. It would be a tremendous benefit to maintain that 3.0 GPA right from the beginning of college, as opposed to trying to reach it the semester before you apply to an internship with this requirement. By earning decent grades and keeping a solid GPA, companies can realize your motivation, work ethic, and character. In another instance, you may want good grades to earn a spot on the Dean’s List or the prestigious President’s List. Earning honors and awards speak levels to your character and is a symbol of your hard work, but interpreting the importance of grades in college comes from different angles. Consider the personal benefits of being a solid student.

Grades take on a multi-dimensional meaning in college. It’s not like previous years of schooling where your averages would impact your ability to advance to the next grade or get into college. College is a time of freedom, and only you can make the most important decisions. Based on your goals in life, you must evaluate how grades will impact the present and the future.