[cctop]

But there's also the flip side of that; the brilliant but lazy kid who just never put in the work.  The lore among Stanford admissions officers was that absent a good reason (like one of the examples Marty mentioned), when they got a kid with high SAT but low GPA that it would be a red flag that this was an applicant who wasn't maximizing their potential.  I wonder, when there is a significant mismatch between GPA and test scores, what accounts for it.

Instead of "brilliant and lazy", I think a more likely description is "brilliant and bored".

The smartest guy I've ever known -- and I include all the people I met at Stanford -- was a C student at my high school. I think he just couldn't be bothered to do homework.

He was the secret weapon on our school's Academic Decathlon team, which had to be composed of two A, two B, and two C students.

[cctop]

But there's also the flip side of that; the brilliant but lazy kid who just never put in the work.  The lore among Stanford admissions officers was that absent a good reason (like one of the examples Marty mentioned), when they got a kid with high SAT but low GPA that it would be a red flag that this was an applicant who wasn't maximizing their potential.  I wonder, when there is a significant mismatch between GPA and test scores, what accounts for it.

Instead of "brilliant and lazy", I think a more likely description is "brilliant and bored".

The smartest guy I've ever known -- and I include all the people I met at Stanford -- was a C student at my high school. I think he just couldn't be bothered to do homework.

He was the secret weapon on our school's Academic Decathlon team, which had to be composed of two A, two B, and two C students.