OP you're joking right? What has good grades got to do with managing your finances? Please stop it!
@tacpoly wrote:
@thom02099 wrote:A GPA, any GPA, shows how well a person takes a test. It does NOT necessarily indicate that said person is smarter than anyone else. Some folks do very well on tests, others not so much. My son is an example of that. Did terrible on tests, but he's very smart, learns quickly, and most importantly, has good ole' common sense. But Discover won't reward that. They did, however, reward my daughter who had that high GPA through college. But she's also smart. Just takes tests better than my son.
Ideally, a person's grade should reffect how well they understood the subject matter -- not how smart or how good a test taker they are. Most classes outside the hard sciences don't rely solely on exams for grading. This seems specially true now when students are coddled quite a bit more and given as much help to make their grade (even in the hard sciences -- I've had friends who, when they were TAs, were told they could not fail students).
And what does being a "better test taker" mean, anyway? I scored well on standardized tests (consistently top 2%) because I knew the material, had good reading comprehension, a large vocabulary, and good logic skills, etc. I never took test prep classes so never employed test "strategies" that they taught. While at uni I encountered so many different kinds of exams -- blue book essays (questions NOT given in advance), long form answers, proofs, oral, fill-in-the-blank, take-home, even a multiple choice -- some I liked better than others, but all asked what had I learned. I did well when I understood the material, not when I didn't, so I worked to understand my subjects. To simply say that someone "just takes tests better" doesn't give them enough credit.
Ideally, yes. I don't disagree with this at all, we are in complete agreement. But there are many factors involved in taking a test and how well one does. Even when well prepared, the test taker can have anxiety issues or nervousness about taking the test. They can go into panic mode and completely blank out. They can second guess themselves, or lose track of the time available to take the test, and fall behind. And then you have students that skim over the subject matter, may or may not retain the information, and still go in and ace the test. They (some of them) have an inate ability to take tests with minimal preparation. They may or may not be aware of the psychology of test design and take advantage of that. Or they are simply lucky. There's a degree of luck involved for some folks, particularly with certain types of tests. All of this, and more, is what I was meaning when I said some folks are better test takers.
But that's what this is about...credit. And no one should be given more latitude in the OP's original question about why academic performance isn't weighted more heavily in finance and credit reporting. Why should someone with a higher GPA, or even the existence of a GPA, get extra consideration, aside from the marketing aspect already mentioned in a previous post? Many folks don't have a GPA at all, for a variety of reasons. And as others also pointed out, having a high GPA doesn't necessarily mean that you're any better at managing finances as someone with a lower or non-existent GPA.
Even considering a GPA as a factor for granting credit could also be considered discriminatory, giving that person an advantage in credit beyond someone without a GPA. Heck, I haven't had a GPA in over 45 years; should a lender however, look back 45 years for that GPA to determine if I'm creditworthy? I sure as heck hope not! I wasn't a great student back in the 60s. But over the years, I learned a heck of a lot more than any test ever taught me in college. Given what I know now, I could probably ace some of those tests that I took and did so miserably on way back then.
Update:Lenny credit builder app uses GPA .
Starting Score: Ex08-732,Eq08-713,Tu08-717