Your GPA Doesn't Matter (But Your Friends Do)

I've been thinking about why people quit STEM degrees lately¹. You know that conventional wisdom that says smart kids succeed and everyone else drops out? Yeah, turns out that's complete nonsense.

A couple years back, the National Science Foundation published this fascinating study comparing first-year dropouts, fourth-year dropouts, and graduates in STEM fields. What they found shocked exactly no one who actually paid attention in college: there was practically no difference in GPA between these groups.

Let that sink in for a second. The students who dropped out in their first year? Similar grades to the ones who graduated. The ones who made it all the way to senior year before calling it quits? Same story.

So what was the difference? One factor stood out above everything else: whether your social circle was within your major.

The Social Integration Factor

This actually makes perfect sense if you think about your own college experience². When I was in college, the students who thrived weren't necessarily the ones with the highest raw intelligence or best study habits. They were the ones who:

• Participated in study groups they regularly met with
• Felt comfortable asking professors and TAs questions
• Participated in departmental events and clubs (or in my case, CREATED the clubs, even if they were not major related)³
• Had older student mentors in their program

It's exactly what a 2024 study on STEM Intervention Programs found – students with similar incoming GPAs had wildly different persistence rates based on their sense of belonging. Give a student a community, and suddenly differential equations seem less terrifying.

But Wait, Doesn't GPA Matter At All?

I'm not saying grades are meaningless. If you're consistently failing classes, that's obviously a problem. But the research suggests GPA alone is a pretty terrible predictor of who will make it through a STEM program.

A 2023 study on "pathways of opportunity" in STEM highlighted that social factors explain retention disparities far better than academic performance alone. When you control for social integration, the GPA differences often vanish.

Here's what I think is happening: it's not that grades don't matter, it's that they're a symptom, not the cause. Poor grades often reflect a student who feels disconnected, overwhelmed, or like they don't belong – all social factors at their core.

The Obvious Implications That No One Implements

If we actually took this research seriously, we'd completely redesign how STEM programs work:

1. We'd evaluate professors not just on their research output, but on how well they build community
2. We'd structure courses to require meaningful collaboration, not just individual performance
3. We'd create spaces and events specifically designed to foster those crucial social connections
4. We'd recognize that "weeding out" students is usually just code for "we're bad at teaching and don't want to fix it"

But universities are still mostly fixated on test scores and grades, because they're easy to measure and they let faculty avoid the messy, complicated work of building community.

What This Means For You

If you're in a STEM program right now (or have a kid who is), the lesson is clear: prioritize building your social network within your major. Join the clubs, attend the department events, form the study groups, get to know your professors. Your GPA might benefit, but more importantly, your likelihood of actually making it through will skyrocket.

And if you're an educator or administrator in STEM, maybe it's time to stop obsessing over test scores and start thinking about how to create environments where students feel like they belong.

After all, science itself is fundamentally a social activity. We just pretend it isn't to seem more impressive at parties.