You're speaking from anecdotal life experience. My anecdotal life experience tends to disagree with several of the points you have made.
I'm writing solely from the perspective of and about the top ~5% of a high school class. I assume that students taking the time to weigh the human capital growth prospects vs. the signaling benefits of an opportunity belong to this class
Bad assumption, even when only taking into account similar schools and demographics to the one you attended. I did make exactly this sort of cost-benefit calculation in high school and I was only above average and not close to the top 5% when it came to GPA. To avoid having you attribute this to low intelligence, I'll also mention that I was in the top 1% when it came to standardized test scores. I attribute this to the fact that GPA primarily measures organization, conscientiousness, working memory,and signalling while test scores primarily measure English verbal and quantitative proficiency.
What I'm against is a student using signaling benefits as a deciding factor in any amount when selecting extracurriculars, classes, etc
I paid zero attention to signalling in high school. I'd engage in auto-didactic activities such as browsing google-scholar and reading stuff which interested me in favor of working on my assignments. I signed up for all of the most challenging classes because I knew that in the competition between regular course X and AP course X, the AP course would be more fun, more interesting, teach me more, and suck up roughly equal time. For the same amount of studying, a high level course will give you a lower grade but more knowledge. I didn't even think about my GPA - I didn't even bother keep track of how many points I had in my classes. I had a terribly single-minded focus on learning...because signalling was just too damn boring to bother with. To this day I still struggle to force myself into putting up adequately strong signalling, even when it's dull. Not signalling adequately is akrasia, it is bad, don't do it.
I was one of very few among the top 1% of my class who didn't force themselves into AP US History, AP Chemistry
Right, but that means you took non-AP History and non-AP chemistry courses. You could have chosen to take the AP classes and simply spend the same amount of time studying for them as you would for the non-AP equivalent , and been content with a lower grade because you learned more about the material. If you weren't signalling at all, why would you ever take a lower level course if you have the prerequisite knowledge to understand the higher course?
If it takes 5 hrs/wk to get an A in AP english and 2 hrs/wk to get an A in regular English, you can (but shouldn't!) still just spend 2 hrs/wk on AP english, get a B-, and still learn more than you would have with an A in regular English.
Forget about how "significant" or "impressive" this issue might look on paper to an admissions officer.
So when I started college (due to my GPA, it was not a high-flying Ivy league) and started taking courses, when it came to the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and sociology I had already read much of the original research off of which the material was based. Some of the professors I encountered felt like celebrities because I had happened to read one of their papers once. Of course, this didn't help me at all when it came to introductory courses where most of the material was memorization, but now that I'm taking upper level courses dealing with primary source material it's finally beginning to pay off. But even now, those introductory courses are leeching my GPA, and are going to effect my graduate admissions process.
So lets return to high school: how exactly do I put: "For the past three years I've I spend hours every day reading primary literature and so I am intimately familiar with how science is done, but you'll just have to take my word on that" on a transcript without sounding completely lame? That might fly in grad school interviews, but your average undergraduate admissions officer probably doesn't understand why this is a really valuable and rare thing for a high school student to do. They're thinking, "Yeah, my kid reads Scientific American too, big deal". The fact that I won several science fairs, which should actually be the much less impressive accomplishment, probably helped my resume more than all my reading combined.
Evidence of a true passion can show through in application essays, and will mean more than 10 club presidencies or 50 letters of recommendation. Rip out of the chains of high school and do something that you're passionate about!
So here's what I see: You are someone who followed their passions and excelled in school, and you think doing well in school is about passion. I am someone who followed his passions and did above average in school (an underachiever relative to what IQ-proxy standardized tests expected), and I thought doing well in school was about signalling.
Here's my updated conclusion after reading your story: some people have natural passions which take them in a direction that happens to cause good signalling - passions which cause them to succeed in school and get admitted into high level colleges. Such people like the system and tend to feel that its indicators are good and honest. Others have natural passions which take time away from signalling activities, and these people perceive a constant strain between signalling and passion. Such people tend to think that the system has perverse incentive structures.
I didn't often connect this work with college admissions, however.
And that's the crux of it. You did signal optimally, and the fact that you didn't signal optimally on purpose doesn't change that.
See, when your passions just happen lead to high GPA and good resumes, you don't need conscientiousness-ly cultivated signalling behavior. This is why you are advising others to simply do what comes naturally.
For the rest of us - if you want to get into a high level university, I'd advise you to keep signalling, or switch into a different set of incentive structures (homeschooling, alternative schools, etc).
Some of the professors I encountered felt like celebrities because I had happened to read one of their papers once. Of course, this didn't help me at all when it came to introductory courses where most of the material was memorization, but now that I'm taking upper level courses dealing with primary source material it's finally beginning to pay off. But even now, those introductory courses are leeching my GPA, and are going to effect my graduate admissions process.
Admission to graduate school is easy to hack, especially if you know the people in the fie...
During high school, students learn skills that will help them in their future careers. This can be referred to as building human capital. They also build up a record of grades, standardized test scores, and extracurricular activities that colleges use to assess whether to admit them. This can be referred to as signaling quality to colleges.
High schoolers engage in valuable activities that fall outside of these two categories, such as personally enjoyable activities and helping others. This article focuses on building human capital and signaling quality to colleges, for the sake of simplicity, rather than because I think that these are the only two things that matter.
In an ideal world, building human capital would be perfectly aligned with signaling quality to colleges. In the real world, this is not the case. Consider the following story:
Kevin is an ambitious high school student who aspires to become a molecular biologist.
Kevin attends a competitive high school, where a student is awarded an extra GPA point for each honors or AP course that he or she takes. The maximum number of grade points that a student can get taking a “regular” course is 4.0 and the maximum number of grade points that a student can get for taking an honors or AP course is 5.0 A student who gets all A’s and takes at least one honors or AP course gets a GPA that’s greater than 4.0 so that taking a “regular” course reduces his or her GPA. GPA determines class rank, so taking a “regular” course lowers such a student’s class rank.
Kevin’s school offers a molecular biology elective during second semester, which is not an honors or AP course. Kevin would like to take the elective during the second semester of his junior year, in addition to his other coursework, but he knows that doing so would lower his GPA, so he decides not to. Kevin ends up with a class rank in the top 1%, contrasting with a class rank in the top 5% if he had taken the molecular biology course. Because he’s in the top 1%, he’s accepted at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT, and this would not have happened had he only been in the top 5%.
Kevin chooses to attend Stanford. The summer after his freshman year there, he works as a molecular biology research intern, and performs worse than he would have if he had taken molecular biology in high school.
This story shows how there can be a tension between building human capital and signaling quality to colleges. Kevin’s choice enabled him to get into a better college than he would otherwise have been able to get into, but it came at the cost of lowering the quality of his future work.
Imperfect measurement and perverse incentives
In Kevin’s story, the class ranking system was poorly designed: it rewarded some students for achieving less rather than for achieving more. The colleges that Kevin applied to were relying on a faulty measure of quality.
All measures of quality are imperfect to varying degrees. Because they’re imperfect, they sometimes assign somebody higher quality for making a choice that actually lowers his or her quality relative to what it otherwise would be. Once people catch on to this, they feel pressure to make such choices.
Imperfections of measures of college applicant quality
Class rank at Kevin’s high school is an imperfect measure of the strength of students’ academic transcripts. This is only one of many examples of imperfection in the measures that colleges use to assess student quality. Some more examples come from:
Each factor gives rise to situations in which students aren’t able to signal quality to college by doing certain activities that would raise their human capital more than the activities that do signal quality to colleges.
Some activities that build human capital also signal quality to colleges. But it’s important to recognize that building human capital isn’t the same thing as signaling quality to colleges. Many activities that build human capital don’t signal quality to colleges, and many activities that signal quality to colleges have negligible value from the point of view of building human capital.
What to do about it?
Having acknowledged that there’s a tension between building human capital and signaling quality to colleges, one is faced with the question of what to do about it. Concretely, in the story above, did Kevin make the right choice? Should he have taken the molecular biology elective?
Exploring other options can sometimes resolve tensions
Of those activities that build human capital to a given degree, some signal quality to colleges more than others. Of those activities that signal quality to colleges to a given degree, some build human capital more than others.
Sometimes when there seems to be a tension between building human capital and signaling quality to colleges, one can resolve the tension by being imaginative and resourceful. In the story, Kevin could have considered possibilities such as
If Kevin had been able to do these things, he could have learned some molecular biology without having to sacrifice his class rank.
Tradeoffs between building human capital and college admissions
Sometimes there’s no possibility of resolving the tension, so that imagination and resourcefulness don’t suffice. One does have to make tradeoffs.
In Kevin’s situation, the choice isn’t just “molecular biology vs. no molecular biology,” but “molecular biology vs. everything else that could be done within that time slot.” Putting aside the issue of taking molecular biology lowering Kevin’s GPA, there might be other activities that would signal quality to colleges better than learning molecular biology.
There are two inputs into thinking about how to make tradeoffs in this context:
The answer to the question of how a given individual can best balance building human capital and signaling quality to colleges depends very heavily on the details of individual’s situation: his or her values, his or her goals, and the opportunities that are available to him or her.
Though there’s not an easy answer to the question of how to best balance building human capital and signaling quality to college, it’s helpful to explicitly recognize the distinction between two things, and the tradeoffs involved. The first step to resolving a tension is recognizing that it’s there.
For commenters
I’m primarily interested in feedback involving signaling as it relates to undergraduate admissions (as opposed to, e.g. signaling in the context of romantic courtship), but I’d welcome related observations about signaling to graduate school or employers based on high school or college coursework.
What’s an example from your own life where building human capital and signaling quality to colleges have come into conflict? How did you resolve the conflict? Do you think you made the right choice? Is there anything you would have done differently?
Thanks to Vipul Naik for conversations that lead to this post, and to Luke Muehlhauser for feedback.