Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

What other personal qualities matter?
To find out, Willingham’s team followed several thousand students for five years, beginning in
their senior year of high school.
At the start of the study, college application materials, questionnaires, writing samples, interviews,
and school records were collected for each student. This information was used to produce numerical
ratings for 
more than one hundred
different personal characteristics. These included family
background variables, like parent occupation and socioeconomic status, as well as self-declared
career interests, motivation for a college degree, educational goals, and many more.
Then, as the students progressed through college, objective measures of success were collected
across three broad categories: First, did the student distinguish him or herself academically? Next, as
a young adult, did this individual demonstrate leadership? And, finally, to what extent could these
young men and women point to a significant accomplishment in science and technology, the arts,
sports, writing and speaking, entrepreneurism, or community service?
In a sense, the Personal Qualities Project was a horse race. Each of the hundred-plus measures at
the start of the study could have ended up as the strongest predictor of later success. It’s clear from
reading the first report, completed several years before the final data were collected, that Willingham
was entirely dispassionate on the issue. He methodically described each variable, its rationale for
being included, how it was measured, and so on.
But when all the data were finally in, Willingham was unequivocal and emphatic about what he’d
learned. One horse did win, and by a long stretch: 
follow-through
.
This is how Willingham and his team put a number on it: “The follow-through rating involved
evidence of purposeful, continuous commitment to certain types of activities (in high school) versus
sporadic efforts in diverse areas.”
Students who earned a top follow-through rating participated in two different high school
extracurricular activities for several years each and, in both of those activities, advanced significantly
in some way (e.g., becoming editor of the newspaper, winning MVP for the volleyball team, winning
a prize for artwork). As an example, Willingham described a student who was “on his school
newspaper staff for three years and became managing editor, and was on the track team for three
years and ended up winning an important meet.”

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In contrast, students who hadn’t participated in a single multiyear activity earned the lowest
possible follow-through rating. Some students in this category didn’t participate in any activities at
all in high school. But many, many others were simply itinerant, joining a club or team one year but
then, the following year, moving on to something entirely different.
The predictive power of follow-through was striking: After controlling for high school grades and
SAT scores, follow-through in high school extracurriculars predicted graduating from college with
academic honors better than any variable. Likewise, follow-through was the single best predictor of
holding an appointed or elected leadership position in young adulthood. And, finally, better than any
of the more than one hundred personal characteristics Willingham had measured, follow-through
predicted notable accomplishments for a young adult in all domains, from the arts and writing to
entrepreneurism and community service.
Notably, the 
particular
pursuits to which students had devoted themselves in high school didn’t
matter—whether it was tennis, student government, or debate team. The key was that students had
signed up for