Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

or third activity, please leave those rows blank:
Activity
Grade levels of participation 9-10-11-12
Achievements, awards, leadership positions, if any
Following Willingham’s lead, my research team calculated Grit Grid scores by quantifying
multiyear commitment and advancement in up to two activities.
Specifically, each activity students did for two years or more earned a grit point; activities
students did for only one year earned no points and weren’t scored further. Activities that students
pursued for 
multiple
years and in which they could point to some kind of advancement (for example,
member of the student government one year and treasurer the next) each earned a second point.
Finally, when advancement could reasonably be deemed “high” versus just “moderate” (president of
the student body, MVP of the basketball team, employee of the month), we awarded a third grit point.
In sum, students could score anywhere from zero on the Grit Grid (if they’d participated in no
multiyear commitments at all) to six points (if they pursued two different multiyear commitments and,
in both, demonstrated high achievement).
As expected, we found that students with higher Grit Grid scores rated themselves higher in grit,
and so did their teachers.
Then we waited.
After graduating from high school, students in our sample ended up at dozens of colleges
throughout the country. After two years, only 34 percent of the 1,200 students in our study were
enrolled in a two- or four-year college. Just as we expected, the odds of staying in school depended
heavily on Grit Grid scores: 69 percent of students who scored 6 out of 6 on the Grit Grid were still
in college. In contrast, just 16 percent of students who scored 0 out 6 were still on track to get their
college degrees.

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In a separate study, we applied the same Grit Grid scoring system to the college extracurriculars of
novice teachers. The results were strikingly similar. Teachers who, in college, had demonstrated
productive follow-through in a few extracurricular commitments were more likely to stay in teaching
and, furthermore, were more effective in producing academic gains in their students. In contrast,
persistence and effectiveness in teaching had absolutely no measurable relationship with teachers’
SAT scores, their college GPAs, or interviewer ratings of their leadership potential.
Considered together, the evidence I’ve presented so far could be interpreted in two different ways.
I’ve been arguing that extracurricular activities are a way for young people to practice, and therefore
develop passion and perseverance, for long-term goals. But it’s also possible that following through
with extracurriculars is something only gritty people do. These explanations aren’t mutually
exclusive: it’s entirely possible that 
both
factors—cultivation and selection—are at play.
My best guess is that following through on our commitments while we grow up both 
requires
grit
and, at the same time, 
builds
it.
One reason I think so is that, in general, the situations to which people gravitate tend to enhance the
very characteristics that brought us there in the first place. This theory of personality development has
been dubbed the 
corresponsive principle
by Brent Roberts, the foremost authority on what leads to
enduring changes in how people think, feel, and act in different situations.
When Brent was a psychology graduate student at Berkeley, the prevailing view was that, after
childhood, personalities are more or less “set like plaster.” Brent and other personality researchers
have since collected enough longitudinal data—following, literally,