Got Grit?

What is grit?  Grit has been defined by researchers in slightly different but consistent ways.  It is hard work plus dedication, perseverance and persistence in the face of adversity, passion for long term goals, or Gladwell’s 10,000 hours plus a little bit of fanaticism.  

Grit has made its way into contemporary research because we cannot really explain success, especially in college environments. We would like to believe that High School GPA, SAT, and class rank are good predictors of performance because they are so-called objective measures of intelligence. However these metrics explain only a very small portion of the academic performance story. This means that there is a lot about performance and achievement that we cannot explain with these traditional measures of merit. Education speaker Paul Tough suggests that a portion of this can be explained by grit.  He argues that the higher you score on the grit scale, the greater your grit, and the greater your chances of achieving your future goals. 

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, college success requires initiative and persistence, i.e. grit. This is causing many colleges to think beyond non-cognitive measures to capture grit.