So I have heard time and time again from nursing professors and clinical adjuncts that "4.0 students often have a hard time transitioning to the floor, B or C students make better nurses". While I totally get that there are some people out there that are so cerebral that they don't do well on the floor, I think this blanket statement is a bunch of bunk.
I bring this up because I am a 4.0 student. I am also involved in clubs and student groups, volunteer outside of school, and often get complimented in clinicals. However, even with that I still hear the comment over and over that A students don't make as good of nurses as B and C nurses.
What do you nurses who are actually out there on the floor think?
Grades don't mean as much to me as does application and critical thinking.
However, the drive it takes to get those good grades comes in awful hand in any career.
BTW - med schools and lawyers graduate B & C students, too, who pass the boards. That argument is a fallacy.
My D starts law school in the fall. She has met with several attorneys to get their advice on school, life after passing the bar, etc. Every single one of them has emphasized how important it is to make top grades. She has been told she needs to either graduate in the top 10% of her class, hold an important post in the Law Review, or excel and be at the very very top (higher than top 10%) of the class in a particular field of law if she wants to be hired in a good job at a good firm at a decent salary.
There is a glut of lawyers right now, so grades are very important in Law.
The whole "if you make straight As in nursing school, you can't be clinically competent" line is and has always been total bunk.
As for B and C students, when I graduated, an A was 90 and up, B was 80 and up, C was 70 and up, and everything below 70 was failing. So someone making a C was someone who was clearly struggling and not likely to be the star in clinicals either.
True story. My uncle was on a hiring committee to hire engineers for a certain position. They hired the people with the best grades from top universities. The engineers they hired had a huge turnover rate. The brilliant new guys wanted to do original design, not keep the wheels of industry turning. The job they were hired for did not satisfy their desire to create and shine like stars do.
Eventually the hiring committee realized that the highest priority they were looking for in a job candidate was a strong work ethic. They looked for people who had worked their way through school, but did not necessarily have top grades. The turnover rate went way down when the job was well-matched to the person.
Nursing, at the entry level is a lot like this.
Please do not insinuate that those with high grades do not have work ethics. I had a 3.9 at graduation, I did very well in clinicals, and according to my last annual evaluation I show excellent clinical judgment, interpersonal skills, and natural leadership qualities. Just because I earned high grades does not mean I can't do my job as a floor nurse.
I'm tired of this tripe being peddled over and over, even by instructors! The damage it can do to a newly minted RN/LPN with high grades and mild insecurity... Can anyone explain to me why nursing, as a profession, would want to *encourage* lower grades at graduation?! Yeesh.
Please do not insinuate that those with high grades do not have work ethics. I had a 3.9 at graduation, I did very well in clinicals, and according to my last annual evaluation I show excellent clinical judgment, interpersonal skills, and natural leadership qualities. Just because I earned high grades does not mean I can't do my job as a floor nurse.
I'm tired of this tripe being peddled over and over, even by instructors! The damage it can do to a newly minted RN/LPN with high grades and mild insecurity... Can anyone explain to me why nursing, as a profession, would want to *encourage* lower grades at graduation?! Yeesh.
I hope they don't. I feel that it just means there are more ways to skin a cat. I was a solid B student in Nursing School, which was a bitter pill to me after graduating summa cum laude for my Psych degree, but my strength was always clinical. Always. I was able to translate what I learned in school to actual practice pretty seamlessly.
In my little group from nursing school, the one A student is no longer a nurse, quit the first year, the other A student is a Supervisor. The other B student (like me) has her Masters and is an adjunct Prof. and was my NM for awhile on Oncology. The C student is an LD nurse. We are a mixed bag. The best nurse, IMO, out of my friends (besides me? ) is the Onc. nurse.
Good grades are always good. Always.
Like someone else here said, maybe "less than" is touted to students to show them that's not only what it is about.
Please do not insinuate that those with high grades do not have work ethics. I had a 3.9 at graduation, I did very well in clinicals, and according to my last annual evaluation I show excellent clinical judgment, interpersonal skills, and natural leadership qualities. Just because I earned high grades does not mean I can't do my job as a floor nurse.
I'm tired of this tripe being peddled over and over, even by instructors! The damage it can do to a newly minted RN/LPN with high grades and mild insecurity... Can anyone explain to me why nursing, as a profession, would want to *encourage* lower grades at graduation?! Yeesh.
I didn't get that from the post; I got that in this example there are people out there who may have less than a 4.0 who have a strong work ethic, a less than tradition background that overcame challenges where they were willing to do the work; where ever their talent pool they were drawing from reflected that some of their top tier candidates thought that their high grades would transcend into a higher position. I have had a few nursing peers who had this as an idea because of their high GPA.
Just for balance, I'd like to add that their was 1 person in my nursing school who was the awful kind of 4.0 student. She was in her late 40's, bragged endlessly about her great grades, we got to clinical and she put a catheter in someone's bum. So...
For real though, I don't think grades make a difference in your clinical performance. The type of person that you are, will drive the type of nurse that you will become. I always did hate all of the grade comparing that went on in nursing school. My little group was happy to say "Well, I didn't fail" that was our go to, didn't matter if you got 99% or 73% as long as you didn't fail!
Ok so I haven't heard ANYONE recommend intentionally lowering grades. I also have not heard ANYONE implying that A students are all my default incompetent. The ascertain here to my understanding is that excellent grades do not necessarily lead to clinical skills or vice versa for average grades.
So I have heard time and time again from nursing professors and clinical adjuncts that "4.0 students often have a hard time transitioning to the floor, B or C students make better nurses". While I totally get that there are some people out there that are so cerebral that they don't do well on the floor, I think this blanket statement is a bunch of bunk.
I bring this up because I am a 4.0 student. I am also involved in clubs and student groups, volunteer outside of school, and often get complimented in clinicals. However, even with that I still hear the comment over and over that A students don't make as good of nurses as B and C nurses.
What do you nurses who are actually out there on the floor think?
OP: When I was in nursing school, I received the same sort of message from the instructors. I graduated in the top 5% of my nursing school. Here's what I had heard:
"A lot of the time students who are really book smart like you are have difficulty with the practical skills."
"What we're asking is for you to dumb down the careplans a little bit."
These ignorant comments are highly pervasive in nursing school unfortunately.
This whole thing doesn't make any sense at all, what would be the reason that a student who does well in academics doesn't do well in clinicals or doesn't do well once licensed? I think if anyone is going around saying that top students only make so-so nurses they are probably just trying to make themselves feel better because they did so-so in school and now believe they are outstanding nurses! I've worked with more than one nurse who felt she was terrific at nursing but who definitely wasn't. Maybe they thought that since they did Eh in school they could make up for it by being Best on the floor but it simply wasn't true! So-so student can be so-so nurse, bad nurse, good nurse. Great student can be great nurse, so-so nurse, bad nurse.
A Students Don't Make Good Nurses. Ask your instructor where is the data that makes this stupid statement true? Answer is Nowhere, because it's garbage!
- a professor telling med school students that mediocre students make better doctors
- a law firm saying that they prefer "B" or "C" students, because they make better lawyers
- a recruiter saying the company wants to hire "B" or "C" students because they make better engineers
Being an "A" student doesn't guarantee that someone will transition well to a job, but it is a good indication that the person is capable of learning and knows how to work hard.
It is a weird quirk in nursing that we tolerate ludicrous aphorisms like this from our own academics.
To me, this idea falls right in with other self-defeating, anti-intellectual, and masochistic features in nursing cultures and personalities like those who will follow policy without thought, the meme that more documenting is always better, or the idea that people should "shut up and stop whining" about unpaid missed lunches.
I'd also say "smart" students may be more likely to dislike the day to day duties of nursing and have a tougher time just because they don't like the job. I'm saying this to represent people who are just like me, not good students in general. I enjoyed nursing school because I loved learning about all the pharmacology, physiology, treatments, etc. Nursing school was all about learning huge amounts of material quickly, thinking critically, and making decisions, and I really enjoyed that. Real world nursing is maybe 20% critical thinking of the type I enjoyed and more like 80% turning, cleaning poop, sliding people up in the bed, finding more pillows, giving more pain medicine, and stopping the beeps.
The people who enjoy nursing school and get all As because they enjoy the thinking and reasoning parts of nursing school may find themselves very disappointed with the day to day tasks of nursing. The B and C students who went to nursing school because they wanted to take care of people are likely going to enjoy being nurses more because they finally get to stop studying all the book stuff and do the things they want to do. It's always easier to acclimate to doing things you like than things you don't like, which is where I could see a disconnect happening between the A students and the B/C students.
I've always thought of that as something B and C students tell themselves (or are told by others) so they feel better ...just like people say ASN nurses are better on the floor than BSN nurses. It's "everybody gets a trophy" type of thinking.
I disagree with this. I'm going to have my ASN and the last thing I think is I'm better than anybody. I'm also a B student and I don't think I'm any better than an A student. I don't tell myself anything to make myself feel better and I certainly don't believe in the everybody gets a trophy. I believe in the theory the best should be rewarded.
To the OP, I have had instructors say the same thing. I think it's because the personality type of the 4.0 student. Some, not all, tend to be very rigid and OCDish, which can make them more difficult to teach and adapt. They think the B or C student is a little more laid back.
I can see what they are saying to a point. But I also think the straight A student may work harder at adapting. I just think it's kind of like an Old Wives Tale that is not really true.
Congrats on your straight As in nursing school. That is awesome!!!
Horseshoe, BSN, RN
5,879 Posts
My D starts law school in the fall. She has met with several attorneys to get their advice on school, life after passing the bar, etc. Every single one of them has emphasized how important it is to make top grades. She has been told she needs to either graduate in the top 10% of her class, hold an important post in the Law Review, or excel and be at the very very top (higher than top 10%) of the class in a particular field of law if she wants to be hired in a good job at a good firm at a decent salary.
There is a glut of lawyers right now, so grades are very important in Law.
The whole "if you make straight As in nursing school, you can't be clinically competent" line is and has always been total bunk.
As for B and C students, when I graduated, an A was 90 and up, B was 80 and up, C was 70 and up, and everything below 70 was failing. So someone making a C was someone who was clearly struggling and not likely to be the star in clinicals either.