When asked to describe an ideal student, both lecturers and learners agreed it’s not the academic results and IQ that count, but rather hard work, enthusiasm, punctuality, and being organized.

What does an ideal student look like?

The recent survey conducted among the British scholars has found true criteria of what makes an “excellent student”, ScienceDaily.com has reported. The qualities that respondents choose for a beau ideal were diligence, self-discipline, organization, and punctuality, which trumped other expected attributes such as intelligence, academic skills, and employability.

When asked to define the most and least valuable abilities of an “exemplary student” and rank those in order of their importance the majority gave precedence to the attributes expected to be less important than others. The results showed that it is not the high IQ and excellent grades that topped the list but quite different abilities such as hard work and involvement in the process.

• “Discipline and self-organization” were ranked as the second pair of the most essential skills for a student. This generic term involves ideas of being motivated, self-controlled, preparatory, and obedient to the institutional rules.
• “Academic abilities” and “employability skills” didn’t seem of high importance for the vast majority of interviewees. The answerers didn’t think that critical reflection, presentation skills, and usage of statistics have the utmost significance at all. A similar attitude was towards the student’s employability and the corresponding skills like sociability or work experience, which are highly valued by the employers.

The most unimportant attribute for both students and the staff was “high intellect and strategic outlook”.

Dr. Billy Wong, the co-author of the research and the Associate Professor of Education of the University of Reading, points out, “It appears that mental capacity, strategic thinking and the student degree results are not among the most important abilities as it used to be thought.  Surprisingly, both groups of respondents appraised these skills as the least appreciated ones placing them at the very bottom of the list”.

“Discipline and self-organization” were ranked as the second pair of the most essential skills for a student.

Top qualities

Here’s what the eventual listing looked like after all the survey results were summarized:

1. Hard work and engagement
2. Discipline and self-organization
3. Innovation and cogitation
4. Positive and confident attitude
5. Supportive and helpful to others = showing support and providing assistance
6. Academic abilities
7. Employability
8. High intellect and strategic outlook

But if we check the answers of each group separately, we can see that different qualities were ranked by each group a bit differently.

Having a “confident and positive outlook”, for example, was rated as only the sixth by the lecturers but the third by their wards. As for the “employability” attribute, it was valued by students a bit higher than by the staff.

According to the researchers, this slight discrepancy in the opinions of the two surveyed groups was pretty foreseeable. Self-confidence and optimism have always been highly valued by the young generation, whether in school, university, or other spheres.

“They are important characteristics responsible for the student balance of mind”, explains Dr. Wong.

“Mental and emotional stability of a student should be our top priority, especially now when we observe a higher workload of counselling and mental health services.  Educators should pay more attention to this important area. Filling in the gaps in the staff training would eventually benefit the parties involved and the society as a whole”, concluded the professor.

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