Having both worked in a high school and a private tutoring center for the past few years, I’ve come to discover what I call the “DNA” of students who have 4.0s. But, before I can discuss how hard it is to get the coveted 4.0 GPA, it is important to provide some background information.

I base this information on everything I’ve learned both as a private tutor, educational consultant, and teacher at the high school and college levels. I myself had a rather unusual experience with academics in my school. I performed unusually well in English but had severe deficiencies in Mathematics. Thus, I never achieved anything higher than a 3.8 in my GPA. I also had to get audited and tested due to this; so, that was fun.

So, you may ask this: “Jason, you had an unusual academic upbringing considering your severe performance differences in English and Maths. What makes you qualified to talk about how hard it is to get a 4.0?”

Well, it is exactly because of my unusual circumstances and later experience teaching that brings me here. I also learned from teaching what the 4.0 student “DNA” seems to be. Thus, I would like to share those details with you and show you just how difficult it is to achieve that 4.0.

Also, if you came to this article for a quick “secret ninja technique” on how to get a 4.0 GPA fast, you’re in the wrong place. This article gets deep into the waters of the scientific perspectives on academic performance and how to use society’s modern understanding of the brain to paint a good idea of how hard it is to get a 4.0 GPA.

Though, if you came to this article looking for advice on how to improve your GPA to a 4.0 with the least amount of work, you may want to consider scheduling a private phone consultation with me. These things are possible; but, they are VERY dependent on your unique circumstances. So, it’s important to know more about you before I can give you better advice on how to get a 4.0.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Table of Contents

1. What is the “DNA” of a 4.0 GPA Student?
2. The Best Way to Earn a 4.0 GPA: Combining Point 3 and 4.
3. How Hard is it to Get a 4.0 GPA?
   • IQ Testing… For What It’s Worth.
   • Personality and Temperament. The Big 5 Personality Model and its Correlation With Academic Performance.
   • Learning Deficiencies.
   • Hard Work. Or, What Do You Mean by That?!
   • Incremental Progress and Patience.
   • Testing. Testing. Testing.

What is the “DNA” of a 4.0 GPA Student?

In my experience working with students both during their academic careers and during their college admissions processes, I’ve seen transcripts that reached the 4.0 range quite often. However, as I’ve had the chance to get to know more of these students, I realized that many of them fell under three of the following categories.

1. Those who cheated their way to a 4.0 GPA.
2. Those who had unusually talented or gifted minds carried them to a 4.0 naturally.
3. Those who had the money to pay for high-level tutoring and consulting.
4. Those who honed their own unique study and work habits through hard work.

For the sake of clarity, there’s not much to say about 1 and 2.

For 1, cheating your way into a 4.0 GPA is not something I recommend nor endorse. For number 2, I found students who were highly gifted or talented could earn a 4.0 GPA naturally and with seemingly no effort. These students were unusual, as even most high-performing students have to work hard. However, there is a small percentage of students who can learn and retain information very well. Usually, these students were audited, tested by psychologists, and determined to be unusually high in the IQ percentile.

So, in other words, they’re aliens. You don’t need to be an alien to earn a 4.0 GPA, though!

As such, we will be focusing on 3 and 4 of this section.

So, 3 and 4 are going to be our main focus. Let’s start with 3.

People who had a 4.0 due to specialized tutoring and consulting had unique training and services that would funnel them into a 4.0 GPA range. This does NOT mean they had typical tutoring that you would normally see. So, they didn’t get test prep help from chain tutoring centers like Elite Prep or ACI Learning. This does NOT mean these places are bad. In fact, these tutoring centers are actually quite great at helping students learn the content they missed. What we mean is that the tutoring they used was highly specialized and tailored to that unique student in particular.

On the other hand, there are those who earned a 4.0 GPA through hard work and honing their own unique study habits and techniques. This means they usually had to sacrifice social time, self-exploration, and personal teenage “things” in order to perform at the highest academic level. They also had to learn on their own what the best techniques and study skills were that would accommodate for their own unique learning temperaments and environments.

Now, most people make the mistake of thinking 4 is “better” than 3; or, vice versa. The reality is that these both have their own advantages and disadvantages. 3 helps students learn what works MUCH FASTER, but students have to rely on others. 4 takes MUCH LONGER, but helps students learn to develop some independence better than 3; plus, it’s cheaper!

In truth, we at PenningPapers find that what works best for students is actually to have a balance between 3 and 4. This intersection between the two points is what I realized helped students achieve a 4.0 in the best possible manner. It saves money without compromising academic performance. We’ll show you how to do exactly that in the next section below.

The Best Way to Earn a 4.0 GPA: Combining Point 3 and 4.

The best way to earn a 4.0 GPA is to combine two of our previous points. That is points 3 and 4: the former being investing in an academic consultant or tutor, and the latter being honing your work and study skills.

Now, we know what you must be thinking:

“Wait, you mean to say in order to earn a 4.0 I must spend money on some kind of tutoring or high-level academic consulting service?”

Well, no. Not really.

However, what we do mean is that the most optimal way to earn a 4.0 with the least amount of effort is to have a mix of paying for academic consulting and working hard on honing your own skill. Earning a 4.0 literally means earning perfect marks. It means nothing less than an A- can be earned.

So, getting to that level is next to impossible without external help from a professional tutor or academic advisor. I’m not saying it’s a prerequisite; but, from my experience as an academic advisor, I find it’s most helpful.

In addition, I recommend you find an academic advisor or tutor who can iron out you/your child’s insufficiencies and help you earn a 4.0 with minimal financial burden. Tutoring can sometimes be a nasty business. Thus, you need to be financially literate about how much it costs to get a 4.0.

Now, this gets tricky. The question would then become, “how much should I be paying for an academic advisor, tutor, or consultant to help me raise my GPA to a 4.0?”

And, well, as much as we’d like to say a lot because that would make us teachers and tutors a lot of money, the reality is actually quite surprising. Funnily enough, you can actually get away with very limited and minimal tutoring to reach a 4.0.

In fact, you actually want to minimize unnecessary tutoring and prep hours to ensure you maximize your GPA.

The more efficient and fewer hours spent on tutoring and outside prep, the better your performance will be (so long as you’re receiving quality tutoring and advising.)

Even weirder is that many students can actually get away with no tutoring at all. Instead, they can just remove their tutoring and just have an academic consultant brush up on their study and work habits. From there, students more often than not can actually learn content themselves enough to reach a 4.0.

We actually have this same process here at PenningPapers. It’s essentially a weekly GPA advising and consulting service that helps students iron out their insufficiencies to maximize their academic performance. If this is something you think you’d be interested in, feel free to contact us for a free phone consultation.

Now, we don’t want to denigrate the value of tutoring. Learning content in certain subjects from a tutor can certainly help certain students. However, from my experience, I’ve found that many students actually increased their performance dramatically by atomizing their subject-based tutoring and incorporating stress-free and light-loaded weekly consultations.

How Hard is it to Get a 4.0 GPA?

Alright, now let’s cover just how hard it is to get a 4.0 GPA.

As you may have already guessed, every student is built differently. Some have a natural proclivity for Mathematics, and others for Reading Comprehension and Writing articulation. Some have learning disabilities such as ADHD. Others have an easy time focusing but lack multitasking skills. Some students literally have temperamental proclivities that put them at a disadvantage in earning a high GPA.

We’re going to cover each of these elements and how they play into the difficulty of earning a 4.0.

IQ Testing… For What It’s Worth.

One of the variables with the highest correlation with academic performance is IQ.

No, this does not mean you can just take a TikTok IQ quiz generated by a preteen looking to get famous. No, clickbait IQ tests that take 10 minutes don’t work either. Typically, a real IQ test needs to be administered by an educational professional and a psychologist.

Sometimes, if students are unusually gifted, they will be pulled by their local institution and obligated to take such IQ tests. They’ll also receive a one-on-one test from a psychologist who will ask them questions to measure their performance.

IQ is relatively stable and unchanging. There are no tests or training one could take to increase IQ.

Now, how does this play into academic performance?

Those who are at a genius level of IQ should have no problem earning a 4.0, as their ability to process information is much faster and more fluid than most regular students. However, there are instances when such gifted students are lacking in other metrics that could prevent their ability to earn a 4.0.

Those who are at an average level of IQ, anywhere between 100-110, will need to work hard in school, train their work and study skills, and oftentimes receive extra help from educational consultants or tutors.

Those who have an IQ of below 100 will often find that earning a 4.0 is very, very difficult. The reason for this is that the processing capabilities of someone at the lower end of the IQ distribution are not built for handling the workload of the average high school or college level institution. Students will need to engage in active participation which demands active listening comprehension, complete course work on time, perform nearly perfectly on every test, and do so whilst juggling other courses.

Students with lower tested IQs aren’t doomed from the 4.0 range. However, they are certainly facing a much higher obstacle compared to those who were predisposed to a higher IQ level. Remember: IQ is not everything that goes into GPA. That’s why there are plenty of gifted students who cannot perform at the highest level and students struggling at the low end of IQ who can perform near or at the 4.0 range.

Personality and Temperament. The Big 5 Personality Model and its Correlation With Academic Performance.

Uh oh. Jason is getting scientific again…

Before you begin to let your eyes roll to the back of your head in boredom, remember that this is a crucial element that makes a big difference in academic performance. This section makes up a big portion of the reason why certain students cannot earn a 4.0 GPA.

It gets very scientific. But, that’s okay! I’ll translate all the Science jargon into English.

The Big 5 personality traits distinguish 5 temperamental personality dimensions.

1. Openness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extraversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism

These personality traits can play a major role in not just earning a 4.0 GPA, but also in academic performance as a whole. Openness dictates one’s, well, openness to experience. It is also correlated to a certain degree with one’s creativity. In certain instances, creativity can help students earn higher grades; however, creativity can also hinder academic performance because it makes students more likely to step outside the realm of convention and standardized academic requirements.

Conscientiousness is rather straightforward. It dictates a student’s likeliness to work hard and be diligent. More often than not, students who are conscientious enjoy working hard or at least dislike leisureliness. If you or your child lack conscientiousness, earning a 4.0 can become very difficult. Not everyone needs to work very hard to earn a higher GPA, but many have to work extremely hard to earn a 4.0 because it demands perfection. Remember: an A- is not a 4.0. Only an A can count as a 4.0. So, talent alone

Extraversion levels, or the lack thereof, can make earning a 4.0 very difficult. Extraversion is the desire for social interaction and the need for sociability. Typically, I found students at either extreme end of the distribution will have a very hard time earning a 4.0. I’ve had very smart and highly extroverted students who NEEDED a strong social circle, lest they wither on the vine. Their parents would bar them from all socialization: no social media, no friends, no relationships. Instead, their children would spend more time on their studies. This actually debilitated their child’s lifeline, thus degrading the mental wellbeing needed for a 4.0.

On the other hand, heavily introverted students may have difficulty reaching a 4.0 because they lose out on opportunities for collaboration with other peers. Two brains are often better than one; but, introverted students will not have this advantage. The difficulty in earning a 4.0 can increase if heavily introverted students are bullied for their lack of socialization.

Agreeableness is a massive factor that plays a major role in earning a 4.0. If your child is agreeable, that means they have the natural proclivity to please others. Disagreeableness is a bit more difficult to narrow down, but it can be inferred based on a constellation of traits: highly competitive, tough in nature and mind, lacking consideration for others, blunt, and uncooperative in activities they don’t like. If a student is agreeable, they have a massive advantage because their temperament aligns them with the school system. They can follow instructions, and they are aimed at pleasing teachers by performing at the highest level. Even being slightly agreeable makes it easier to earn a 4.0 GPA. On the other hand, heavily disagreeable people will have a very, very hard time earning a 4.0 GPA. Even if a student is slightly disagreeable, they can sometimes be driven enough by self-interest and competitive nature to earn a 4.0 GPA. However, those who are severely disagreeable will find earning a 4.0 GPA nearly impossible. If behavior and general social incongruency do not debilitate their ability to earn a 4.0 GPA, the obstacle of following instructions may very much do so.

Neuroticism, like the other four factors, is most extreme at the ends of the spectrum. If students are neurotic, they are more likely to suffer from emotional dysregulation and sometimes emotional reactivity. For the sake of brevity, one may think of neuroticism as the sensitivity to negative emotion. This can manifest in many ways including, anger, fear, depression, and anxiety. This can either work well or backfire for students in an academic setting. Students who are high in neuroticism have often struggled with overcoming their anxiety and depression; thus, their productivity decreases. However, some students seemed to be fueled by their neuroticism to work harder and focus on academics. On the opposite side of the spectrum, a lack of neuroticism led to students being satisfied where they were; thus they never felt the need to earn a 4.0 GPA.

Roughly speaking, depending on where you or your student are in each personality spectrum, earning a 4.0 GPA can sometimes be very easy or difficult.

It’s crucial that you or your child knows exactly what the right moves forward are based on Big 5 personality traits. Wrong steps such as isolating extroverted students happen very, very often. Schedule a free consultation with us, and we’ll advise you on how to earn a 4.0 GPA in the context of the Big 5.

Learning Deficiencies.

This is where I begin to enter the end of my expertise. I cannot clarify in detail every learning deficiency I’ve come across. However, I can talk briefly about the ones I know of as well as how they affect how hard it is to earn a 4.0 GPA.

Normally, many parents assume that learning deficiencies can make it next to impossible to earn a 4.0 GPA. However, this sometimes may not be the case.

Typically, most learning deficiencies make it very difficult to earn a 4.0 GPA. But, the one I wanted to cover specifically is ADHD. Although not all the time, sometimes ADHD can work in a student’s favor. They are sometimes capable of juggling multiple subjects at once and learning at a high speed. Because of this, ADHD can actually help students earn a 4.0 GPA more easily because they don’t need to exert as much force to perform well. However, this can backfire later on because they don’t develop the proper study habits to maintain a 4.0 GPA over time.

This happens very often with gifted students. They can learn well and perform at a high level due to their ADHD working in their favor in school; however, over time, they don’t develop the work habits needed to survive in the academic setting. So, they can easily earn a 4.0 GPA quickly but burn out very fast.

Students with ADHD may need to consider adapting their learning conditions to their advantage. Of course, the necessary medical necessities will need to be taken into consideration.

Hard Work. Or, What Do You Mean by That?!

This one seems to be rather self-explanatory. I’ve observed how hard work helped students improve their GPAs and earn a 4.0 over time.

However, many parents and students misunderstand what I mean by this.

When I say that hard work helps students quickly earn a 4.0 GPA, they often have the misconception that it will be both instantaneous and monolithic. Now, what do I mean by these big, annoying SAT words?

When I say that people think hard work is instantaneous, I mean that parents and students think that the fruits of their labor will just fall on their lap very quickly. They don’t think of hard work as a long con over time. They imagine it as a single force that can get someone to a 4.0 GPA very, very fast. Here’s an example:

“Can you help my son be more hard-working so that they can increase their GPA from a 3.33 to a 4.0?”

The answer is often no. Sometimes they can skyrocket to a 4.0; but, this often results in burnout. So, no. They need to incrementally increase from a 3.33 to a 3.4 to a 3.6 to a 3.8. Then, they can hope to work hard enough to earn a 4.0. It’s hard to earn a 4.0 GPA because hard work takes a long time to master.

Now, what do I mean by monolithic?

Students and parents often believe that hard work only looks and feels a certain way.

This is false. In fact, it’s very, very false.

Hard work is often a spectrum. In fact, it’s more accurate to say honing one’s work habits and conscientious temperament must exist on a spectrum. This means your methods of working hard and being conscientious to earn a 4.0 GPA may work in one way but need adaptation in the next few years to accommodate for differences in the environment.

Here’s an example.

You decide that you’re going to increase your GPA through hard work over time. However, you realize that some days you’re more motivated than others. The methods you used such as motivational videos and hustle culture that may have worked in the past quarter don’t seem to work as much anymore. Instead, you seem to be going through more fatigue in your hard work. So, you’ll realize you need to create a new system that will help you work hard and stay consistent with your work instead of just implementing the same techniques over and over. Maybe this time you’ll need to get more sleep to accommodate for a more rigorous varsity sports lifestyle; or, you’ll need to recover and overcome your burnout from the first quarter.

Long story short, hard work can change over time. It’s not always a burning fire that moves in one direction. Sometimes your focus can veer off course. Other times, the triggers that helped you work hard, in the beginning, may need adaptation to accommodate for a new environment. To circumvent this problem, you’ll need to consistently revamp your system of motivation instead of doing the same thing over and over. This can make earning a 4.0 GPA consistently over time much more difficult, especially for those who are not accustomed to adapting to new methods of hard work.

Incremental Progress and Patience.

One of the other elements that make earning a 4.0 GPA very difficult is having to implement slow and incremental progress over time. You’ll need to be patient with this.

Very few people can earn a 4.0 GPA easily in a short amount of time. Instead, most people climb up to a 4.0 GPA through ever-changing work methods and consistent adaptation over time. Even then, they’ll take a few quarters or semesters before they can land a 4.0 GPA.

The thing that makes earning a 4.0 GPA so difficult, from what I’ve seen with my clients who’ve increased their GPAs, is the patience it takes to get there.

Students cannot (and admittedly should not strive to) earn a 4.0 GPA quickly and within one quarter or semester. Or, at least they can’t jump up to a 4.0 from a significantly lower GPA.

This is because students often cannot jump so high without having burned themselves out very quickly. They may condition themselves to work 80-hour work weeks at maximum efficiency to perform at the highest level. This may in fact work initially. However, it’s not sustainable.

Most of my students, and others outside of my practice from what I’ve seen, earned a 4.0 GPA by adapting to new study skills, working harder slowly, and taking their time to evolve into the kind of student who could consistently earn a 4.0 GPA. It takes a lot of time and effort, and sometimes the results don’t always pay off as much as one would like.

A good analogy for how hard it is to earn a 4.0 GPA is thinking of the journey like starting a business: most businesses fail, but that’s also because they haven’t worked for long enough. Some of them are doing everything correctly, yet they still start off with no profit or even with debt. It takes gradual time and commitment to become the kind of businessowner who can make a profit in the same way that it takes a long time for a student to gradually become someone who can earn a 4.0 GPA.

Testing. Testing. Testing.

Repeat after me.

“I am my own lab rat.”

Got it? Good. You are your own lab rat because you and practically every other student in the world has no idea what they are like. No one at this age really ever knows themselves well enough to know what techniques work for themselves and what doesn’t.

When I’m working with my clients and students, I typically have to get them to see what study habits and techniques work and what doesn’t. Sometimes it’s their procrastination. Sometimes their easily distractible minds actually help them juggle multiple subjects. Sometimes they need to reorient their personal lives. Sometiems it’s literally just their diet.

The multi-variable attributes to academic performance means you can’t earn a 4.0 GPA without testing new methods. So, when people ask me how hard it is to earn a 4.0 GPA, they usually don’t take into consideration the difficulty of having to test out new study methods, figure out what is causing their brain fog, reorienting their personal lives to make education streamlined, etc.

Earning a 4.0 GPA is hard because par tof the process isn’t just working very hard, it’s also learning HOW to work smart. Not everyone starts off knowing exactly what they need to do. So, they need to test the new skills and study habits that will work.

They may not know that they’re studying inefficiently, they may not know that they actually learn worse when they take notes, and they may even not know that they’re losing sleep due to mattress issues which decreases their academic performance (yeah, I know, it sounds crazy but it happens more than you think).

If you don’t know what attributes you need to improve on to increase your GPA to a 4.0, or just how to set up a proper, realistic plan that will get you there, I would highly recommend speaking with one of our academic advisors. At PenningPapers, you can schedule a free 30-minute consultation; we’ll help you set up a plan on how to help you increase your GPA to a 4.0 without falling for the common pitfalls many other students and even other tutors miss.