That's not normal. However, I have heard there are some educational systems which work that way -- eg, in China it is mandatory that all students pass. But it certainly wasn't like that where I went to school. If you made a 4.0 or higher in any semester, that put you on the "honour roll", which then got you invited to a big ceremony. These were never more than 500 students, out of 35,000+. There were thousands of people in my particular program, but the honour roll postings outside the program main office was only a few pages long. So no one was handing out A's.Originally Posted by BHXSpecter
I would bet that in most fields, the majority of university graduates never have to do work at the level they did in school again, and certainly not in their first job. The only place I could have done things as "advanced" as what I was doing in my last year or so would be if I went on to get a Phd and did research. Likewise, my father made a great living as an engineer, but the kinds of things he did in general on a day to day basis were not as complex as the things he had to do to get an engineering degree. Another example would be doctors who become GP's (or anything other than surgeons or researchers, ie, the vast majority) -- the kind of work they do day to day is much easier than what they had to do to get a medical degree.How well you do in school doesn't hint at all for how well you do at work, in school you are just doing it to get out of there, work you are doing it to get paid and sustain your living so you would work harder at a job than you did in school.
I'm sure there are exceptions to this, and it may be less true in CS; my point is just that people who did well in school probably do not "work harder" when they get out because there is no such possibility. You may put as much energy in, and take it just as seriously, but in most cases the material you are dealing with will be simpler and there will be less chance of failure.
