[stcredzero]

It's best to become a member of a close group that is not only smart, but which has good values and is well connected to reality.

So long as you get a 3.5 GPA or above, you can, in the words of a fellow alum's mom, "pretty much do what you want." But what you want to do may not even involve that kind of GPA signaling.

If you really are smart, then you can figure out how to generate the right sort of signal for your purposes. You'll also figure out that you're not infallible and that there are others out there who are smarter than yourself. From this, it follows that durable signals need to be based on real underlying value.