Why might it be that some ex high-achieving students struggle more than their peers in college?

[Sicnoo0]

There are countless examples out there of young people who were standout high-achieving students who end up performing worse than their peers in college or even failing to graduate. These students are the type who used to win academic competitions and perform extremely well on standardized tests.

Note that you can't just suppose that maybe their high schools' standards were simply very low for what constitutes a high achiever.

For the sake of this discussion I'm specifically talking about students who were objectively stellar students, and not students who had the mistaken impression that they were a stellar student.
It doesn't take a genius to obtain a college degree, so clearly there's something that's preventing some ex high-achieving students from graduating with their peers.
In some situation the answer is obvious; the ex high achiever had extenuating circumstances.
This isn't the case for every single person, though. In those cases the answer must be something else.
What could those factors be?

[teo123]

There are countless examples out there of young people who were standout high-achieving students who end up performing worse than their peers in college or even failing to graduate. These students are the type who used to win academic competitions and perform extremely well on standardized tests.

Note that you can't just suppose that maybe their high schools' standards were simply very low for what constitutes a high achiever.

For the sake of this discussion I'm specifically talking about students who were objectively stellar students, and not students who had the mistaken impression that they were a stellar student.
It doesn't take a genius to obtain a college degree, so clearly there's something that's preventing some ex high-achieving students from graduating with their peers.
In some situation the answer is obvious; the ex high achiever had extenuating circumstances.
This isn't the case for every single person, though. In those cases the answer must be something else.
What could those factors be?

That is exactly me. I was the best student in my high-school. And I had the highest score when applying for the FERIT university that I am attending. I scored 93% at the mathematics part of the maturity test (which was in the top 1%) and 97% at the "informatics" (mostly the knowledge of Microsoft Office, but it also included some programming) part of the maturity test (which was way into the top 1%). And here I am, having been a third-year computer science student for three years, and I likely won't finish it even this year.

How did that happen?
Well, it arguably wouldn't have happened if I didn't get a psychotic disorder. Why did I get a psychotic disorder? Well, it didn't help that I was taking a lot of caffeine (in Red Bull and similar drinks, I was regularly drinking 3 per day) and paracetamol every day. My psychiatrist thinks that triggered my psychotic disorder.
But I also think it is possible that I got a psychotic disorder because I was studying at a too difficult university.
So, what do I think, why aren't the success on the maturity test and the success on university correlated? Well, I think that is the fault of those who make maturity tests. I understand the motivation behind the maturity test (external evaluation of high schools), but I think it is not a good idea. Math that is requested of students to know on the maturity test has basically nothing to do with the math that is requested of students to know at the universities. Math at the university is mostly revolving around integrals. At the math part of the maturity test contained no integrals. The only thing about calculus there was to tell from a graph of a function whether the first derivative at some point was positive or negative. And, yet, the university math is mostly calculus. And what isn't calculus is statistics. Many students at my university failed statistics (not me, I got a C in it). And there was no statistics at the math part of the maturity test. I'd argue that the very reason high schools don't prepare well for universities is the maturity test. High schools get praised if their pupils do well on the maturity test, but nobody looks at whether those same students do well at a university. And the "informatics" part of the maturity test also has little or nothing to do with the IT stuff that are taught at the university - we are taught nothing about Microsoft Office at the university. And, at the university, we are almost never given a task to follow some algorithm written in pseudocode, which is what the programming questions at the "informatics" part of the maturity test were about.
A few years ago, I was strongly against affirmative action. How can it be fair that some 20 pupils who had a lower maturity test score than I did (some much lower) had a priority over me when enrolling at the university? Just because they are children of the injured war veterans or a national minority? Now I think that's entirely fair. The score at the maturity test is not a good predictor how prepared you are for the academic standards of the university. And the Croatian government cannot undo waging a senseless war 30 years ago, but it should at least apologize to the victims of its past actions. So now I support affirmative action.

[Sicnoo0]

Thanks so much for sharing your story. I happen to have a slightly similar one.
Before college, I realized I had a better-than-average proficiency for STEM. I was an avid self-learner when it came to math. Like you, I was very "mathematically mature" for my age because I went out of my way to learn math that was many years ahead of my grade level. I went to a dual enrollment high school, and when I found out about the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) I went ahead and taught myself calculus and I took a test on calculus 1 and got an A, giving me an A credit for the course. Long story short, during high school I managed to take quite a few college math courses, including Calculus 3 and Linear Algebra, and I got an A in all of them. I also took a Math Level 2 SAT Subject test and got a perfect score of 800.
Because of all that, I had the impression that if I studied math in college it would be a piece of cake.
If you had asked anyone who knew me, they'd say they'd be surprised if I didn't end up getting a PhD in Math.

Here's the part that makes me embarrassed to this day:
I actually went to a very easy state school, the kind of school that takes in literally anyone. I was in the honors college and I had a full ride scholarship. I had every reason to think I was going to have an easy time in college. For whatever reason, that didn't happen. I dropped out after a single year because I lost my scholarship. Heck, even if I could afford to keep attending without a scholarship, I probably still would've quit, because there was no denying that the college courses were too hard for me.
To this day it bothers me and I try to make sense of it.

If I can conclude anything about this phenomenon in general, I'd say that it seems like high schools fill some students with unrealistic expectations. Even though it goes against all intuition, being an academically remarkable teenager doesn't correlate with being successful in college.

[teo123]

Thanks so much for sharing your story. I happen to have a slightly similar one.
Before college, I realized I had a better-than-average proficiency for STEM. I was an avid self-learner when it came to math. Like you, I was very "mathematically mature" for my age because I went out of my way to learn math that was many years ahead of my grade level. I went to a dual enrollment high school, and when I found out about the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) I went ahead and taught myself calculus and I took a test on calculus 1 and got an A, giving me an A credit for the course. Long story short, during high school I managed to take quite a few college math courses, including Calculus 3 and Linear Algebra, and I got an A in all of them. I also took a Math Level 2 SAT Subject test and got a perfect score of 800.
Because of all that, I had the impression that if I studied math in college it would be a piece of cake.
If you had asked anyone who knew me, they'd say they'd be surprised if I didn't end up getting a PhD in Math.

Here's the part that makes me embarrassed to this day:
I actually went to a very easy state school, the kind of school that takes in literally anyone. I was in the honors college and I had a full ride scholarship. I had every reason to think I was going to have an easy time in college. For whatever reason, that didn't happen. I dropped out after a single year because I lost my scholarship. Heck, even if I could afford to keep attending without a scholarship, I probably still would've quit, because there was no denying that the college courses were too hard for me.
To this day it bothers me and I try to make sense of it.

If I can conclude anything about this phenomenon in general, I'd say that it seems like high schools fill some students with unrealistic expectations. Even though it goes against all intuition, being an academically remarkable teenager doesn't correlate with being successful in college.

I also received a scholarship called "STEM Stipendija" and I also lost it due to my bad grades.

Maybe math in college requires some type of logical thinking which I don't possess and which high-school math doesn't require. After all, it wasn't my peers in high-school who thought the Earth was flat, that the Toricelli's Law proves that airplanes don't exist, that rockets cannot be made compatible with both the Newton's Third Law and the 1st Law of Thermodynamics and therefore that rockets don't exist, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that bombs don't exist, that the Karl Popper's Principle of Rationality proves that prisons don't exist, that ironic meanings in names of places prove that massacres all around the world are fake... It was me who thought those things. Maybe my peers who are doing well in college possess some ability to think logically that I don't possess.

Quite a few people on Quora have asked something along the lines of "Why aren't most winners of the past International Olympiads in Mathematics now PhD mathematicians?". The answer to that seems obvious to me: graduate level mathematics and high-school mathematics have very little in common.

[teo123]

Many people who are otherwise against higher education say stuff like "If you go to college, at least become an engineer or a doctor.". In my opinion, they are getting it precisely backwards. Studying engineering is extremely risky in that you may not get a diploma at all (you may drop out). If going to college is a good investment, it may be that humanities are the way to go, rather than engineering.