Students who think high reap better harvest

Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who surveyed hundreds of high school students about their career goals and expectations, found a unique relationship between their study plans and professional ambitions.

And those goals and expectations are shaped better by the kind of extracurricular activities they are engaged in.

That unique relationship, the researchers said, played a role in predicting how far teens eventually went with their educations.

“Adolescents’ expectations about their occupational and educational attainment as adults predict their eventual educational attainment, and these expectations seem to shape and be shaped by extracurricular activities — which, in turn, contribute to young adult educational attainment,” said Sarah Beal, the study’s lead author.