Then obviously you have no experience of what it is like in the real world - employers don't give two brass tacks whether you were the 'head boy', or the 'top cheerleader' or the 'captain of the first fifteen' or the 'guy who wears the latest cool name brand gear". When you get to university no one gives a shit if you turn up wearing name brand clothes, put 2kg of gel in your hair, or whether you've plastered your face in make up. When I was at university the first people to drop out or to take the difficult degree then downgrade to an easy one majoring in unmarketable areas were the 'cool kids' because god forbid them spending the weekends studying instead of partying! (Yes, and these Einstein's found Philosophy difficult to understand - I was in a class where 5 students pulled out and took a nice easy subject in one airy-fairy departments).

My experience tells me that those who didn't fuck around at high school, knuckled down, studied, shunned the 'parties' and 'booze ups' with the 'popular kids' are now earning 6 figure incomes whilst the 'cool kids' are earning barely above the minimum wage at the local video store. I can think of at least a dozen of my friends who would be considered 'social rejects' who now have jobs they enjoy, happily married and either have kids on soon to have them. Equally I know all the cool kids who thought they were top shit and the rest of the school worshipped the ground they're walking on barely making ends meet, choosing dead end jobs because the well paying ones, surprise surprise, don't give a shit about how popular they were at high school.

For me, I was never 'at the top' (I was average-ish) nor have I ever actually given a shit about making it big - I've run my own business, I've done my own thing and quite frankly I wouldn't give up the freedom I have so that I can be a bitch to some corporate master to make a few extra bucks. If I can earn enough to give myself a warm house, food the belly and enough left over for the occasional treat for myself why the hell do I need anything more than that? I've completed my Degree (Bachelor of Arts majoring in Religious Studies and Philosophy) with an average of a B+ (a real B+, not an American B+ which is the equivalent of a C- in most other countries) and quite frankly I take greater joy in interests outside my work - my occupation doesn't define who I am as a person.

Edit: To anyone seeing the contradiction between the first part and the final part of this post - the difference is that these cool kids tend to have nothing outside small talk and their shitty jobs; they're shallow, vapid dead shits who quite frankly chock up the local ER needing their stomach pumped after too much alcohol, get into accidents with their boy racer friends, or think that sending 30000 texts per month is remotely normal. Cool kids tend to be unbalanced fucks who wouldn't know how to balance out their life if their existence depended on it.