By now, "jocks" and "brains" are high school archetypes. From Emilio Estevez and Anthony Michael Hall's characters in 1985's quintessential teen genre movie The Breakfast Club to the young Clark Kent's troubles with football star Whitney Fordman on the current Superman-inspired show Smallville, the roles persist in American culture. In the movies and on TV, the jocks typically lord their popularity over their more cerebral classmates. In real life, though, a surprising number of teen-age boys say they would choose the role of star student over that of star athlete.
A 2000 Gallup Youth Survey* asked boys aged 13 to 17 the question, "If you had your choice of only one of the following, which would you rather be, the captain of a major sports team, the president of your class, the top student in your class, or the best-looking boy/girl in your class?" Forty percent (40%) of said they would choose to captain the sports team -- but the "top student" option ran an unexpectedly close second, with 36% of boys choosing it.
Also running counter to a long-standing stereotype is the small number of girls who aspire to be the "best-looking girl in the class." Only 18% of girls aged 13 to 17 chose that response, while 42% said they would rather be known as the "top student in their class" and 23% most coveted the role of "captain of a major sports team."
When boys and girls answers are combined, the role of "top student" comes out ahead of "captain of a major sports team," 39% versus 31%.
Finally, only 12% of teens said they most aspire to be class president. Teen-age girls are apparently more interested in school politics than are boys; 17% of girls want to be class president versus just 7% of boys.
*Findings are based on telephone interviews with a representative national cross section of 501 teen-agers, aged 13 to 17, conducted January through April 2000. For this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±5%.