During my freshman year of high school, I took “Introduction to Drafting” and spent two semesters sitting next to a senior with perfect grades who was at the top of his class. When a substitute teacher failed to show one day, the opportunity to spend 55 minutes talking to our peers was my chance to officially hack his system.

I wanted to know how he’d done it, what his secrets were, and how a freshman like me could do the same. This was going to be my shortcut to success.

He did his best to lay out his academic system for me, everything from “During your busy sports season, do just enough to get through the next day,” to “Do more of whatever carries the most grading weight in each class.” He had it all figured out, and he was really generous about sharing it with a freshman he barely knew.

That conversation eventually taught me two important lessons.

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from people who know what they’re doing.
2. Don’t always expect what worked for them to work for you.

I tried to do what he described, but it didn’t magically transform me into the top student in my class like I’d hoped it would. The truth was, his system was his system. And it was built on hard work. He wasn’t cutting corners—he was just being smart about how and where to apply his efforts for the maximum return. Turns out the first step to being top-of-your-class isn’t to use any one system. It’s to work like you want to be at the top of the class.

High school students often try to hack the system of college admissions. They look at older students who get admitted to prestigious colleges and try to deconstruct how they did it. It seems logical to assume that if it worked for them, it will work for you.

But the truth is that if there were one proven system to deliver anything worth having, from straight A’s, to an admission to college, to a happy and successful life, someone would have found and profited from it already.

You can learn a lot from successful people—I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t be open to adopting any of their habits or practices. But don’t expect that doing things their way will necessarily make it easy. They may have their systems, but they probably don’t have shortcuts.