What is the single most important skill one must be equipped with before graduating from high school?

Social Skills. Meaning manners dealing with table manners and conversational manners. That is one of the most important things that will help you succeed in most jobs.

How to manage your money and not use credit cards unwisely and bury yourself in debt! That and how to cook.

Also what Coooldil17 said.

how to take things from other people, not take literally but to learn from them, grab all the knowledge possible.
also social skills rank really high up there as cooldil17 noted.

yeah, its the social stuff that’s important ing highschool. As long as you graduate, everything else is easy to make up.

social skills and the ability to be good at finding information.

Manners.. Are you fucking kidding me? I learned how to use a fork and chew with my mouth closed during dinner.

High School taught me how to get things done. 25 page paper I don’t want to write. I had to do it. It sucked but I did it. Oral report.. I hate those. But I did it.

A had a job out of high school that had me clean gross shit out of the “grease trap.” I hated it but I did it. I learned that in high school.

And I learned about algebra, history, and tons of other things.

Ditto on social skills. It will carry through life.

Try to live life to the fullest. Before you graduate, write a realistic list of the things you would like to do in your lifetime.

I’m incredibly ticked off at my high school for not preparing me with better study skills. High school was way too easy for me. All of a sudden, college hits my brain like a sack of genetically modified potatoes… on STEROIDS.

College is sooo much more different than high school, academically. If you plan on going into a hard major, make sure that you have excellent study habits. Otherwise, you won’t have the time for a social life. And if your grades aren’t good enough to keep you in college, then you won’t have a college life either.

LEARN HOW YOU LEARN. THEN PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999.

Social skills as stated above. Confidence in yourself is important too.

a high emotional intelligence quotient (EQ)

an open mind

The single most important skill to have is communication skills. Being able to effectively deliver your message as well as being able to listen and receive others message.
After this would be a healthy doze of realism and a little skeptism, so as to better adjust and filter the messages communicated.

Keen logic/problem solving skills.

With that, you can do almost anything.

I second Spargett, critical thinking is the most important skill we can ever learn, it is the basis from which all other skills develop.

study skills are key and bad habits are hard to break and make sure fasfa is done

Communication skills

Critical thinking and discernment.

High school isn’t the place to learn social skills, unless you really want adolescent relationships the rest of your life.

knowing how many parts make up your life (money, laundry, cooking, school, friends, family) and balancing all of them.

Metacognition.
And also, I think one really important thing I figured out was that school is a system with certain rules, and if you learn how to play them, you will get ahead. At the same time, you shouldn’t take it too seriously, because grades, etc are just one way of measuring your ability… the ability to play the game.

I would say that my critical thinking skills really got honed in college, not high school. High school was really learning a time to reflect about myself, and the people around me.

Finally, I wouldn’t really call this a skill, but if my students emerge out of high school (still) curious to learn more about the world around them, as a teacher I would consider my work well done.

Nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills…girls only want boyfriends who have skills!

Seriously, though, judging from what I’ve seen, an ability to write well will often put you ahead of the next person.