Does being named "most likely to succeed" in high school mark you for life? Sue Shellenbarger explains why many winners say the label itself is a curse, saddling them with overblown expectations and self-doubt.

Charlene Dupray was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by her classmates at New Hanover High School in Wilmington, N.C., in 1990. That honor has been hanging over her ever since.

Even though she went on to graduate from the University of Chicago, travel throughout southern Europe, the Middle East and the Caribbean as a cruise-line tour director and pull down a six-figure salary in executive recruiting, Ms. Dupray, now 38 years old, says, "I have been constantly evaluating my success and using that silly award as a benchmark."

D.J. Struntz/Eyeconic Images for Wall Street Journal

Charlene Dupray quit a professional job in New York City in 2006 to start a gourmet-chocolate business in North Carolina.

Courtesy Charlene Dupray

Ms. Dupray's 1990 high school yearbook photo, when she was named Most Likely to Succeed.

More high schools are eliminating senior-class polls, a long-standing tradition for graduating classes, in part out of concern for their effect on recipients. Research suggests most winners of the most-likely-to-succeed label will do well later in life, based on their academic ability, social skills and motivation. Less is known about the psychological impact. Some former winners of the title say what seemed like a nice vote of confidence from their classmates actually created a sense of pressure or self-doubt.

"Being noosed with 'most likely to succeed' is like lugging an albatross to every job interview, new relationship or writing endeavor," says Blake Atwood, 30, of Irving, Texas, and a copywriter for a law firm. His 80 classmates at his Lorena, Texas, high school bestowed the label on him in 1998. Recalling these expectations just deepened his self-doubt during a six-year period after college when he wasn't working in his chosen field, as a writer, he says.

Nearly one-third of those named "most likely" in high school regard it later as "a curse," according to a recent poll of 1,369 members of MemoryLane.com, which links users to high-school classmates, yearbooks and nostalgic material. Some say the label makes them feel stuck with high-school definitions of success, which invariably involve rising to the top of a profession, making lots of money, or both.

Brandon Hogan, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, says winning the most-likely designation at his Winter Haven, Fla., high school has fostered pressure "to make sure I live up to it," long after his 1999 graduation. "I wanted in some way to be a leader for the people who were paying attention to me back home," he says. That has sometimes been inspiring; such thoughts kept him from seriously considering dropping out of Harvard Law School a few years ago, he says. "It's not that the pressure is going to get to me. But I'd like the story to end well," says Mr. Hogan, now 29.

As it turns out, the behaviors typically linked to the label may be "a pretty good predictor of how well they're going to do in the labor market as adults," says Christy Lleras, an assistant professor of human and community development at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

for the Wall Street Journal

Blake Atwood is happy as a copywriter at a Dallas law firm, but says being voted 'Most Likely to Succeed' was 'an albatross' to carry.

Courtesy Blake Atwood

His Lorena, Texas, high school yearbook photo from 1998.

In her study of 7,656 people, published in 2008 in the journal Social Science Research, high-school sophomores with comparable behaviors, including superior social skills and work habits and more extracurricular activities, earned 12% more money than their peers 10 years later. And about 4 in 10 most-likely-to-succeed winners regard the label as an inspiration, the MemoryLane.com survey shows.

Sakita Holley of New York City says being raised by her grandmother because her parents were absent fostered "frustration and negative energy" that she channeled into achievement. As a high-school senior in 2005, she urged classmates to vote her most likely to succeed. After she won, she had "success" tattooed on her back, changed her middle name to "success" on Facebook, and graduated with honors from Howard University. She named the public-relations company she founded in 2006 "House of Success."

Although her quest for success "governs my life," she says, she defines it in her own terms. "Success doesn't mean making $100 million. It means getting through the day without a pink slip on the door, it means turning on the TV and seeing my client on the news."

Even winners of the most-likely-to-succeed label sometimes wish they had been voted something else. Ms. Dupray was also named "most likely to be remembered" in high school, she says, but she gave it up because each student was allowed only one such honor.

Ms. Dupray and her husband quit professional jobs in New York City in 2006 to start a gourmet-chocolate business, South 'n France, in Wilmington, N.C. She hoped the business would rocket to success in six months, rather than the five years advisers told her it would take. While the business has won industry awards and survived the recession, she and her husband, Pascal Siegler, are drawing small salaries.

That may have bothered her years ago, but not now. "Now, I think success is much more simple, and elusive, including all the things we take for granted," such as health, contentment and time to reflect, she says.

For a few, the label has served as a useful milestone to measure how far they have come. Deborah de Freitas, 42, says she was driven to achieve during her years at Leander High School in Leander, Texas, becoming student council president and class president and earning an invitation to apply to a Harvard University summer fellowship program for academically gifted students. Her classmates voted her "most likely to succeed" in 1986.

But graduation from high school brought a sharp change of course. She chose not to apply to an Ivy League school, then changed her major several times at the University of Texas before graduating after five years with three majors and three minors. "I asked myself, 'Why am I floundering so much?' " she says, recalling her search for direction. After 12 years as a senior manager at a computer company, she sold her stock options and traveled for five years.

Today, she has redefined success to suit herself. "The person I was in high school is kind of foreign to me," says Ms. de Freitas, director of marketing for Bazaarvoice, an Austin, Texas, software company. Since then, "I learned that success wasn't what I was most interested in. I was most interested in experience. I wanted to travel, have great meaningful friendships, experience art and music and life."

In hindsight, she wishes today she had won a different label: "Most likely to be happy."