Western culture admonishes that ''winners never quit,'' but sometimes the termination of a specific goal is the best choice for a student. Cognitive perseveration is commonly defined as one repeating an action after learning that it produces a poor outcome and may be considered a form of ''never quitting.'' This type of cognitive perseveration predicted poor academic performance in a group of male but not female undergraduates. The perseverative males repeated more courses, failed more courses, earned lower GPAs, and took longer to graduate than nonperseverating males and all females. We discuss the implications of distinguishing between productive persistence and self-defeating perseveration and the importance of advising students how to decide when persistence is not productive.