<p>My family is past the college admissions point by a long time now. (I originally joined CC when I had a child in law school.) So, I’m not competing…even vicariously…with anyone.</p>
<p>Recently, I have had several neighbors refer to their children as “brilliant.” I’ve also noticed several recent CC posts in which parents have referred to their children as "brilliant.’ They then list SAT scores below 2100, a good gpa, and some strong but not outstanding ECs. To me, these kids are a long way from “brilliant” and I tend to see their parents as deluded. </p>
<p>Now, perhaps my threshold for “brilliant” is higher than most. Maybe people use if for “genius” in the sense that IQ tests do, i.e., top 1% of the population. To me though “brilliant” means more than that. </p>
<p>My D had some brilliant classmates. There was the boy who could find the square root of 3 digit numbers in his head, without using paper or pencil, when he was in kindergarten. That’s brilliant to me. </p>
<p>But perhaps I’m just out of date and now “brilliant” is just meant to be very smart. I’m curious. What does “brilliant” mean to you?</p>
<p>I have met very few brilliant people. I have met people who may be able to do certain things well, but not brilliant. My kids are smart, but they get good grades because they work hard and are very good at time management, not because they are brilliant. I also don’t believe people need to be brilliant to be a good student/employee and do well in life.</p>
<p>I think my two kids are brilliant too. BUT I usually keep that to myself knowing that I view them through rose colored glasses…as should be the case!</p>
<p>I think that someone who is brilliant is someone who has a really high IQ or level of creativity and can also APPLY that ability in a way that solves problems. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>By the way, neither of my children are brilliant but they can get through the day.</p>
<p>I am glad my kids are not brilliant because I would prefer if they were to have more of ordinary life, there is a lot of burden to be brilliant (or have very special talent).</p>
<p>My kids are brilliant in the English usage, as in “what a brilliant goal by Messi” or “these brussels sprouts are brilliant.” In other words, wonderful.</p>
<p>it’s funny how many parents decide their children are brilliant because they get A’s in their high school classes.</p>
<p>They have a very hard time when reality bites, and their brilliant child is applying to elite colleges against all the other brilliant children, and once they are in college in classes with all other students who were in the top 10% of their high schools too.</p>
<p>There is one mom in our community who is highly offended that my son is doing so much better than her daughter at the same university, because her daughter did much better in high school than he did. Of course, she also always turned in her homework and made prettier posters and did every point of extra credit that was ever available–things I could not convince my son to do back then…he was the quintessential B+ student…getting A’s on exams and papers and shooting himself in the foot on all the things he deemed beneath him. Fast forward to today…my son continues to do just fine on exams and papers, has learned to take advantage of extra points offered when he needs to do so (although usually there are no extra points available)…her daughter does just fine, but the A’s aren’t coming to her because she always needed those extra points from fluff to boost her grade.</p>
<p>My kid is not brilliant. He is smart. He is a strategic thinker. He works with his strengths, and he makes a difference. He will be very successful and happy in life. But he is not going to change the world, which is my definition of brilliant. </p>
<p>However, I do know several extraordinary intelligent people who are classic underachievers (for a vary of reasons). And I know more than a few high achieving people who are not super intelligent but they do know how to ‘work’ the system to their benefit (which is also an admirable trait, IMO).</p>
<p>Like most things, ‘brilliant’ is a somewhat subjective term and perhaps these people look at their smart kids only in comparison to their current peers and think they deserve the title of brilliant. Like Boysx3 pointed out - it’s all relative to time and place.</p>
<p>To me, high test scores and straight As are neither necessary nor sufficient criteria for brilliance. There is probably little correlation one way or another. Also, except in very rare cases, concluding that a child or teenager is “brilliant” is at best premature. “Shows exceptional promise” or has a “spark” are generally more appropriate label for kids with potential. I also suspect that there is a negative correlation between true brilliance and helicopter parenting (even the mild forms demonstrated by the most level-headed CC posters). I’m trying to picture John Lennon’s mum anxiously posting on CC, trying to convince fellow posters that her dear son really is brilliant despite his test scores and the fact that his only EC is hanging down at the pub with his buddies. I wonder to what degree brilliance requires a hands-off approach from parents in order to truly flourish.</p>
<p>I once heard through the grapevine that a gc at S1’s h.s. said “That packson must be brilliant. I hear he sleeps through the first half of AP Bio (first class of the day) most days and still makes A’s.”</p>
<p>Our only brush w/ brilliance… Thank goodness S1 was asleep and didn’t hear it. The pressure to continue to learn while sleeping in order to show continued brilliance may have been too much! </p>
<p>The kid in his class who S1 would have called brilliant was the class Sal., a dedicated pot smoker who sat in the back of AP Calc. appearing to ignore the class while knitting multicolored beany caps for himself…which he wore daily…and mades A’s on every Calc. test while many good students were wilting under Calc. pressure. Learning while asleep in class is nothing compared to regularly being high while knitting beany caps in AP Calc. Now that’s billiant! That kid went to a state u. w/ a full ride.</p>
<p>No matter how brilliant your child, it’s generally not considered polite to point out said child’s brilliance, unsolicited, to others. </p>
<p>High school grades and SATs are low-ceiling tests. Trying to measure brilliance with them is like using a 6’2" stick to define “really tall.” The 6’2" person is not really tall in the same way as the 8’ person is.</p>
<p>Thanks to those who replied. While “brilliance” is subjective, it looks like most of you agree with me that it’s something much rarer than, e.g., 1 out of every 100 kids. </p>
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<p>I tend to agree with this, but I think my neighbors feel comfortable saying this to me because my family is grown. I have cut them some slack–in one case because I really like the mom and she’s never said anything like this before. I think she’s just under a lot of stress with her S applying to college and felt the need to vent to someone. I’m “safe” because I don’t have a child competing with hers. </p>
<p>But it also seems that the word “brilliant” is being used by CC parents to describe their kids much more frequently than it was in the past, so I thought that maybe this was one of those words whose meaning has been diluted like e.g., “awesome.”</p>