“To get a better sense of who these struggling students were, Laude started pulling records from the provost’s office. It wasn’t hard to discern a pattern.” - not always the case at all.
Many Honors pre-meds in D’s class were derailed from the pre-med track by the first college Bio class, they simply did not recognize that the academic efforts had to be adjusted upwards in college or some of them decided that medicine is not for them. The last still was not the reason for getting C in a class though. I am not talking about kids from low-income school districts coming to the Ivy / Elite college. I am talking about valedictorians primarily from the private (and some public) HSs attending at in-state publics with good number of them having physician parent(s).
Re: post 273:
While not familiar with the state policies and procedures re: Standardized or placement testing in Ohio public schools, the private school attended by miami’s DD has admissions testing requirements, though its may likely be more along the lines of achievement rather than IQ testing. Not sure. Though they do want the SSAT and TOEFL for international applicants.
As for the weeding out of premeds (which is off topic for this thread) it happens for many, many reasons, and is a separate issue from the excellent article posted by GMT above. Sadly, per that article, income and parent education is a higher predictor of graduation than some standardized test scores or secondary school performance. Its an excellent read.
One of the markers often looked for is the ability to ask for and use academic help/advice, in some circumstances, or collaborate, in others. In the drive to look at all this hierarchically (whose grades or scores predict what,) that’s often missed on CC.
The book Mismatch seems to suggest that basic intelligence is established before age 5 or 6. It also suggests that intelligence improves less rapidly between 6 to 9 or 6 to 11 and doesn’t improve more than a standard deviation after that. (If I recall correctly, they used SAT data from middle school talent identification programs such as Duke TIPs and compared it to HS exit data etc.)
Personally, I feel that age parameters are little less rigid. I agree with @patertrium , some kids can get into a “I can do it too” state of mind and continue to improve in bigger increments for a longer period of time, perhaps into the early 20s.
“The book Mismatch seems to suggest that basic intelligence is established before age 5 or 6. It also suggests that intelligence improves less rapidly between 6 to 9 or 6 to 11 and doesn’t improve more than a standard deviation after that. (If I recall correctly, they used SAT data from middle school talent identification programs such as Duke TIPs and compared it to HS exit data etc.)”
- I did not know that SAT measures intelligence, this statement does not make much sense. Still not clear how intelligence measured. Does book suggests that the vocabulary of the middle schooler is the same as High schooler?Then this means that the High school did not provide any education. I mentioned vocabulary because SAT is very much vocabulary / reading oriented, I agree that SAT math is primarily from the middle school.
…and “continue to improve” - improve what? Grades? Some kids will improve grades, others will do opposite, depending on a kid and the goal and many other factors. What grades have to do with intelligence?
Or improve intelligence? Again, how it is measured? IQ test score become higher?
@MiamiDAP, maybe the premed students that were weeded out at your D’s school just didn’t do their homework. @-)
I think this thread is hilarious… I mean, don’t we all think that our blue eyed wonder is the best thing in the world? I know exaggerating but still…! I have heard many parents say that child is very smart only if he applied himself … I just find this whole thread very funny!
“maybe the premed students that were weeded out at your D’s school just didn’t do their homework.” - Yes, they did not do their homework at the level that college classes require them to do, they failed to recognize that they needed to adjust their efforts. I stated that in my post. Some of them decided not to pursue medicine. But again, it is not the basis for having a C in a class. If one paid for class, might as well try harder. This is according to my D., I was not taking classes with them.
…although college needs adjustment, it is still an UG, it is not a PhD in Rocket Science program. It does not need any special genius to get all As in UG.
As far as SAT measuring intelligence is concerned, it is not a precise measure in my opinion. However, I also don’t know of any native English speaker who scored sub 900 on the SAT (M+CR+W) in middle school, then turned around and scored over 2100 by memorizing word lists or whatever, later in life. In other words, there is no high school in the world that can bring about such an outcome. I think the absence of such examples suggests that tests such as the SAT measure something that cannot be acquired by memorizing word lists etc. and I think this (thing) is generally referred to as intelligence by most people.
Miami, it’s not absolute. It also depends on school for UG. Come back and tell me that it’s not hard to get all As when your kid achieves that at Caltech and MIT.
OT, my brother who did both engineering and medical school told me that medical school is easier than engineering for him anyway. So it depends on the person. Not to take away anything from medical students or your kids achievement. It all depends on the person.
Sorry. You must be thinking of a relatively unchallenging UG course load. I find the word “genius” wrong in this context, but in any case, a premed course load, while it has its difficult parts, is not the standard for all UG.
I think I’m leaving this thread for a while, because it seems to have become the MiamiDAP family hour.
There are entire fields within the cognitive sciences devoted to measuring intelligence. It is complex. There is no point in employing simple layman’s statements about what does or doesn’t measure it.
The facts are that the SAT is highly correlated with general measurements of IQ.
This thread has wandered off topic from what makes a kid “smart” to some kind of debate about homework I don’t quite understand. @MiamiDAP, you have made your point repeatedly, saying it again on this thread won’t make it more true. People either agree with you or they don’t, apparently most don’t. Let’s move on.
In other words, I don’t disagree with the idea of intelligence. I disagree with how much intelligence is nature v nurture and how much it can improve and when during the life of a person. In other words, I am of the view that intelligence can increase considerably more than some experts suggest between the age 12 to 20.
Sidebar: Where are the articles that talk about how much time employees spend wasting time on internet forums during paid work hours. And this isn’t Ashley Madison 
Interesting theory. If you would specify which experts you are referring to, and which components of “intelligence”, it might be examined in more detail.
I am not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that a kid who scores very low in math in middle school (7h grade) cannot improve his math score later in life?
As I mentioned above, the Flynn effect does suggest that the population as a whole is getting “smarter” by about 3 IQ points a decade. This was corroborated with use of several instruments across several sample groups. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152423/ That said, these tests do not correlate with each other 1:1, so if an individual was tested on one measure (eg Stanford-Binet) as a child, and then on a Wechsler scale as an adult (currently on the WAIS- IV, with the WAIS-V in development) the scores will differ. Not to mention that yes there are some age-related changes even within instruments developed by the same measurement companies. Can’t recall the correlation of the WPPSI scores to WAIS scores, but there was a degree of variability accounted for by developmental variances in the younger population, being tested on the WPPSI.
OK this is probably too dry for some. Apologies.
" Are you saying that a kid who scores very low in math in middle school (7h grade) cannot improve his math score later in life? "- I am saying that it can be improved a lot. Just go over what was missing, the gaps.
But I guess, we have to stick to the topic and the real way to make smart kids is to marry higher in the gene pool, I do not know any other way, I still do not understand how “smart” is measured and I did not think that those kids with very high IQs in competition that I have seen on TV were impressive. I guess, “smart” might not impress us at all.