How did your kid become so darn smart?? Top five or ten.

Parents Forum
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I haven’t read the book Mismatch (“Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It”), so my comments are on what it is reported to say.

A standard deviation is about 15 IQ points, which is not a small amount. If the book argues that a standard deviation of improvement in IQ is minimal, I would wonder about it’s agenda in making that argument. However, a standard deviation of improvement is so much, that I’d want to see the data. If he is just saying that SAT scores improve a standard deviation from middle school to high school, then “duh”. The SAT is not age-normed; IQ tests are.

Earlier versions of the SAT were more highly correlated with IQ test scores. So, SAT scores from before 1995 (I think) could be used as indicators of IQ. The various revisions of the SAT since then have made it more related to achievement than aptitude (and so more coachable). I believe current scores are still somewhat correlated with IQ scores, but not as much as in the past.

The “new SAT” coming out in March 2016 is supposed to be less coachable, but the truth of that statement remains to be seen. The new essay sounds pretty much like taking APUSH will be the appropriate coaching. The effect of the changes on the correlation between SAT and IQ scores also remains to be seen. The questions on obscure vocabulary are suppose to be gone in the new SAT, replaced by determining the meanings of more common words that have flexible meanings when used in less common contexts.

@GMTplus7 I enjoyed that article about UT Austin. Thanks for providing the link.

@jym626 I find the Flynn effect interesting and not too dry. Sorry I didn’t comment earlier. Aside from the variability in test scoring for different ages and eras, I do think that a lot of the things we and kids do now are more like tasks found on IQ tests–general computer things, Sudoku, etc, even some video games likely help. Not very many of us are farmers anymore, so doing things with our brains more of the day may be the cause.

Only an aside: My husband taught lab sections for the Intro to Physics course for life science majors when he was working on his physics PhD at a UC campus. He was constantly complaining about the premeds and how they couldn’t find the slope of a straight line and came begging for him to raise their grades. Of course, he didn’t teach OChem, which I hear is the difficult class in the premed set of courses.

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At one point I had access to 3rd grade OLSAT test results broken out by race for our entire elementary district. The OLSAT is an IQ screening test. The percentages of kids who made the GATE level (97%ile) based on this test was nearly identical over several grades of students for both Caucasian and Asian students.

Our local achievement results for Asian students do anecdotally seem to be higher, so I think that argues for the effect of nurture over nature.

(Background: We have a good number of Asian students in the district, but not nearly as many as some districts in California. They are from a wide variety of Asian countries and spread out over kids born in an Asian country to ~3rd generation students. And, we have a lot of kids with one Asian parent, so I don’t know what box they checked before there was a multiracial box. So, perhaps a less homogeneous Asian group than in some areas where most of the Asian parents were born in a couple of specific countries. And we have perhaps fewer of the stereotypical tiger moms than in some other areas, though we still have some. Disclaimer: I’m not Asian; hope I didn’t offend any Asians.)

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But are we only taking about the quantitative measures?
When experts say IQ is fixed (or relatively so,) isn’t there an assumption it can be measured in perfect conditions? Isn’t it possible some laggers grow in the interim between, say, lower and upper school and their very ability to test improves? Plus their familiarity with certain concepts? (Maybe I’m way off.)

Anyway, need to say, when young, D1 tested genius level in certain skills, and to this day, even with our awareness of the particular claimed strengths, she never manifested them, didn’t even have particular interest in those areas. Where she did grow is in other ways.

I’m as impressed as the next person when I hear of a high IQ, but I look for the more. As for SAT, imo, it’s not a measure of raw intelligence or potential as much as one’s understanding of the importance of the test and practice. I consider the rare anecdotes of the kid who walked in unprepared to be just rare anecdotes. You can train.

So, the 2350 impresses as just that- a kid who took it seriously. I get a “good boy” or “good girl” moment, then look for what they actually did (or do.)

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Ynotgo,
I miss the Miller analogies! Thought they were fun and a good measure of linguistic reasoning.

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From the book Mismatch by Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor:

“NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) tests attempt to maintain comparability over time and across ages; test results for reading and math are each measured on an absolute 500 point scale. In 2008 (the most recent year with good comparative data) the mean reading score for nine year olds of all races was 220; for thirteen year olds, 260; and for seventeen year olds, 286. Another way of putting this is that a typical seventeen year old has the reading ability that would place her at about 80th percentile of thirteen year olds. Students, thus progress over time, but not very dramatically.” pg 261

“In 2004 Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt published an analysis of ECLS (Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies) data on study participants through age six. There study produced two very significant findings. First, Fryer and Levitt found that large racial gaps in test scores exist at age five. For blacks, the gaps were about half the size of those that exist among high school seniors; for Hispanics the gaps among five year olds were about the same size as those among high school seniors. The gaps did not change much when, instead of using tests, the study asked kindergarten teachers to complete individualized assessments of each student’s cognitive skills. These findings imply that although the test score gap may be exacerbated by K - 12 education, it already exists in large measure when students start schooling.” pg 262-263

"Cole and Barber’s project stretched a decade from conception to publication …Their book “Increasing Faculty Diversity”, was published by Harvard University Press in 2003 and contained a host of prescriptions to increase minority participation in the pipeline to academia. But it also contained a clear statement of the problem of mismatch, offering this advice to student counselors:

**Instead of recommending that minority students go to the most prestigious school they can get into, high school guidance counselors should recommend that each student go to a school where he or she is likely to do well academically. An HBCU may be such a school. Guidance counselors, in short, should try to reduce some of the lack of fit between the level of academic preparation of minority students and the schools where they enroll. **

These words were published at almost the exact moment that Smyth and McArdle were giving the same advice to counselors as a way of reducing science mismatch." pg 47

In other words, the book suggests that kids don’t change the gap dramatically after age 6. So, don’t place low SAT scoring kids into colleges with higher average SAT scores because they will fall behind and not be able to improve and compete.

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Your bold is a loaded issue, perazzziman. I agree that in many cases, the student in question should go to a college where he or she can be empowered and succeed. Depending on the kid, that may be a less competitive environment-but there is so much more to consider. The pool of low SES and URM kids often shows comprehension, energy and drives which place them appropriately in a highly competitive school. It’s NOT all about getting A’s in college, not for any kid (except that CC subset intent on IB or specialist grad school.)

That’s where this emphasis on quantitative and predictions falls quite sort.

Are we OT?

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Their study not There study

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Recent research has demonstrated that the belief that most cognitive development occurs before age 6 is false. Recent research shows brain elasticity through early adulthood. Research is even demonstrating that the early teens are a time of massive shifts in neural pathways. (Google brain elasticity or brain development in teens. Here is one link: http://patwolfe.com/2011/09/the-adolescent-brain-a-work-in-progress/ )

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@perazziman The NAEP does not measure “intelligence” in any way. It is designed to measure educational progress in a variety of subject areas.

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I just noticed something as we are not allowed to discuss grades here. The name of the thread is “How did your kid become so darn smart?? Top five or ten.” - Top five or ten of what? Top 5-10 in a class? It is not determined by being “smart” or not. Top 5 - 10 % of all who took an IQ test?

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Top five or ten most prolific CC users who have posted in the past month?

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…and they are declared “smart”?
Anyway what “smart” means and how it is measured? Talking about something that does not have a clear definition and is not measurable is kind of just having fun but nothing more.

Kids become smart - what it means? There are people with the savant syndrome who cannot take care of themselves. Are they smart? They did not become “smart”, they were born that way.

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Post #292 answered our question, miami. It will require some reading which is something you have indicated in another thread you do not like to do.

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Its hard to imagine that someone who scores above 2100 on the SAT or 320 on the GRE etc. could have an IQ score <100 or < 80 etc. Are you saying this happens? thanks

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309 I was asking for folks' top five or ten explanations as to how their kid became so smart. It would appear I could have been clearer.

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Smart enough to score 700+ in all sections of the SAT & GRE.

  1. Lousy Elementary and Middle Schools (Public ethnic poor)
  2. No Private tutoring
  3. Genetics had little to do with it.
  4. No Summer programs.
  5. Encouraged to read and use numbers.
  6. Encouraged to develop interests such as playing chess or music or poetry or sports or math or science or business etc.
  7. Discouraged from watching violent cartoons/ encouraged to watch Nat Geo, Animal Planet & Discovery channel etc
  8. By age 12, read religious texts of three Abrahamic religions.
  9. Read works of David Thoreau, Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand as gateway philosophers.
  10. By age 13 he had freedom to see read and watch whatever he wanted. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings ...
  11. Smart friends were biggest influence in competitive suburban high school.
  12. Smart professors and grad students seem to be biggest positive influence in college.
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I thought the title of this thread was referring to kids who were in the top 5 or 10 in terms of high school class rank.

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People are mixing up the concepts of performance vs innate intelligence.

I have 2 boys. They’ve been given similar emotional, material and educational support & encouragement.

One is an extreme type-A and applies himself 120%; the other is a bit of a slacker. While their classroom performances reflect their contrasting work ethic, their standardized test scores do not.

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No, not all of us feel that way.

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Some motivations for the thread:

1 - Being impressed with many of the parent (and student and mentor) comments on CC.
2 - Many parents on CC have had success in raising their kids - sometimes stunning success.
3 - The topic of how best to achieve good outcomes for children is often high jacked by people with a political agenda.
So I wanted to ask parents directly about their methods and observations without filters.
4 - There are parents who do their thing better than I do and I like to learn. The lifelong learning thing - topic parenting.
5 - I still have two kids to go.
6 - I’ve had some good outcomes with my kids too and as one heads off to college, I’m pondering myself what the mojo was.
7 - It’s easy to fool oneself about success factors or to forget important ingredients that went into the soup.