<p>My oldest D just graduated from HS, and recently became friends with her class Val. After spending an afternoon at Val’s home, she told me, “Mom, our Val is not very smart!” (I laughed here, thinking she was making a joke.) “Her bedroom shelves are stocked with every test prep book you can imagine. But she doesn’t seem to know much. Only things she read in a book.”</p>
<p>I have never personally known a Val, and I always assumed they must be brilliant. But after hearing my D’s description of this girl, I thought perhaps this might explain why elite U’s reject voluminous numbers of Vals every year. This girl’s grades and test scores were nearly perfect, but she couldn’t seem convey her intellect very well or apply what she had learned to the world around her.</p>
<p>Are all Vals “smart?” What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>There’s a difference between only knowing “things she read in a book” and only knowing things she read in test prep books! I say that after spending the afternoon convincing D that she doesn’t have to take her 30 favorite books to college with her - that she’ll have more than enough to read next semester and that most of her dorm-mates won’t want to borrow extra reading materiels…
Is D saying the val has no street smarts, current event smarts or people smarts, or is she saying the girl is a test robot? High IQ doesn’t always mean smart in real life. Which is exactly why top colleges don’t just go for the stats.</p>
<p>I think there is a difference between being bright (as in naturally smart/able to learn things quickly) and being a hard worker. In my experience it has been the hard workers who make it to the top of their class because they have developed the study habits and work ethic it takes to be a top student. Sometimes bright kids just don’t work as hard as the hard workers because they don’t have to. These are the kids who have a relatively low GPA but have insanely high test scores. And sometimes bright kids will work as hard as the hard worker.</p>
<p>So, maybe the val was a hard worker, but not necessarily the brightest kid in the bunch.</p>
<p>Here is something to consider: at some schools, the VAL took crazy courses - basket weaving and “regular” English (is there still such a thing? Isn’t everyone AP, Honors, CP or whatever?)… </p>
<p>I think VALs are extremely diligent for the most part, though not necessarily a genius. As an employer, I would rather hire the hard worker over the genius any day.</p>
<p>Depends on the school, if the school is average and has a wide range of abilities, vals can often just be hard workers. At a competitive school with a 1300 SAT average and a big group of kids vying for Intel, your val usually will be at least very bright.</p>
<p>My D know a somegirl that has perfect SAT and almost or perfect GPA, but can’t seem to answer the teacher’s question in class. This happened more than once. My guess is a lot of kids at D’s high school have tutoring after school. That helps with the high GPA.</p>
<p>Grades usually measure content knowledge, not intelligence. </p>
<p>Work ethic, motivation, organization, and metacognitive skills are probably just as important as intelligence when it comes to mastering content. My D. had a math teacher who made the mistake of confusing intelligence with content knowledge. (It was his first year teaching). </p>
<p>If a student asked a question, he would tell them that if they didn’t already know the answer, they probably didn’t belong in the gifted class (the school’s term, not mine, sorry). Apparently he thought “gifted” meant “born knowing all the math.” :)</p>
<p>Also, I don’t know how much faith I would put in measuring anyone’s intelligence by the impression a peer (however insightful) gets after spending an afternoon or two with her. There could be all kinds of reasons the other girl didn’t put on a show of brillance; she might have not even have realized it was expected of her during a social visit! </p>
<p>As an aside, elite U’s reject voluminous numbers of everyone every year. My understanding from reading other’s posts is that vals do get accepted at higher rates than the general population, but it’s certainly no hook.</p>
<p>There’s also a difference between the student who obsessively wants to get A’s and win approval with good test scores, and the student who has a true love of learning, interest in the subject matter, and/or natural abilities who does really well. The Val at my D’s high school gave a plodding speech without intelligence or imagination, just as I had always seen her to be throughout school. Nice girl, but just no star. The Sal, on the other hand, gave a speech just like himself - witty, intelligent and creative. Their gpa’s were probably really close, but nothing else was.</p>
<p>Close to 30 years ago, I was a young reporter and had dinner with another young reporter friend and an even younger reporter acquaintance, Oprah Winfrey.</p>
<p>My friend and I were surprised at how little Oprah knew about journalism and about the world in general. We decided that Oprah wasn’t too bright and wouldn’t go far in the field.</p>
<p>After that enormously wrong assessment, I look askance at others’ assessments of the intelligence of their acquaintances.</p>
<p>People, even teachers, tend to mix up verbal ability with intelligence. There is some overlap but they aren’t co-terminous. Ask college students in lecture courses taught by Nobel laureates. Some Nobel laureates are engaging and entertaining lecturers, others not.</p>
<p>NSM: Thanks for sharing that story about Oprah. I’ve always thought Oprah’s success was about her ability to empathize with others and inspire others to empathy, more than about more traditional kinds of intelligence (not to say she doesn’t have them, too). I think she took a lot of people by surprise.</p>
<p>Sometimes the ones to watch out for are the ones who are smart but didn’t work in high school. When these kids finally engage their academic gears, they can blow the kids who ground their way to straight A’s in high school right out of the water. </p>
<p>Sometimes the students who have worked their hardest all the way through sometimes work themselves into a spot over their head.</p>
<p>One of the deans at my oldest son’s school made a comment along the lines of–90% of you were in the top 10% of your class in high school; 90% of you will not graduate from here in the top 10%. </p>
<p>The girl in the room across the hall from my son freshman year could not keep up in some ways–she had studied non-stop in high school and didn’t have another gear to kick it up a notch in college. She attempted suicide from the pressure–she couldn’t continue to get the grades she had gotten all of the rest of her life and there just wasn’t any harder that she could study. She withdrew two-thirds of the way through second semester of freshman year and did not keep in contact w/ anyone so I do not know where she is now, but I think of her sometimes. It was very traumatic for my son and the rest of the kids on the floor.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Fencersmother (I have a fencer, too, by the way – aka psycho with a sabre). The non-fencer is the hardest working average kid I know and she does well and will be an amazing citizen. The super-bright one is lazy as the day is long and has developed almost no work ethic. I’d rather hire the hard worker, too.</p>
<p>Some students can play the game, write the papers, and know what a teacher wants, and that doesn’t make them educated</p>
<p>when my D was in middle school, a classmate “won” an award for a story she wrote and it was picked by the teachers, the story was really not very good, and after having read the other runners up, etc, it was obvious the girl was picked because she was “smart” er, she was the obvious choice</p>
<p>and sometimes, kids who always write well, can get away with mediocre very often, a teacher sees it, and gives the A</p>
<p>as for genius, a Val should have a hint of intellectual courisety and risk taking, often kids with high GPAs don’t venture off what is expected, taking a risk on a concept, a thesis, asking questions…</p>
<p>“as for genius, a Val should have a hint of intellectual courisety and risk taking”</p>
<p>Nope. A val just should have the highest grades. Many if not most vals earn their positions by working for As and not taking risks. The quality of most schools helps such students become vals. Most schools reward with good grades students who give teachers exactly what they want – no matter how mundane – not students who ask difficult to answer questions, do things creatively, submit papers that are beyond what their teachers can understand, etc. The students who figuratively color nicely between the lines are the ones who’ll become val.</p>
<p>northstarmom, you are completely correct. As I recall my h.s. days, the VAL of my class was a good friend, but she had a complete “no risk” personality. She dated only the right boy, married the day after college graduation (same boy), worked for her parents in their business - had the obligatory two children four years apart. SNORE. What a dull life.</p>