<p>They keep saying that you need high IQ to do well in school and I disagreed by using my IQ.</p>
<p>And, yeah, I guess those IQ tests were worthless.</p>
<p>And forget about my dad. If you get into Columbia my dad would go “if you worked harder you would’ve got into Harvard.” If you DO get into Harvard and you get 3.9 he’d say you could’ve got 4.0. If you do get 4.0 he would’ve said “you could’ve taken this/that class that’s harder.” His cup is always half empty even if you fill all the gallons of water of the 7 seas in his cup. Unless you go to Harvard and graduate top of the class with hardest classes that you can possibly take, which is very unrealistic. ***…</p>
<p>Melin, I empathize with you about your dad. I have a Harvard undergrad degree, an earned doctorate, an honorary doctorate and some awards, and despite all of that, when I was in my 40s, my mother still was saying I should consider going to law school!</p>
<p>I think its ridiculous to say that a person with average intelligence wouldnt cut it at an ivy. Its not about the intelligence you have, but about what you do with that intelligence. With the proper amount of effort, anything can happen.</p>
<p>The problem is, once you get past high school that’s just not true. If Person A and Person B can both do an assignment, but Person A takes 10 hours and Person B takes 5, then person B is more qualified. If the work needs to be done in 7 hours, Person A will not finish.</p>
<p>“The problem is, once you get past high school that’s just not true.”</p>
<p>It’s not even true in high school. The person who takes forever to do a standardized test isn’t going to finish, and will score lower than will the smarter person who finishes the test in time.</p>
<p>I think that mentality is just wrong. How are people supposed to believe that they have any chance to succeed when you tell them they are doomed from the start. Its kind of sad, really.</p>
<p>You do realize that your IQ is not listed on your applications?</p>
<p>And that admissions committees may not be able to discriminate between an average IQ/ hard worker with a 3.8 unweighted and 4.2 weighted , and a person with a 130 IQ with a 3.8 unweighted/ 4.2 weighted who took exactly the same classes but didn’t spend as many hours on homework and studying? That is, unless the difference is highlighted in a letter of recommendations.</p>
<p>A lot of hardworkers also do just fine on the standardized testing as well. </p>
<p>My S1 is very, very bright. Graduated top of his class at Emory in a difficult major. In third grade, he did not do well on the “IQ test” given for the gifted program even though he was the student most advanced in reading and math in his entire grade! Why? Because he saw three different ways to possibly solve one of the problems, and decided he wanted to see if all three methods led to the same answer…so he never finished the test. Another son–not as academically oriented–passed the same test with flying colors but refused to participate in the program.</p>
<p>This is not true. Someone with an IQ of 80 has effectively no chance of getting 2400 on the SAT. Someone with an IQ of 150, for example, has a significantly better chance – one that is not negligible.</p>
<p>On a related note: Has anyone read Outliers?</p>
<p>I have. I do believe that after a certain benchmark IQ, your intelligence level really doesn’t matter and that it takes hard work to truly succeed and make use of that intelligence.</p>
<p>Of course you have to reach that benchmark IQ or be somewhat near it in the first place…</p>
<p>Indeed, I was interested in this part. I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether the author was making a logical fallacy in his noting that many scientists with good but not genuis IQs were winning Nobel prizes when those with ultra-high IQs were not; there are simply a lot more scientists with IQs 120-140 than there are with profoundly high IQs.</p>
<p>Given the significant luck involved, there just aren’t enough people with IQs 160+ to produce a large number of Nobel laureates.</p>
<p>To the OP: I hope that you don’t let your IQ results make you feel as if your options are restricted. It’s best to ignore them; your sense of your intelligence and abilities should be your guide.</p>
<p>I took one IQ test and did well, but I don’t intend to ever take another one with a higher ceiling. There isn’t really a point.</p>
<p>I suppose, but perhaps he was making the argument from a proportional point of view and that you would expect a high(er) ratio of people with IQs 160+ to be winning Nobel Prizes/Fields medals/w.e. than scientists with IQs 120-140.</p>
<p>At any rate, I personally believe that “IQ,” just like the “SAT” is inherently flawed in the sense that it is based off a standardized test. A timed sitting solving problems can in no way capture someone’s true measure of potential or intelligence IMO. As a matter of fact, I cannot believe the emphasis placed on grades as well; the nature of defining “academic excellence” with a benchmark is bound to have everyone trying to surpass that benchmark (i.e. an A). So what does getting an “A” mean? It doesn’t mean that you are academically excellent - it means you made the institutional benchmark defining “academic excellence.”</p>
<p>And that’s what things such as class ranking and curved grades try to remedy. But then you run into the opposite problem; you get ranked differently depending on how good the pool of students in your year is. I don’t really think that there is a perfect way to measure academic potential, unfortunately.</p>