Are you or have you been obsessed with intelligence?

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I am learning to temper my intelligence with kindness.

Intelligence + Mercy = Wisdom

Gee, I never saw THAT problem. In fact, when I learned a new word, HECK, EVEN TODAY, my compehension DOES go up with knowing more about each part. Having studied several languages, I can tell you it DOES happen! Even some devanagari is starting to jump out at me. What I CAN'T handle are all the stylized scripts in devanagari. It is RARE to see it to that degree in Latin!! !! !!

Hey, 2ukenkerl,

I read "Jabberwocky" but I read it in English, French and German, ('
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Il brilgue: les töves lubricilleux
Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven



This usage of the word was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy" and this is in English, so it might make sense.

and so is les toves lubricilleux anything really in French? Doesn't seem like it translates into German,unless it says 'it was brillig' either.

Merle

OK, when I said "It is RARE to see it to that degree in Latin!! !! !!", I meant the different scripts. Arial, courier, even OCR are VERY close to one another. Devanagari scripts vary so much it is incredible that even a literate person could read them.

I'm glad to hear you are trying to be nicer!

I was obsessed with it for a short time. I lost interest when my elementary school withheld my IQ test results, then told me I could do better. I didn't understand what "better" I was supposed to do. They said they withheld scores because a low number would discourage someone and a high score would make someone overconfident. Idiots.

Ughhhhhhhhhhh; Doing good in school DOES NOT equate to having high intelligence.

It merely shows that you have dedication and possibly even maturity but it is not an accurate measure of intelligence.

I am even going to take this one step further and pronounce the statement that:

People who go to Ivy Leagues schools are not geniuses and/or overly intelligent.

They merely spent the majority of their time in high studying and really not having much of a life outside of studying.

I hate to use this as an example but......George Bush went to a Ivy League, I think it was Yale, and this is such a perfect example .

Last edited by Brian003 on 20 Oct 2007, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is probably because of the myth that the IQ test is 100% accurate and the IQ can't change. After all, with that being the case, a person with a 300 IQ will be smarter than all of his teachers, and a guy with an IQ of 80 should be a janitor, RIGHT?(BTW I am being sarcastic. Frankly, I think everyone should know ALL their test results.)

And yeah, maybe they viewed you as bright, and a 130 score would have been "below expectations"! AND, after making that observation, they STILL held back your score? CRAZY!

I will let Tom Robbins tell you himself what your idea made me think of.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvI5hPo7pMU[/youtube][/

I disagree. Yes, some people get into Ivies as a result of connections, like Bush. But in today's highly competitive selection process, you have to not only have the grades and activities (which are possible just through dedication and hard work), but also the SAT scores (which I have found to be very accurate reflections of intelligence in general). However, one can be very brilliant and not do well in school. My valedictorian was ditzy - I mean, she had the intelligence to do well enough - you can't really fake writing a spontaneous essay etc., but she definitely got by mostly by her insane work ethic. I knew other brilliant kids who failed tests for lack of effort. But the vast majority of people who can get into Ivy Leagues have to be very brilliant, as well as hard working. Less and less are colleges able to sneak in less intelligent kids based on legacy or the money/influence of their parents. In my public high school, many bright kids didn't get into Ivies, but no idiots got into great schools, either. I think the schools are getting a lot smarter about who exactly the people are who are applying - they're not easily deceived by inflated resumes and professionally planned applications. Sorry for the long post - I just went through the college admissions process!

Last edited by quirky on 21 Oct 2007, 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

I disagre with MUCH of what you said and....

RIGHT! NOW, it is based on color, race, "ideals",perception



Well, that is why the SAT was designed, but OTHERS(And they themselves even) made course/wrote books to pass it!

BTW A friend told me of how an honest friend of hers tried applying to a college. She was TURNED DOWN! She sent in the same application to the SAME college with her picture(she's asian), and they accepted her! Interesting, huh?

you are kidding, right?

I mean you are kidding that you don't know these things not only exist but you are actually surprised that they happen?

Love that bit about Bush, thanks sins

Hmm...yes, I think it should be done a lot less on race and hometown. At my school I've noticed the kids from MA are very bright, because it's difficult to get into BU from MA, but students from far away states seem to be a lot less bright. But, in reference to SAT prep classes, they help, but they can't fix someone's scores. I know plenty of people with good grades who paid thousands of dollars for prep courses and still couldn't get above average scores. I took like one math review class and did several hundred points better than they did. It can help - but it can't make you do brilliantly, IMO. Some people, no matter how much practice they do, just can't get all the reading comprehension questions and can't see the errors in sentences where you have to find what's grammatically incorrect. I agree anyone can be taught to write an essay, and do most math problems, but I've seen way too many people spend thousands on courses and still not be able to fix their critical reading and non-essay writing portions. Looking at all the kids in my grades, all of those who were very bright did very well, and a lot of kids who had good grades but weren't brilliant saw this accurately reflected in their scores. My friend complained to me about how unfair they were because she had a pretty low critical reading score - but she was terrible at reading in real life! She never read, always spark noted books, always missed the symbolism. She had a great math score, and she had a 102 on honors calculus. I said, "How is that unfair? You're not good at critical reading, but you're great at math, so why would your scores be the same?" In my experience, these scores have been pretty accurate.

Okay, I'm am not going to try to make a flame ....but people LIKE YOU make me very very angry. When I get angry, I argue.

Well, I could only assume the reason you think this way is because YOU go to a school comparable to Ivy League.

Of course you have put in the dedication and effort, but you seem to fool yourself into thinking this makes you better/smarter than all the other students. On the contrary, it does not.

The reason the kids do very well in school is simply because the grand majority are too socially incompetent to do better at anything else (Like Sports, Status, and everything else that actually matters in a society like America).

In the long run, if you do not have the adequate social skills, your grades mean absolutely NOTHING. You will see that many people with AS like symptoms who get 4.0 GPA's get paid less than people who just barely passed College with a 2.0 GPA. WHY? Because having social skills is more important than doing well on tests. Doing good on tests may get you on top of the class list in school, but that ability is absolutely USELESS in the real world. Because the real world is communicating with other people, not memorizing random things that your teacher wants you to learn from lecture notes.

And yes, school is not the REAL world. After you graduate you will then be placed in a totally different reality.

While I would agree with you that getting good grades is based on the reflection of dedication, it does not in any way equal intelligence. Look at Bill Gates and Albert Einstein form example- They dropped out of College.

And the SAT scores and ACT scores mean absolutely nothing either. But since you apparently think they do- I would love for you to explain to me how? They are an accurate measure of what?



Yes, they have to be hard working but not necessarily "smart." They also spend all day in the library reading books and/or lecture notes because they do not get along with other people with explains the reason why they have to proven themselves as better academically when they don't understand that further isolating themselves from society(By reading books alone in the library) isn't really helping them in the long run. It is just making their social skills worse.



Ummmm, have you ever heard of Affirmative Action? I'm not even going to get into a debate over that because it isn't fair in a school wise setting, but I believe it is still necessary because many white employers are very very racist(Especially some i have worked for).

And yeah, College in America isn't exactly what it used to be either. It is turning into a 4 year party, not necessarily a place to learn. And thats in the Ivy League schools also.

I'm having trouble working around all these quotes, so I'm trying to answer your points one by one here.

I go to BU - not an Ivy. I don't think I'm better than anyone else - I think I'm smarter than some people, but I don't think there's anything wrong with saying this in a thread about being obsessed with intelligence. I do think I'm better than people who don't make any effort to learn about the world or to work hard at whatever they want to pursue. But I don't think intelligence makes me any better.

I agree some kids who do very well at school are antisocial. However, you are making HUGE generalizations. My valedictorian was an athletic partier, as were most of the people at the top of my class. Actually, no one at the top of my class was a loner who just studied - those kids tended to not do well at all. The majority of kids who did very well at my school were involved in athletics, music programs, etc., and had jobs and were very into the social scene. In college, this may be different, but I'm not sure yet. I don't believe someone should give up their whole lives just to study, although if you plan to be a doctor or something, I don't believe there's anything wrong with putting your life on hold to study like crazy to get a good position, and then enjoy your life later on. But it's a personal choice. And what matters to American is sports and status? That's a pretty depressing view....sports only get you so far, unless you go pro. All the football players at my school, despite winning the superbowl, couldn't get into college and most are now facing DUI and assault charges. And social status disappears once you leave school also - and becomes replaced by job status.

You don't have to isolate yourself to be smart. I agree that most people won't be successful without adequate social skills, but many people won't be successful without intelligence and a good education, either. It depends on your career goals. You're making it sound like being smart gets you nowhere in life, and neither does studying. It's gotten many people VERY far in life. That's not to say people who didn't work hard in school haven't done well, or people who aren't bright haven't done well. I agree that in the real world, tests don't matter. They don't. But test scores can reflect intelligence, which is very important. For most jobs social skills are needed, but not all. Likewise, for many jobs, intelligence is needed, but not all. I'm not arguing that being bright makes up for me not having the best of social skills (I do have social skills, just not great ones)....I feel that it's definitely holding me back, and it makes me really worry about my future abilities. That's why I chose to go to BU, a big school with many different people and resources, so that I could push myself out of my comfort zone and prepare better for the real world. I decided not to go to Wellesley because I feared it would allow me to stay in my room studying all day, and never make me face my fears of being in a big city and of interacting with guys. I don't know if it's the right decision, but I am very well aware of the importance of social skills.

I agree AA might have gotten out of control, but I don't know if it makes that big of a difference. I don't have the stats on that. And I agree it's a big 4 year party - I don't know if that's something new, but MIT has the best parties in Boston, apparently. I wish people focused more on studying, I agree with you on that.

You mention people like Bill Gates. I've clearly stated that people can be brilliant and not do well in school! I've known plenty of people who were practically geniuses and failed tests because they just didn't care about school, and wanted to do their own thing. I am not saying that doing well in school is an accurate measure of intelligence. I was saying test scores tend to be - I would imagine Bill Gates tested quite well. The kids I know may not have done well in school, but they still did awesome on the SATs. I've very clearly stated that doing well in school shows dedication and not brilliance. I totally agree with you on that point.

There are people who have spent years studying in libraries, and it paid off well. Working hard at school doesn't mean you have no social skills. I don't think you mean it this way, but you make it seem like studying is a bad thing. It's not - but yes, just knowing a lot is not necessarily enough. But I still really admire people with that kind of dedication, because I don't have it.

And lastly, I can't prove that the SATs are accurate. I really can't. But in my personal experience, I have never met someone whose SAT scores did not appear to me to reflect accurately their intelligence. My own were very high in reading and writing, which I enjoy, and do well. I had a lower score in math, and I sometimes struggle in math. People in my school who did well in school, but it was clearly more dedication than intelligence, didn't do as well as kids who were clearly very bright but got lesser grades due to apathy. SAT scores are not the most important thing - but they are one thing that really can't be helped too much by others, IMO. Your college essay could've been written by your parents, as well as most of your AP english papers throughout high school (I know many kids whose parents did all the work). It's something that's really only a reflection you. Is it the most important thing? No. But I've found its reflections to be accurate. I could be wrong though. These are just my personal findings. They should not be the defining measure of people's lives. Wow that was a long post. i hope I cleared up some of my responses.

I didn't know it was difficult to get into BU if you are from MA. Yes, I know BU has produced Nobel Prize winners, but I never thought BU was a tough school to get into for people from MA or any other state. Isn't it ranked like number 50 in the nation?

By the way, how do MIT kids get along with BU students?