how much does someone's intelligence correlate to his/her school name?
I go to a top 20 university. We have a smattering of smart kids but a lot of unmotivated kids that only want to party and no intellectual pursuit whatsover. I've also been to a lot of the ivy league schools and observed a lot of the same things that I witnessed at my school.
Most surprising is the number of people I know who have never finished reading a book from cover to cover and cannot write anything for their life. Also a bunch of people I meet at my school and also the kids from my HS who went off to ivy league schools have major ADD and can't sit still to work or read anything remotely long without being distracted by social media or something. The kids from my floor last year spent the majority of their time playing xbox and getting high than do anything productive. I feel like a lot of my state school friends were better than this. Did these kids just get lucky with rich parents and figured out how to game the system? Can't be the whole school though.
0.37
More specifically, 0.368. But you know, whos counting?
You don't write well enough to make posts complaining about people who "cannot write anything for their life."
to an extent, you can substitute intelligence for hard-work (e.g. not spending 100s of hours prepping for SATs but still doing great). But only up to a point of course.
i see what you're saying. same thing at my ivy, a lot of people who don't/haven't do/done shit but still got in.
That's just life. Some kids just know how to play the system. There are kids who can sit drink and smoke all week and look at the material 5 minutes before class starts and ace every test. I think sometimes when kids go off to Ivy's or top 25 schools, they expect way too much.
I know I did when i transferred from a non-target mediocre school to a top 25 school, I expected way too much but in essence, these kids are all the same. It's just that the kids at the higher ranked schools, put a little more work into their school work, although you do have the ones that are socially inept.
That may be true for the average student, but I promise the top decile and most motivated of the top schools can run your state school friends into the fucking pavement. And investment banks aren't especially going to be interested in anyone outside of that group.
Paging Doctor IlliniProgrammer, paging Doctor IlliniProgrammer...
There's a correlation between school name and SAT score, and there is some correlation between SAT score and iq. obviously neither measure is perfect but in aggregate it's ok.
Top admissions are insanely competitive now; it often comes down to who has the right extracurricular or ticks the right diversity box. If you are at a top 10 university or top 5 LAC, you are smart enough for 90% of finance jobs.
The top 10% at any of those institutions will be extremely motivated and have similar capabilities. They are almost certainly within the top 1% of the population in terms of mental horsepower. And they all have the potential to do very well, whether they attend Harvard or UChicago.
This isn't to knock state schools. Any college will have a few exceptionally talented students who chose that college for reasons other than US News rank, such as a single strong program or generous financial aid. But, on the whole, the top 10% at Harvard is probably smarter than the top 10% at UC Irvine.
even at top schools you get a lot of ppl that are complete idiots, you get marginally less than at lower schools and the top end is much much much smarter
Yes
Um, not quite. At least not the beginning of what you said.
That is not to complain, but they are given way too much credit for the percentage of students at those schools that are quality.
And this statement is horrendous; "If you are at a top 10 university or top 5 LAC, you are smart enough for 90% of finance jobs. "
Are you kidding me? Sorry, but you just ignored the trash students that exist at every school. Ivies and any top school and any school has crap students mixed in. Therefore, just because you went to a "top 10 university or top 5 Lac" does not in anyway mean you are fit for 90% of the jobs.
Sorry if I seem like an asshole, but that was ridiculous.
And while I honestly admire an attempt to put numbers on this (since numbers can help people understand and picture the situation/question), that top 10 percent statement about those kids being within the top 1 percent of the nation is stretch. I just wouldn't even try to put a number on that because you just don't know.
But let's consider for a second here what the top 1% really means. Top 1% includes all the anomalies, meaning any ridiculous geniuses, whether they went to school or not, no matter where they went. And geniuses don't just go to the top schools. Do they tend to flock there because of prestige, yes. But they don't all go there.
10% means one in every ten students you see at one of those colleges is within the top 1% of the nation in smarts... I don't think so. 3-5 percent, I might have believed you, but ten percent all being the smartest of our nation is a stretch.
But like I said before, to put numbers on that type of thing is very very difficult and I wouldn't even try to attempt that when you simply don't know.
I think a simple statement/answer (like some other posters here have gotten close to) is what really answers this question: There are SMART kids at EVERY school, there are DUMB/LOSERS at EVERY school, but if you were to choose a student from a "top" school you would be more likely to choose a smart one than if you were randomly picking at other schools. Top 1% at Ivies, the ones that truly are in that 1% at the school (if there really was any legit way to measure this since gpa isn't always accurate), yes, almost all of those people are incredibly smart and rank high in the nation, but the top 2-4 percent at any school, aside from a rare exception here an there, are going to be of respectable intelligence. Top 1% Ivy > Top 1% Public yeah... Top 20 % Ivy > Top 20 % Public definitely.... Top 10 % Ivy > Top 1% state no
"Top" schools have more prestige, they have a larger percentage of intelligent individuals, but they also have dummies and it's not like state schools only have "a few" smart people. Give "top" schools the credit they deserve, but not anything more.
Stop making assumptions that someone is great just because they went to a school. If you believed in that, then you would think every president was great because how could the leader of America not be great.... um yeah, look at who is the president now. But I don't want to get started on that. And don't assume what I said is wrong just because your political views are different (just look at any one of a number of other presidents who have under performed and relate to that).
TL;DR: This guy ended up at one of his safety schools.
Super Short;I Shouldn't Have Wasted My Time Reading Your Lame Attempt At A Joke:
Actually no, I didn't end up at a safety school. I didn't go to an Ivy and my school is semi-target at most (a bit of finance OCR). But I have a number of family members at Ivies and many in finance too. So I am simply taking what I have personally seen at those schools and what I have learned over my life into consideration and giving my best attempt at an answer to this question since so many of the bits of information mentioned in general are incorrect assumptions.
I skimmed your original post, but you're right. There are complete morons at Ivies and there are smart people at non-targets. Some may be at the former because of sports; others may be at the latter because of money. But idiots and smart people are everywhere; there's just a (slightly higher) percentage of somewhat intellectually curious people at more prestigious schools, since those schools were built to attract those types of students to begin with.
Exactly this.
you'd be surprised at how many people at any top 20 school can't sit still to read a book or even a news article for that matter. social media and video games have destroyed this generation (myself included).
Let's be honest, you don't need to be incredibly intelligent to be top 10% at a top state school, but it does take a hell of a lot of work. I can't tell you the value of a person's Ivy League education + extra intelligence when we both have the same job, same network, and same paycheck. All the while, they paid 2x as much, and probably never experienced a true college or even high school social scene.
A better metric of someone's intellectual horsepower, rather than where s/he went to college, is to look at that person's major and GPA. Someone who attained 3.7 in electrical engineering from a middling state college tells me more about his work ethic/ intelligence, than someone with a 3.2 gpa in a fluff major from Princeton.
Not to mention, the kid with a high gpa in engineering from a state school will likely end up with a better job than a kid with a crap gpa + fluff major combo from Ivies.
That being said, Ivies have much higher concentration of students who are motivated and intelligent, compared to large state schools. It's just the matter of higher barrier of entry. I don't doubt that there are intelligent folks at state schools, it's just that the proportion of dumb kids at state schools is way higher compared to Ivies, due to much lower barrier of entry.
Many kids from my high school who had trouble with basic grammar and were too retarded to understand basic cosign functions from pre-calc got into our flagship state college left and right. Not to mention, many public schools, even the top ones (like Michigan, Berkeley, UVA) accept a ton of transfer students from community colleges each year, who don't even have to submit SAT scores to get in. These kids would never stand a chance at a top Ivy/ Stanford/ Duke in a hundred years.
people tend to give too much credit to brands, I find this even more so prevalent amongst those that are insecure of their own intellectual abilities
The way I see it, in HS you have nearly only morons, at top universities its still predominantly morons, in banking you still get a lot of idiots but its a bit better than at university, at elite buyside shops you at last have no more (or nearly no more) morons.
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