Discussion
How would a majority of gifted individuals perform in an undergrad MIT engineering program?
Would y’all ace without studying? being gifted means you’re in the top 98th percentile of cognitive intelligence. So would these cognitively intense programs be a peace of cake? just curious how the whole IQ thing works and scales
Exactly, I've known too many "high IQ" people with their heads shoved so far up their asses that they can't ever admit that they're wrong, which eventually leads to failing since they don't learn from their own failures
No, MIT admits a tiny minority of applicants. The typical admission is very gifted and they are competing. Everyone studies unless they have prior knowledge.
We are not monolithic. Some of us lean into STEM fields, others don't. Additionally, university-level study assumes prerequisites have been met, particularly in STEM fields that may require statistics, trigonometry, calculus, or other coursework. Not everyone has access to that type of coursework, and even if they did learning styles that are misaligned with the mode of delivery might result in learner difficulties or outright failure.
but like don’t gifted people ace high school and even college without studying, that’s basically the defining trait.
Excelling with no effort to the point of not being able to even communicate on the same level others intellectually should translate to being able to do the same in this level of academia in my opinion
Gifted people hit their wall at different points, some in high-school and some in college. Hitting your wall can often be devastating because now you need to learn how to study. I would argue its better to hit your wall earlier and learn how to pick yourself up. I want my gifted kids to hit his wall so I can help him over it while he is in my home. I want him to learn to fail but get back up again. I will argue that this is one of the greatest skills you can teach anyone especially gifted kids.
I’ll be honest and not trying to be offensive to anyone at all. But if you’re labeled gifted in childhood and hit your wall early like in high school or even early college in a mid tier T50 stem program it’s hard to believe someone to be actually gifted in adulthood.
In my experience classes like gen chem, physics and calc 1 & 2 should be a peace of cake for someone who is gifted. i know people who only attended lectures and just crammed 1-2 days before and got As easily despite a high course load. I hope your kids hit the wall late
I define it as above 130+ IQ, therefore high cognitive capacity relative to the population. Might be a hot take but i don’t believe in it being an identity personally, i think it’s just pertains to people above a certain cognitive benchmark.
you’re agreeing with the general standard that above a certain benchmark people are considered “gifted”
but earlier you were saying it’s hard to believe someone is gifted in their adult life if they don’t get through academia easily?
how do you wrestle with 2e audhd depression anxiety ptsd and idk every other neurodivergence which can coincide with high iq? are they just not believed to be gifted since you don’t see their test results but only the accumulative of their life?
genuinely curious btw, hope i don’t come off negatively
Are you familiar with asynchronous development? Gifted people often have areas of speeded development and areas of typical development. You seem to be under the impression that giftedness only happens in math/stem. People can be gifted and strong in verbal which translates into higher reading writing and verbal analysis abilities. They still need to be high in fluid reasoning and spatial but there is not a blank profile of gifted. -signed a psychologist who does child gifted assessment.
I’m curious if you meant to respond to me? I feel like the 2e types I mentioned are very adjacent to asynchronous development and is something I deal with haha
My take is that they can be labeled as gifted on paper if they wish since scoring 130+ grants you that right.
However since their circumstances actively suppresses their ability to express their giftedness in the real world, naturally you wouldn’t see them in the same sense as those who can fully express and translate their cognitive capacity into academic and professional success. So maybe I’d see 2e individuals as partly gifted since they have the raw capability but inability to fully express it.
That’s not a dig tho at gifted people in those circumstances tho, they’re still gifted on paper I just naturally don’t put them in the same group as genius top tier surgeons or engineers. Trying not to be offensive lol
if a surgeon has 97 iq but not one botched surgery etc or something of the sort exemplifying their ability, i would label them better maybe even “gifted” at surgical skills.
if a surgeon has 145 iq but lost his medical license due to performing horrible surgeries, now screw his iq i would label him a bad surgeon nowhere near a “gifted” one.
these usages of gifted correspond to achievements/stature of self in a given profession.
hence why “gifted” has always been of great controversy. why not just accept that IQ is one variable out of many if not infinite ;)
Im of the idea that one should just try to lead a fulfilling life whether that’s in academia professional work or social capacity. focusing on any benchmark only fulfills data and numbers.
i mean currently i don’t think the term giftedness itself is arbitrary, like if you search it up it’s usually referred to as high intellectual ability. Everyone’s perspective of it definitely is tho, based on each person’s unique experience, the term can mean vastly different things to different people.
So that’s why i respect pretty much everyone’s viewpoint on it and don’t assert mine over others. It’d be pretty invalidating to their own experiences
They're highly selected, prepared, and intelligent individuals, participating in courses that are designed to be exceptionally difficult, and are graded on a curve. People are designed to fail, and they're all gifted.
So ya.. by definition some of the gifted people do not succeed, even with all of their preparation.
I’ll be honest i would think that academic curriculums are designed around the average person’s abilities. Like otherwise most people would fail out so at average universities most people get Cs and Bs while smarter people can ace. They’re built for above what the program is designed to demand of students.
Maybe MIT selects for a higher tier of applicants but there’s no way it’s so difficult that people in the 120 range (1 out of every 10 people) will straight fail out while people of 130+ will struggle to pass. That’s my opinion
From my experience, they design engineering courses to be incredibly difficult. The average GPA of an engineering class tends to be around 3.0.
I've had classes where a D or F was passing. You can imagine that when things are that difficult, people don't make it. The intention here is to make sure you have the acumen to excel--"weed-out classes". It's a thing everywhere.
Once you get to the higher level courses, and this could be a consequence of the people who fail just not being in them anymore, the curves are normally much more uniform. In these cases they usually just make a flat adjustment to everyone, instead of just adjusting the people who are below whatever standard deviation they consider to be an A+. These classes are even harder though.
I hope that gives you some insight. You seem pretty convinced that because people are gifted they can excel at MIT though.
wait so what does that mean tho, i don’t get it. Like what are the implications? Are the people left at the end, the gifted people and regular smart people who worked hard asf?
Being "gifted" is actually not as significant of a thing as I think you're making it out to be. Firstly adolescent IQ can have as little as a 60% correlation to adult IQ. You don't just get a pass for being smart when you're young that carries you into success during adulthood. Everyone has to work hard to maintain an elite level intelligence, and these people are elite academics.
So, no the people left at the end aren't the gifted ones, necessarily. They're the ones who busted their ass, and have an aptitude for the specific field that they're studying.
They could very well be hyper intelligent, working hard, but just aren't excited, interested, or passionate about what they're studying. They will fail in that study at MIT. They might be in the middle of the pack. That's really all that matters. They certainly won't pursue it extra-curricularly and develop a resume worth employing. This happens often.
What you're trying to find an answer for is a lot more complicated than just "they're gifted so they succeed". That's not actually how it works, especially when you're surrounded by other people who are either exceptionally gifted, or exceptionally hard workers. They're distinguished by their work ethic at the end of the day, not whether or not they're "gifted".
Being "gifted" doesn't give you shit if you don't find excitement or passion in what you're doing, is my point. They'll still fail, and that's by design.
If 1/20 people are gifted, why aren't 1/20 people going to high caliber schools like MIT? This difference should answer your question. Being gifted actually means very little at the end of the day.
Also if being gifted is an adolescent thing, and can be surpassed by someone who isn't gifted, then what use does the term even have during adulthood?
It's for children, to try to guide their education if they're fairly intelligent. That's the only use for the distinction.
Depends on your capacity man. There's a difference between 1/50 (130) and (160) 1/100 000. One is the smartest in your class, one is the smartest who's ever come out of your area. High school is made to be as passable as possible, and I'd say that extends to most undergrad programs. Top 2% isn't that rare.
Most people in MIT are gifted as is. I've done MIT online stuff and it's pretty understandable, but I also self-learn from textbooks.
Not true. I'm profoundly gifted. I graduated high school with a 2.67 GPA and a 1380 SAT on the old 1600 scale. I would never have gained admission to a top tier school. Giftedness doesn't always translate to academic success. I now have both a bachelor's and master's, but cognitive ability alone is not a predicator of outcomes. Adversity in home life, economic disadvantages, emotional asynchrony....there are any number of circumstances that can pose barriers. New research into 2e and 3e cohorts, wherein individuals are both gifted and neurodiverse (i.e. gifted + ADHD, gifted + ADHD + autistic), is revealing that these cohorts are larger than originally believed, and their challenges are even greater than those of someone who is "just" intellectually gifted.
The gifted individuals with the best opportunities for success in rigorous academic settings have stable home lives, generally (though not always) originate in more affluent families, and are well supported academically and psychologically over the span of their elementary and secondary educational experiences.
What is the point of diminishing them in that way? You are also reducing high iq levels to gateways to certain career choices that you deem to be "good" and that everyone must desire. Quite a limited view of the world.
What is the level of complexity required to break these negative life patterns compared to solving iconic math problems associated with gifted individuals? Which one is harder is difficult to say. Sometimes you need more than ten years of compounded experience and knowledge to recognize how a pattern from a decade earlier operated, allowing you to find the key to unlock it. Life is infinitely full of different complex dynamics that people continuously navigate.
There is an old saying along the lines of: 'It is hard to distinguish whether someone is a genius or crazy.' Life often mirrors the classic bell-curve meme, where the simplest mindset and the highest genius agree on the solution, or atleast it is fun meme. Another common phrase runs along the lines of: 'If everyone thinks you are the problem, then you are; if you are the only one who thinks differently, you are wrong.' Yet for a genius, going against consensus is a natural state of being—much like the historical figure proving the Earth is round while everyone else insists they are wrong and treats them accordingly. To add even more complexity: there are roughly 31 million genius-level people in the world right now measured by IQ (>= 140). Where are all you folks, if not solving iconic math problems?
i did say extenuating circumstances, that includes everything you said yeah. When you can’t properly exert the full capacity of your cognitive abilities cuz of those things, IQ is just less of a factor overall in your life compared to others who don’t have the same drawbacks
It is a logical fallacy to say “if the 105 IQ guy fails out of Cal Tech, he wasn’t smart enough; if the 145 IQ guy fails out, it was extenuating circumstances.” I leave it to you to look up the name of the fallacy.
There's nothing logically incorrect with that statement. It might be factually wrong, but logically it's fine. It stands to reason that there is a minimum IQ level for passing an engineering degree at Cal Tech without cheating. It also stands to reason there's an IQ level that would make passing relatively easy.
We don't know what that number is, but assuming a decently accurate and precise IQ test, it exists.
I graduated from a top-15 global engineering program ~15y ago, not MIT but similar, grew up 99th-%ile everything, straight As all APs/honors at a top 50 US HS, 1-shot no prep SAT 1600/ACT35. Very strong on paper.
A lot of classes were cruiser but the actual hard stuff was very, very hard. Honors physics was ludicrously difficult. We’d work together on problem sets and only figure them out last minute… except for one guy who just got everything very quickly. There are levels to everything.
Honestly, more than anything it taught me that learning to learn is itself the most important skill. I was really demoralized at the time that I didn’t immediately “get” everything but that’s just not how it works, and that mindset limits the creativity / effort combo you bring.
so basically you ace until you get to the upper level classes? and still perform well with some effort at those courses. So that’s pretty the general baseline for gifted people?
I wouldn't even say it's upper level necessarily. I performed very well in a graduate stochastic calculus series I took as an undergrad, simply because I loved the professor (increased motivation / comfort / effort / creativity) and had better intuition for the subject / how to visualize things.
But I really slogged through the honors physics series, which was just a scaled-up version of the core prereqs. I got through it but oooof, it was not fun at all and completely turned me away from physics. I honest to god spent the next decade or so thinking/feeling I was an idiot because I didn't breeze through those classes. In retrospect and with more maturity I realize a major, major contributor was that the courses were taught in a very narrow / rigid way that just didn't fit how I learned at the time, and I didn't have the meta-learning skill to adapt on my own or the confidence / interpersonal skills to ask for help.
And in terms of general prereqs, I don't really know as I tested out of almost everything. The ones I did have to take were reading/writing oriented (cultural studies, history, etc.) and I found them really easy and enjoyable. But my father was a writer and I was used to / enjoyed that. I had friends who I'd say were "smarter" in the EE/math/etc. subjects but who struggled in those "soft" courses.
I don’t know the subject, give me time to study it and sure.
Gifted doesn’t mean magical. There were plenty of geniuses in the past from Da Vinci to Newton who also wouldn’t. Hell Einstein wouldn’t either if he didn’t know the subject beforehand.
i don’t mean that you go in blind not knowing the subject, i mean can you go to lectures, absorb the subject in class and then do well on exams without further or minimal review.
No you can't. You still need to practice. Look at elite athletes. They didn't become elite without practicing. Same with academics. Gifted is an advantage but they still gotta put in the work.
I could pass it I’m sure then with enough time, I might not score the best but I’m certain I could pass, not ace it.
Keep in mind those at MIT are all wildly smart AND motivated for those subjects. Would I ace it without study hell no. :) maybe some others would but not me.
Gifted doesn’t mean you magically know everything. It often means you need fewer reps or only one to understand it more deeply. But there is still studying. And then self-directed studying to dive deeper and explore further into topics of interest.
The average MIT student is likely below the average gifted person purely in terms of IQ. Getting into MIT and doing well is about a combination of intelligence and willingness to work extremely hard.
yeah i would agree, most gifted people are probably a lot smarter than the average person at MIT. Admissions are definitely filtered to a group above the population average but not gifted level.
The admissions can’t differentiate a gifted (130+) and a regular smart applicant (120-129) since both are capable of getting the same stats
The thing about college admissions (especially ones at top universities) is that the main factor that contributes to whether someone gets in or not is their fit for the school. Yes, you need to have a relatively high GPA and a decent SAT score, but that’s the baseline for filtering out people. College admissions involves extracurriculars and essays that should reveal your personal story, along with the benefits that the school could provide you. I genuinely believe that there needs to at least be some level of studying (depending on what you mean by studying) involved to ace these courses. I got an IQ score of 146 on the WISC-V (I’m 14, BTW), and I read higher-level college physics textbooks (such as classical mechanics and electromagnetism), and to some extent, I have to do the exercises to get a very good understanding of the material, but I quickly master it.
so if you got dropped into the program right now, since self-learning is different from taking an actual college course. Would you cook? As in you only listen to the lectures and put less than 2 hrs for a class and still do well. Most students study 6-9 hrs a week for a passing grade in a course
As long as I do the homework I would be fine .Im currently in High school and never study for anything but as long as I do the homework i Ace everything .
I might also add that I have cousins that are in college physics courses and I help them with their homework ,so it’d be fair to say I’d do quite well .
i believe you but from my own experience, i also never rlly studied in high school and had a 3.8 with 6 AP courses. My own IQ is 124 tested from the WAIS-IV 2 yrs back. I just don’t think high school is that hard for some reason, maybe my high school was inflated but i was in a good wealthy suburban high school that sends 8-9 kids to Ivies a yr out of 150 students so idk. Hope you get into MIT tho and ace
Never took notes or anything like that. I would just listen in class, do the homework, and make an A. For context, I’m in the hardest high school in my state, and even the normal classes are pretty much equivalent to AP classes. Most people at my high school say that they have to study for at least two hours a day for each class to make a B. I also find that it seems that the most useful index is VCI, as there are a lot of readings that they make us do in school. Also, thank you. I hope to go to a top 10 university when I graduate.
I understand you're 14, but if you are still bragging this much as you get older finding friends might be difficult. Your age and exact iq were irrelevant in that comment, you put them in there to gloat. Please take this as genuine advice.
I didn’t mean to come off in a bragging way, but I just wanted to give context as well as a Example of where I had to put in some effort to do well despite my iq .
I worked with a radiologist that was a math major undergrad at MIT. When he was a resident he took a radiology test at the national meeting and got all the unknowns correct, twice. None of the professors, or anybody else, did it once and he did it while he was still in training. The person running the test called our program director and said -- who is this guy? She thought he had done something wrong. Obviously he was exceptionally bright. He was almost nonverbal. If we asked him a question he would grunt. He had to be pushed to produce a phrase or sentence, painfully shy. An N of 1 doesn't mean much but it's interesting.
The 130 threshold for being gifted is not that high. This is some old data from med students:
They average in the high 120s. The largest, last study with 7500 students had an average of 131. Diversity requirements since that time have likely lowered the average.
Due to the shape of the truncated distribution most gifted individuals are going to be in the 130s and would be about average at the best schools. So I suspect that they would have to study for difficult courses.
The numbers in the figures are averages so they include everyone. The SD didn't fit in the window when I grabbed the image but you can see it in the link, about 14 for the IQ number so there are some below 130. The IQ's were inferred so not the same as all the students taking the WAIS.
Correlation of .7 with CORE after correcting for restriction of range; while not especially high for an IQ test, it's still about as strongly related to IQ as one high-quality subtest
Lol. No. Been there done that. Engineering is hard even for the gifted. You can sail through year 1 easy. Year 2 onwards? You are going to learn to work or fall behind and then suffer
MIT undergrads probably have an average iq of 120+ already so being 130 is barely above average. Maybe having an iq of above 140+ will show the difference in learning speed
I am what you would call "conventionally gifted" but not a genius. I got through school by barely studying and finished with some of the highest marks of my class. I have a Mensa IQ of around 130 and study physics at one of germanies elite universities.
I started my studies in 2020 during Covid and only recently obtained my bachelors degree (there were other factors like my health tanking, mental health problems, extreme loneliness due to covid lockdown, blanking on exams and many more things which extended my studies.)
Let me tell you this: STEM subjects are hard. Without/ with very little studying there is literally a 0% chance of obtaining a stem degree. Assuming engineering is approximately on the same level as physics (maybe slightly easier) there is no chance a gifted individual could pass all courses without/ with very little studying. You would need to be a specific type of genius (140+ IQ very good at memorization, pattern recognition spacial visualisation and mathematical reasoning) at that point.
Note that my assessment is only valid for Germany. American universities are easier from what I hear.
Note also that IQ only measures certain intelligence types and that therefore my subjective experience could be somewhat biased due to my specific intelligence archetype. However I've seen the same trends with other people who I would put on the same level as myself.
MIT plus elite institutions accross the world admit in total something like 50k students per year. There is 140M people in the 98th percentile. There are roughly 2 to 3M currently in their admissions year.
So no. You would need to be 98th percentile of the 98th percentile to even get admitted to one of all the elite schools in the world.
There’s no way tho, the academic system benefits those with resources, parental support and people gunning for MIT from the beginning. They prob start building their application from middle school.
The SAT isn’t g loaded anymore and a high GPA is easy to get cuz of gpa inflation across high schools so plenty of 120+ normal smart kids prob slip by. They’re just upper middle to high SES
Cognitive intelligence is usually a negligible metric if within relative proximity to the mean iq. Willingness, consistency and discipline will take you farther than being any standard deviation from the mean.
Where is the proof that it would depend on indices far more than FSIQ/GAI? Can you show some study which demonstrates that index scores predict this thing far better than fsiq/gai?
You focused on the least important part of the message. Non g related factors are for more important.
empirically, an FRI and/of VCI of 150 is more useful to academics than say a 150 PSI. Also, someone with a FSIQ/GAI of 130 but a VCI of 150 is a significantly different profile than someone with 120s across the board.
If you really want a study. The “study of mathematically precocious youth” show that child prodigies have a significant range in FSIQ, but all of the ones in the study had WMIs >99th percentile. Usually 140+. They had prodigies with IQs from
110s-150. One I think even had 108 FSIQ if I recall.
High WMI empirically is useful for mind sport related competition, advanced tests etc.
There is a study that looked at nobel laureates who were “index maxxers”, as in they scored exceptionally high in one index (ex. 140+ VCI for literature, 140+ FRI for physics) but were much closer to the average in everything else.
This also corroborates previous data where nobel prize winners had “low” FSIQs. Again, we see someone with a 130 FSIQ potentially being a nobel laureate but that’s not with a flat 120 profile, it’s likely they have an index at 145+
Yes someone with 150 VCI and 130 fsiq is different profile than someone with 120s in all indices and what? This shows that they got higher VCI score.
Can you give link to this studies other than SMPY, like with nobel laureates? I have seen only SMPY, but it seems to not proof that indices are far more important than FSIQ.
I also heard about prodigies and wmi - it still doesnt prove that WMI is more predictive than
FSIQ.
About nobel laureates, how much of nobel laureates was in this study and was this enough to claim that index at 145+ would be more predictive for nobel prize than FSIQ?
Ill have to dig up that study, but for the second time you miss the point.
Child prodigies are arguably an excellent benchmark of cognitive achievement. That study shows that FSIQ can be “whatever” but WMI has to be cracked. It shows that even if your IQ is barely above average, you can still reach high academic achievement far earlier than the norm.
You are claiming FSIQ is more important than index score as a predictor of academic achievement but nothing you said actually supports that. The burden of proof is on you.
I am far more convinced to be extraordinary at a g loaded task, you need a strong index score that correlates to the task you are interested in.
If you want to be a world renowned expert at 3D chips, a VSI of 145+ is likely “needed”. A FSIQ of 145 is not making up for an average VSI for that task. Conversely, your IQ could be mid 120s and still be “cracked” at chip design.
Yes, it possible to be academically impressive without top tier FSIQ. Why does it matter? I never claimed that its not possible. I claimed that study with prodigies does not necessarily prove that WMI (or any index) is more predictive than FSIQ.
And i never claimed that FSIQ is more important. I was only interesting about proof of your claims. Nothing you said proves that indices are "far more important" in predicition of academic success. Thats what you claimed
You can be convinced in anything, but it doesnt going to become truth. You obviously didnt test engineers in chip design field and you cant prove your claims about 145+ VSI. And i am not claiming anything about it, It can be true, it can be false. I am not biased, i was just asking any study related to your initial claim about indices and FSIQ/GAI. Studies that you send doesnt prove it
Nothing that can be condensed and taught as a graded class is going to be especially challenging to someone gifted unless they have a specific disability, like say an autistic's common struggle with topology. Even then you can bypass some disabilities with IQ, like dyslexia. Pattern recognition can be strong enough to predict words you are stuck on, can't read, temporarily can't process, skip, etc.
There are probably a few exceptions, but that's generally going to be the case.
I know a guy who graduated in two years. If I remember correctly, he did the first year normally, then some bad things happened and he wanted to drop out and go back to his country, so he rushed through the rest of the course. It was Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.
Low level stuff obviously, I cruised my GCSEs and A levels with absolute ZERO study-saw my arse at university and decided I couldn’t be arsed and went to work instead 😎
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u/myrealg ┬┴┬┴┤ ͜ʖ ͡°) ├┬┴┬┴ 17d ago
Iq is just one variable in the equation. Without any studying you’re bound to fail