IQ v. MCAT

[RobbingReality]

This is just to fulfill my own interest, but I was wondering about individuals IQ levels compared to their MCAT scores.

Please list your IQ (only if you know it for sure), and your MCAT score (average if taken more than once).

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[tkim]

Quite some time ago I did my field intership for my paramedic ticket. One of the preceptors watched as I asked a patient some questions:

"Sir, how long have you had this dyspnea?"
"Is your chest pain sub-sternal?"
"Are you on any anti-hypertensives?"

As the patient became more confused at my line of questions, my preceptor stepped in and asked the same questions:

"How long have you had trouble breathing?"
"Show me where your chest pain is."
"Do you take anything for high blood pressure?"

After we finished the call, he pulled me aside and said: "You must be very proud of your new medical vocuabulary. It's too bad the patient didn't go to medic school with you so he could understand what the hell you were talking about. Do me a favor, and stop using five-dollar words for a nickel's worth of conversation."

You get the point, of course. I did. But the larger picture was that I wasn't focusing on communicating on the patient's level. I was talking more for me than for the patient.

When I wrote term papers I sprinkled them with italicized Latin phrases. But I never enjoyed reading them - not like a nice piece of fiction. Part of the success of getting one's point across is in the way in which it's delivered. People annoyed at the writing style will focus less on the point of the message - and more on how annoyed they are at the writing.

It's all in what your goal is in writing something - to convey the clearest message to the largest audience, or produce some piece of ephemera that gets a chuckle and a nod from the average subscriber to 'The New Yorker' magazine.

After all, it's your five dollars.

- Tae

 

[enamine]

Originally posted by tkim6599
Quite some time ago I did my field intership for my paramedic ticket. One of the preceptors watched as I asked a patient some questions:

"Sir, how long have you had this dypnea?"
"Is your chest pain sub-sternal?"
"Are you on any anti-hypertensives?"

- Tae

Why would you ever use technical jargon in talking to a patient? I mean, even a high-schooler I would know not to use language that the other person would not understand. It sounds like you were on a huge ego trip.

 

[lloydchristmas]

Originally posted by enamine
Why would you ever use technical jargon in talking to a patient? I mean, even a high-schooler I would know not to use language that the other person would not understand. It sounds like you were on a huge ego trip.

Because, he is human. It is common practice for noobs in the medical field to get caught up in all the medical jargon and forget the patient doesn't know what you're saying. Ego trip?? Come on dude.

I just don't understand some people on SDN. They're either criticizing someone else to make themselves feel better or using incredibly useless words that are undoubtedly intelligent words, but no one in their right mind uses them. I bet if gbemi uses those words outside his mom's basement, he has just as many friends as I thought. Get real, man. Everyone knows how to use those words; we've all done it a million times in papers. No one uses them in conversation; unless you're trying to prove a point on an IQ thread (and though you don't know it, the point you're trying to prove is only getting harder for you to convince people the more you use them).

 

[ttac]

Originally posted by Gbemi24
ttac, why do you feel the need to defend your style of writing? Is it now a crime to have facility with language? It is obvious to me that NONE of the people who are bothered by the so-called "high" or "flowery" language have ever read a scholarly book of note in the arts or humanities. If they had, they would have realized that the "high language" that gets them so much is and has been the lingua franca of scholarly discourse for over a 1000 YEARS!

It definitely isn't a crime to have (and use) a large vocabulary. I am sure that your vocabulary is greater than mine, and it is probably comfortable for you to use words that you did. However, I'd like to point out that it could appear that you were intentionally using sesquipedalian (oops, there I go again! I mean, 'large' ) words to demonstrate superior intelligence, and "rub their noses in it", so to speak.

The whole point of these posts is to get your point across, so what is the use of posting if the other person cannot easily understand you?

On a side note: From your claim that you got 23 questions right on the month-long test, I'd say you're almost certainly smarter than me. I looked at some of those questions, and they were HARD. REALLY HARD. I don't think you have anything to prove to anyone in the way of intelligence. It's unfortunate, but using a large vocabulary (especially in the context of an IQ vs. MCAT post) makes it seem like you do. That's why I refrain from speaking in that way whenever possible.

ttac

 

[deez4life]

Originally posted by lloydchristmas
I bet if gbemi uses those words outside his mom's basement, he has just as many friends as I thought. Get real, man.

that's my laugh for the day, now back to amcas

 

[tkim]

Originally posted by enamine
Why would you ever use technical jargon in talking to a patient? I mean, even a high-schooler I would know not to use language that the other person would not understand. It sounds like you were on a huge ego trip.

Yeah, a bit, sure - but I was mostly nervous and scared that the patient would think I was new. Which I was. So I used all the fancy new words I learned in class to appear competent. Big mistake.

I suppose every high schooler would know better than to use big jargon. I was twenty and just got let loose into the world with big needles, a box of drugs, and crackly radios, so my perspective was more than a little skewed.

It's good that fifteen years has given me *some* perspective.

- Tae

 

[DALABROKA]

Originally posted by tkim6599
"Sir, how long have you had this dypnea?"

While we are on the subject of vocabulary, it is actually "dyspnea".

DALA

 

[tkim]

Originally posted by DALABROKA
While we are on the subject of vocabulary, it is actually "dyspnea".

DALA

Yeah, my bad - but that's more of a typo than anything else - like these:

finacial or a instead of 'are'.

How about:

'You' instead of 'your'.

And may I add:

'Spatter' instead of 'splatter'.

But typos don't explain 'allot'. Not did you just mispell it, it isn't even a word.

These were in your ten most recent posts ...

Dude, spelling flames are sooo JV. Rocks, glass houses, PCTKB, etc.

- Tae

 

[Biffer]

gbems,
cool down--its not that your verbal facility is being seriously challenged or even that your inherent intelligence is in question--just a question of motivation, thats all. Sure, I'm not so idealistic as to preclude the existence of genetic variables that control measurable intelligence--but to say that it is so clearly delineated in your diction is foolish. Of all people, you should know that to have an IQ above 130, qualifies above average mental competence and the rest, well, is left to will.

 

[DALABROKA]

Originally posted by tkim6599
Yeah, my bad - but that's more of a typo than anything else - like these:

finacial or a instead of 'are'.

How about:

'You' instead of 'your'.

And may I add:

'Spatter' instead of 'splatter'.

But typos don't explain 'allot'. Not did you just mispell it, it isn't even a word.

These were in your ten most recent posts ...

Dude, spelling flames are sooo JV. Rocks, glass houses, PCTKB, etc.

- Tae

Talk about JV. You going through my last ten posts to find a handful of errors is just sooo mature.

Just a few comments.
'You' instead of 'your'.
-Either you are saying that I should have put "your are" instead of "you are" or you meant that should have just said "your." In both cases you are incorrect. "You are" and "your" are not the same thing. What I wrote was exactly what I intended to. (However, I could have used you're)


'Spatter' instead of 'splatter'.
-Another word you should add to your vocabulary:
Spatter: To scatter a liquid in drops or small splashes.
Once again, exactly what I intended to say.

finacial or a instead of 'are'.---But typos don't explain 'allot'.
- I have no excuse for these errors, but rather than searching through your last ten posts for mistakes, I will let it go. Can you?

DALA

 

[dstn2bmd]

I have just spent one hour reading these posts. Whoo!

Man, I am afraid to write. Anyways, very entertaining stuff. Probably one of the best threads I have read yet. Intrigue, drama, debate, bad words, sexual references. This is better than the movies.

Have fun.

 

[Gbemi24]

Originally posted by Biffer
gbems,
cool down--its not that your verbal facility is being seriously challenged or even that your inherent intelligence is in question--just a question of motivation, thats all. Sure, I'm not so idealistic as to preclude the existence of genetic variables that control measurable intelligence--but to say that it is so clearly delineated in your diction is foolish. Of all people, you should know that to have an IQ above 130, qualifies above average mental competence and the rest, well, is left to will.

Isn't it ironic that you accuse me of using "high language," yet your post to me is more obscure and "formal" than mine? I have to embarrassingly admit that I am still trying to understand this phrase, "but to say that it is so clearly delineated in your diction is foolish." Talk about "high" language.

Clearly, you misread my post to ttac. You misread it because you read it through a "gbemi is arrogant" filter in your mind. You mistook my challenge to your general thesis that intelligence is a "social construction" to mean that I was defending the innateness of my intelligence. The truth is, I don't really care how smart or dumb you or anyone else thinks I am. That opinion has and will have no bearing on my life. I joined this thread to have a healthy discussion or debate on the degree to which the MCAT score correlates with IQ. Instead, you and others have turned it into a referendum on my use of language.

This is not new to me. The regression to ad hominem attacks in hot debates is very common. Political debates are the most conspicuous instances of this. When people have no way of debunking your arguments or ideas, they change the subject to focus on such extraneous and ultimately irrelevant matters such as your style of writing. If you understand my "high language" enough to criticize it then you surely understand it enough to comprehend the points I make.

I am not angry because you or other people take issue with my point of view. If you find faults with my reasoning, then by all means you should hold my feet to the fire for it. But do not disguise personal attacks as intellectual discourse.

 

[tkim]

Originally posted by DALABROKA
Talk about JV. You going through my last ten posts to find a handful of errors is just sooo mature.

It's just a very simple way of showing you that no one's perfect.

Just a few comments.
'You' instead of 'your'.
-Either you are saying that I should have put "your are" instead of "you are" or you meant that should have just said "your." In both cases you are incorrect. "You are" and "your" are not the same thing. What I wrote was exactly what I intended to. (However, I could have used you're)

"PS., is you signature from one of the dark tower books"

So, am I to assume that's what you *meant* to write?

'Spatter' instead of 'splatter'.
-Another word you should add to your vocabulary:
Spatter: To scatter a liquid in drops or small splashes.
Once again, exactly what I intended to say.

BS - I've worked in and out of hospitals for 15 years. The face shields you're describing are commonly called 'splatter shields'. Please, don't embarrass yourself by trying to say otherwise. I knew that the word spatter exists, but no one uses that word in the context of face shields. C'mon.

[/B][/QUOTE] finacial or a instead of 'are'.---But typos don't explain 'allot'.
- I have no excuse for these errors, but rather than searching through your last ten posts for mistakes, I will let it go. Can you?

DALA [/B][/QUOTE]

The point being, perhaps you should not have brought it up in the first place, eh? I find it entirely hypocritical that you should point out the typing/spelling errors of others, when you commit the same errors yourself. We all make those errors. How much more annoying it would be if we spent all of our time posting about other people's typos.

- Tae

 

[Gbemi24]

Originally posted by tkim6599
Quite some time ago I did my field intership for my paramedic ticket. One of the preceptors watched as I asked a patient some questions:

"Sir, how long have you had this dypnea?"
"Is your chest pain sub-sternal?"
"Are you on any anti-hypertensives?"

As the patient became more confused at my line of questions, my preceptor stepped in and asked the same questions:

"How long have you had trouble breathing?"
"Show me where your chest pain is."
"Do you take anything for high blood pressure?"

After we finished the call, he pulled me aside and said: "You must be very proud of your new medical vocuabulary. It's too bad the patient didn't go to medic school with you so he could understand what the hell you were talking about. Do me a favor, and stop using five-dollar words for a nickel's worth of conversation."

You get the point, of course. I did. But the larger picture was that I wasn't focusing on communicating on the patient's level. I was talking more for me than for the patient.

When I wrote term papers I sprinkled them with italicized Latin phrases. But I never enjoyed reading them - not like a nice piece of fiction. Part of the success of getting one's point across is in the way in which it's delivered. People annoyed at the writing style will focus less on the point of the message - and more on how annoyed they are at the writing.

It's all in what your goal is in writing something - to convey the clearest message to the largest audience, or produce some piece of ephemera that gets a chuckle and a nod from the average subscriber to 'The New Yorker' magazine.

After all, it's your five dollars.

- Tae

Nice anecdote. However, I think it misses the point of my choice of language. The reason why every human language has a LARGE store of complex and seemingly unnecessary words, is not because man has an idle penchant for linguistic redundancy. It is because words are often invented to express relatively complex thoughts or ideas in an economic fashion. For example, it is more economical and efficient to say "reaganomics" than to say "the economic policy used by the Reagan administration, in which taxes for the rich and corporations were lowered with the hope that they would invest the extra capital to help grow the economy." If I were giving a speech to an audience that was not sophisticated enough to understand the word "reaganomics," I would have no choice but to give a long explanation of what the idea stands for. On the other hand, if I am lecturing a sophisticated audience, why not use it to save time and energy?

As regards the language used in my posts, this same line of reasoning applies. I am on a premedical forum where most of the people are fairly intelligent and all are college educated, so why not use vocabulary if it gets my point across efficaciously? Why should I say "the common language used by " when I can say "lingua franca"? Why say "harshly and loudly criticize" when I can say "fulminate"? Why waste the time and energy? Especially if my intended audience can understand it. If I were using "big" words out of context, I could understand why many would be annoyed. But I am not. No one has been able to point out to me where I used a word inappropriately. Besides, all the words I have used are common in college textbooks and journal articles, so most people on this thread should be already exposed to them. For some reason, my detractors are under the impression that the reason why we learn vocabulary in school, is so that we can use it on tests like the SAT and GRE or, as they accuse me of doing, use it to "prove" our intelligence in forums. The REAL reason why vocabulary is tested on standardized tests like the SAT and GRE, is to see whether we have a large enough vocabulary to express complex thoughts and ideas. Whats the point of having it if we are not going to use it appropriately to express ourselves when needed?

Also, as regards the anecdote you gave, you completely misunderstand the function of specialized vocabulary used by academic disciplines such as medicine. The reason academic disciplines develop specialized vocabulary, is so they can express ideas particular to that discipline without having to always resort to wordy explanations. If neurologists had to always say, "the lateral region of a part of a tissue called the thalamus, located in the middle of the brain and made up of six layers that map neural signals from the eye to the visual cortex," instead of saying, "the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus," they would go mad. The preceding example clearly illustrates the importance of medical vocabulary. Also, these terms are clearly not meant for the lay person but for communication with other doctors and medical scientists. So your use of medical vocabulary with a lay person is not the same as me using college level vocabulary with college students. If I used this type of language in the stands at a NY Giants football game, then your criticism would apply.

Interestingly, you accuse me of using language that does not get my "message to the largest audience", yet you used "ephemera" in your post. I guess the word "ephemera" gets your "message to the largest audience." What HYPOCRISY.

 

[lloydchristmas]

Originally posted by Gbemi24
Nice anecdote. However, I think it misses the point of my choice of language. The reason why every human language has a LARGE store of complex and seemingly unnecessary words, is not because man has an idle penchant for linguistic redundancy. It is because words are often invented to express relatively complex thoughts or ideas in an economic fashion. For example, it is more economical and effecient to say "reaganomics" than to say "the economic policy used by the Reagan administration, in which taxes for the rich and corporations were lowered with the hope that they would invest the extra capital to help grow the economy." If I were giving a speech to an audience that was not sophisticated enough to understand the word "reaganomics," I would have no choice but to give a long explanation of what the idea stands for. On the other hand, if I am lecturing a sophisticated audience, why not use it to save time and energy?

As regards the language used in my posts, this same line of reasoning applies. I am on a premedical forum where most of the people are fairly intelligent and all are college educated so why not use vocabulary if it gets my point across efficaciously? Why should I say "the common language used by " when I can say "lingua franca"? Why say "harshly and loudly criticize" when I can say "fulminate"? Why waste the time and energy? Especially if my intended audience can understand it. If I were using "big" words out of context, I could understand why many would be annoyed. But I am not. No one has been able to point out to me where I used a word inappropriately. Besides, all the words I have used are common in college textbooks and journal articles, so most people on this thread should be already exposed to them. For some reason, my detractors are under the impression that the reason why we learn vocabulary in school, is so that we can use it on tests like the SAT and GRE or, as they accuse me of doing, use it to "prove" our intelligence in forums. The REAL reason why vocabulary is tested on standardized tests like the SAT and GRE, is to see whether we have a large enough vocabulary to express complex thoughts and ideas. Whats the point of having it if we are not going to use it appropriately to express ourselves when needed?

Also, as regards the anecdote you gave, you completely misunderstand the function of specialized vocabulary used by academic disciplines such as medicine. The reason academic disciplines develop specialized vocabulary, is so they can express ideas particular to that discipline without having to always resort to wordy explanations. If neurologists had to always say, "the lateral region of a part of a tissue called the thalamus, located in the middle of the brain and made up of six layers that map neural signals from the eye to the visual cortex," instead of saying, "the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus," they would go mad. The preceding example clearly illustrates the importance of medical vocabulary. Also, these terms are clearly not meant for the lay person but for communication with other doctors and medical scientists. So your use medical vocabulary with a lay person is not the same as me using college level vocabulary with college students. If I used this type of language in the stands at a NY Giants footballl game, then your criticism would apply.

Interestingly, you accuse me of using language that does not get my "message to the largest audience", yet you used "ephemera" in your post. I guess the word "ephemera" gets your "message to the largest audience." What HYPOCRISY.

OK, I'm the smartest in here, and I'm about to make a serious statement, so everyone listen up.

I believe I speak for everyone in here when I say, "Gbemi, SHUT THE F*CK UP!!!"

 

[Gbemi24]

Originally posted by lloydchristmas
OK, I'm the smartest in here, and I'm about to make a serious statement, so everyone listen up.

I believe I speak for everyone in here when I say, "Gbemi, SHUT THE F*CK UP!!!"

Priceless

 

[tkim]

Originally posted by Gbemi24
Interestingly, you accuse me of using language that does not get my "message to the largest audience", yet you used "ephemera" in your post. I guess the word "ephemera" gets your "message to the largest audience." What HYPOCRISY.

Actually, I wasn't trying to single your posts out. I apologize if it seemed that way.

My use of the term 'ephemera' was really more tongue-in-cheek - in the context of people who read 'The New Yorker', with those cartoons that display a sense of humor a little more sublime than I'm used to. You get it, I'm sure.

- Tae

 

[Gbemi24]

Originally posted by tkim6599
Actually, I wasn't trying to single your posts out. I apologize if it seemed that way.

My use of the term 'ephemera' was really more tongue-in-cheek - in the context of people who read 'The New Yorker', with those cartoons that display a sense of humor a little more sublime than I'm used to. You get it, I'm sure.

- Tae

No offense taken. Atleast you took the time to clarify your point. I can't ask for anything better. Cheers.

 

[RobbingReality]

So, I am doing this survey and wondering what everybody's IQ and MCAT scores are to see if there is any correlation. I don't know some say it is a crazy idea, but **** I think this might work. I know evrybody will be comparing themselves to everybody else and there may be a debate here or there, but we are all intelligent people who won't let the egos of others get in our way. SO WHO IS WITH ME

 

[ttac]

Originally posted by RobbingReality
So, I am doing this survey and wondering what everybody's IQ and MCAT scores are to see if there is any correlation. I don't know some say it is a crazy idea, but **** I think this might work. I know evrybody will be comparing themselves to everybody else and there may be a debate here or there, but we are all intelligent people who won't let the egos of others get in our way. SO WHO IS WITH ME

LOL
ttac

 

[DALABROKA]

It's just a very simple way of showing you that no one's perfect.

No, I'd say that it is just plain childish.

"PS., is you signature from one of the dark tower books"

So, am I to assume that's what you *meant* to write?

What the hell does this mean? Are you now trying to say that "meant" is not a real word?

Not did you just mispell it, it isn't even a word.
And "dypnea" is? C'mon yourself.
Also, did you mean to say "not ONLY did you MISSPELL it,..." hmmmm?


BS - I've worked in and out of hospitals for 15 years. The face shields you're describing are commonly called 'splatter shields'. Please, don't embarrass yourself by trying to say otherwise. I knew that the word spatter exists, but no one uses that word in the context of face shields. C'mon.

And how many surgeries have you scrubbed in on during you 15 years in and out of the hospital? While these face shields are commonly called "splatter" shields, it is just as common to call them "spatter" shields. You are very presumptuous to say otherwise.

FYI:
OSHA 29 CFR code 1910.1030(d)(3)(x)
(x) Masks, Eye Protection, and Face Shields. Masks in combination with eye protection devices, such as goggles or glasses with solid side shields, or chin-length face shields, shall be worn whenever splashes, spray, spatter, or droplets of blood or other potentially infectious materials may be generated and eye, nose, or mouth contamination can be reasonably anticipated.
OSHA CODE


The point being, perhaps you should not have brought it up in the first place, eh? I find it entirely hypocritical that you should point out the typing/spelling errors of others, when you commit the same errors yourself. We all make those errors. How much more annoying it would be if we spent all of our time posting about other people's typos.- Tae

I was simply trying to clarify your error for people that might not know what dyspnea is. While I fully admit that I make typos and spelling errors, they are on everyday words, not technical jargon. If I were to make such an error, I would welcome someone to point it out so that others might not be mislead. Your reaction to my constructive criticism was uncalled for. Are you just trying to make yourself feel better by attempting to berate me? Or, perhaps, you are trying to diffuse the strike to your ego that my original post (which was intended in a joking way) caused? Either way, you can take you BS elsewhere.

DALA

 

[DALABROKA]

Originally posted by tkim6599
"You must be very proud of your new medical vocuabulary.
- Tae

For posterity...

Rocks, glass houses, PCTKB, etc....you know how it is!

EDIT: I can't believe that I let you drag me in to this childish crap. I'm done.

Cheers!
DALA

 

[tkim]

Originally posted by DALABROKA
It's just a very simple way of showing you that no one's perfect.

No, I'd say that it is just plain childish.

"PS., is you signature from one of the dark tower books"

So, am I to assume that's what you *meant* to write?

What the hell does this mean? Are you now trying to say that "meant" is not a real word?

DALA, you are not reading your own sentence.

'is you signature' 'is you signature' 'is you signature'

Say it out loud ... Got it?

Not did you just mispell it, it isn't even a word.
And "dypnea" is? C'mon yourself.
Also, did you mean to say "not ONLY did you MISSPELL it,..." hmmmm?

My god, now he's a grammar cop too!

BS - I've worked in and out of hospitals for 15 years. The face shields you're describing are commonly called 'splatter shields'. Please, don't embarrass yourself by trying to say otherwise. I knew that the word spatter exists, but no one uses that word in the context of face shields. C'mon.

And how many surgeries have you scrubbed in on during you 15 years in and out of the hospital? While these face shields are commonly called "splatter" shields, it is just as common to call them "spatter" shields. You are very presumptuous to say otherwise.

Surgeries - none. I wear them routinely for invasive procedures and intubations in the field during my work as a paramedic.

Hmmm - 'how many surgeries ...' - are you trying to play some sort of status thing? Am I supposed to be impressed by you casually dropping some line about scrubbing in? Unless you are some surgeon dropping this line, I am nada impressed.

FYI:
OSHA 29 CFR code 1910.1030(d)(3)(x)
(x) Masks, Eye Protection, and Face Shields. Masks in combination with eye protection devices, such as goggles or glasses with solid side shields, or chin-length face shields, shall be worn whenever splashes, spray, spatter, or droplets of blood or other potentially infectious materials may be generated and eye, nose, or mouth contamination can be reasonably anticipated.
OSHA CODE

I stand corrected.

I was simply trying to clarify your error for people that might not know what dyspnea is. While I fully admit that I make typos and spelling errors, they are on everyday words, not technical jargon. If I were to make such an error, I would welcome someone to point it out so that others might not be mislead. Your reaction to my constructive criticism was uncalled for. Are you just trying to make yourself feel better by attempting to berate me? Or, perhaps, you are trying to diffuse the strike to your ego that my original post (which was intended in a joking way) caused? Either way, you can take you BS elsewhere.

DALA

*My* BS? Hey buddy, you brought up a typo of mine, I brought up a couple of yours. You like poking fun at others, then you should accept it gracefully in kind. You like criticising others, then be prepared to be criticized.

The fact you are going through great pains to dispute any of the spelling errors or typos of yours that I've pointed out shows that you are quite unwilling to drop the issue - despite postings to the contrary.

I was all done after I said 'typo - my bad' and put a few of yours up as 'constructive criticism'.

You like pointing out other people's errors, but can't take it when someone points out errors of yours? Tough. Deal with it, buddy. You can't take ****, don't give it.

You wanna dance around some more, bring it, Mary.

- Tae

 

[tkim]

Actually, I'm going to end this here. I won't delete my previous post, because I'm not above the occasional flame. It does a body good ...

Dala, if your correction to my post was sincere, then I thank you for pointing it out to me. It was a simple typo I have corrected. If you see any more of my postings that have spelling errors, I ask that you be so kind as to PM me to make me aware of it, so that I may correct them. Thank you!

- Tae

 

[farrago]

ttac,

"Clearly, a high IQ does not necessarily mean that one will accomplish things that will change the world. In certain academic fields, however, I think it is a prerequisite for such accomplishments. For example, I am fairly sure that nobody that has won a nobel prize in physics in the last 30 years has had an IQ less than 150. I would be quite surprised if they did. I believe that IQ does measure something, and that is 'intellectual potential'."

My opinion is that, once an individual's measured IQ reaches a certain point, the tests fail in making any substantive predictions about that person's global intellectual ability. Basically, I think that current tests have ceilings much lower than advertised.

You and gbemi have categorized IQs that differ by 5-10 points. I think that such differences, and any consequent distinctions and categorizations, are completely meaningless. I imagine that the functional differences between stratospheric intellects become more and more subtle, and increasingly more difficult to quantify. Given our limited knowledge of the related neurophysiology, and the difficulties inherent in assessing one intellect with another, I think our current measurement methods are very deficient.

"Here's a listing of the factors that I think contribute to 1)MCAT 2)Med school performance 3) Life accomplishments"

[snip...pretty much agree]

"MCAT 24 = IQ 112
MCAT 27 = IQ 120
MCAT 30 = IQ 125
MCAT 32 = IQ 130
MCAT 34 = IQ 140
MCAT 37 = IQ 150
MCAT 40 = IQ 155
MCAT 44 = IQ 162+"

Again, while I agree that there is a correlation, I don't think there is any valid way of being this exact. In addition, the three subsections allow for different score combinations so, you will need to account for that as well.

"This is based on the following data points (admittedly my numbers below 27 are pure speculation):

a)My 41-43 MCAT/160 IQ HST friend
b)My 40-42 MCAT/155-160 IQ friend
c)Myself
d)My 34 MCAT/140 IQ neighbor
e)Average MCAT/IQ of med students
f) My roommate"

These could be coincidental findings. Undoubtedly, a person with a score of 45 is going to be fairly intelligent, and a person who consistently scores a 23 will be less intelligent, but I doubt that any earth-shattering, intellectual disparitywill result from a difference of 4 IQ points.

[snip...agree]

[Me: Clearly, IQ tests are measuring something. However, statistical acrobatics, in and of themselves, won't provide much useful information. Ratio IQ, childhood scores... kinda useless...]

I disagree. IQ (while not perfect), is the best objective criterion we have for determining how 'smart' somebody is.

I might be the best we have, but that doesn't mean that it is anywhere near adequate. (But I didn't mean to imply that childhood scores are useless when we're talking about assessing children.)

Look, in one of his posts, Gbemi said:

"Do you know what an IQ of 170 means? Your IQ of 130+ should place you anywhere between 1 out of 50-100; on the otherhand, an IQ of 170 places an individual in 1 out of a 100,000! A person with that IQ, is statistically speaking, atleast a 1000 times smarter than you. A THOUSAND TIMES SMARTER !!! Your inability to score very high on the MCAT in spite of your outstanding SAT scores and good grades says nothing of how correlated IQ is to the MCAT. Rather, it suggests that you are a very intelligent person (an IQ of 130+ places you in the top 2% of the general population) who studied hard in school to do dwell on the SATs and in in-class exams. A person with an IQ of 170 is in the top .0001%. Do you realize how AMAZING that is? There are only 3,000 people with this IQ or higher in a country (the United States) of 300,000,000 people. A person with this IQ is about 30 times smarter than the average science NOBEL PRIZE WINNER (IQ of 155)!!! Einstein's and Hawkings' IQ are probably not this high."

So, apparently, Gbemi knows *exactly* what an IQ of 170 means. Forget them THOUSAND TIMES SMARTER folks, now *that's* amazing!


I'd bet that if you had tested the average childhood IQ of PhD's in math and physics, or nobel prize winners, it would be apparent that their ratio IQ's as children would be much higher than 100. If this is true, then childhood IQ is useful. Once again, childhood IQ only shows _potential_.

Potential, and innate ability, actually is all I care about. There are many things in life one could devote time to, so the fact that a certain person never goes on to win a Nobel prize, or whatever, doesn't really tell us much. Besides, the idea of intellectual accomplishment can't be confined to the halls of academia, or some other structured, major life activity. High cognitive capacity will make itself apparent in many other facets of everyday existence.

But, as I've said before, I'm sure that IQ tests are useful, to a certain point.

As you pointed out, it is possible to have a high IQ and not accomplish anything earth-shattering (Chris Langan). But there are confounding factors here. Alot of childhood geniuses either burn out, or are lacking in social interaction to the detriment of their overall development. They may be intellectually lazy, because they could get away with it in school.

It's also possible that a number of childhood geniuses reach some sort of saturation point in terms of their intellectual development, and don't progress further, thus becoming fairly, but not freakishly, intelligent adults.


In Chris Langans case, he was beaten as a child. However, after spending the first part of his life in relative obscurity, he IS making discoveries and advancing his field.

Perhaps because Chris is the only one working in "his" field.


[Me: Gbemi, it seems your interactions in the HIQ circuit are proving quite intoxicating. While I'm sure that you can objectively judge some of the accomplishments of some of the Mensans, Glians, and Triple Niners you've come in contact with, the basis of much of your praise rests on other, vague, personal assessments.]

I would hardly call Nobel prizes, PhD's, or revolutionary discoveries in mathematics "vague and personal".

I was referring to the HIQ society chit-chat.


These are objective measures of accomplishment, and almost without exception, were the results of the labors of individuals with a high-IQ. If there really was no correlation between high IQ and these discoveries, you would find that many nobel prize winners would have IQ's of 100, and half of them less than that. Essentially, an IQ histogram of nobel prize winners would be superimposable on that of the general population (mean=100, SD= 15). Of course the amplitude would be different.
To clarify: An IQ of 150 is about 1 in 1000. There have been 700 Nobel prizes awarded so far.

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/swedish/sympnobel/quiz.html

Ergo, you would expect that barely 1 Nobel prize winner would have an IQ of 150. This is a ridiculous assertion.

You won't find me claiming that such accomplishments are the result of an average intellect.


[Me: Anyway, I don't doubt that that the MCAT score correlates with one's intelligence (with the verbal section probably correlating most strongly).]

Agreed, as long as English was your first language.

Well, as long as you acquired it early enough in life.

 

[ttac]

farrago,
I basically agree with everything you're saying, and I'd like to clarify my proposed MCAT-IQ correlation.

I was just throwing that table out there as my best correlation of MCAT scores with IQ. It isn't really a one-to-one correlation, but more like where the mean would lie.

If you took 100 people with MCATs from 39-41 inclusive, and you had some way of accurately determining their IQ's, I would guess that their MEAN IQ would be around 155. Sure, the range of IQ's would probably be anywhere from maybe 130 to 170 (if we included the outliers), but the average would probably be 155. I have no way of knowing this, but I would estimate the SD of IQ would probably be 5 IQ points, or less.

The point of my table was not to exactly assign an IQ to an MCAT, but to give a ballpark estimate based on my anecdotal experiences. There is too much variability in MCAT scoring (with varying studying times, biology background, and just plain luck) to be able to exactly correlate MCAT with IQ (or even get an 'exact' MCAT score)

Re: IQ scores and '1000 times smarter'. I agree with you there. What exactly does it mean to be '1000 times smarter' than someone else'? I think there is a distinct difference between having an IQ that is 1000 times more rare than someone else, and being 1000 times 'smarter' than someone else.

I also agree with you on the fact that after having a certain IQ, your life accomplishments are pretty much only limited by your drive, motivation, and a whole host of non-IQ factors. For example, I probably lie pretty close to the upper end of MCAT scores at Drexel (mean=30). Theoretically, if MCAT (and the semi-correlated IQ) was all that mattered, I should be honoring all of my classes. In fact, I am only honoring maybe 1/3 of my classes, and high passing another 1/3. Why? because I don't work as hard as my classmates that got 30's on their MCATs, and I have other time commitments that my classmates don't have (National Guard training one weekend per month and posting waaaaay too much on SDN, for example )

My point is that I think it's possible for people with IQ's of 130 to achieve more than people with IQ's of 150. The 130 IQ people just might have to work a little harder. My classmates demonstrate that to me all the time.

ttac

 

[Gbemi24]

Re: IQ scores and '1000 times smarter'. I agree with you there. What exactly does it mean to be '1000 times smarter' than someone else'? I think there is a distinct difference between having an IQ that is 1000 times more rare than someone else, and being 1000 times 'smarter' than someone else.

ttac, What is the distinct difference? What scale does the IQ concept use to measure adult intelligence? I believe the scale used is the DEGREE OF DEVIATION FROM THE MEAN, where the mean IQ is a numerical value generated by a deterministic algorithm that uses the degree of deviation. Now lets use some simple deductive logic to see if my assertion is reasonable.

1. Since rarity and (100-percentile)/100 are different ways of speaking about the same thing, we don't lose any information by using (100-percentile)/100 instead of rarity. So I will use (100-percentile)/100 instead of rarity with the implicit assumption that they mean the same thing.

2. The set of all (100-Percentile)/100 is mathematically isomorphic to a subset of the set of all real numbers. The proof of this statement is easy to see. In fact this statement is true a prior since the set of all percentile numbers IS a subset of the set of all real numbers.

3. Since the set of all arithmetic operations apply on the set of real numbers, it follows that they apply on all of its subsets including the (100-percentile)/100 subset.
This seems like a trivial fact but it necessary I state it for reasons of rigor.

4. Since the psychometric definition of intelligence is "the degree of deviation from an arbitrarily determined population mean," it follows that a UNIT of intelligence must be some restricted interval on the deviation scale or more precisely, an interval on the (100-percentile)/100 set. This is similar to saying that the unit of distance is some restricted interval of the cartesian cordinate system, which is ofcourse true.

5. On the set of (100-percentile)/100, an IQ of 170 which is equivalent to .00001 is a 1000 times smaller the .01 (IQ 137). Since (100-percentile)/100 is inversely proportional to rarity, it follows that on the rarity scale an IQ of 170 is a 1000 times more rare than an IQ 137. Since we established in premise (1) that rarity and (100-percentile)/100 are equivalent by way of a mathematical function, it follows that we can use rarity as the unit of intelligence. This means that a person with an IQ of 170 is a 1000 times "smarter" than a person with an IQ of 137. This is true regardless of the restricted interval used since any interval on the real number line can be further divided into smaller intervals ad infinitum.

In conclusion, it is REASONABLE (although not necessary) to use rarity as the unit of intelligence if we ACCEPT the psychometric definition of intelligence. If you and farrago are using the vague, intuitive and ineffable definition of intelligence that non-psychologists use, then this argument won't apply. In fact if you read the post in question (my post) carefully, you would notice that I make it clear that I am using a statistical definition of intelligence.

P.S. When I say IQ, I mean adult deviation IQs that approximate the normal distribution and not childhood ratio IQs.

 

[ttac]

Originally posted by Gbemi24
ttac, What is the distinct difference? What scale does the IQ concept use to measure adult intelligence? I believe the scale used is the DEGREE OF DEVIATION FROM THE MEAN, where the mean IQ is a numerical value generated by a deterministic algorithm that uses the degree of deviation. Now lets use some simple deductive logic to see if my assertion is reasonable.

[snip]

Holy mathematical proofs, Batman!

I won't even try to work my way through those paragraphs, but I will say that intelligence is not an easily quantifiable quantity, unlike objective measures in some sports.

For example, waaaaay back when I was captain of the wrestling team in high school, I weighed 140 and I could bench 205.

The world record for someone my size was 435 lbs:
http://www.wabdl.org/world_bench_records.htm

(just a side note: out of curiosity, could someone who had no legs compete in the bench press competition at the weight class that he weighed in at? I remember a wrestler who only had one leg... he was pretty good since he had far more upper body strength than other wrestlers his weight)

Anyway, back to my point. So the world record holder is slightly more than twice as strong as I am. It's easy to quantify a strength difference here, but how much better of a bench-presser is he than I? Lets say that there are 100 million men in the world that weigh 145 (I have no idea here). Lets say that I am 90th percentile in my benchpressing ability. So since his bench press ability is 1 in 100 million, and mine is 1 in 10, does that mean that he is 10 million times better at bench press than I am?

Anyway... I think that saying someone is "1000 times smarter" than someone else vs. an IQ "1000 times more rare" is just a matter of semantics, which doesn't really interest me, to be quite honest. Let's make a deal. I'll go on saying that an IQ of 170 is "1000 times more rare" than an IQ of 137, and you can say that he/she is "1000 times smarter".

ttac

 

[Gbemi24]

Originally posted by ttac
Holy mathematical proofs, Batman!

I won't even try to work my way through those paragraphs, but I will say that intelligence is not an easily quantifiable quantity, unlike objective measures in some sports.

I agree that intelligence is not easily quantifiable, but in every argument you have made to this point, you have implicitly assumed that atleast some aspects of intelligence are quantifiable by using IQ scores to support your arguments. The whole point of IQ scores is to quantify intelligence. So I hope you would agree with me that it is not fair to change your views on the quantifiability of intelligence just because it happens to be convenient in this case.

For example, waaaaay back when I was captain of the wrestling team in high school, I weighed 140 and I could bench 205.

The world record for someone my size was 435 lbs:
http://www.wabdl.org/world_bench_records.htm

(just a side note: out of curiosity, could someone who had no legs compete in the bench press competition at the weight class that he weighed in at? I remember a wrestler who only had one leg... he was pretty good since he had far more upper body strength than other wrestlers his weight)

I am sure they could compete since the only requirement is that they have a certain body weight. It seems unfair though since the guy without legs would have a bigger upper body, but if you argued that point you would be accused of being insensitive. Given the fact that they have no legs, allowing them to compete, even if it is unfair, is the least we can do to show some compassion for their plight.

Anyway, back to my point. So the world record holder is slightly more than twice as strong as I am. It's easy to quantify a strength difference here, but how much better of a bench-presser is he than I? Lets say that there are 100 million men in the world that weigh 145 (I have no idea here). Lets say that I am 90th percentile in my benchpressing ability. So since his bench press ability is 1 in 100 million, and mine is 1 in 10, does that mean that he is 10 million times better at bench press than I am?

That is a very ingenious argument. When I initially read it, I thought you had me. I didn't see anyway of going around it. At the same time I was convinced that my semi-mathematical argument was correct so I knew something had to give. Then all of a sudden I had an "eureka" moment lol. I realized that you hadn't given a STATISTICAL definition for "bench pressing prowess." In this case, your implicit definition of how good someone is at bench pressing is "how much they can bench." Therefore, if we want to compare how much better X is than Y at bench pressing, we must compare how much they each bench rather than their rarity in the population. However, if we use a BQ [Benching Quotient] that depends on how much a person can bench AND their deviation from the population mean to assigned bench pressing prowess, then we have to compare benching prowess on a rarity scale. This is because in this case our definition of "bench pressing prowess" is based on a deviation scale, and a deviation scale is simply a rarity scale put in a different but isomorphic mathematical form. Similiarly, the IQ scale is based on the normal distribution; therefore, if we use IQ numbers as a way of comparing intelligence, then we must use a restricted interval on the deviation OR rarity scale as our unit for comparing intelligence. Whatever interval we choose is ultimately irrevelant to this argument since in the end we would have to divided 2 rarities to compare the intelligence of 2 people. This is the same as saying that it does not matter whether we use millimeters or centimeters as our unit of comparing distance, since we would have to divide the 2 numbers to compare the 2 distances.

As strange as "X is a 1000 times smarter than Y" might sound, it is mathematically correct. It does not make much sense intuitionally or qualitatively but it is nonetheless correct because of the scale the IQ concept uses to measure intelligence. In mathematics, DEFINITIONS and PREMISES have a huge impact on the outcomes of arguments. For instance, the set of all even numbers is as LARGE as the set of all integers. This seems to defy common sense because the set of even numbers is part of the set of integers, BUT it is TRUE. This is easy to prove but I won't prove it since you can find the proof in any standard undergraduate text in abstract algebra. The paradox arises from the human definition of size. There are many such paradoxes in fields such as Transfinite Mathematics, Probability Theory and Bivariate Statistics.

Anyway... I think that saying someone is "1000 times smarter" than someone else vs. an IQ "1000 times more rare" is just a matter of semantics, which doesn't really interest me, to be quite honest. Let's make a deal. I'll go on saying that an IQ of 170 is "1000 times more rare" than an IQ of 137, and you can say that he/she is "1000 times smarter".

ttac

Well, I agree that it is a matter semantics and that is PRECISELY the point I tried to make in my previous post. They are mathematically equivalent ways of saying the same thing. IF you agree that it is simply a matter of semantics, then there is no "distinct difference" between the two statements. After all, semantics refers to a difference in linguistic structure rather than meaning. I agree that it is intuitionally suspect to say "X is a thousand times smarter than Y" since it seems to cheapen the whole common sense notion of intelligence. However, intuitional correctness is not a requirement for mathematical correctness. After all, common sense itself is suspect sometimes. As Einstein aptly put it, "common sense is our accumulated prejudices by age 18."

Also, I do not wish to argue about this point either, but I hope you would agree that I have a right to respond if someone argues that one of my claims is suspect. Especially when I disagree.

 

[ttac]

I agree that intelligence is not easily quantifiable, but in every argument you have made to this point, you have implicitly assumed that atleast some aspects of intelligence are quantifiable by using IQ scores to support your arguments. The whole point of IQ scores is to quantify intelligence. So I hope you would agree with me that it is not fair to change your views on the quantifiability of intelligence just because it happens to be convenient in this case.

The problem here is that the numerical IQ value that is assigned is nothing that can be objectively measured outside of the artificial IQ scale that psychologists have made. All an IQ score tells us is essentially, the mathematical rarity of having a certain IQ. I agree that intelligence will loosely map to a certain IQ, but what an IQ of 130 (mean=100, SD=15) tells us is the RARITY of that persons IQ (2 SD above the mean). It doesn't tell us anything about how objectively smart the person is. Here's an example. Try to tell me how smart someone who has an IQ of 130 is, without resorting to using the IQ scale to tell us about rarity. You might be able to tell me that he might solve problems faster than someone with an IQ of 100. Or he might have a better memory. But outside of IQ, there is no quantifiable, objective measurement that you could assign to this person, other than the fact that he could get 'N' questions right on a certain IQ test in a certain amount of time.

That's what I mean by intelligence not really being quantifiable, OUTSIDE OF the relative rarity in the population. OTOH, bench pressing ability IS objectively quantifiable, down to the ounce. So you could say that "X" is twice as strong as "Y", since he can bench twice as much. Further, we could rank order all the bench-pressers in the world from worst to best, and, as you said, basically make a benchpressing quotient (BPQ) where the average bench-presser was 100, and each SD above the mean would be 15 BPQ points. Here, we have artificially mapped the number of pounds someone can bench press to a certain BPQ score. This is just like mapping someone's intelligence (as semi-objectively measured by the # of questions they get right, the speed they do it at, their short term memory, etc etc) to a rarity as determined by a certain IQ. However, in the case of the bench press, you could objectively, exactly quantify someones bench pressing ability without using the BPQ. Try doing that for someone's intelligence without using an IQ score.


I am sure they could compete since the only requirement is that they have a certain body weight. It seems unfair though since the guy without legs would have a bigger upper body, but if you argued that point you would be accused of being insensitive. Given the fact that they have no legs, allowing them to compete, even if it is unfair, is the least we can do to show some compassion for their plight.

That's pretty much what I thought.



That is a very ingenious argument. When I initially read it, I thought you had me. I didn't see anyway of going around it. At the same time I was convinced that my semi-mathematical argument was correct so I knew something had to give. Then all of a sudden I had an "eureka" moment lol. I realized that you hadn't given a STATISTICAL definition for "bench pressing prowess." In this case, your implicit definition of how good someone is at bench pressing is "how much they can bench." Therefore, if we want to compare how much better X is than Y at bench pressing, we must compare how much they each bench rather than their rarity in the population. However, if we use a BQ [Benching Quotient] that depends on how much a person can bench AND their deviation from the population mean to assigned bench pressing prowess, then we have to compare benching prowess on a rarity scale. This is because in this case our definition of "bench pressing prowess" is based on a deviation scale, and a deviation scale is simply a rarity scale put in a different but isomorphic mathematical form. Similiarly, the IQ scale is based on the normal distribution; therefore, if we use IQ numbers as a way of comparing intelligence, then we must use a restricted interval on the deviation OR rarity scale as our unit for comparing intelligence. Whatever interval we choose is ultimately irrevelant to this argument since in the end we would have to divided 2 rarities to compare the intelligence of 2 people. This is the same as saying that it does not matter whether we use millimeters or centimeters as our unit of comparing distance, since we would have to divide the 2 numbers to compare the 2 distances.

So as I said above, the BPQ would essentially be analogous to IQ, in that it maps BP ability to population rarity. IQ also maps a bunch of variables (cognitive speed, memory, spatial ability, language ability, etc etc) to population rarity. Near the upper ends of the bench press spectrum, the difference between a rarity of 1 in 100,000,000 (the world champion) vs. 1 in 1,000,000 might be only five pounds out of 435. Is the world champion 100 times better than the latter individual? I would argue that he wasn't. Objectively, he is only 1% stronger.


As strange as "X is a 1000 times smarter than Y" might sound, it is mathematically correct. It does not make much sense intuitionally or qualitatively but it is nonetheless correct because of the scale the IQ concept uses to measure intelligence. In mathematics, DEFINITIONS and PREMISES have a huge impact on the outcomes of arguments. For instance, the set of all even numbers is as LARGE as the set of all integers. This seems to defy common sense because the set of even numbers is part of the set of integers, BUT it is TRUE. This is easy to prove but I won't prove it since you can find the proof in any standard undergraduate text in abstract algebra. The paradox arises from the human definition of size. There are many such paradoxes in fields such as Transfinite Mathematics, Probability Theory and Bivariate Statistics.


...which are fields that I am thankful that I don't need to know anything about


Well, I agree that it is a matter semantics and that is PRECISELY the point I tried to make in my previous post. They are mathematically equivalent ways of saying the same thing. IF you agree that it is simply a matter of semantics, then there is no "distinct difference" between the two statements. After all, semantics refers to a difference in linguistic structure rather than meaning. I agree that it is intuitionally suspect to say "X is a thousand times smarter than Y" since it seems to cheapen the whole common sense notion of intelligence. However, intuitional correctness is not a requirement for mathematical correctness. After all, common sense itself is suspect sometimes. As Einstein aptly put it, "common sense is our accumulated prejudices by age 18."

Also, I do not wish to argue about this point either, but I hope you would agree that I have a right to respond if someone argues that one of my claims is suspect. Especially when I disagree.

Of course you have a right to disagree. Perhaps I am not the only one (or maybe I _am_) but I am still not convinced that you can say that someone is '1000 times smarter' than someone else merely on the basis that their IQ is 1000 times more rare.

ttac

p.s. forgive me if I do not respond to your future replies for a while, since I have about 6 finals this upcoming week.

 

[FMLizard]

Certain tests, such as the MCAT and DAT, are facts and knowledge based.

Others, like most IQ tests, are problem solving and pattern based, for the most part.

The ACT and LSAT are almost all verbal, even the "science" on the ACT is basically just reasoning and disguised verbal.

The SAT, GRE, GMAT, and such are a combination of knowledge and reasoning.

My IQ is generally around 150, in most of the tests I have taken, with about a +/- 7 deviation for each of about a dozen tests I have taken in my life.

On standardized tests, I had a 34 on the ACT and a 1390 SAT. My ACT is in line with my IQ, but my SAT is not. Of course, I didn't study one minute for the SAT, and spent about 10 hours prepping for the ACT. The math part kinda owned me on the SAT because I had a limited background, which I owe to taking a sparse selection of math courses due to my disdain for the subject.

I also took the LSAT awhile back, with a decent amount of study but no formal prep or anything like that, and scored a 171, which about the 98.5 percentile. However, the LSAT is a very verbal heavy and theoretical test, unlike the MCAT.

I bet if I took the MCAT tomorrow, as a business major, I couldn't break 22. I would probably have close to a 15 in the verbal, but couldn't beat a monkey filling in bubbles blankly at anything in the sciences. After I have all my science classes and study, I bet I'll do well on the DAT, which is the test I will likely be taking. Study and factual knowledge is much more important on the MCAT and DAT than other college and IQ standardized tests.

 

[jhrugger]

just to add to someone's list if they are looking for a correlation among all those posted:

emode IQ: 133
MCAT: 31

 

[willthatsall]

just to add to someone's list if they are looking for a correlation among all those posted:

emode IQ: 133
MCAT: 31

You just resurrected a thread that is over a year old.

 

[liverotcod]

You just resurrected a thread that is over a year old.

Yeah, but it's a pretty fun one to read. Anything to avoid writing my *#(!*@ personal statement. It's already held up my application for a month.

 

[willthatsall]

Yeah, but it's a pretty fun one to read. Anything to avoid writing my *#(!*@ personal statement. It's already held up my application for a month.

If this is the thread I am thinking of, it got pretty heated somewhere in the middle. I don't feel like going back to read it, but I know there was a thread one time when someone accused someone of lying about IQ scores and then it turned ugly pretty fast. High comedy.

 

[MoosePilot]

Yep, same thread. I actually thought it was fun to read. I liked pretty much everyone posting in it, which is rare anymore.

 

[ifailedmcat]

Very entertaining, I could have sworn I was reading a current thread until I looked at the date . This thread is like a verbal passage from hell.

 

[Kazema]

Yeah that was fun to read. Multiple flamewars on different topics happening at the same time, all in the same thread! You don't find threads like this every day.

Oh wait...

 

[liverotcod]

By the way, my IQ, old SAT and MCAT all correlate pretty well. Maybe I should take the GRE and DAT just to round things out. Do you think I need to go to med school to take the boards?

 

[CJMPre-Med]

Hmm, I was debating on whether or not to post in this thread, since I haven't formally taken the MCAT yet, but what the hey.

Various online IQ test scores over the years: 162, 158, 160, 148

Actual scores on professionally administered IQ tests: 166 (age 6; 169 verbal, 162 math/spatial), 160 (age 14; 163 verbal, 157 math/spatial, iirc)


So we can safely conclude that I'm getting dumberer (sic ) as I age. I'm 26 now, btw, so it'd be interesting to take another legit IQ test one day and compare.


As for the MCAT, well, I've taken about 5 practice verbal sections and never gotten below a 14 on them (2 15's and 3 14's, iirc, with no "practice" or studying of any sort-- I just figured I could pick them up and take them since it's just reading comprehension, which has never been a problem for me). Though I've largely stayed away from the science portions, seeing as how I'm taking the exam over a year from now and still haven't finished pre-reqs, I have tried to do a few of the science passages (2 on orgo and one on physics); despite having no exposure to orgo or physics yet, I did manage to get 7/9, 6/8, and 7/8 correct on those three passages. After taking it, I felt that if one could comprehend, relate, and extract information from the passages/data/charts well, then they'd perform well on these sections. That's the impression I got.

So, at the very least, I'd say that IQ would at least correlate moderately with success on the VR portion of the exam, though this is obviously only anecdotal evidence (and obviously only holds for native speakers, I would imagine).

 

[CJMPre-Med]

Also, I just read this last page, and wanted to wholeheartedly endorse Farrago's post above. Excellent, well-reasoned response; it's largely in line with my own thinking on such matters.

 

[dzlist]

hello guys,
this IQ and MCAT thread is awesome. I learned all kinds of weird maths, physics, chemistry since i was a kid, and most of these stuffs, american students would not dare to take in college. when i got to the US at the age of 19, i never got a B in math tests, and won national math contests several times. i scored 100% on most of my physics midterms and finals. however, when it come to MCAt, i scored bad over all. when i took IQ test, the english version, my score was 131. most of the time in my class, whenever the professors write something on the board, i can give them the answer when he just finishes his sentence. so my IQ of 131 correlated with my mcat score? I think actually the English part pulls me down. i scored 80-90 percentile on BS and PS of MCAT. so i guess for me, IQ or MCAT or GRE is just all about English. as long as you speak english well, and supposed you sit and listen in the class, you will have some IQ of 130s.
My gf has IQ of 154, got to med, but said she med was tough for her.
so IQ and MCAT? hmmm low MCAT makes me look less intelligent?

 

[adamj61]

I had a genetics prof that was one of the first people to explain IQ in genetics terms. He argued that the MCAT and LSAT were both masked IQ tests...but that the further you go in education, the less they matter. For example, in grade school standardize tests are everything...how well you do is based on your intelligence. But work ethic and other things come to play later on...there are a ton of interesting stats on this. But without a doubt, the MCAT tests your natural intelligence

 

[willthatsall]

Yeah, but LSAT is much more of an IQ test IMO. There is nothing to learn for it. MCAT has to correlate less because there is more preparation involved.

 

[adamj61]

I agree, I remember he said that if the mcat wasn't intelligence based, you wouldn't have that kind of score distribution, and you would hear stories of people working it all out. Everyone knows it is concept based, but you're right, a lot of those gimme questions are pure memorization

 

[CJMPre-Med]

dzlist:

IQ is wierd, though. Just this week, my cognitive psych professor was INSISTING that performance on an english-based IQ test would NOT be affected by fluency or lack thereof. I was befuddled, obviously, because the verbal portion is so clearly weighted in favor of native speakers; since the overall IQ is a composite score of which verbal proficiency accounts for one half. I kept inquiring as to how it could possibly not have an adversely affect on a foreigner, but he kept insisting that it didn't. As an example:

He brought in his Stanford-Binet IQ kit, just to show the class what sorts of questions were on a typical IQ test. So he's asking a few verbal questions, where you have to adequately describe or define the word given; different descriptions which contain different keywords are assigned different point totals-- I believe for each word, the maximum allotted point total was 2. So after a couple of the easier words, he skipped to the second-"hardest" (i.e., highest rated) word on the test, which was "ominous"; almost immediately, my mind said "foreboding", which turned out to be the only answer which would have gotten you the full two points for that example. But then I asked myself HOW IN THE HELL would a person who's only been in the US, say, 2-3 years know a word like "foreboding" (I'm sure some would, but those are exceptional cases), much less have the linguistic facility to rapidly search for it and make the association in the given time.

I know that if you dropped me in Yugoslavia and gave me the exact same type of question, I wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of correctly identifying a Yugoslavian word of similar difficulty and comparing it with another equally advanced word. And I know that I'm not dumb. So I just fail to see how it's not related to linguistic proficiency, which is oftentimes necessarily tied to exposure, as in the case of recent immigrants.


He insisted that the measure would be fair across all groups, even for a test administered in english given to non-native speakers. Weird. Needless to say, I disagree-- so don't get too down about your score.


Btw, you should've asked for your separate math/spatial score, which would show only slight language-related effects, if any. According to your background, I'm sure you performed sterlingly on those tasks.

 

[willthatsall]

Yeah, your professor is full of ****.

 

[vhawk]

God this thread is amazing.

 

[pingouin]

God this thread is amazing.

It's also 5 years old and really didn't need to be resurrected. Closing.