Predicting a human being’s ability to “succeed”, regardless of domain, is very difficult. The insights from YC’s process might be useful. While intelligence is

Predicting a human being’s ability to “succeed”, regardless of domain, is very difficult. The insights from YC’s process might be useful. While intelligence is important, it isn’t the most important variable. What matters most is a determined-to-succeed-at-all-costs team. In the case of education, it makes sense to have some kind of threshold for general competence (GPA for instance) which is required, but subsequently to focus more on the “team” aspect of education. What kind of culture are you attempting to build on your campus? What kind of people are you trying to form? That’s the purpose of education, not technical mastery (that comes later). Having said that, even a group like YC could use a standardized test to accurately measure that intangible force behind grit/determination, the force that drives a person to be a creatively unstoppable force of success. Of even more value would be a measurement contextual to environmental factors: i.e., higher or lower scores depending on what kind of people you are surrounded by, what kind of tasks you are confronted by. To do that you’d probably have to model (predict) society itself, and then you’d have implemented Foundation. In other words, this is a problem much harder than whether or not to use standardized tests for college applicants. We don’t know how to predict the future of individuals and societies. It may be impossible. But if you’re looking for an embarrassingly ambitious startup idea, this sure seems like a good candidate.