4 ms·

Answering the title only, so forgive me: > How smart do you have to be to get a degree? Not especially, what you have to be is hardworking and committed. You

by dijit 3y ago

Answering the title only, so forgive me: > How smart do you have to be to get a degree? Not especially, what you have to be is hardworking and committed. You don't even need to show significant improvement; just an understanding of the subject material. Of course this gets less true as you go up the degrees. (Batchelors requiring a broad rote understanding, Masters requiring a more detailed understanding and PhD requiring some sort of novelty that pushes the field forward). However there's a saying: "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard". I have lived this. My sister is not smart. That may seem unkind but she would be one of the first to admit this. Things do not come to her easily, she has a hard time recognising patterns and lacks a certain level of "common sense". She is extremely motivated though. Thorough and hardworking. I have had the fortune of being quite gifted, I test well and have a great propensity to solve novel puzzles. I, however, procrastinate and am easily distractible. She has a degree, I do not. Intelligence had nothing to do with it. Being hardworking did.

reaperman 3y ago
I could have written this exact post. It contains every point I would have made, including "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" which was my mantra for a long time. As well as my sister not being 'smart' but very hard-working and doing infinitely better than me despite having much lower test scores. The only thing that (eventually!) got me through my bachelors degree was thinking "If you just put one foot in front of the other, you'll get there eventually (assuming you are walking on a sphere and not perfectly along a meridian)". People asked me if you needed to be smart to get my degree (one of the big-4 engineering degrees) ... I always said "No, just stubborn."
throwaway64554 3y ago
Throwaway: I have a PhD in CS, and I wouldn't describe myself as very intelligent. Maybe slightly above average. I am constantly amazed at how quickly others in my team can understand extremely complex mathematical problems in a few seconds. I would need at least an hour of quiet thinking, and I struggled a lot with the mathematical aspects of my PhD. But I did work my ass off for 5 years (mostly out of curiosity, though, there was no family pressure, my father is a builder and my mother worked in a supermarket). Something I noticed: extremely smart people have a tendency to see a problem and quickly sketch the solution in their head, or sketch a proof that the problem cannot be solved. Their overwhelming life experience is that they are always the most intelligent person in the room and that their intuition is always right, and so they quickly mark this problem as "done" / "boring" / "unsolvable". In contrast, people with curiosity but less intellectual confidence tend to experiment with ideas to see if they would work / why they wouldn't work / if they work to a certain degree. I certainly do, and everything I have ever written a paper about, including my dissertation, was discovered during such experiments. If anything, I have a PhD in intellectual naivety. I know of several extremely smart people in PhD programs who have not produced anything interesting in years, because they shrug off every problem as trivial, see paper writing as below their dignity, and keep themselves busy with teaching. They seem to wait to be automatically rewarded for their intelligence. After all, that is exactly what happened to them in school, and during their Bachelor/Master studies.
- smokel 3y ago
  Curiosity and perseverance are probably different traits than intelligence. It'd be nice to know if these can be learned, or whether one is born with them.
  - smeej 3y ago
    Perseverance can be trained. In fact, I think that's probably the only way to get it. As for curiosity, I don't think I've ever met a child who wasn't born with it. The goal there might have to be to avoid anything that would cause a child to unlearn it.
    - throwaway64554 3y ago
      Too much curiosity can be dangerous. As I child, I constantly opened electrical devices to see how they worked internally, resulting in several 230 V shocks (the notion of alternating current instantly made sense to me in 8th grade, because you feel the line frequency as an extreme vibration in the hand when you get shocked). My wife stuck a plastic toy into an outlet as a child to see if plastic really was a bad conductor. The toy had some glitter paint on it, and apparently, that paint was a good conductor.
- stavros 3y ago
  My sister is a public prosecutor. She's of maybe average intelligence, but she did study for five (or seven?) years, ten hours a day, seven days a week, to pass the test. This was on top of already having graduated from law school.
- smeej 3y ago
  Your insight into what's going on in a head like mine is spot on, and I have wished for a long time that my parents would (ever) have made an effort to put me in rooms where I wasn't the "smartest" person there. When I was young, I was often the least experienced, but throughout school even, it was obvious to me and usually to them that I was smarter than my teachers. It sounds like a humble brag but it's not. It's more like a cautionary tale. Smart children need the experience of having to work to understand things, of knowing there are things other people know or that humanity in general could know, but not instantaneously. Intelligence could be a powerful tool, but there are precious few people teaching children (or, heck, adults for that matter! I would pay serious money for a remedial "how to work hard for things and make incremental progress" classes as an adult!) who have it how to use it.
donatj 3y ago
I think there’s also a willingness to jump through hoops required that some of the most intelligent people I have known have been too stubborn for.
katzgrau 3y ago
I’m pretty convinced that if you just show up to class, be nice to the prof, and do all of the assignments you’ll get a mercy C or D regardless of how you performed. I’ve never tried this (finished with a 3.9) but observed my friends. Some would do the above and miraculously pass courses they, according to exam scores, were certain to fail. However, my friends who had poor exam score and spotty attendance never made it through. In fact, sometimes they were so convinced they’d fail that the dropped the course or no-showed the exam — so they did in fact fail. Hard work, maybe — simply trying is easy. But more than that, persistence.
quickthrower2 3y ago
If you have a higher IQ it is going to be easier though in subjects like Math, CS, Physics etc. You still need to work. It may not be hard work though.

by dijit 3y ago

reaperman 3y ago

I could have written this exact post. It contains every point I would have made, including "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" which was my mantra for a long time. As well as my sister not being 'smart' but very hard-working and doing infinitely better than me despite having much lower test scores. The only thing that (eventually!) got me through my bachelors degree was thinking "If you just put one foot in front of the other, you'll get there eventually (assuming you are walking on a sphere and not perfectly along a meridian)". People asked me if you needed to be smart to get my degree (one of the big-4 engineering degrees) ... I always said "No, just stubborn."

throwaway64554 3y ago

Throwaway: I have a PhD in CS, and I wouldn't describe myself as very intelligent. Maybe slightly above average. I am constantly amazed at how quickly others in my team can understand extremely complex mathematical problems in a few seconds. I would need at least an hour of quiet thinking, and I struggled a lot with the mathematical aspects of my PhD. But I did work my ass off for 5 years (mostly out of curiosity, though, there was no family pressure, my father is a builder and my mother worked in a supermarket). Something I noticed: extremely smart people have a tendency to see a problem and quickly sketch the solution in their head, or sketch a proof that the problem cannot be solved. Their overwhelming life experience is that they are always the most intelligent person in the room and that their intuition is always right, and so they quickly mark this problem as "done" / "boring" / "unsolvable". In contrast, people with curiosity but less intellectual confidence tend to experiment with ideas to see if they would work / why they wouldn't work / if they work to a certain degree. I certainly do, and everything I have ever written a paper about, including my dissertation, was discovered during such experiments. If anything, I have a PhD in intellectual naivety. I know of several extremely smart people in PhD programs who have not produced anything interesting in years, because they shrug off every problem as trivial, see paper writing as below their dignity, and keep themselves busy with teaching. They seem to wait to be automatically rewarded for their intelligence. After all, that is exactly what happened to them in school, and during their Bachelor/Master studies.

smokel 3y ago
Curiosity and perseverance are probably different traits than intelligence. It'd be nice to know if these can be learned, or whether one is born with them.
- smeej 3y ago
  Perseverance can be trained. In fact, I think that's probably the only way to get it. As for curiosity, I don't think I've ever met a child who wasn't born with it. The goal there might have to be to avoid anything that would cause a child to unlearn it.
  - throwaway64554 3y ago
    Too much curiosity can be dangerous. As I child, I constantly opened electrical devices to see how they worked internally, resulting in several 230 V shocks (the notion of alternating current instantly made sense to me in 8th grade, because you feel the line frequency as an extreme vibration in the hand when you get shocked). My wife stuck a plastic toy into an outlet as a child to see if plastic really was a bad conductor. The toy had some glitter paint on it, and apparently, that paint was a good conductor.
stavros 3y ago
My sister is a public prosecutor. She's of maybe average intelligence, but she did study for five (or seven?) years, ten hours a day, seven days a week, to pass the test. This was on top of already having graduated from law school.
smeej 3y ago
Your insight into what's going on in a head like mine is spot on, and I have wished for a long time that my parents would (ever) have made an effort to put me in rooms where I wasn't the "smartest" person there. When I was young, I was often the least experienced, but throughout school even, it was obvious to me and usually to them that I was smarter than my teachers. It sounds like a humble brag but it's not. It's more like a cautionary tale. Smart children need the experience of having to work to understand things, of knowing there are things other people know or that humanity in general could know, but not instantaneously. Intelligence could be a powerful tool, but there are precious few people teaching children (or, heck, adults for that matter! I would pay serious money for a remedial "how to work hard for things and make incremental progress" classes as an adult!) who have it how to use it.

donatj 3y ago

I think there’s also a willingness to jump through hoops required that some of the most intelligent people I have known have been too stubborn for.

katzgrau 3y ago

I’m pretty convinced that if you just show up to class, be nice to the prof, and do all of the assignments you’ll get a mercy C or D regardless of how you performed. I’ve never tried this (finished with a 3.9) but observed my friends. Some would do the above and miraculously pass courses they, according to exam scores, were certain to fail. However, my friends who had poor exam score and spotty attendance never made it through. In fact, sometimes they were so convinced they’d fail that the dropped the course or no-showed the exam — so they did in fact fail. Hard work, maybe — simply trying is easy. But more than that, persistence.

quickthrower2 3y ago

If you have a higher IQ it is going to be easier though in subjects like Math, CS, Physics etc. You still need to work. It may not be hard work though.