which major has the smartest students?

[astroyogi]

My boyfriend is a physicist and he's one of the smartest people I know. My mother is an artist and musician and she's one of the smartest people I know. 

[thingii]

On 13 January 2014 at 10:26 AM, Amelorn said:

It seems that the entry barrier of departmental/university admission requirements are being forgotten.

 

As a US student expat, my experience with admissions are from foreign systems (UK and Australia), but from what I understand from back home, they translate well.  Here in Queensland, students take a test that functions similarly to the SAT, the Overall Position (OP) test.  The score is scaled from 1 to 25, with 1 being the highest number.  Law requires a 2.  Medicine and dentistry demand a 1.  Business and Architecture require a 7.  Social work or education will accept 13 and 12, respectively.  Those courses have the lowest entry barrier.  

 

If "hard science" departments lowered their entry requirements, I would imagine their graduates's average IQ would drop.  Consequently, if education aimed to accept only those with excellent credentials, average IQ of graduates would increase.  I believe Finland would be an example of the latter case.  

It brings tears of joy that someone here has explained the Queensland education system, which I went through.

The OP is the overall grade (GPA equivalent) you get as your tertiary education-entering score. The test is called the QCS (Queensland Core Skills) test, and compares different schools with a state-wide standard. Then your raw marks from the final 2 years of classes in high school are scaled based on your school's performance (not your individual performance in the QCS test). This produces the OP.

At the time I left school, primary education was down at 15~17. The OP is bell curved between 1 and 25, although it's almost impossible to score 24 or 25 (you'd have to purposely barely pass everything, and account for the school's overall performance scaling).

[ExponentialDecay]

Many smart people don't even go to college.

[Cheshire_Cat]

So, funny story.  Everyone considers your major and intelligence in a hierarchical manner.  Hard sciences are "smartest" humanities- not so much.  But they don't know where to put business majors.  We seem dumb, but we make twice as much money as anyone else on campus.  So who's the smart one now?

There are multiple types of intelligence, seven or eight last time I checked, and being smart in one doesn't mean being smart in another.  What you think is "smartest" really comes down to what you value.  As a business person, the "smart" people are the ones who act rationally, like economics says they should.  Or the rich people.  But then all you have to do is look at a couple of the USA's presidential candidates to realize that wealth does not equal intelligence.  English majors may value the ability to communicate clearly and beautifully the most important indicator of intelligence. Hard sciences look at the more traditional measures of intelligence...  

[sjoh197]

My father is probably one of smartest people I personally know. He never went to college.... instead went into computer-y tech-y stuff that I don't understand... sold his company to Microsoft and now owns a yacht and has been "working" in key largo for the last 2 years. (He really does work his ass off, I just put quotation marks because it's so awesome there) He previously was touring America in a super awesome RV. 

"Smart" is a relative term. There are lots of types of "smart". 

[ExponentialDecay]

On 2/22/2016 at 5:42 PM, Cheshire_Cat said:

 But they don't know where to put business majors.  We seem dumb, but we make twice as much money as anyone else on campus.  So who's the smart one now?

Please. You don't make any money while you're on campus because you're paying 150k for some piece of shit MBA. The saddest thing to witness is the state school finance undergrads who think they're going to work on Wall Street. One shudders at the thought of spending 4 years looking down on English majors only to find oneself getting a job licking envelopes for the ones from Cornell. 

I'd say generally business majors are put on the same level as Geographers and other people whose course of study consists mostly of reading The Economist and coloring in. Of course, Geography is an actual science.

[Cheshire_Cat]

4 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

Please. You don't make any money while you're on campus because you're paying 150k for some piece of shit MBA. The saddest thing to witness is the state school finance undergrads who think they're going to work on Wall Street. One shudders at the thought of spending 4 years looking down on English majors only to find oneself getting a job licking envelopes for the ones from Cornell. 

I'd say generally business majors are put on the same level as Geographers and other people whose course of study consists mostly of reading The Economist and coloring in. Of course, Geography is an actual science.

Holy crap! Condescend much?  Also, I said we make *more* than anyone else on campus. Not less.  As in, at a major engineering university, the assistant professors in my area of business make twice as much as the assistant professors in engineering.    Doing pretty well for ourselves, considering we don't really have to do "real science" 

[Demeter]

I guess I see this sort of conversation as pointless, given that I jumped through all those hoops as a kid.  This is like some conversation kids who insecure in their intelligence have, or something. Worse yet, this is like some conversation parents of gifted kids have when they're sitting and stressing about how little Johnny or June will do in life, or in some forum where parents discuss how to best track their kids, for one reason or another, with some thing being understood intrinsically as "smarter" or something. I've heard enough of those conversations to fill a book, conversations between parents who somehow are both proud of their kids, and are terrified of their intellect and how out of step they are with little Susie on the playground. 

I'll say what I said as a teen who was so over stuff, and what I will continue to say until I'm blue in the face: do you. I'm saying it for a different reason now, but, seriously. Socialization can be hard for kids with higher than average intelligence, and sometimes the information found in an evaluation is useful for designing an education that will allow a kid to feel fulfilled and to help them find services they need. Beyond that, and, and perhaps a parent/person doing some research to better understand themselves, I strongly advocate letting fretting about intelligence go, and go on rocking your fascination with fundamentalism, or the rise of skiffle and its journey across the Atlantic, or the composition of various soils or how cool algebra really is. 

People with high IQs are still people. They still have interests and personal passions, often highly developed and refined interests and personal passions, personal struggles and issues. It's nearly impossible to list the factors that go into shaping one person into making the choices they make. These interests are likely to shape their choices as an adult. I chose what I chose because it was a field that enabled me to keep thinking, keep growing. I chose something I knew would keep challenging me no how quickly or slowly I mastered a topic. Why else do we choose the majors we choose, if not to seek a lens to answer the questions that plague us, if not to delve deeply into a subject that provides a foundation to think about broader issues that we will no doubt encounter in life? I think this is true for all/most/many people, but I can only speak for myself. 

So it's not about raw intelligence, at least in my understanding. I once had a psychologist tell me that a lot of highly intelligent people burn out very quickly in professions, and I've seen it happen. I'm just lucky that it hasn't happened to me, and I hope I will have the tools to cope if it does. I hope that I will continue to be able to create questions and develop answers along my professional life, and take time to develop parts of myself that I sometimes neglect, to continue to find a positive challenge in what I do. For me, the whole kit and caboodle is about what we do with processing power, about the way we direct energy, about what we do with the tools we have to address the questions that matter.  In truth, I think about how much I don't know as opposed to what little I do know. 

Maybe now I'm getting into theories of multiple intelligences vs raw IQ, and that's a whole other post, and maybe that isn't what we're talking about when we say 'smart' in this context. But at this point in my life, I've accepted that it doesn't matter where the 'smartest' people happen to be, as long as I can do my research and carve out a place in which my interests can come together to allow me to contribute meaningfully with what I have to offer, which is, partly, my processing power, and the way I create and categorize information.

Maybe I didn't answer your question. So, here, I'll try it: which major has the smartest students? Well, it depends on what you mean by smart. I'm not being flippant. For my part, I really don't care about how must prestige my field has (I actually can lay claim to a few, as I had multiple majors), or how much I make compared to some other field. I rarely think about things like that, and sometimes when my bills are due, I think it would have been smarter to consider those things. I will say that sometimes I envy a girl I knew growing up, who, while quantifiably smarter than I am, has a developed social life, and plenty of time to think and write, and works in a low pressure profession. Given some of the issues that tend to crop up in highly gifted and intelligent adults, I think she was one smart person. 

The truth is, highly intelligent people are everywhere, and taking on a narrow view of what intelligence looks like in society is a great folly on our parts. I learned a long time ago that if if I feel ill at ease with some topic, it doesn't mean that it's beneath me or worth dismissing, it means I need to work differently and look at it new ways. If I think a topic is really, really, easy, it means I haven't dug deeply enough into the subject, and I haven't yet found its nuance and its deeper meaning.

For a question like this, there isn't just one answer.

I'm going to think more on this. This is actually a topic I never thought I'd encounter as an adult in a professional context, and I'm almost enthused that I have, mostly because it makes me feel like that teenage girl inside of me is a little vindicated. I might be poor, stressed, constantly questioning everything, constantly thinking about things, out of step socially, and concerned about how little I actually contribute to the world, but at the very least I feel as though I can articulate what a positive that is for me, right now. 

*names changed to protect the fictional people I held up to use an example. 

[ExponentialDecay]

11 hours ago, Cheshire_Cat said:

Holy crap! Condescend much?  Also, I said we make *more* than anyone else on campus. Not less.  As in, at a major engineering university, the assistant professors in my area of business make twice as much as the assistant professors in engineering.    Doing pretty well for ourselves, considering we don't really have to do "real science" 

Forgive me, I assumed that you weren't talking about professors of business, since I figured you'd have the wherewithal to know that these professors come from all sorts of academic backgrounds (and mostly not business M/BAs). They're also making all that money by fleecing clueless young people for a degree that's worth less than the paper it's written on (unless it's a T14 MBA). Insofar as non-professors go, again, never said you make less than others. I said you make the same, as in 0. 

If you're actually going into business, nobody's gonna care what your degree is in. They will care that you can get results. Which is partially why everybody else laughs at the glorified trade schoolers.

Edited February 24, 2016 by ExponentialDecay

[Cheshire_Cat]

4 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

Forgive me, I assumed that you weren't talking about professors of business, since I figured you'd have the wherewithal to know that these professors come from all sorts of academic backgrounds (and mostly not business M/BAs). They're also making all that money by fleecing clueless young people for a degree that's worth less than the paper it's written on (unless it's a T14 MBA). Insofar as non-professors go, again, never said you make less than others. I said you make the same, as in 0. 

If you're actually going into business, nobody's gonna care what your degree is in. They will care that you can get results. Which is partially why everybody else laughs at the glorified trade schoolers.

 

First of all this whole conversation started with me just making a funny ancedote about business *professors* in the university and that we aren't as "smart" but make more money. Learn to read.  Also, those in my field have to at least have a master's in business to get a Ph.D.  

Secondly,  where the hell are you getting you information about b-school students?  The stats are not in your favor. I went to b-school, and all of my friends from there have decently paying jobs.  My dad is a b-school professor and has has seen countless  of his students become rather successful business people. And he doesn’t teach at a top school either.  If the degree was worth less than the paper it was written on, then people would stop going to b-school.  It isn’t like we learn fun stuff. Debits and credits and financial equations are boring. 

 Also, the reason that b-school professors make more than everyone else is because we don't have enough professors for the demand.   Why not? Because our students are out in the real world making money instead of trying to stay in school for as long as possible to avoid dismal career prospects. We can't even get them to come back for a Ph.D, so we have to take from disciplines that don't have the same career prospects in their own field. 

But as a general rule, I try not to disparage other disciplines because I am a decent human being and not an ass like some people. 

[Morrijay]

Doesn't surprise me one bit. STEM teaches you how to do a certain type of work, liberal arts teaches you how to learn and live. One of the reasons I double majored as an undergrad.

[ExponentialDecay]

On 2/24/2016 at 5:09 PM, Cheshire_Cat said:

 

First of all this whole conversation started with me just making a funny ancedote about business *professors* in the university and that we aren't as "smart" but make more money. Learn to read.  Also, those in my field have to at least have a master's in business to get a Ph.D.  

Secondly,  where the hell are you getting you information about b-school students?  The stats are not in your favor. I went to b-school, and all of my friends from there have decently paying jobs.  My dad is a b-school professor and has has seen countless  of his students become rather successful business people. And he doesn’t teach at a top school either.  If the degree was worth less than the paper it was written on, then people would stop going to b-school.  It isn’t like we learn fun stuff. Debits and credits and financial equations are boring. 

 Also, the reason that b-school professors make more than everyone else is because we don't have enough professors for the demand.   Why not? Because our students are out in the real world making money instead of trying to stay in school for as long as possible to avoid dismal career prospects. We can't even get them to come back for a Ph.D, so we have to take from disciplines that don't have the same career prospects in their own field. 

But as a general rule, I try not to disparage other disciplines because I am a decent human being and not an ass like some people. 

No, your OP was that business majors make more money than everyone else on campus. "Majors" indicates undergrad, and the rest of it is kind of nonsensical. PS, y'all don't. It depends on the school, and even then, with a few notable exceptions, you don't make more than the MDs, the engineers, and sometimes the JDs.

What stats? Give me some stats please. I went to a liberal arts school, a bunch of my friends majored in medieval French anthropology, and they all have decent paying jobs. My father was an engineering professor who became a successful stockbroker. He has seen countless students become piece of shit good for nothing engineers and go into business instead. Now what? My personal anecdotes are hardly relevant to anyone else, much less to these "stats" you keep mentioning. Please, I would like to see some stats. It's kind of meaningless to go around harping that business professors make more than anyone else without a citation to back you up.

Look, I don't mean to offend. All I'm saying is, business school is a sham. Sure, you're all set if you go to the Sterns and the Whartons of the world, but even then, I'm not sure how much of it is education and how much of it is cocktail mixers.

[Cheshire_Cat]

10 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

No, your OP was that business majors make more money than everyone else on campus. "Majors" indicates undergrad, and the rest of it is kind of nonsensical. PS, y'all don't. It depends on the school, and even then, with a few notable exceptions, you don't make more than the MDs, the engineers, and sometimes the JDs.

What stats? Give me some stats please. I went to a liberal arts school, a bunch of my friends majored in medieval French anthropology, and they all have decent paying jobs. My father was an engineering professor who became a successful stockbroker. He has seen countless students become piece of shit good for nothing engineers and go into business instead. Now what? My personal anecdotes are hardly relevant to anyone else, much less to these "stats" you keep mentioning. Please, I would like to see some stats. It's kind of meaningless to go around harping that business professors make more than anyone else without a citation to back you up.

Look, I don't mean to offend. All I'm saying is, business school is a sham. Sure, you're all set if you go to the Sterns and the Whartons of the world, but even then, I'm not sure how much of it is education and how much of it is cocktail mixers.

 

You are using inaccurate measures.  Of course undergrad business majors don't make more than MD's or JD's, those require a doctorate!  There are some subjects such as engineering that make more coming out, but not many.  (Any my undergrad didn't have an engineering school, so I wasn't talking about them.  Also, I've noticed on the salary thing, they list each engineering major separately, while aggregating business degrees, which is weird to me)  And just because you don't have to have a degree in business to be a business person doesn't mean that having a degree in it isn't helpful to you.  You could say the same about several other majors.   I posit that business schools wouldn't exist if they weren't useful. The people who would consider a business degree are the people who are more practical and have to be shown that there is value before getting the degree.  (People will get a degree in mid evil literature for fun.  Accounting, otoh...)

Business school isn't always about entrepreneurship or stock-brokering.  (My grandpa was extremely successful at both with a high school education.  I guess all college is useless)  You HAVE to have a certain number of hours in accounting to become a CPA.  Finance has similar requirements for some of their jobs.  You can't just pick up Quick Books and publish financial statements for a fortune 500 company. (Or do their taxes, or audit them...)  You don't automatically know what the optimal rate of return for an investment should be, or what debt to equity mix your company should have...  And we haven't even touched on market research... 

I don't even know why I'm arguing this with you.  That isn't what this whole thread is about.  My post was a humorous anecdote, and then about how there are multiple intelligences and one major doesn't have a monopoly on all of them.  You apparently have something against business school.  Well good for you.  You also have a limited understanding of business school and business operations.  I'll let you have your opinion out of ignorance.  
Obviously I can't convince someone who is ignorant of business that it is useful.  That would be like convincing a desert nomad that boats are useful.  ("Why the hell would I need a boat? I can swim across any water I see!" Says the nomad)

But: To back up higher pay of b-school profs:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-highest-paid-professors-in-the-u-s-  According to them, we are second highest pay, next to law school.  But lots of schools don't have law schools, and the "smart ones" are the ones in the hard sciences that wonder why we are paid more.  My professors here are paid about 100k more than the average law school professor.  How do I know that? State schools where I live have to publish the salaries of all their professors.  And specifically at my school, my professors make about 80-100k more than the law professors at my school.  If we control salary by school tier, then b-school profs probably make more.