Callysta wrote:
You are what you portray to the world. Without the academic connections related to fantastic grades, an individual must rely on social connections and personality to get ahead. At the moment you don't appear to be exploiting either option.
The SAT and Stanford-Binet are measures of potential. Potential is nothing without the corresponding ambition. I received a perfect score on my SATs and ACTs, have a genius IQ (and was admitted into Mensa at 6), maintained a 4.0 in college, where I received 3 degrees in 2 years. I think I am able to comfortably state that I am exceptionally intelligent. I don't, however, spend my time blathering on constantly about how everyone is beneath me and trying to make myself look smarter. I don't need the validation. You appear to need this, which is one of the reasons I made my assessment.
I won't dispute the waning exclusivity of academic degrees, but acquiring a Doctorate is more than cramming for a test the night before a skimming on by. I didn't say that getting poor grades means that you are not intelligent. Several years ago that was me. The 1st grader that read at a college level and could do calculus, but never did homework. However, once I was in college where it "counted," I did all of the mundane assignments and did what I needed to do to get the A. It was my currency for entry into the workforce. (It is not the ONLY thing that employers look at, but definitely important.)
Callysta wrote:
I don't, however, spend my time blathering on constantly about how everyone is beneath me and trying to make myself look smarter.
Your post is despicably hypocritical because that is exactly what you are doing.
Your part in this entire thread has been insisting that the ways in which you define worth, merit and intelligence are correct and that not only is any other definition incorrect, but no one who defines those things in differing ways could possibly possess those virtues themself.
Every argument you make in favor of your own merit is in some way defined in terms of your acceptance in a group, whether by an educational institution or MENSA. You further argue that the only path to success is through institutional recognition, which corroborates your overall theme, but isn't actually true - and that falsehood speaks volumes about your hypocrisy behind it.
Nothing you have said is about you as an individual, or what you have done outside these purely elitist settings. I call them elitist because they exist expressly for the purpose of exclusion and not the realization of actual goals. Therefore, what they mean to you, is just what you claim to despise, which is putting oneself above others.
All of which has gotten you where? What have you done outside the purely institutional? Your perfect SAT/ACT scores, your 4.0 GPA, your degrees - what have you gotten from all that? Will you move and shake this world to an extent that correlates with your position on the academic curve or will you not? Answer me that.
And what of those who are successful but don't have those qualities, nor even charisma? Doesn't the fact that MOST of the world's biggest and most successful movers and shakers DON'T have those things prove that they are specious as measures of worth or ability after all?