Genes are key to academic success

Different brain regions do different things. An English professor doesn't need a high (or even average) visual or mathematical iq, but that verbal iq obviously needs to shine. The opposite is true for someone in "STEM".

My point is: for certain professions, you only need to be "smart" in a few select areas. Best case scenario is working in a field you enjoy and can naturally excel in
 
As most people will do, I thought I had an above average intelligence. Then I got assigned to the Pentagon and was chagrined to see how truly smart people can be. The elite intellects did rise to the top. It just goes to show you that the reason that things don't get resolved in DC, or places like it, isn't that people are stupid, but that the problems are so intractable.
 
My maternal grandfather had an IQ of 136, and he was a banker. My paternal grandfather was an honor roll student at Tilden Technical High in Chicago in the mid 40s. I have an IQ of 125, and also have Asperger's.

in what year did your grandfather make the IQ test and when did you make yours? also what kind of IQ tests where these?
 
in what year did your grandfather make the IQ test and when did you make yours? also what kind of IQ tests where these?

My IQ was tested to be 143 back in 1992 when I was seven years old. Though I'm not sure what kind of test it was. Nevertheless, I was said to be highly gifted.
 
Mothers can quit fighting to get their children into certain classrooms with certain teachers. Well, unless the teacher is a bully and a psycho. There are some of those.

See:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-60508-001

"Classroom-level influences on literacy skills in kindergarten through Grade 2, and on literacy and numeracy skills in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, were examined by comparing the similarity of twins who shared or did not share classrooms with each other. We analyzed two samples using structural equation modeling adapted for twin data. The first, Study 1, was of Australia-wide tests of literacy and numeracy, with 1,098; 1,080; 790, and 812 complete twin pairs contributing data for Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, respectively. The second, Study 2, was of literacy tests from 753 twin pairs from kindergarten through Grade 2, which included a sample of United States and Australian students and was a reanalysis and extension of Byrne et al. (2010). Classroom effects were mostly nonsignificant; they accounted for only 2–3% of variance in achievement when averaged over tests and grades. Although the averaged effects may represent a lower-bound figure for classroom effects, and the design cannot detect classroom influences limited to individual students, the results are at odds with claims in public discourse of substantial classroom-level influences, which are mostly portrayed as teacher effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)"
 
Well, Ivy League schools have that covered. If you are too lucky to be East Asian and thus having a higher IQ, there are higher standards for you to get into certain Ivy League schools. Not only that they label people with epicanthic fold as too boring and too focused on success in academics. Ivy league schools also block Asian students from entering because they lack sport skills other with lower IQs applicants possess.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/harvard-...s-different-sat-standards-for-asian-americans
 
Well, Ivy League schools have that covered. If you are too lucky to be East Asian and thus having a higher IQ, there are higher standards for you to get into certain Ivy League schools. Not only that they label people with epicanthic fold as too boring and too focused on success in academics. Ivy league schools also block Asian students from entering because they lack sport skills other with lower IQs applicants possess.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/harvard-...s-different-sat-standards-for-asian-americans

Well, to be fair, triple 800s on your SATs don't necessarily mean that you're innovative and creative, or leadership material, which these schools have always seen themselves as, if not creating, then fostering . It's a carry over from earlier times, I admit, but that is indeed part of the context here.

I saw it in the public school my children attended, and in the schools like them in similar communities. There were, of course, the awards for academic excellence, organizations for the students with a certain grade point average, and ones for performance in sports as well. Perhaps the most coveted prizes, however, were those for students who were "scholar athletes".

I understand the logic, although as a student myself that would never have applied to me. Now, perhaps if there was one called "scholar and the arts". :)

Sports do teach leadership and sportsmanship, qualities valued in western societies. It goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. There's nothing like that in East Asian societies, to my knowledge. Nor is there the emphasis on individualism, creativity, etc.

These schools don't want to be peopled totally by students who have spent their entire lives in their parents' homes cramming for tests.

Another lesson from all of this research is that maybe Asian parents should protect their children's sanity and not send them to "after school school" and then Saturday school and never let them see the light of day. Honestly, if you have the gifts you don't need to do that. You'll still get really high SAT scores.

I'm one of those who think the "Tiger Moms" are one step away from being child abusers. The irony is that a lot of their kids probably don't need it. They might very well do just fine academically, if not quite so precociously, perhaps.
 
Admission to Ivy League schools is becoming a cottage industry. There are cram schools for the SAT, people that prepare you for your interview, advisors for resume padding to show leadership skills, service to the community, etc. My daughter had very high SAT scores and she never prepared for. She never got into resume padding. She had earned a lot of local awards for her writing skills. She did not get accepted into Harvard but she did at Berkeley. She earned two undergraduate degrees in 4 years there and is now a Vice President at a major media company at the tender age of 29. But she busted her butt. On top of her native intelligence she has a tremendous work ethic and she's a great cook. Now if she could clean her room...
We did not force her into after school activities, she dabbled with music but got bored with it, what she has accomplished was due to self motivation.
 
Well, to be fair, triple 800s on your SATs don't necessarily mean that you're innovative and creative, or leadership material, which these schools have always seen themselves as, if not creating, then fostering . It's a carry over from earlier times, I admit, but that is indeed part of the context here.

I saw it in the public school my children attended, and in the schools like them in similar communities. There were, of course, the awards for academic excellence, organizations for the students with a certain grade point average, and ones for performance in sports as well. Perhaps the most coveted prizes, however, were those for students who were "scholar athletes".

I understand the logic, although as a student myself that would never have applied to me. Now, perhaps if there was one called "scholar and the arts". :)

Sports do teach leadership and sportsmanship, qualities valued in western societies. It goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. There's nothing like that in East Asian societies, to my knowledge. Nor is there the emphasis on individualism, creativity, etc.

These schools don't want to be peopled totally by students who have spent their entire lives in their parents' homes cramming for tests.

Another lesson from all of this research is that maybe Asian parents should protect their children's sanity and not send them to "after school school" and then Saturday school and never let them see the light of day. Honestly, if you have the gifts you don't need to do that. You'll still get really high SAT scores.

I'm one of those who think the "Tiger Moms" are one step away from being child abusers. The irony is that a lot of their kids probably don't need it. They might very well do just fine academically, if not quite so precociously, perhaps.

i think the lack of innovation in china is because of their political system. their governement is filled with engineers (here it's filled with lawyers, more scientists wouldn't hurt). they just see the state as a machine that needs to stay oiled and running, giving individualism no value. the governement has way too much power over the universities and you need to deliver there. they can't try out new stuff with uncertain outcome and so there is no innovation. but there is a lot of potential in the chinese population.
they are just suffering from a regime that blocks everything.

however i don't think thats the case with asian americans. and most harvard students probably have a good work ethic and are cramming for tests. maybe the asians just work harder. why punish them?
 
Well, to be fair, triple 800s on your SATs don't necessarily mean that you're innovative and creative, or leadership material, which these schools have always seen themselves as, if not creating, then fostering . It's a carry over from earlier times, I admit, but that is indeed part of the context here.

I saw it in the public school my children attended, and in the schools like them in similar communities. There were, of course, the awards for academic excellence, organizations for the students with a certain grade point average, and ones for performance in sports as well. Perhaps the most coveted prizes, however, were those for students who were "scholar athletes".

I understand the logic, although as a student myself that would never have applied to me. Now, perhaps if there was one called "scholar and the arts". :)

Sports do teach leadership and sportsmanship, qualities valued in western societies. It goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. There's nothing like that in East Asian societies, to my knowledge. Nor is there the emphasis on individualism, creativity, etc.

These schools don't want to be peopled totally by students who have spent their entire lives in their parents' homes cramming for tests.

Another lesson from all of this research is that maybe Asian parents should protect their children's sanity and not send them to "after school school" and then Saturday school and never let them see the light of day. Honestly, if you have the gifts you don't need to do that. You'll still get really high SAT scores.

I'm one of those who think the "Tiger Moms" are one step away from being child abusers. The irony is that a lot of their kids probably don't need it. They might very well do just fine academically, if not quite so precociously, perhaps.

Indeed more, and more studying, isn't necessarily conducive to academic success. I myself rarely studied for more than two hours, and it was usually a day before the test; I did exceptionally well. However, I always paid attention in class, and took meticulous notes, which I would type-out, as part of my studying.

The brain is like a sponge, there is only so much it can absorb at a time.
 
I don't think all those SAT courses do anything more for students than tinker at the margins of their results. There's a couple of studies where the difference pre and post the course is something like 25 points. Factor that out over the hundreds of dollars the courses cost.

When I took them, and my brother, my parents had no idea they should be paying for these private courses. Their "outdated" and perhaps idealistic attitude was that the test would help us, and the colleges, figure out where we would best fit. There were only two tests then, they were much harder, and I still got 1520 out of 1600, 800 on the verbal and 720 on the math, and that's with English as a second language, and a school that only offered pre-calc. My brother's scores were the exact inverse. Those and his grades still got him into MIT, and, and this is an important and, he didn't have a nervous breakdown over it all. He belonged there, so there was no unnatural stress. He also didn't walk around with his slide rule in his pocket all day, played sports, sang, played an instrument, and had a full social life.

In my experience, the real stars in any field not only have the intellectual capacity needed, they're also creative, in addition to having a lot of energy and the capacity to work hard.

As for why East Asian countries really lack in the creativity department, imo it's more complicated than just their current system of government. To be honest, if you take a look at Chinese history, with a few exceptions they're not responsible for very many innovations of benefit to mankind. So, in some way it's bound up with their culture. Of course, culture is influenced by genetics, and culture drives selection, so it's a very complicated subject.

It's also true that IQ tests are weighted toward "visual" scores, i.e. mathematics, so the supposed East Asian "advantage" of a few points in average IQ is a bit deceptive.

@Ailchu,
I don't think anyone is "punishing" them. If anything, it's their parents who are being punished and the effect on their children is a by-product. The emphasis is too extreme and too one sided. I saw a video on a Chinese American mother whose children didn't have one free moment for a social life, for sports, even just for downtime. After school there was the "after school" for cramming, particularly in math, then an hour and a half for practice on the violin for one child and the piano for another. Saturday was for all day school. That isn't mentally or physically healthy for the child, and people who are the product of that are not good for the health or creativity of a society.

(I particularly didn't understand this mania for instruments. What good for anyone, the child, the society, in producing automatons who can play complicated musical pieces? I always believed in introducing them to everything, as I was introduced to everything, instruments, singing, art, sports or gymnastics, dance etc. If they have an aptitude for it, they'll like it and pursue it, and I supported it all the way. If nothing else, it makes people more well rounded and able to appreciate all that life has to offer. This enforced drill would make any normal child hate it. Look at the children whose parents have ruined them in pursuit of excellence in sport as well as music. It's just stupidly unfair. All the parents are doing is feeding their own ego and drive for status. My father used to say children are your responsibility; they shouldn't be your property).

I understand and support the Ivy League Standards in this regard. They're a reflection of Western values. It wasn't for nothing that the Duke of Wellington supposedly said: "'The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton'".


The Confucian model which Asian parents are following, whether they know it or not, is completely different. It's based on a whole tradition of cramming for grueling exams in order to qualify for bureaucratic positions. That created a society which was static and not innovative at all, and which featured extreme deference to authority and acceptance of the status quo in virtually every aspect of life. That's not a model I would like to see the U.S. adopt.


 
Well, to be fair, triple 800s on your SATs don't necessarily mean that you're innovative and creative, or leadership material, which these schools have always seen themselves as, if not creating, then fostering . It's a carry over from earlier times, I admit, but that is indeed part of the context here.

I saw it in the public school my children attended, and in the schools like them in similar communities. There were, of course, the awards for academic excellence, organizations for the students with a certain grade point average, and ones for performance in sports as well. Perhaps the most coveted prizes, however, were those for students who were "scholar athletes".

I understand the logic, although as a student myself that would never have applied to me. Now, perhaps if there was one called "scholar and the arts". :)

Sports do teach leadership and sportsmanship, qualities valued in western societies. It goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. There's nothing like that in East Asian societies, to my knowledge. Nor is there the emphasis on individualism, creativity, etc.

These schools don't want to be peopled totally by students who have spent their entire lives in their parents' homes cramming for tests.

Another lesson from all of this research is that maybe Asian parents should protect their children's sanity and not send them to "after school school" and then Saturday school and never let them see the light of day. Honestly, if you have the gifts you don't need to do that. You'll still get really high SAT scores.

I'm one of those who think the "Tiger Moms" are one step away from being child abusers. The irony is that a lot of their kids probably don't need it. They might very well do just fine academically, if not quite so precociously, perhaps.

So nerds who excel in Academics are not permitted to go to the highest institutions of learning. The Romans and Greeks would disagree. This is social engineering to reject the brightest and most learned from top colleges.
 
So nerds who excel in Academics are not permitted to go to the highest institutions of learning. The Romans and Greeks would disagree. This is social engineering to reject the brightest and most learned from top colleges.

Nonsense. There are plenty of "nerds" who get accepted, but they want more than one type of student. SAT scores aren't the be all and end all.

They're looking at the entire person, and they're providing educations for more than just STEM students. Trust me, a LOT of the applicants at certain schools have perfect SAT scores, or close to it, especially now that they've dumbed down the tests. How do you choose from among them? Or, look at it this way: you have one young person with 2400 on the tests, but other than a certain robotic ability on the violin, for example, he doesn't seem to have done anything else but study for thirteen years. You have another student with 2275 on the SATs but she's the captain of her tennis team, plays numerous other sports, sings in her church choir, is Class Treasurer one year, and Class President another, and has done volunteer work at the local animal shelter since Middle School. Oh, and she directs a children's dance group in the summers. Why not accept students like her as well? In fact, someone like her is my bet for someone who's going to be a mover and shaker.
 
My point is the Ivy League schools already know that genes are key to academic success. East Asians have genes that are for academic success. They isolated this 'problem' and the solution is to limit the number of Asian Americans entering Harvard, regardless if every Asian American is a top sports player too.

They know that Asian Americans are too smart and thus would flood Ivy League schools, so they put a literal cap on the number of Asians allowed into Harvard:

'Supporters of the lawsuit said Harvard illegally discriminated against Asian Americans by putting a cap on the number admitted to the university, making it harder for Asian applicants to get in.'

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...admissions-racial-bias-asian-americans-latest

Then Ivy League schools hide behind the racist claim that Asians lack personality:

'The group, founded by a longtime affirmative action opponent, Edward Blum, argued that while Asian Americans outperformed other groups on academic measures, stereotyping caused them to receive low scores on subjective “personal” ratings.'

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...admissions-racial-bias-asian-americans-latest

They get bullied in junior high and high school because they are nerdy and so smart. Then the colleges put a limit/cap on those who are Asian Americans from entering in because if they let them all on, there would be too many Asian Americans in the Ivy League schools, upsetting the existing WASP and other 'establish' in the Ivy League schools. Asian Americans are a threat to society because they are smart and are being kept down because of the high IQs, so they don't reach their potential at top universities.

And then this is blamed on Asian Americans being too smart and nerdy, lacking 'personality', being too quiet. Nerds are quiet, they simply have to take a public speaking class and they are fine.

Ivy League schools accept average IQ individuals, yet reject a demographic because they excel too much in academics. Even the racist trump administration recognized this. When you are more racist than racist trump who says it is ok to shoot Mexicans in the legs, wow.

The Ancient Greeks would not reject Plato or Socrates from top academics over them not playing basketball. This is uniquely a modern thing to perform social engineering... To get those with lower IQs into colleges where they can get better pay because businesses and corporations place value on Ivy League schools.

This Harvard and Ivy League school policy is as racist as those neo-nazis who don't want Syrian migrants in Europe because of this so-called fake 'white genocide'. They don't want the competition in Europe, they see somebody different and they discriminate. Ivy League schools isolated that Asian Americans have genes to succeed at an academic level, and the WASP and others at Ivy League schools know if they allow every qualified Asian into Ivy League schools, the board would be easily controllable, there would be 'WASP genocide' at Ivy League schools and there would be a replacement of the WASP 'establishment' at Ivy League schools replaced by Asians graduates in 20 years. To stop this genocide, they place caps on Asian Americans entering Harvard and other universities.

My top college professor at the University I attended was an quiet Asian man, because I was one of his top students and the top students in the Department, he tried to get me good internships so that I could excel in employment. He did not need to to play basketball, he simply was a great guy and a great teacher because he had good genes for academics and was very hard working.

This claim that Asians are lacking personality because they are quieter, and lack 'leadership skills' because they are not good at Lacrosse is racist. This is supposedly the top academic venue for top academics, rewards should go to the top academics in the country. I guess Harvard is simply another racist institution that CAPS the number of Asians entering Harvard because the WASPs feel threatened.

Harvard is using the SAT to discriminate against Asians, Asians must score higher on the SATs than those of African descent. This is a total abuse of the SAT system, Harvard is rejecting the intelligent Asians because of SATs, I never said the SAT are end all be all, Harvard does in accepting Asian Americans, or in Harvard's case of rejecting top intelligent Asian Americans.
 
If, for whatever reason, you want to believe this, go ahead. Everybody seems to want to play the victim card

In my experience it's nonsense. My children's schools are now about one quarter Asian. The East and South Asian students don't go out for sports, they don't participate in student government, or do volunteer activities. It's the same with the parents. They don't join the Parent/Teacher Association, or volunteer at the school, and with the various clubs or teams, or, indeed with the various community organizations. They have no interest in joining the local swim and tennis clubs, or helping out with the Welcome Wagon Association, or the library. It is what it is; it's just a different culture.

Telling the truth about this is not racist; it's an objective description of the reality.

Oh, and someone with all A's, a 2275 SAT and all the AP courses offered on the transcript is not an "average" student. The student I'm talking about is just not a one dimensional young person, and that's good for her, the school she's in, and the future.

The fact that you can't have a civil conversation, even dispute about this without resorting to childish downvoting is part of what I'm talking about; it's a lack of social awareness and understanding of how to function in groups. This kind of attitude, this tribalism, is permeating American society, and it's to its detriment.
 
If, for whatever reason, you want to believe this, go ahead. Everybody seems to want to play the victim card

In my experience it's nonsense. My children's schools are now about one quarter Asian. The East and South Asian students don't go out for sports, they don't participate in student government, or do volunteer activities. It's the same with the parents. They don't join the Parent/Teacher Association, or volunteer at the school, and with the various clubs or teams, or, indeed with the various community organizations. They have no interest in joining the local swim and tennis clubs, or helping out with the Welcome Wagon Association, or the library. It is what it is; it's just a different culture.

Telling the truth about this is not racist; it's an objective description of the reality.

Oh, and someone with all A's, a 2275 SAT and all the AP courses offered on the transcript is not an "average" student. The student I'm talking about is just not a one dimensional young person, and that's good for her, the school she's in, and the future.

The fact that you can't have a civil conversation, even dispute about this without resorting to childish downvoting is part of what I'm talking about; it's a lack of social awareness and understanding of how to function in groups. This kind of attitude, this tribalism, is permeating American society, and it's to its detriment.

While I learned alot from my high IQ Asian Chinese-American professor in college. I learned practically nothing from my four African professors, one professor was trying and I had to instruct the professor in basics of geography. The other three had courses that were thought to be something else, when in fact they were only about how white discriminate against blacks and how blacks don't go to Ivy Leauge schools because of the racism in public schools that keep black kids down because the whites don't value educating blacks.

Every of the three classes of those African professors was like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM

(without the murder at the end, you got good grades by saying gender equality and multiculturalism, if you treated the course in any other way, you did not get the favor of the teachers).

There was not anything academic or high IQ about any of the classes I had with African professors. Yet Ivy League schools say those who score less on SAT, have lower IQ and do not succeed well in academics deserve a place in Ivy League schools in place of smart Asians.

Genetics is racist, in a good way. If your parents were civilized and for thousands of years cared about being hard working and studious and placed a focus on family and creativity, you get to have the good genes of acumen in academics. If what your ancestors did was kill and act like uncivilized barbarians focusing on not on cooperation and building, but on destruction and bullying... you are generally don't have good academic genes. Nature is 'racist' in this regard. You say you lose hope in humanity sometimes from the finding, I find hope, hope that those who do good and work hard like Asian Americans, and don't bother people with bombs and mass killings, are rewarded with success. Social engineering is what is truly racist.

Focus on humanity and developing skills to make a better world, and your children will excel in doing this. Do the opposite and your child will be bullies too.

To punish Asians for being too smart a group is to work on the inverse. The Devil works on the inverse. Rewards bad behavior. Punishes good deeds. This social engineering of Harvard and elsewhere is evil. This is why trump won in 2016, the public was sick of this. Most recognize hard work and good results deserve rewards.

The same group that bullies the Syrian migrants and the Mexican migrants are the same group that bullied neolithic EEF. This is partly from genes. Christianity tempered this for 2000 years, but even with Christianity, you had the genocide of Native Americans from the same crowd.

This works for good and bad deeds, love and hate:

https://youtu.be/j1c3EmrySSI?t=2m10s
 
Messier, never did I advocate that Ivy League schools or ANY university admit students who don't have the ability to perform at the expected level. University is not the place to redress racial imbalances by admitting students to whom you have to teach remedial math and reading and writing. Affirmative action has not worked. Period. All you get is substandard graduates, if they graduate at all, which most don't.

I'm talking about how to choose from among many qualified candidates. Just from my daughter's graduating class, ten students applied to Harvard. They wouldn't have applied if they didn't think they had a shot. They were all straight A students who had taken all AP courses senior year, and probably all had combined SATS of 2250 and above out of 2400. However, you'd see the same situation in every really good school in the tri-state area. Multiply that all over the country. Harvard or any Ivy League school can't take them all. There has to be some way to discriminate among them, and I agree with these schools that strictly looking at SAT scores is not the answer.

As for the following, it's not only vastly incorrect, but it's bizarre. By that standard Germans should have low IQs.

Europeans get no prizes for being humane. For goodness sakes, the Balkan Wars with their mass rape as a tactic of war and their genocide and ethnic cleansing was barely thirty years ago, World War II seventy years ago. I still have some ancient aunts who lived through it. Don't tell me how civilized Germans are. It wasn't just the SS who burned my people alive in their churches. It was the Wehrmacht too. And most of them got away with it. My own people did their share. What is humane in bombing Ethiopian villagers in their huts?

Please.

Messier:
If your parents were civilized and for thousands of years cared about being hard working and studious and placed a focus on family and creativity, you get to have the good genes of acumen in academics. If what your ancestors did was kill and act like uncivilized barbarians focusing on not on cooperation and building, but on destruction and bullying... you are generally don't have good academic genes."
 
but why even make different fixed requirement scores and not just the same range for all ethnicities in which you have to be in in that case? is the average private life really a reason for different score requirements? probably not. asian americans make up only 5.6% of the total american population but they make up 25% of the students that are entering harvard in 2023. harvard and other such universities probably just want to ensure that one ethnicity doesn't take over so they stay ethnically diverse. that has bad but also good sides. though if they really just wanted the best it would look different.
 

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