https://www.google.com/amp/s/thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest-iq-64811/amp
Physics, Mathematics, Economics, Philosophy and engineering are on top of the list.
Unfortunately Education, Social Work, Psychology are at the bottom.
What a silly list. My IQ is on the higher end of this list and I chose to major in something near the bottom- and then to be a stay-at-homeschooling mom. People are not locked into career choice based on IQ.
Agreed but it’s just a simple list based on data about attracting and retaining higher percentage of high IQ/high stats people.
Why is this unfortunate?
The gifted therapist who practically saved my life didn’t need to have Einstein’s IQ. By all accounts, Einstein was not an empathetic listener, and did not have the patience to sit through sessions untangling a mess of emotion, family issues, and medical complications. But she did.
Nobody has ever suggested that Stephen Hawking could have taught third grade literature, or even 6th grade math.
Attracting and retaining what exactly? People who are good at managing 25 energetic 8 year olds in a classroom aren’t good at philosophy or engineering. And this is post-worthy why?
No one claimed they were. As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. Every one of these undoubtedly has data points at either extreme.
Why post? Well, It’s a post about college majors in a forum entitled “College Majors”.
It’s simply a statistical set of aggregated data. I’ll never understand why people get offended by facts.
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The entire concept of IQ is ridiculous. The idea that something as complex as human intelligence can be boiled down to s single number is so laughable that I am constantly surprised that so many smart people actually take it seriously.
Whats even more ludicrous is the fact that IQ is measured by standardized tests, while it is acknowledged by anybody who studies human intelligence that the highest measure of intelligence is the ability to solve novel situation in novel ways. Not only are standardized tests unable to detect this ability, this ability will actually incur a penalty in standardized tests.
It is also beyond ridiculous to claim that IQ tests measure something innate, when it is possible to improve one’s testing results by training.
The reason that Physics, Mathematics, Economics, Philosophy and engineering are at the top is because the easiest things to test in a standardized format are logic and mathematics, so these are the main things for which “IQ” tests measure. These fields are based on logic and mathematics, so of course they score high on these tests.
It is like a scientist who decides that ocean life at night is dominated by animals that are attracted to light, because he used lights to capture marine animals at night.
None of these “IQ” tests actually measures the ability of thinking critically, something that people who believe in these numbers also lack. The level of logic that they test is also very low, otherwise everybody who scores high on the tests would identify the host of logical fallacies inherent in the tests.
Of course even very smart people will often ignore logic and critical thinking when they’re being flattered…
Until we have better ways to predict ability and competence, standardized testing like IQ and SAT will not go obsolete.
As far as “why this is post-worthy?”, this is relevant and interesting … even if not as interesting as CC threads about Megxit, Your Best Buy, and Roasting Vegetables.
IQ and SAT don’t measure the same thing.
I’m not even sure many people/kids/students get their IQs tested any more…it’s not done in Illinois schools…so seems one would need to go to an outside testing service to have it done. And in that case, why?
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Anti-testers are a bit like anti-vaxxers. Both schools of thought seem to thrive in America despite worldwide evidence.
Admission to Peking University or Tsinghua in China, IIT in India, or Seoul National University in Korea are largely decided based upon high scores in the national tests. If your assertion that standardized tests don’t measure intelligence was actually correct, then graduates from these would not outperform graduates from other colleges. But if you actually look at what these graduates achieve, even outside their home country, you would be hard pressed to find another explanation. In Silicon Valley, a large percentage of successful startups are founded by graduates of China’s C9 and India’s IIT.
Note that I personally am against high-stress one-and-done exams that these countries use. I think that a combination of standardized tests (that can be taken more than once) and rigor-adjusted grades are the best approach. Not a fan of superscoring either.
A few practice tests are useful to understand the rules and recommended approach of the test. After that, appreciable improvements only happen on low-ceiling tests like the current versions of the SAT and ACT. Historical versions of the SAT in particular had a very high ceiling, and scores above 750, particularly in English, were rare. Likewise, the tests in the countries I mentioned above have very high ceilings.
CupCakeMuffins states “to predict ability and competence” and never said they measure the same thing.
Why do humans test their IQ’s? We like to measure things. Why do we use services like “23 and me” and doggie genetic makeup services?
I chose to read this thread, which interests me much more than reading about a “which purse to buy” thread. 
Understood. My (poorly!) made point was it doesn’t seem many humans have their IQs tested any more(whether thru school or independently)…it seems to have fallen in importance and usage in the last couple of decades.
It seems there aren’t many corporations, organizations, or schools (except MENSA, and even there one can substitute test scores when joining which doesn’t make sense!) that use IQ as a way to predict ability and competence. Sure, many companies use various tests when evaluating potential employees, but those tests seem to have shifted focus from those with a pure brain power measurement (frequently not IQ based/proxy anyway) to those that evaluate many skills including teamwork, emotional intelligence, grit, etc.
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IQ tests used for hiring purposes have been illegal in the US since 1971 unless there is justification as to why they are required. See:
Griggs - Wikipediav.DukePowerCo.
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I don’t know how common IQ testing is today, but I do know that there are some parents who do test their children. The kids that I’ve heard about through the grapevine are the kids with IQ’s at either end of the spectrum.
WISC-V includes a full scale IQ test and is one of the diagnosis tests typically used as part of the psychological testing for learning disabilities including ADHD (see https://www.brighthubeducation.com/special-ed-behavioral-disorders/67066-adhd-testing-using-the-wechsler-intelligence-scale-for-children/)
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Most school districts use tests like MAP, COGAT, EXPLORE, Stanford Binet and others to mark and monitor gifted students. Do these tests have an IQ component or are they purely achievement based?
^Many school districts use ability screening tests like the CogAT, which is explicitly not an IQ test, to find gifted students. MAP is an achievement test often given to all students to track academic progress. EXPLORE is a middle school test by ACT, though I’m not sure whether it looks at achievement or ability (it is not an IQ test).
Stanford-Binet is an IQ test, though it is not typical for school districts to administer actual IQ tests for the purpose of identifying gifted students because it is expensive and time-consuming. IQ testing is far more common in the context of diagnosing learning issues, especially by private providers. Some private gifted schools may require private IQ testing for admission.
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Following paragraph explains value of this topic better than I did.
“Do students who choose to major in different fields have different academic aptitudes? This question is worth investigating for many reasons, including an understanding of what fields top students choose to pursue, the diversity of talent across various fields, and how this might reflect upon the majors and occupations a culture values.”
https://qz.com/334926/your-college-major-is-a-pretty-good-indication-of-how-smart-you-are/
Here is a limited study about Physics, Maths, Economics, Philosophy and International Relations majors scoring highest on LSAT.
It is hard to test IQ without being confounded by achievement or knowledge of the types of things that IQ tests (or tests that are claimed to be like IQ tests like the SAT) depend on as a basis.
Note that tests for achievement do not have this problem, because it is not necessary to separate intelligence from achievement, since intelligence is part (though not all) of what produces achievement.
Is the LSAT claimed to be an IQ test?
In any case, the often forgotten about logic puzzle section of the LSAT makes it not surprising that math and philosophy majors do well on it.
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Correct. Achievement and intelligence tend to have a strong connection.
About LSAT, i don’t know if it claims it or not but like other standardized tests, similar majors score highest there and on MCAT as well. Humanities did best on GRE’s verbal and Math/Physics on quant portion.
It’s all pretty much useless information for an individual but nonetheless interesting stuff.
There are fields and companies that use high school SAT score for hiring purposes. Although their lawyers won’t let them admit this, they are using high school SAT as a proxy for IQ.