<p>Outside of the sports world and entertainment--which make up relatively few of the successful people in the US at maybe a few 1000 out of millions--there certainly is a high correlation between IQ and income. The fact that there is also a high correlation between IQ and education does not disprove the fact that smart people tend to be higher income. School does not make people smarter--smart people go to school.</p>
<p>People who have access to money tend to go to school. It is harder for people without money to go to school. People without money tend to not go to school. People with money do not tend to be smarter.</p>
<p>barrons, you really should read up on some of the lastest sociological thoeries with regards to education attainment. But, since i know thats not necessarily high on everyone's reading list, I'll save you the trouble. Studies have been done where the have compared the education attainment (in number of years of education) to the socioeconomic deciles found in society. What they find is that people with a higher socioeconomic status end up with the highest level of education attainment (no big surprise there). But then people like you come along and suggest that they are at the top because they are smarter. </p>
<p>In response to this the same study was done but this time they controlled for intelligence by only looking at those individuals who had an IQ = 100. If it were true then that higher intelligence led to higher educational attainment then you would have seen a (relatively) equal number of educational years throughout each socioeconomic decile, however, what they found was that the same trend, ie. higher socioeconomic status = higher educational attainment. </p>
<p>I will concede though that when controlling for the IQ the numbers did converge slightly.</p>
<p>Conclusion: Intelligence matters, but where and to whom you are born matters most.</p>
<p>Look at the average IQ for certain well paid professions. It is WAY above 100. Around 130 for accountants and lawyers. A little more for doctors and scientists. Probably 140 for investment bankers. Then there are teachers--maybe 110-120.</p>
<p>I would also venture that the children of high income folks--who tend to be of above average IQ--also have above average IQ's. And the beat goes on.</p>
<p>I don't think you're getting it. First of all, I'm not sure how good of a measure an IQ test really is, but for the sake of argument lets say it does measure intelligence accurately.</p>
<p>If you controlled for IQs of 140 (or whatever number youd like...) then you'd still get something like this:</p>
<p>Socioeconomic Deciles - level of attainment (in years)
Top 10% - 14
10-20% - 13
20-30%- 12 (there is really little point to me giving real numbers because I don't know what they would be, but the studies have been done and you can look up the exact numbers if you'd like)
...
90-100% - 6 </p>
<p>Now things to keep in mind: The number of years is an average. The IQ has been controlled for, meaning the only people included in the survey are those with the specified IQ (which means that, if we take the IQ test as a measure of intelligence, everyone is as smart as everyone else in the survey)... which <em>drumroll please</em> means that your economic status dictates a large portion of how much education you will receive. </p>
<p>AND since what degree you obtain dictates what profession or job you will be able to get, then it follows that your socioeconomic status dictates which profession or job you will get. (obviously there are exceptions and your socioeconomic status is not the single factor in determining your job... there are certainly many different aspects involved, however, it does dictate this to a large degree.)</p>
<p>To think otherwise, in this day and age with the amount of research done on this by many sociologists is really quite ridiculous. Sure to become a doctor you must be intelligent, no one is arguing that, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to become a doctor if you're from a wealthy family.</p>
<p>Oh and if you want to look this up, what you are suggesting is nicknamed the meritocratic theory. Like I said, it has some credibility, but in large part today's sociologists have begun to realize that much more than inteligence is at play in determining who is granted membership to the upper class.</p>
<p>Alexandre, I can't totally agree with you. I too have been educated at both a good state university and top private school.I explored the book store and offerings at both schools. Both had the roughly the same books for undergraduate work. Both offered roughly the same types of courses and had similar graduation requirements for the major. Both had very smart professors, although I am not sure I can measure brain power on an individual basis. Thus,what were the differences:</p>
<ol>
<li>The top private school was at least triple the tuition of that of our state university</li>
<li>The top private school had a better cache. However, two or more years out of school made no difference.</li>
<li><p>I definitely met more "connected" kids from richer backgrounds at the top private school than I met at the state university. Some of these kids now run some of the top companies in the world or have inherited their parents empire. One was a well-known composer and acter.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, the tougher private school had more motivated kids. This is NOT to say that there weren't motivated kids in the state university,but they may have comprised 40% of the student body. However, it seems that almost every kid at the top private school was very motivated and smart. Probably it was the peer competition and pressure that resulted in the greatest difference between the two types of colleges.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Taxguy, it depends on your particular schools and you personal experience. I am speaking about Michigan and Cornell. I am not sure about the kids at your state school, but at Michigan, over 80% of the kids are extremely competitive and ambitious. Generally, in terms of the 4 points you mention above, you can group the following state schools with the following private schools. Each "Group" offers universities with very similar characteristics. LACs not included:</p>
<p>GROUP I:
Private Universities:
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
Yale University</p>
<p>Public Universities:
No public equivallent</p>
<p>GROUP II:
Private Universities:
Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>Public Universities:
University of California-Berkeley
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>
<p>GROUP III:
Private Universities:
Boston College
Carnegie Mellon University
Emory University
Georgetown University
New York University
Rice University
Tufts University
University of Southern California
Vanderbilt University
Washington University</p>
<p>Public Universities:
College of William and Mary
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>GROUP IV:
Private Universities:
Boston University
Brandeis University
Case Western Reserve University
George Washington University
Lehigh University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Tulane University
University of Rochester</p>
<p>Public Universities:
Georgia Institute of Technology
Indiana University-Bloomington
Pennsylvania State University-University Park
Purdue University-West Lafayette
University of California-Davis
University of California-Irvine
University of California-San Diego
University of Maryland-College Park
University of Washington</p>
<p>Alexandre, there you go, once again spreading misleading information. What exactly do Cal-tech and Dartmouth have in common? Very little. Dartmouth is a liberal arts college and Cal-tech as it names suggests concentrates on anything but. These two school, attract VERY different students and offer very different academic environments. Your grouping of these schools is almost based entirely on the U.S news ranking. Dartmouth and Columbia for example attract more similar students to HYP and have similar academic atmospheres to HYP than say MIT and HYP.</p>
<p>Your grouping motivation seeks to justify or rather, legitimize the fact that you attend ( or as you say "chose") a public university.</p>
<p>Ivyleaguer, you seem to enjoy insulting people. My groupings have little if any correlation with the USNWR and they have nothing to do with universities that share similar atmospheres.</p>
<p>dartmyth--what is NOT controlled for in your analysis is the percent of the population in each economic decile with a certain level of IQ. If the average IQ of the top income/education decile is 125 while the average of the lowest 50% is 100, then you are not really comparing the same things. Sociologists as a group are among the most lberal and just might have a little agenda in their presentation and analysis.</p>
<p>What is the argument about? </p>
<p>We live in the real world people. The education might be the same at top private and public schools...but the prestige is not, and the prestige = alumni network = big money = big resources = heavy recruiting = $$$ + success.</p>
<p>Forget sociology, ^math explains it. For all of you people who have such pride and want to PROVE your point that harvard is no better than UMich, go to UMich...for all you real people who want to get a good stepping stone in life, i suggest you pay the extra $20 grand and go to harvard :)</p>
<p>Where does EQ fit in? From what I have seen, A high IQ loses to a slightly lower IQ, if the lower IQ has a much better EQ.</p>
<p>Also, ambition plays a huge part. Many high IQ people aren't ambitious, or don't want to work hard.</p>
<p>"Some proponents of IQ have pointed to a number of studies showing a fairly close correlation between IQ and various life outcomes, particularly income. Research in Scotland has shown that a 15-point lower IQ meant people had a fifth less chance of seeing their 76th birthday, while those with a 30-point disadvantage were 37% less likely than those with a higher IQ to live that long. Research by Charles Murray on siblings has shown that there is a strong correlation between IQ and earned income."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.i2osig.org/test.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.i2osig.org/test.html</a></p>
<p>There were two schools (undergrad) that produced the most Fortune 500 CEO's in a recent study. One was Harvard--the other was the University of Wisconsin.</p>
<p>That proves absolutely nothing...no smart person goes to school with the goal to just "become a CEO"...why would you go work for a company for 40 years before attaining top status when you can just go to a top ivy league school, get recruited to an investment banking firm, and make millions of dollars a year...lets see how many of those people Wisconsin produced compared to Harvard...</p>
<p>Proportionally, schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Yale produce way more CEOs than the University of Wisconsin. U of W probably has more than ten times the number of undergraduates that a school like Yale has. A fair comparison would be the number of CEOs that Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and all the ivy leagues combined produced vs the number of CEOs produced by U of W. I think it would be a no contest don't you agree?</p>
<p>Why do you exagerate ubermunch? Wisconsin has 30,000 undergrads. Yale has 5,000 undergrads. So yes, Wisconsin is much larger than Yale, but not by more than a factor of 10!</p>
<p>And why would you have to add the number of CEOs from all the Ivies plus MIT and Stanford to make it a fair comparison? Let us look at how many undergrads attend those schools:</p>
<p>Cornell: 13,000
Penn: 10,000
Columbia: 7,000
Stanford: 7,000
Harvard: 6,500
Brown: 6,000
Yale: 5,000
Princeton: 5,000
Dartmouth: 4,000
MIT: 4,000</p>
<p>That's 70,000 undergrads.</p>
<p>Ok then. Drop Cornell, U of Penn, Columbia, and Brown. </p>
<p>Does U of W have as many CEOs as Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and MIT combined? I think not!</p>