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The measure for academic success for decades has been a person's intelligence quotient, or IQ. But new research published in the journal Child Development says that a thought process called "executive functioning," which governs the ability to reason and mentally focus, also plays a critical role in learning, especially when it comes to math skills...</p>
<p>In this study 141 healthy children between the ages of three and five years took a battery of psychological tests that measured their IQs and executive functioning. Researchers found that a child whose IQ and executive functioning were both above average was three times more likely to succeed in math than a kid who simply had a high IQ.</p>
<p>"[The fact] that executive function, even in children this young, is significantly related to early math performance suggests that if we can improve executive function, we can improve their academic performance," says Adele Diamond, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia.
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<p>The question is - how does this research apply to the ability to succeed at MIT? (or to succeed in the most theoretical fields?) The issue here is that we need to control (a bit) for intelligence. Now, most students, granted, are fairly weak in math (they struggle with grade school math courses, and often must ask for help - courses we usually can breeze through without much effort. Most of them are pretty much through with math once they reach calculus - that is, if they reach it). The research cited above is based on such students.</p>
<p>Another question is, can the same research apply to those of higher IQs, who may think and reason differently? Perhaps they have alternative strategies of seeking a solution to the problem? Perhaps they find looking for help easier? But as we get up to the higher IQs - it's possible that IQ may be a stronger control for the ability to do theoretical math than other factors (we need a control group again, but theoretical math may be out-of-reach for many MIT and even Caltech students - who struggle over their problems sets and must frequently get help, whereas stronger students in the same pool can do the problem sets with not much help). Most people who get into Caltech/MIT are probably at the 99th percentile of math ability, and the difference between 99.9th and 99.5th is far huger than that between 60th and 70th percentiles. The bell curve distribution of IQ does a good job of quantifying this - but it may still be that the difference in ability of 130 and 135 (in math) may be larger than that between 80 and 85 (though at such high IQs, IQ becomes a fairly poor indicator of math ability). I generally don't think that IQ means much at higher IQs, but there may be another test that correlates more with mathematical ability than with IQ.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, <a href="http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/25/the-cult-of-genius/%5B/url%5D">http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/25/the-cult-of-genius/</a> is an interesting take on this - even non-geniuses can handle the material. They won't be Nobel laureates, but at least they can still do a good job at research. And as for how this relates to MIT, MIT will still manage to admit a number of very-talented students, while admitting a larger number of people who aren't that smart, but who can still succeed in research/other high-cognitive ability occupations.</p>
<p>Now, I'm not a Caltech student, but I read the Caltech boards, and based on what I've gathered from them, many students initially want to major in math or physics (50% IIRC), but the Caltech curriculum shows them that math/physics may not be their forte (often due to their struggles with the problem sets).</p>
<p>Of course, MIT and Caltech are not purely focused on theoretical math - and most of their respective applicant pools do well in their own non-math fields. MIT's admissions are catered towards "is the applicant good enough to succeed in MIT core?" And if so, intelligence/SAT scores/etc really don't matter beyond that (for most applicants). Nonetheless, we do know that some very high level students are rejected or waitlisted (ones who may get Axlines at Caltech). What do we make out of that? The problem, again, is that it's difficult to compare how well MIT does on competitions like the Putnam were such students accepted, with how well it would do in such competitions were they not accepted. Of course, the Putnam isn't the best indicator of how good MIT students are (since school performance on the Putnam is based on the top few scores, and MIT can still do well on it even if it accepts all at the top in terms of USAMO/ISEF/USA(X)O, rejects some near the top, and admits URMs below them). Whatever, MIT has its own mission, and somehow, such mission has changed from what it was before.</p>
<p>The other issue, of course, is that executive functioning/work ethic is very difficult to quantify in high school students. Teacher recommendations are the only way to quantify this characteristic in HS students. And frankly speaking - students who do the minimum to "A" a class may still have a very strong work ethic - they just may be using that work ethic towards self-study, rather than to do more busywork in a class which they find too easy. Even then, those with less self-control could potentially be more creative (in that they don't filter out stimuli that could provide insights to their work),and yet have enough self-control to succeed in school (even if they don't get straight A's).</p>
<p>Of course there are other issues as well - work ethic may be partially contingent on environmental circumstances. But the psychological tests do seem to show that conscientiousness (in most people) seem to be relatively consistent in a person through time.</p>