See, I still see this as a Venn diagram which is being conflated to represent ONE group.
There are those with very high cognitive ability...
and there are those with "elite" educations.
Yes, there is significant overlap in the two groups. But they are
not identical.
C'mon... how smart do you
actually have to be to get a 2300+ score on the SAT your fourth or fifth time out, at 18 years old, after four years of daily tutoring for that test?
Apparently smarter than people like these:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57348498/the-perfect-score-cheating-on-the-sat/I'm guessing that yes, if you look at PERFECT scorers, then yeah, those people are probably all MG+. But the top 2% of scorers? I'm guessing that a fair number of those people are instead in the IQ >120 range, which is a far cry from "the intellectual elite."
There is also the fact that there are many OTHER correlations to be made re: "the elite" as well. Not-so-savory correlations. take a look at how many executives would qualify as having serious personality disorders--
In 2005, psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey, UK, interviewed and gave personality tests to high-level British executives and compared their profiles with those of criminal psychiatric patients at Broadmoor Hospital in the UK. They found that three out of eleven personality disorders were actually more common in executives than in the disturbed criminals:
Histrionic personality disorder: including superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity and manipulation
Narcissistic personality disorder: including grandiosity, self-focused lack of empathy for others, exploitativeness and independence.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: including perfectionism, excessive devotion to work, rigidity, stubbornness and dictatorial tendencies.
This startling finding is (apparently) even MORE striking when examining high level executives in finance and politics, many of whom apparently could readily be diagnosed as sociopathic using clinical criteria. (Again, I've seen studies, just no time this morning to dig them out.)
Anyway. I think that conflating the two groups (elite education + success and elite cognitive ability) is merely correlation fallacy on some level.
Yes, OF COURSE one must be more than average levels of bright and motivated to achieve that kind of success (material and status based)-- but "genius"? What are we calling "elite" there? Probably not as helpful as other traits, honestly.
Where are all of the introverts in that model of gifted people running the world? Those introverts sure aren't CEO's. And yet introversion is actually slightly MORE common among HG+ people.
About 60% of gifted children are introverted compared with 30% of the general population. Approximately 75% of highly gifted children are introverted. Introversion correlates with introspection, reflection, the ability to inhibit aggression, deep sensitivity, moral development, high academic achievement, scholarly contributions, leadership in academic and aesthetic fields in adult life, and smoother passage through midlife; however, it is very likely to be misunderstood and “corrected” in children by well-meaning adults.
(I'm pulling this from Linda Silverman-- too rushed this mornign to look up the original references, though I know they exist)
But I can also see how that is incompatible with traits which are absolutely essential to the competitive, driving mindset necessary for success as defined upstream in this thread.
Again, the sorting is ABSOLUTELY not a perfect proxy for "elite schools = higher IQ." The assumption is that everyone who COULD go there
would, first and foremost, which is untrue. People of high cognitive ability choose all kinds of colleges for all kinds of irrational and rational reasons-- not the least of which is that many introverted HG+ persons do NOT see a life of interpersonally competitive professional interactions as "rewarding" in any way, shape, or form. Secondly, recall that the SAT
averages really are only that-- and without a standard deviation associated, are virtually meaningless. What percentage of people at Harvard scored below that average, hmmm? Right. HALF. And maybe a few of them
well below it. We simply don't know. It's entirely possible that the population of
Generic Prestigious Institute is actually composed of two distinct groups--
a) kinda bright, but economically highly advantaged and therefore paying FULL freight... so lower test scores are entirely acceptable, and
b) VERY VERY bright, but requires a bunch of financial assistance because of low SES of family.
Basically that would be the two extremes. The latter group is going to skew the average higher, and the upper limit, of course, is "perfect" SAT scores, which a good many-- maybe even "most" of them are entirely capable of on a reasonably good outing. Then there are all of those somewhere in between, most of whom skew high on testing-- but as noted before, those with highest SES have the most advantages in securing the kinds of GPA's and test scores that show to absolute BEST effect whatever raw cognitive ability that they actually possess.
So circle back to my initial hypothesis. The SAT just isn't
that hard. Nor is high school material. It's just hard for most people. ANYONE with cognitive ability in the 120+ range
ought to be able to look more or less identical using those measures, providing that they were highly motivated.
Given that, I'd also argue that
that may be the real sorting mechanism at work in elite admissions-- motivation.
It should come as NO surprise that the "elite" are highly motivated people. That they are disproportionately 'driven' types, personality-wise. I can see why it would be nice to
believe that those running things are "earning" those positions through their superiority rather than through uneven advantage or selection based on some personality traits and not others, but I think personally that such a conclusion isn't entirely defensible given the evidence at hand.
