Assortative mating by education entails assortative mating by IQ, so the children of the top 10% are likely to have higher IQs, which is a big reason they compile the resumes needed to get into selective colleges.
Money buys expensive, not necessarily quality. And, like in any market, there are lemons in higher ed.
I should also forewarn you, in case you’re putting all your eggs in the Ivy basket, that IQ isn’t universally high at selective colleges. In some cases, the children of Ivy alumni don’t fall in accepted gifted ranges. And that’s okay—the world isn’t universally gifted, and people are of equal value and dignity irrespective of their investment accounts or IQ.
The most important measures of a person can’t be quantified by a single metric—character, leadership, ingenuity, courage, compassion, mercy—and I’m far more concerned about assortative matching on those dimensions than the mercenary ones. I think you’ll find most gifted people think similarly. There are a lot of middling affluent or bright people in the world; that’s not unique. But what is remarkable is someone who doesn’t get embroiled in status symbols, and instead lives out a life rich in meaning without constantly referring to the “scoreboard” for personal validation. This article is about precisely that.
But I guess it’s the same story as the comparison between old money and nouveau riche. As the article indicates, genuinely talented people don’t spend time feeling superior about what they were born with, or engage in paranoid thought exercises about how to preserve their grasp on social supremacy when the barriers for other groups’ participation are finally removed; they get busy tackling the world’s toughest problems and being awesome. Part of that is acknowledging that the world has room for lots of talent and success, and so much the better the more people who share in it.
Now, let’s talk about how to use all the big brains floating around here to ensure that all smart people, irrespective of starting positions, have the opportunity to use their talents. That’s worth discussing!
