A few days ago wrote about this friend at a top-notch research institute who was bothered about my lack of intelligence.
I was not offended because I knew the truth. On the other hand, I knew that he came to IIT on a reservation. In spite of having secured #1 rank in the high school graduating exam, #1 out of about 300,000 candidates.
Can understand once. But after securing almost a distinction at IIT, he didn’t attand a top notch school in America. He was at LSU, an okay school. Finally he went to Carnegie, which is a top tier school.
There is no doubt that he is an outstanding researcher. But the fact that he had to go to LSU tells me something probably he didn’t score that high on GRE. I, in contrast, had gotten scholarship at top tier University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in spite of my dismal performance at IIT. Effect of high GMAT?
The fact is that in traditional intelligence measurement I will probably comfortably beat him. He is a researcher, very useful to the society, and high intelligence as not a big asset for him. Perseverance, ability to look and solve problems are big assets for him.
So he should not be obsessed with intelligence. I didn’t do well at IIT because it was a stupid place. It was designed for mediocrity. It was not my lack of intelligence.