Post #17

"Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart." -Alan Alda

Chapter 9 spanned across intelligence and how to measure it. This is relevant as high schooler, mainly because throughout our entire lives we have been told to study hard in preparation for college, and when we reach high school our intelligence is put to the test, literally. Taking the ACT or SAT can be the most daunting day of a person's life, because it is a test that carries a lot of weight and can determine what college you are able to go to and how the rest of your life will pan out because of that college.

When I took the ACT for the first time, I had the exact thought of my entire college and future life depends on this one test. Thinking this psyched me out and ended up not receiving the score I had hoped for. There is so much pressure riding on one test, it makes me wonder whether it is a true test to your intelligence or if there are more beneficial ways to assess your ability.

The text gives evidence that there is about a 0.7-0.8 correlation between an IQ test and the SAT. It then goes into statistical evidence and the way the experiment was conducted, which I actually understand because of my stats class. And seeing how the SAT and the IQ test are measuring different forms of intelligence it makes sense as to why it is not one hundred percent correlated.

It would be hard to imagine the rest of our lives being determined by an IQ test though. As demonstrated in class, many of the students thought having to reach a certain IQ before entering a job was not a good testament as to who the person was as a worker. Which, going back to the college entrance exams, carries the same idea. Colleges not only look at your test scores but also how you've progressed over your high school year and how you've carried yourself through extracurriculars.