Just to clarify - I didn't say it was a measure of anyone's intelligence - there are many very intelligent people who don't have PhD's.
What I mean is that it requires intelligence - yes, it requires dedication, perseverance etc .. but intelligence is a central component.

I am not sure how a claim that you could do 'any PhD' challenges that? You would apply your skills and, your intelligence ... no?

I believe I am intelligent but no more intelligent than someone who decides to be a shop assistant. If that shop assistant got fed up with their job, decided to change direction and opted to study for a degree and applied themselves to their studies, I believe they could do as well as I have academically. I am no more intelligent than the average person, in my opinion.

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yes i have been intimidated by people who i feel are very dedicated and also 'super intelligent' in my phd office.

this can be the case especially when you set out in your 1st year of phd study and are surrounded by 'experts' in the field who can be very dedicated to their work, it can seem like a very steep learning curve to get to that level (which it is i guess) and this can seem very daunting.

i have also found that certain phd students (or ones who have already become Dr xxx) can be quite pretentious (i guess as they seem to value their knowledge as superior to other people), which doesnt help not getting annoyed by academically successful people like that - but i think this is down to the individuals personality as other Dr xxx's that i know are very friendly and easy to approach.

however you have to remember that everybody has to start somewhere on the path of learning, people were not born with 'instant super knowledge' - so it is possible for you to get to that level if you have an interest in the field - which leads onto dedication and using your intellect to get the work done.

sadly i am lacking in the dedication part of the equation haha, but hopefully i will be able to get some thing out of the work i have done so far.

Again, you are using an irrelevant example that doesn't disprove my original argument - a 'shop assistant' is not, by definition, any more or less intelligent than any given PhD student so their ability to undertake a PhD is moot. My point was, and still is, that successfully completing a PhD requires intelligence.

It does, I agree, but most people have a level of intelligence sufficient to complete a degree or PhD and that's my point. Whether or not they can apply themselves to do it is another matter.

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At the risk of sounding arrogant and alienating myself, I tend to be described as one of these 'very high achievers' and I can assure you I don't have pushy parents. Due to family circumstances, neither of mine could even go to university and they don't really understand why I want an academic career. Despite this, they have always been very supportive and, unlike a lot of my friends, I was never forced to study or even asked about my grades. My motivation to achieve has always been internal, so I don't think it's possible to generalize the cause.

The average IQ is 100. Most people (if not all) on this forum have an undergraduate degree. the average IQ for a graduate is 120. Hence the average on this forum is quite high. Also, most people who have a higher than average IQ tend to be friends with people with a similar level of IQ, hence intelligent people tend to think the "average" IQ is higher than it is. I doubt many people with average intelligence, that is 100 IQ would be able to complete a PhD. I do think however that most graduates could if they put their mind to it.

Note that these are averages, so not all people with a degree are IQ120 for instance. Also, people can be very clever and without many qualifications at all (e.g. Richard Branson). My point is that most people's view of average is skewed towards their own intelligence.

I know the average IQ is 100 but I still think anyone with this IQ could complete a PhD, after doing a degree. It is possible that studying could increase IQ, maybe?

Thinking about it, with the amount of debt many students amass for an education and considering the high level of graduate unemployment or underemployment it throws a question over their intelligence;-) Is it really a 'smart' move going to university?

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Hi Sparkles, I'm not sure I feel intimdated, but i do feel envious of people who get the kind f research grants I would like. I feel intimidated by some people's work - like a PhD student I saw give a truly stunningly intelligent paper this summer, I hope I can do the same near the end of my process... I tend to think of people and their work as seperate things I really liked this girl too - so I was doubly impressed, but not intimidated.

I read a quote in one of the Sunday papers or somewhere like that recently: 'never compare your insides to someone elses outsides', and I think that's a good way to think.


I like the stuff that's been said here about average IQ etc, I thought: 'that's why I wonder about thinking 'Is everybody bl**dy stupid!'', maybe they're not stupid, but perhaps quite a few people do have a lower IQ - or however these things are measured - than mine. I also tend to assume that other people will understand the things I do, and get frustrated when they don't. I alsoe think high IQ doesn't necessarily translate into achievement, bt I do think hig IQs will seek stimulation, however that comes. I suspect that's why I prefer to be utterly brasic, but interested and engaged. I get very depressed when bored.

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Delta,

Base intelligence or IQ is not supposed to be affected by education. I guarantee that you will be in the top 10% of IQ, probably top 5% and maybe top 2%. My wife is a clinical psychologist and I've done the test. I genuinely think that most people doing a doctorate will be in the top 10% of intelligence. You have to remember that you interact daily mainly with people over 120 IQ, so your view of average is skewed upwards. I'm not saying everyone doing PhDs are genius, and I think hard work plays a massive part in achieving the result, but I think almost every PhD student is above "average" simply because average is surprisingly low (surprising to those who mix mainly with more intelligent people). I don't think you need to be massively clever though. Remember there are an awful lot of people in the top 10% - over 6 million in the UK alone.

Again, I disagree. I think that 'most' people don't have the intelligence to do a PhD - not in the way we are speaking of 'intelligence' here. Just like I do not have, nor ever will have the ability to be an elite athlete - no matter how hard I trained I would never be olympic material - which also takes time, dedication, desire, hard work but also an innate ability to perform in the field.

IQ doesn't expand by studying, knowledge does - which is why measuring someones'e intelligence via whether or not they know a particular fact or whether they made a 'smart' choice tells us nothing about their IQ, only their knowledge.

As the previous poster pointed out, there are many, many people with the intelligence to do a PhD and many of those will never bother to - this doesn't make them any more or less intelligent - but the ability to complete a PhD successfully requires a higher than average intelligence. Within that scope, some will be higher than others but all will be above average. If you have indeed done a degree, masters and PhD then you have spent a considerable time amongst intelligent people and again, as previously pointed out, perhaps you are taking this for granted so that 'everyone' seems to be able to do it.

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Hello everyone, this has got me thinking about the whole IQ and inteligence thing, so I did some indepth research on the interweb and found some interesting results.

Apparently, according to some - wobbly - web sources, IQ tests do not measure creativity, hence Andy Warhol having a score of approximately 84, well below the average of 100. Although some may say they are not surprised by Warhol's low rating, it does seem a bit odd, perhaps he was being a bit smart arsed when he took the test... Also, how come they say IQ tests don't measure creativity when they do measure conceptual intelligence (which Warhol had plenty of), which I always think of as the basis for creativity and innovation? Hhmmmm... Many creatives are dyslexic, could this de-value their scores? I noticed, when I took it a while ago, that lots of the test relies on language and numeracy skills. Not so easy for dyslexics.

That's my coffee break procrastination over with for now, back to cleaning the fridge - and then to finally finish editing my chapter.

IQ tests are designed to be as "education" free as possible (i.e. someone uneducated but equally intelligent should do just as well as an equally intelligent educated person). I think in general they give a good guide, but they're not the be all and end all. After all, how do you define intelligence in the first place etc etc. They actually split the result into different types of intelligence too (my scores were all fairly good except in processing speed for example - basically I'm clever but slow!). I wouldn't read to much into stuff like the Warhol info. For a start I doubt he did have an IQ of 84 - that's special needs level.

To get back to the original post, I don't feel intimidated by high achievers, probably partly because I'm not that ambitious. I don't mind others doing better than me if they are obviously good - it's when people get places whilst still being rubbish that I get annoyed! Also, other people's projects will always appear to be going better than yours because people will tend to talk about what they did well rather than what went wrong.