What Harvard is selling

I recommend Steve Sailer's latest VDare column on Harvard.

But there is one part I'm going to disagree with:

Nonetheless, there may be one thing Harvard can't afford: to be honest about what it is really selling. Summers, with his talk of IQ bell curves, came perilously close to spilling the beans, So he had to go.

What students are actually buying from Harvard is not so much a Harvard education as Harvard's certification that, as high school seniors, they were among the country's best and brightest. (A Harvard degree doesn't add much distinction over just getting in, because 96 percent of Harvard freshmen graduate.)

There are, however, potentially much quicker and cheaper ways to certify such things than to spend four years and $185,000 at Harvard—for example, IQ tests.

No, Harvard is not selling IQ certification, Harvard is selling its prestige. How could Harvard be selling something that hardly anyone believes in? Blog readers who hang out in the "Sailersphere" can get the mistaken impression that IQ is commonly understood to be important. But this is not true. The vast majority of people in the overclass, if asked, will adamantly insist that IQ is meaningless, or even worse, sinisterly racist. And for the most part, they believe it too, although there are a few, like Larry Summers (before he accidentally spilled the beans), who keep their beliefs to themselves, like a Jew pretending to be a goyish Nazi. But I think they are a pretty small number of people.

Harvard and other elite universities are looking for future leaders, and while too low of an IQ is a bar to high level leadership, it's possible that too high of an IQ is an equal bar. George Bush, leader of the free world, is widely ridiculed for being dumb, yet he scored higher on his SATs than a lot of other high level politicans.

Part of being a future leader is having the right familiy connections, so Yale and Harvard gladly accept applicants, such as George W Bush, who are sons and daughters of importnant people, while nerdy super-high IQ applicants are rejected.

Some people in the Sailersphere make the argument that court cases prevent employers from using their own IQ tests and thus they are forced to rely on prestigious degrees, but I don't buy this at all. If there were a big mass desire on the part of companies to use IQ they'd figure out how to do it. Google (one of the most successful companies of the decade), for example, relies heavily on IQ. Companies (a limited subset of companies such as investment banks) prefer graduates from top schools for reasons of prestige and tradition and not a scientific analysis of why they are better employees.

Comments

[JewishAtheist]

In my anecdotal experience, Harvard passes over the high-IQ, low-social-intelligence math whizzes and engineers for the high-IQ folks who will easily network with all the other upper class smart folks. Some of the "smartest" people I know went to Harvard and Yale and they were without exception perfect social fits for that world.

People who are math- or science-smart don't need the prestige of a Harvard because their skills are so easily quantifiable. Sailer's 180 degrees wrong here -- Harvard does not certify IQ, it certifies IQ combined with upper-class-socialization.

[Before Sunrise]

"In my anecdotal experience, Harvard passes over the high-IQ, low-social-intelligence math whizzes and engineers for the high-IQ folks who will easily network with all the other upper class smart folks."

That has been my experience with Harvard graduates too. High IQ people who have good social skills or at least know how to network with people who "matter".

[Agnostic]

The way I hear it, the objection is that Harvard isn't selling IQ certification -- it's selling IQ certification plus an upper-class "finishing school" socialization, i.e., learning how to behave decorously at dinner parties with important people, which leisure activities are acceptable vs. not, which beliefs are praiseworthy vs. tolerated vs. verboten, and so on.

Peole may not believe in the letters IQ, but they do believe that some individuals are intelligent, smart, etc. It's hard to swallow that one of the first thoughts that enters a person's mind on hearing that X went to Harvard isn't, "Wow, you went to Harvard -- so you must be pretty smart, huh?"

[Agnostic]

To back that up, think of how excited Important People get when talking about test scores -- SAT scores in this case. Elite schools try to simmer down when discussing their median SAT scores, but they brag about them whenever the opportunity arises. Also, undergrads at elite schools try to ferret out this information about their classmates as soon as they arive, to better understand their position in the pecking order, or out of curiosity. Like when a bunch of overachievers compare who got the highest A on the test.

Now, these people may foolishly believe that such scores don't reflect IQ, but then they're just referring to "intelligence" by a more socially acceptable phrase ("test scores"), in the same way that Americans ask where "the restroom" or "the facilities" are, instead of scandalizing the person by asking where "the toilet" or "the shitter" is.

[Half Sigma]

it's selling IQ certification plus an upper-class "finishing school" socialization" i.e., learning how to behave decorously at dinner parties...

No, Agnostic, Ivy League schools don't teach any of that stuff. The students are more likely to enter the school knowing that stuff because they were brought up in an upper-middle class or higher family, but working class kids going in still come out working class kids.

[Peter]

One employer that's a big believer in IQ tests is the National Football League. Almost all draft prospects are required to take the Wonderlic test, which is said to be a very good proxy for IQ.

[Spungen]

The students are more likely to enter the school knowing that stuff because they were brought up in an upper-middle class or higher family,

This mostly answers my question raised by Jewish Atheist and Before Sunrise's comments: Do Ivy league schools have any way of assessing applicants' actual social skills, or is the so-called social fit determined by where they went to school and who their connections are? I presume it's the latter. I would doubt that the upper-class math/science/engineering nerds have to worry about being labeled a poor social fit. I'd expect that would be a problem for the bright lower- and middle-class kids looking to move up based on being smart.

One employer that's a big believer in IQ tests is the National Football League.

Has the NFL ever rejected anyone for low test scores?

[Ned]

I'm currently reading an excellent book, "The Price of Admission," which deals with how elite colleges discriminate in favor of the children of the rich, famous and powerful. You're absolutely right that a high-IQ kid from a working class background has very little chance of cracking the big-time schools' admissions processes unless he/she is a minority or has some other distinguishing feature - just having perfect SAT's and being a valedictorian. won't cut it. My favorite anecdote from the book is about the elite prep school at which the headmaster greets every student with a handshake in the morning and then critiques the handshake (a little firmer next time, if you please)!

[JewishAtheist]

Do Ivy league schools have any way of assessing applicants' actual social skills, or is the so-called social fit determined by where they went to school and who their connections are?

There are some ways. That's why they require students not simply to have high SATs and GPAs but also to be active in all sorts of extracurricular activities. A star football player or student council president likely has more social skills than the kid who aced his SATs and never leaves the house. Legacy admissions let in the obviously connected and recommendations allow teachers to discuss the intangibles. Finally, there's the interview, which is all about social skills.

[Peter]

One employer that's a big believer in IQ tests is the National Football League.
Has the NFL ever rejected anyone for low test scores?

Teams vary in the importance which they place upon the Wonderlic scores. Even those that give the scores the most significance probably aren't going to reject (more accurately, decline to draft) an otherwise-promising candidate on account of low scores, but in some marginal cases the scores might make a difference.

Draft prospects take the test during the annual "combine," at which teams evaluate prospects based on their performance on a whole array of physical tests, e.g. 40-yard dash, bench press repetitions at 225 pounds,* vertical jump, etc. The Wonderlic is the one non-physical test administered at the time.

* = I could qualify as a cornerback based on my rep count. Maybe a safety.

[trumwill]

Has the NFL ever rejected anyone for low test scores?

Not that I know of, but it does matter. I recall that Vince Young took the test and did very poorly. His agents made damn sure that he took it again because it would have caused him to go much further down in the draft. He must have done fine the second time because he did get drafted pretty early.

[turkey]

The Wonderlic is supposed to be private, so the numbers might not be that reliable since they must be leaked. On the other hand, every team organization does get the information, so leaks of interestingly high or low scores are inevitable.

Anyway, that means that it's hard to do some moneyball-type analysis of the importance of the score.

[Steve Sailer]

For readers of this blog, the differences between Harvard and, say, MIT are quite important. But for 95% of the population, they both just mean "really smart."

[dearieme]

"he scored higher on his SATs than a lot of other high level politicans": tell us more!

[JewishAtheist]

For readers of this blog, the differences between Harvard and, say, MIT are quite important. But for 95% of the population, they both just mean "really smart."

I disagree. Everybody "knows" that MIT students are nerds. People just think of Harvard students as really smart. Big difference.

[SFG]

Sailer may have a point in that elite schools in general may exist in a sort of faraway 'other world' for most normal people; i.e., you'd never have a chance of going there, so the difference between Harvard and MIT makes as much difference as that betweeen the planets Mars and Venus: they're really different (cold ball of rock versus hot acid greenhouse), but who cares?

[The Superfluous Man]

As Agnostic said, people at Harvard (judging by my experience now at Cornell) believe in intelligence, but that it's not equivalent to IQ.

Google hasn't relied on IQ tests. It has relied on abstruse math puzzles that only people it would employ could solve. Investment banks to my knowledge give interviewees puzzles, but that's probably woefully crude compared to an IQ test. HS, you haven't demonstrated that companies can reasonably test for IQ. I've previously noted how according to a reference in Snyderman and Rothman's IQ Controversy book, employers lose 80% of cases dealing with testing. The rules themselves (the EEOC's) are strict, and make the practice exceedingly costly.

And I'm not sure how much one can 'socialize' his children to be upper-class. Behavioural traits are about half heritable and with much of the balance being unshared environment, so...

Why would schools want leaders? For the (greater amount of) money they donate as alumni down the line? What in practice is the University's goal?

"HS, you haven't demonstrated that companies can reasonably test for IQ."

Proctor & Gamble gives the equivalent of an IQ test to many of its applicants (for certain jobs).

A company can give a test if it can prove that that the test is directly tied to job performance. The reason more companies do not give tests is that it is costly to go through the process of getting the test ok'd by the EEOC.

However, if a company really believed in testing, then it could get some sort of a test ok'd. The fact that companies don't says that they don't value the tests that much.

Furthermore, a lot of tech companies conduct "technical interviews", which are long, in-depth interviews to see just how smart an applicant is.

[le biel]

"And I'm not sure how much one can 'socialize' his children to be upper-class. Behavioural traits are about half heritable and with much of the balance being unshared environment, so..."

Heritable traits has nothing to do with it. Upper-classes have norms of dress, speech, mannerism, etc which can be picked up.

[Agnostic]

The students are more likely to enter the school knowing that stuff because they were brought up in an upper-middle class or higher family

I doubt this very much -- most of the upper-middle class kids come from places like Brookline, MA, Bethesda, MD, Oak Park, IL, and whatever the other regional variations are on these cities. They go to public schools or private schools, but not elite prep schools that try to cultivate their students' manners.

Kids from Brookline listen to and watch the same junk on the radio / TV, don't attend their parents' dopey dinner parties (if their parents have them), and so on. They certainly have never worked in a Manhattan law firm, ad agency, or investment bank -- these are totally different places compared to the high school they just graduated from, and elite schools are charged with grooming their undergrads to fit in well at the above institutions.

In high schools, these overachievers tend not to have to kiss any adult's ass or to "network" -- they're smart and hardworking, so good grades pretty much take care of themselves. But you have to learn a new set of social skills to fit in on Wall St. or Madison Ave.

[Jay M. Epstein]

You all are mistaken in assuming that IQ is that important. People care about prestigious degrees, not only because they indicate intelligence (and IQ), but because they indicate a good work ethic. If you doubt this, consider:

The average IQ of professors of academic subjects at Cambridge is only 127. url=http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/emptypromise.html

The average IQ of *physics* professors at Cambridge is only 128. http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/emptypromise.html

The average IQ of Harvard undergraduates is only 130. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html

The IQ of the Unabomber, who went to Harvard at age 16, is 136. His verbal IQ is barely higher, at 138. And even though he earned a PhD in math, a field which supposedly requires strong visuospatial intelligence, his performance IQ is a mere 124. http://iqte.st/blog/?p=160

You might think these IQs are deflated because of some ceiling effect. But the WAIS is used in most of the studies above, and its ceiling is 155.

Jay M. Epstein

[The Engineer]

Since when is a 130 IQ, or even 128 IQ, not high?

130 is 2 SD above the mean. That's a population of 22.8K per million. There's 7 million of these people in America.

That certainly cuts your supply of potential students down to size.

But more importantly, at 2 SD, there's still a sizable population. Go to 3 SD, and you're down to 1.35k per million. There's only 405,000 of these people in America.

So with something like a physics professor, even at an elite institution (although, what the fuck, Cambridge?), the sheer size of the need for professors will drive the need for utilizing people with lower IQs.

I'd also quibble that perhaps some of those numbers are out of date. Take a look at the needed Math GRE test scores to get into the elite institutions in the hard sciences fields. They indicate IQs above 130. Probably more like 140.

[Mr. Mercy Vetsel]

"The average IQ of Harvard undergraduates is only 130. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html"

Impossible. They must have had the legacy students write that article. Actually it sounds like the author is quoting legend.

In 1993 the median score on the (pre-1995) SAT's was 1400. Considering that Mensa uses 1250 as the old SAT cutoff which their psymetricians calculate to be equal to an IQ of 130 and the Triple Nine Society uses 1460 as their 145 IQ equivalent cuttoff. The old SAT has a standard deviation of 203 while IQ is 15.

That places the actual Harvard IQ at around 138,

I suppose it's possible that
a) Harvard students became less intelligent between '93 and '03 (not likely)
or
b) Harvard students outscore their IQ-predicted score on the SAT

I doubt it. I've got good money that says the true Harvard undergrad average IQ lies between 135 and 140.

-Mercy

[Spungen]

It seems to me that all those score-to-IQ systems are inflated. I say this because 1) my measured IQ wasn't as high as my adult test scores supposedly signify and 2) isn't it generally acknowledged (at least here)that one can study for ("game") standardized tests, but not IQ tests?

[Half Sigma]

isn't it generally acknowledged (at least here)that one can study for ("game") standardized tests, but not IQ tests?

Just the opposite. The so-called "Flynn Effect" proves that IQ tests aren't so reliable.

Coaching only helps people improve by about one third of a SD on the SAT.

Hardly anyone is given the WAIS, so I have no idea what "IQ tests" people take when they say what their IQ score is.

There's no better standardized test in America than the SAT.

[vortex]

"You're absolutely right that a high-IQ kid from a working class background has very little chance of cracking the big-time schools' admissions processes unless he/she is a minority or has some other distinguishing feature - just having perfect SAT's and being a valedictorian. won't cut it."

The top universities select on the basis of reasonably well publicized factors, including SAT scores and high school accomplishments. The latter can be highly indicative of ability, drive, perseverance, and ability to lead.
-- -- -- --
"Just the opposite. The so-called "Flynn Effect" proves that IQ tests aren't so reliable."

The Flynn Effect is an artifact of testing that reflects specific abilities and is hollow with respect to Spearman's g. It goes up and down, depending on the composition of the test. In several countries where IQ raw scores were rising, they are now either declining or level. IQ tests are renormed to cancel out the Flynn Effect.

[Spungen]

Coaching only helps people improve by about one third of a SD on the SAT.

OK, I just did that GX formula for my SAT scores and I ended up with an estimated IQ 10 points lower than my Weschler results, administered in 6th grade. And the lowered score definitely puts me in a lower SD bracket.

I guess I got the idea that my scores were inflated based upon my LSAT scores and PSAT scores, as compared to the Weschler score. But I can't remember where I saw the translations.

[SFG]

The *average* Harvard IQ is in the 130s? Come on, what about all the affirmative action admits, athletes, and legacies? I'd bet you've got a bi, tri, or tetramodal distribution.

"In 1993 the median score on the (pre-1995) SAT's was 1400. Considering that Mensa uses 1250 as the old SAT cutoff which their psymetricians calculate to be equal to an IQ of 130 and the Triple Nine Society uses 1460 as their 145 IQ equivalent cuttoff. The old SAT has a standard deviation of 203 while IQ is 15."

The SAT isn't identical to an IQ test. James Flynn shows in his book on Asians that Chinese and Japanese Americans vastly outscored white Americans on the SAT during the period that they scored below whites on IQ tests. They did this even though something like 70% of them took it, compared to 29% of whites. As expected, working hard in schoolraises scholastic performance more than it raises IQ performance.

"Impossible. They must have had the legacy students write that article. Actually it sounds like the author is quoting legend."

The Unabomber was well above average for a Harvard student. On his Wikipedia page, there's a quote by a guy who was on his dissertation committee: "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 people in the country understood or appreciated (his dissertation)." How many Harvard students are capable of that? If Kaczynski's IQ is 136, it's not hard to believe the average Harvard student's is 130.

"It seems to me that all those score-to-IQ systems are inflated. I say this because 1) my measured IQ wasn't as high as my adult test scores supposedly signify and 2) isn't it generally acknowledged (at least here)that one can study for ("game") standardized tests, but not IQ tests?"

Most of them assume that the average IQ of SAT takers is 115 (even though college GRADUATES score slightly below that) and that the standard deviation of SAT takers is the same as the standard deviation of the overall population. So yeah, they're inflated. Trying to make SAT-IQ conversations which assume, say, that the top third of the population takes the SAT don't work either, since plenty of smart people take the ACT but never the SAT, and academic achievement and IQ are far from perfectly correlated.

Jay M. Epstein

[Spungen]

"In 1993 the median score on the (pre-1995) SAT's was 1400. Considering that Mensa uses 1250 as the old SAT cutoff which their psymetricians calculate to be equal to an IQ of 130

This is a lot more generous than that GX formula.

[Spungen]

If Kaczynski's IQ is 136, it's not hard to believe the average Harvard student's is 130.

Why do you think his IQ is 136? That doesn't sound high enough for a guy who performed at that level. He couldn't even get into Triple-9.

Wikipedia:

He claims that his IQ was in the 160-to-170 range. Testing supposedly conducted at that time has not been made available for review. Kaczynski described skipping this grade as a pivotal event in his life. He remembers not fitting in with the older children and being subjected to verbal abuse and teasing from them.

[Mr. Mercy Vetsel]

What is the GX formula?

[Spungen]

What is the GX formula?

Here's the link David A. provided in the Rosner post:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002360.html

[Ed]

I graduated from an ivy league school (not Harvard), and I would recommend that working class and, to a lesser extent, middle class families not send their children to these schools. To some extent they are running a scam.

First, as has been pointed out, the academics are really not much better than other schools, with cheaper tuition but lower reputation. I should point out that Harvard is an extreme example of this, even among the other ivies it has a reputation for being particularly bad at teaching, and I heard jokes about this made at my non-ivy graduate school.

Second, if your interest is giving your kid a leg up on his career, studies have shown that the ivies don´t do this nearly as well as most people think. More particularly, their advantage comes from the fact that alot of their students already come from wealthy and/or well-connected families. These students are going to do well regardless of what school they attend. A working class kid going to Harvard, on the other hand, is probably going to remain in the working class.

For a working or middle class kid -we´ll use a male as an example, going to a school like Harvard may even hurt their career chances. The Florida State University grad who gives him a job interview will think of him as a snooty Harvard kid. He also loses the chance of making connections among his actual peers at the local state school. The Kennedy scions at Harvard or the Bush scions at Yale really won´t have much time for him.

Since this is a HS obsession, its worth pointing out our working class male´s chances of finding his future mate in an ivy league university are also close to zero. Some of these schools, notably Princeton, have a male-female inbalance in their student body anyway.

Personally, I think my university helped me in some ways and hurt me in others, but since my circumstances are unique, I don´t think the ways in which I benefited are applicable to other middle class males. Also, I would have thought that the ivies´ reputation would take a dive with the George W Bush presidency. Bush, after all, has a reputation as being stupid, as do his daughters, yet they all went to Yale. But the message the public seems to have taken is not that Yale graduates stupid people if they are rich and well connected, its that if you graduate from Yale, you can become rich and well connected even if you are stupid.

[Mr. Mercy Vetsel]

Ah, that's what I thought. The Boston Globe formula. That's worse than worthless:

SAT 1600 = IQ 121.1
SAT 1460 = IQ 123.6
SAT 1250 = IQ 123.9

I have no idea how Mensa and TripeNine use for to index the cutoffs, but at least it feels about right.

-Mercy

[Mr. Mercy Vetsel]

Ed,

I would disagree. If you come from a truly lower or lower-middle class family, going to an elite school will give you a boost.

It's the upper-middle and upper class kids who fare worse off compared to their equally able peers who went to state schools.

That was the result of the Krueger study comparing people (like me) who were excepted at elite schools but went to non-elite schools.

Another thing to consider is that the cost/benefit ratio difference is even more dramatic since if your parents are really poor, you will get financial aid.

For kids like me caught in the middle class squeeze -- too much money saved for financial aid, not rich enough to ignore the cost -- the best bet is to go to a state school (make sure you have great grades) and then immediately do a graduate program at an elite school. If you want to do b-school, then work 2-3 years first.

-Mercy

[Mr. Mercy Vetsel]

One other bit of advice (as if college prep kids are reading this). If you got lucky in getting accepted to an elite school, then by all means go.

The IQ competition is even more fierce for the top grad schools in business, law and medicine. If your SAT's are well below the average the school you get into, then you might not get a 2nd chance since grad schools might not care that you were the best high school piccolo player in the nation.

-Mercy

[trumwill]

Also, I would have thought that the ivies´ reputation would take a dive with the George W Bush presidency. Bush, after all, has a reputation as being stupid, as do his daughters, yet they all went to Yale.

Maybe the lesson here is that it's the Bush's reputation that should be questioned rather than Yale's. By most objective measures (SAT and the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test), he has done well and suggested an IQ in the 120s somewhere. Being a bad president doesn't make one dumb.

And only one of his daughters went to Yale. The other went to the University of Texas (which is quite competitive for a state university).

[Half Sigma]

GWB is smart enough to appear smart if he wanted to, but either he's too lazy to put forth the effort, or he enjoys the aura of seeming stupid.

[anonMD]

Not sure if the Ivy is all that useless. I snuck into med school despite lousy interviewing skills because of my grades...but talking to a friend of mine with similar grades and lousy interviewing skills at a state school, if I hadn't gone to an Ivy, I might not have gotten in at all, and that makes a HUGE difference.

[The Engineer]

>>he enjoys the aura of seeming stupid.

I believe that he calls it being misunderestimated.

[Dale gribble]

on the NFL:I also read about UT great vince young's performance. Apparently a punter for the Bengals back in the 1980's from Harvard no less was the only NFL recruit to have maxed the test.
The economist a few weeks ago noted that for all the diversity the big schools promote, for the ivies, diversity does not include Asians, Hispanics and african americans are preferably more diverse

[AllanF]

Quite an interesting thread.

If I may be so bold and presumptuous, I think worthy of another thread is this idea of class signals.

Steve Sailor mentioned on another thread the book "Dress for Success". Someone else (I forget whom) mentioned people can see down the class ladder with 20/20 vision, but looking up are almost comletely blind. A couple commentors on this very thread suggested the Ivys teach how to supply the proper class signals.

In my own experience, I have always had close to a visceral aversion to people that seem to have "climbed" too many class rungs. I've always wondered what causes it. I've never been able to put my finger on it, but by and large there is something about people that have climbed too far that just doesn't seem right. It seems they are providing all the proper signals for the class they wish to be at, and may well have attained the class, and yet something is not right. Often I find out these folks have much more humble beginnings and suddenly it all seems to fit.

Now may be it's just me noticing the failure case, and folks that are successful in climbing the rungs don't get the second thoughts and feelings of aversion. But, if it is true people are generally blind as to the class signals above them, while perfectly tuned to those below, is there something folks climbing rungs are forgetting which causes them to seem out of sort?

Alternately, is the need to climb a bunch of rungs the result of blatant ambition which causes these folks to be unsavory and the fact they are presenting themselves as being of higher class merely coincidental?

Anyone else experienced this?

[Before Sunrise]

"It seems they are providing all the proper signals for the class they wish to be at, and may well have attained the class, and yet something is not right. Often I find out these folks have much more humble beginnings and suddenly it all seems to fit."

I usually don't like to use my family as an example, but it seems nearly impossible to resist it here.

Allan, I agree with you 100%. My father comes from a middle class background, my mother from upper class (very upper class). All throughout their marriage, the difference between my father and mother were very clear to me (and no, it wasn't just because I knew there was a difference). It was small things. For example, he would try hard not to use certain (cruder) expressions or terms, but sometimes would, things that came naturally to my mother and her family did not seem to come naturally to my father. I didn't need anyone to point this out to me, it was just obvious. My parents are divorced, my father remarried someone from a similar background to his. It seems that now he has allowed himself to "fall back" on some behaviour that is more natural to him (middle class). I guess he doesn't feel like he has to try anymore.

Why is it easy to see that someone from a lower class has "climbed" a couple of classes higher? I think because however hard they try, behaving like upper class is not second nature to them, it takes a certain effort and often they will slip and not act according to the class they are now in. In addition to that, they will often, mistakenly, do or say things that they THINK people from that class say and do and look out of place.

[Spungen]

In my own experience, I have always had close to a visceral aversion to people that seem to have "climbed" too many class rungs. I've always wondered what causes it. I've never been able to put my finger on it, but by and large there is something about people that have climbed too far that just doesn't seem right.

Most people can't alter their social behavior much. (I assume you don't just mean getting more money, you mean being in an actual different class.) People who can, the way these people probably have to, maybe it seems a bit dishonest. And they probably never get it exactly right. It's like having a little accent.

It used to take me a really long time to figure out when people, especially guys, were higher-class than I was. I think that's normal. When it finally dawned on me, I felt a bit robbed, like they'd tricked me into being less guarded around them than I should have been. Because I think it was totally obvious to them from the beginning.

Someone who has climbed rungs probably notices a lot more than usual, which makes some people uncomfortable.

[AllanF]

Thanks Before Sunrise.

You don't really get to the question bothering me though. I wonder what is so off-putting about these folks? There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to improve one's class. And many legitimate and innoculous reasons, like one may prefer watching ballet to basketball. And yes, there maybe lots of little clues that singly don't mean anything, but together add up to something; however, that still doesn't explain the aversion.

I don't know. Thinking about it now, I am inclined to believe one must "act" to behave at a different class and the acting is a source of stress which others can pick up on?

I guess further, one does not even need to know a person is acting above their class... assuming the signals are largely impervious to those below, one going from lower-upper to upper-upper would be lost on a upper-middle person such as myself, yet if the act is inducing stress the person is off-putting all the same.

I guess I am beginning to answer my own question. Now what leaves me curious are the subtle signals my upbringing leaves me clueless to. Any upper-uppers around here to fill us village-folk in? :-)

[Before Sunrise]

"however, that still doesn't explain the aversion."

I guess it doesn't...

What causes aversion to me is that the way these people act seems unnatural, as if putting on an act to a certain extent. I am not referring to tastes acquired, I have no problem with that, I think it's great when people expand their knowledge and horizons. I am referring to behaviour, way of speaking, more subtle things. Those are the things that cause aversion to me.

So, I guess that you are right when you say that people pick up on the stress (thus not seeming natural, etc.).

[trumwill]

I don't know. Thinking about it now, I am inclined to believe one must "act" to behave at a different class and the acting is a source of stress which others can pick up on?

You ever know someone hot-tempered that's realized that it's hurt them socially so they're trying to keep their temper under control? Or a shy person that's really trying to be charismatic? There's a certain vibe they give off that sounds like it might be what you're talking about. A certain guardedness that's not conducive to the relaxed feeling that you might otherwise have with them. Maybe it's the same sort of thing.

"Why do you think his IQ is 136? That doesn't sound high enough for a guy who performed at that level. He couldn't even get into Triple-9."

During his criminal trial, he was given a psychiatric evaluation, which is online: http://iqte.st/blog/?p=160 .

"The WAIS-R results were Verbal Score of 138, Performance Score of 124, and Full Scale Score of 136."

Jay M. Epstein

And his IQs, especially the performance one, are probably overestimates since he took the test 17 years after it was normed (Flynn Effect).

Jay M. Epstein

[Half Sigma]

It's possible that he had some sort of mental illness which caused his IQ score to decline significantly since he was in Harvard.

It would be interesting to know what he scored on his college admissions tests.

[Fuzzy Math]

Someone had mentioned P&G and investment banks giving their prospects IQ tests.
I had interviewed with multiple FIs to see which one I wanted to actually work for/with...
Each one gave the same test. Although it had a few challenging questions it was pretty easy for the most part. The funny part was one FI said “no calculator” just paper...meanwhile another one blatantly gave me a calculator (I had pretty much had the test memorized at that point).By the way, the one who said no calculator…was the one I selected.

Ps. They’re based out of Switzerland…