DD wants to transfer out of top university but DH won't allow it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[
My thoughts too, exactly. 165 is nuts. But I do appreciate the points made in the post overall. Maybe compare 125 to 140 or 145.

On the scale I remember it doesn’t go to 165…I think it ends at maybe 145.

After adjusting for all of the factors that make it hard to mess and compare IQs:

- Someone with an IQ of 140 is in the top 1 percent and someone with an IQ of 145 is close to the top 0.1 percent.

- The regular IQ tests psychologists now give kids top out at 145.

- In the old days, IQ tests went up higher. That was possible partly because IQ was closely related to age. A 6-year-old who performed as well as an an average 12-year-old would have had an IQ of 200.

- Someone with an IQ of 160 or higher would be the smartest person on a group of 30,000 people. So, counting kids from overseas who could attend school in the United States, there might be about 200 kids at that level in any given year. Maybe Columbia gets about 10 to 15 of them per year. In theory, the gap between those kids and an average bright college student is as big as the gap between the average bright student and kids who are in a regular non-honors math class. And then Mom and Dad stress the kid out about not being able to keep up with the superhumans.

[Anonymous]

STEM majors are usually brutal anywhere. We should not assume going to be a math major at a state flagship is going to be much easier than being a math major at Columbia. It takes a very talented and rare individual to excel in a college math major.

I think the answer is that you daughter needs to change major.

[Anonymous]

Something to keep in mind, transferring with a low GPA is tough.

Either get tutoring and stick it out with major, or explore in the next few months and switch majors to something that the student enjoys more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

dcmom12345 wrote:Update:
Socially everything has gotten better and I fee DD is enjoying the city but academics have even gotten a little worse which is adding more stress(multiple phone calls home crying over exams and homework). Thinking about switching major(wants to ensure ad least a 3.0 gpa) but she has never enjoyed the humanities before and is a little sad about "losing math".

My impression from this thread is that your daughter is starting to like Columbia, has an IQ of 150 or the equivalent, was never challenged at all in grade school or high school, and now is in classes designed to challenge kids with IQs of about 165 or the equivalent, is passing everything, is getting some C’s and is getting a lot of B minuses.

If that’s correct, I think she should just stay at Columbia, get tutoring, take a lot of economics electives and learn to swim with the sharks.

Reasoning:

- The people here who expect all kids in T30 STEM majors to get GPAs over 3.5 every year are ignorant idiots who should be trampled to death by elephants. Or drowned in ponds. They have no idea what it’s like to have an IQ of 150 and suddenly be in a room where a third of the students have IQs of 165. It takes some time for a normal, very bright kid to get used to studying with a bunch of baby Stephen Hawkings.

- Learning how to deal with academic challenges is incredibly important for people with IQs of 150. People with IQs of 150 can do anything if they learn how to learn, but they’re pretty much as unemployable as semiliterate high school dropouts if they don’t learn how to apply themselves and cope with the boredom involved with studying difficult things. Your daughter is now experiencing what most other kids have experienced since third grade. The whole point of paying Columbia so much money is to put your daughter in the first place she’s ever been where learning is as hard for her as sixth grade was for most of her classmates.

- Chances are the professors are hazing the students to some extent and trying to weed out a lot of premeds and pre-engineers. Getting higher grades will probably get a lot easier for your daughter once the weeding out is over and your daughter understands how college works.

- STEM professors tend to be much harsher about grading than humanities majors are. If your daughter has a 2.5 GPA now, that’s probably the equivalent of a 3.5 GPA for a humanities major. Any sensible grad school admissions people who see many applications from Columbia grads will know that your daughter is a victim of grade deflation.

- Hanging out in classrooms full of baby Hawkings may be terrifying, but it’s also amazing. If your daughter can pass classes, why give that up?

- She can probably double major in economics, or take a lot of economics electives if Columbia doesn’t have formal double majors. Then, after she gets her bachelor’s, she can go to grad school for economics, data science, finance or actuarial science and change from being an ugly math-physics duckling into being a beautiful quantitative finance swan. She won’t get the privilege of slaving away as an academic for decades, but she will go be a quant for ungodly amounts of money at Goldman Sachs or the like. She’ll have a terrific quality of life, and no one will care what grades she got freshman year at Columbia.

Has the IQ scale changed? I thought 140 was genius level back in the day.

So what is someone now classified with a 165?

My thoughts too, exactly. 165 is nuts. But I do appreciate the points made in the post overall. Maybe compare 125 to 140 or 145.

Keep going down. Most kids at these schools are 120 IQ types; they just work hard and have had all the educational privileges to be had growing up. Makes sense, because 120 IQ types tend to be more successful than 140+ types. Once you get way higher on the scale, you have kids who march to the beat of their own drum or don’t have a work ethic. For that reason, would not at all be surprised if you numerically found more true geniuses at a large, mid-tier state flagships than, say, Columbia.

140 is top 1%, or the kids who can get 1500 or so on SAT with no prep. TJ and competitve HS have 25% of their students in this range. My kid at an ivy in Stem has the majority of friends in this range and many higher. Mine did thte fancy IQ tests after hitting the ceiling (145) and has a 151-154 “range” which was scaled as 99.9%-99.99 , total and various subscores. Kid is in top math in their Ivy and scores in the top 5-15% on exam curves (skipped intro levels) where the avg frosh is definitely a 140 type kid and the avg stem gpa there is around 3.3 first yr. Ivies have a huge cohort of 140ish IQ/top1% kids, and less than 20% above 150ish. If OP really has an IQ of 150 and as OP stated they did not have an easy time in HS math AND is getting a 2.4 , that means something else significant is going on. Columbia doesnt grade deflate like that: she is bottom 1/4 or worse yet her IQ should put her in the top1/4. She should stay…but consider changing majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

dcmom12345 wrote:Update:
Socially everything has gotten better and I fee DD is enjoying the city but academics have even gotten a little worse which is adding more stress(multiple phone calls home crying over exams and homework). Thinking about switching major(wants to ensure ad least a 3.0 gpa) but she has never enjoyed the humanities before and is a little sad about "losing math".

My impression from this thread is that your daughter is starting to like Columbia, has an IQ of 150 or the equivalent, was never challenged at all in grade school or high school, and now is in classes designed to challenge kids with IQs of about 165 or the equivalent, is passing everything, is getting some C’s and is getting a lot of B minuses.

If that’s correct, I think she should just stay at Columbia, get tutoring, take a lot of economics electives and learn to swim with the sharks.

Reasoning:

- The people here who expect all kids in T30 STEM majors to get GPAs over 3.5 every year are ignorant idiots who should be trampled to death by elephants. Or drowned in ponds. They have no idea what it’s like to have an IQ of 150 and suddenly be in a room where a third of the students have IQs of 165. It takes some time for a normal, very bright kid to get used to studying with a bunch of baby Stephen Hawkings.

- Learning how to deal with academic challenges is incredibly important for people with IQs of 150. People with IQs of 150 can do anything if they learn how to learn, but they’re pretty much as unemployable as semiliterate high school dropouts if they don’t learn how to apply themselves and cope with the boredom involved with studying difficult things. Your daughter is now experiencing what most other kids have experienced since third grade. The whole point of paying Columbia so much money is to put your daughter in the first place she’s ever been where learning is as hard for her as sixth grade was for most of her classmates.

- Chances are the professors are hazing the students to some extent and trying to weed out a lot of premeds and pre-engineers. Getting higher grades will probably get a lot easier for your daughter once the weeding out is over and your daughter understands how college works.

- STEM professors tend to be much harsher about grading than humanities majors are. If your daughter has a 2.5 GPA now, that’s probably the equivalent of a 3.5 GPA for a humanities major. Any sensible grad school admissions people who see many applications from Columbia grads will know that your daughter is a victim of grade deflation.

- Hanging out in classrooms full of baby Hawkings may be terrifying, but it’s also amazing. If your daughter can pass classes, why give that up?

- She can probably double major in economics, or take a lot of economics electives if Columbia doesn’t have formal double majors. Then, after she gets her bachelor’s, she can go to grad school for economics, data science, finance or actuarial science and change from being an ugly math-physics duckling into being a beautiful quantitative finance swan. She won’t get the privilege of slaving away as an academic for decades, but she will go be a quant for ungodly amounts of money at Goldman Sachs or the like. She’ll have a terrific quality of life, and no one will care what grades she got freshman year at Columbia.

Has the IQ scale changed? I thought 140 was genius level back in the day.

So what is someone now classified with a 165?

My thoughts too, exactly. 165 is nuts. But I do appreciate the points made in the post overall. Maybe compare 125 to 140 or 145.

Keep going down. Most kids at these schools are 120 IQ types; they just work hard and have had all the educational privileges to be had growing up. Makes sense, because 120 IQ types tend to be more successful than 140+ types. Once you get way higher on the scale, you have kids who march to the beat of their own drum or don’t have a work ethic. For that reason, would not at all be surprised if you numerically found more true geniuses at a large, mid-tier state flagships than, say, Columbia.

140 is top 1%, or the kids who can get 1500 or so on SAT with no prep. TJ and competitve HS have 25% of their students in this range. My kid at an ivy in Stem has the majority of friends in this range and many higher. Mine did thte fancy IQ tests after hitting the ceiling (145) and has a 151-154 “range” which was scaled as 99.9%-99.99 , total and various subscores. Kid is in top math in their Ivy and scores in the top 5-15% on exam curves (skipped intro levels) where the avg frosh is definitely a 140 type kid and the avg stem gpa there is around 3.3 first yr. Ivies have a huge cohort of 140ish IQ/top1% kids, and less than 20% above 150ish. If OP really has an IQ of 150 and as OP stated they did not have an easy time in HS math AND is getting a 2.4 , that means something else significant is going on. Columbia doesnt grade deflate like that: she is bottom 1/4 or worse yet her IQ should put her in the top1/4. She should stay…but consider changing majors.

Yes, the Ivies are filled with 120 IQ types who think they are (as do their parents) 140+ IQ types. Again, I assure you that a mid-tier flagship has more geniuses than Columbia (granted, the student population is larger). Sounds like you never attended an elite school. If you had, you would realize how unexceptional most of the kids are: they are just exceptionally well potty-trained.

[Anonymous]

Everyone in here blathering about their being "average" kids at an Ivy obviously has no clue what average really is. An average IQ is on the order of a 900 SAT score. Those kids are NOT going to be at an Ivy. Just stop it.