Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For me, I feel like I always have to explain to people that natural intelligence matters more than SES when it comes to being successful.
I believe the opposite of this now that I've married into money.
Some of my ILs are the dumbest MFs around but are super successful because of name recognition and family money.
This is how I felt when I attended a really elite law school program after attending my big state flagship for undergrad. I thought “oh, the quality of students is going to be much better on average.” Nope. But the pedigrees were higher, and people were much more lined up for professional success in terms of industry contacts and having the right sorts of internships or degrees from elite private schools (HS and college, law school is when I discovered that certain HSs actually opened doors for people in adulthood, I’d had no idea).
SES is centrally important for success, but inborn intelligence is not. I know brilliant people who have had middling careers due to lacking the background and understanding of the social landscape at the top of their profession. And I know many mediocre minds who are successful by any measure because they were enabled to live up to their full potential at every turn. SES is way more valuable than natural talent or intelligence.