Thursday, August 30, 2007

Discipline and Intelligence

Steve Sailer has a post that compares the Graduate Record Exam results of candidates by intended field of study and calculates their mean IQs. There may be some methodological leaps here but the results are interesting. Here is a selection:

Physics & astronomy 133
Mathematical sciences 130
Philosophy 129
Economics 128
Engineering 126
Chemistry 124
English language & lit 120
History 119
Sociology 114
Business 114
Business admin & mgmt 111
Student Counseling 105
Early Childhood education 104
Social Work 103
Psychology 112

Is it possible the number of students and faculty in various disciplines might be a crude but useful proxy for the overall intelligence of staff and students in specific universities?

Also, I can't help but wonder whether QS's succession of errors (counting ethnic minorities in Malaysia as international faculty and students, getting hopelessly mixed up over Duke's student faculty ratio and so on) compared with Shanghai Jiao Tong University's relatively blemish-free rankings has something to do with the former being led by a couple of MBAs and the latter by someone with degrees in chemistry and engineering.

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