Redonkulously Smart!

[Baasha]

Just wanted to discuss...

Who here knows someone who is just stupidly smart? When I say smart, I'm just talking about academic performance. Forget about the other aspects of 'smart' right now.

For example, a girl I know...valedictorian in high school, 1570 SAT (old form), valedictorian U Michigan, 175/180 on LSAT, Harvard Law School (magna cum laude).. graduated with job making $200k+/year...

Any others? And, I know it doesn't mean everything in the long run but it is always nice to see examples of our brethren who engage in serious academic pwnage.

 

[sdifox]

when I was in school, a guy withdrew from comp sci and enrolled in math and physics dual major. I asked him why and he said it was not challenging enough.

 

[nboy22]

I know my dad has a friend who has 3 sons.

All sons graduated with perfect ACT/SAT scores, more than 4.0's, and all had full rides at some pretty nice schools... All I remember is that one went to Harvey Mudd for Nanotech or something of that sort.

 

[vshah]

i had two friends of mine from high school who went to princeton. both had 4.0s in HS with every AP imaginable.

friend A struggled at Princeton, and was amazed at how friend B continued to pull 4.0s with what seemed like zero effort.

Friend B was also an intel talent science search finalist or semi finalist or something. after princeton he went to the UK on a Marshall Scholarship and got 2 masters' degrees. Now he's doing an MD/pHD at harvard

this guy: http://www.princeton.edu/admission/whatsdistinctive/alumniprofiles/eshel/

 

[HydroSqueegee]

My Uncle is a genius. Hes worked on a lot of things over the years, patented and not. Hes also a huge asshole. Probably the worst human being i know.

 

[Bibble]

I've known my fair share of such people. They have similarly impressive credentials (e.g. started a successful non-profit aid group in Africa, near-perfect LSATs, Harvard MBAs, Rhodes scholars, etc).

That's all well and good, but as smart as some people are I believe everyone is capable of doing dumb shit. For example, I went to high school with a guy who was outrageously intelligent. He did independent math research senior year because he knew as much as any of the teachers (i.e. Calc III) and aced his SATs. He got into a great med school program. However, in his freshman year there he got drunk, tripped on some train tracks, and proceeded to pass out on top of them. Thankfully, someone noticed what had happened before a train came around.

I have another friend who speaks 4 languages. On one snowy night he drunkenly tripped/slipped and passed out in the snow bank on the side of the sidewalk. A passerby saw his body, which had already acquired a dusting, managed to get out of him what dorm he lived in, and brought him back. Had another 20 minutes gone by he would have been totally covered in snow and not have been noticed, likely resulting in his death. He had to sleep in my room that night because he lost his keys, of course, where he threw up on my floor and urinated on my end table.

Moral of the story: Brains aren't everything.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

One of my good friends from law school was a real brain. 4.0 ChemE from Georgia tech. MS in BioChem (also GaTech). 4.0 in law school (tier 1) with seemingly no effort at all. Pissed me off to no end. I worked my ass off in law school and couldn't break 3.6.

From a shear memory standpoint, I've never met anyone with a better memory than my brother. He was a child prodigy on the piano and has an eidetic memory for music and images. He once memorized 250 pages of music in 3 days for a concert, and played it almost perfectly. When he was 3, he drew a map from my folks house to our cottage in Cape Hatteras (some 350 miles away) based on the size, shape, and configuration of the telephone poles on the side of the road.

 

[Train]

A friend in HS used to piss me off because he made being top of his class look easy, really easy. Like you never saw the guy studying or working hard, he was always chill, just hanging out, then bam, he gets 100% on a physics test that the rest of the honors crowd averaged a 70 after cramming for weeks. People would get pissed because he was always smashing the grading curve.

Got a 36 on his ACT then went to UofM and cake walked his way through an electrical enginerring degree.

Was not a typical nerd either, seemed like a normal guy, partied, got with women, etc.

My little brother on the other hand, kicked ass in school, but was dumber than a box of rocks when it came to the real world.

 

[brainhulk]

I have a friend who is a genious. He studies the night before every exam and aces all of them. But he's lazy as hell and is currently doing nothing with his degree and jobless...

He currently downloads porn all day and stores them on his gf's computer. and she wonders all them time, "why is my computer so slow?"

 

[Baasha]

My Uncle is a genius. Hes worked on a lot of things over the years, patented and not. Hes also a huge asshole. Probably the worst human being i know.

hahhaha.. wtf.. why is he "the worst human being" you know?