IQ, College, Engineering, Law, And National Merit Scholarships

College

Students who are below a 22 on the ACT composite, a 1073 on the new SAT composite, a 1610 on the older SAT composite, are not in the top 35% of his high school class (in a high school that is representative of the general population), or have below a B+ GPA, have a significantly impaired, low chance of graduating with a four year degree. 

This cutoff is not very sensitive to the selectivity or to the type of institution attended.

The threshold for any ordinary college program corresponds to an IQ of about 110 on a 15-point standard deviation scale or 111 on a 16-point standard deviation scale which is about the 75th percentile of the general population (a higher percentage because the general population includes high school dropouts who aren't included in SAT and ACT percentiles).

But a strong work ethic and grit can make it possible for you to graduate despite a lower IQ in many majors.  

Certain programs (e.g. some STEM programs such as math, physics and engineering), however, have a higher effective minimum threshold for a student to have a reasonable chance of graduating. Basically 0% of people who earn such a degree have an IQ of under 111 (and the threshold to have a better than 50-50 likelihood of graduating is an IQ of 119). Unlike some undergrad majors, engineering has a strong threshold effect.

Under 15-point standard deviation WAIS IQ scaling standard, an IQ of 100 is average for the population as a whole, an IQ of 105 is average for a high school graduate, and an IQ of 115 is average for a college graduate. So, an effective cutoff IQ of about 110 for a reasonable likelihood of graduating from college, fits with the concept that one must be discernibly better than average high school student to be likely to graduate from a college or university with a four year degree.

The Bar Exam

Maximal test prep can increase an LSAT score by about 3 point in the 120-180 range of the test. The maximum impact on other standardized tests scores is similar (but there is more room to improve in math than verbal on the SAT).

An IQ of 100 is roughly an LSAT score of 133, and almost no one who gets below 145 on the LSAT has any realistic chance of passing the bar exam. The bar exam is highly correlated with IQ test results. It takes an IQ of about 117 to pass the bar exam eventually after multiple tries, and the average IQ of a lawyer who passes the bar exam is about 133. (Medical school is much more selective.)

The patent bar is even harder to pass with a low IQ because to be a lawyer admitted to the bar and be a patent lawyer at the same time, you need an engineering BA (there are exceptions but similarly rigorous ones). 

National Merit Scholarships

About 2300 National Merit Scholarships were awarded in the year 2010. It turns out that just 10 elite universities accounted for well over half of these awardees. 

Number of NMS in entering class / size of entering class.

Caltech 42 / 200

Harvard 266 / 1600

Yale 234 / 1300

Princeton 196 / 1300

Stanford 110 / 1600

MIT 110 / 1000

Brown 91 / 1500

Duke 105 / 1600

Penn 125 / 2000

Berkeley 91 / 6000

Total 1270

New Orleans Doomed

Louisiana in 2100 (predicted)

About 10% of the land in Louisiana, including essentially all of New Orleans, will be underwater by 2100, due to subsiding delta silts and rising sea levels. The engineering effort necessary to make a big dent in this trend is mammoth. Much of New Orleans is already below or just barely above sea level, the state has lost a large share of its wetlands to the sea, and Hurricane Katrina cost the city about half of its population on a long term basis.

If the latest predictions by scientists are even partially correct, Katrina may be just the first significant blow of many to one of the nation's most historically and culturally rich cities.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I bear no ill will for New Orleans, and indeed consider it one of the South's most interesting and worthwhile cities. The authors of the scientific journal article cited by the linked Science News article, at least one from a Louisiana university, no doubt earnestly want New Orleans to survive. And, disaster isn't imminent. The time horizon is for gradual (or more likely sporadic but unidirectional) loss of Louisiana's Gulf Coast over 91 years.

The point the science makes is pretty simple. Sea levels are steadily rising -- steps to stop global climate change and model corrections may impact the rate of sea level rise, but won't stop or reverse it. The Mississippi delta in the vicinity of Louisiana is also sinking, which makes Louisiana more hard hit than many other vulnerable sea level cities. Both the rising sea and sinking land are relentlessly making changes without reversing themselves, not cycling back and forth, at fairly predictable rates. Nothing conceivable is going to stop the sea level from rising or the delta from sinking at some rate. There have been major losses already which we have not stopped with engineering. The scale of the problem is enormous, comprising 10% of the land in Louisiana. The kind of efforts that are necessary for an even partial save of some of the Gulf Coast (perhaps perserving a string of access to Louisiana in the manner of the Florida Keys and saving New Orleans itself a la Venice or parts of the Netherlands) is an immense engineering undertaking.

My headline is hyperbole, of course. But, the point is serious. New Orleans is doomed unless someone does something to save it, and the steps that are necessary to do that on the scale that is really necessary (this report reveals that this scale is much greater than most people had previously assumed) haven't even been really put on the drawing board, let alone commenced in the long process of designing, cost estimating, funding, and building a world wonder class engineering project.

Can America and the world save New Orleans? It is possible. It will cost many billions of dollars. The Denver International Airport and Boston's Big Dig cost on the order of a billion dollars and then is a task orders of magnitude larger. It is likewise bigger than the task of building an aircraft carrier which costs about $15 billion. Forced to guess from the little that I know, I'd estimate that it would cost something on the order of the mid-hundred of billions to low trillions of dollars just to save New Orleans and a little strip of land to access it. No one that I've heard from has talked about that kind of major national investment yet.

Should the investment be made? I'm not even trying to get my hands around that question in this post. I'm simply pointing out a credible report passed on from a respectible scientific journal and explaining the threat it describes to one of our nation's oldest cities, then improving a sense of what would be involved to deal with it in this extended comment. Broad discussions armed with facts generally produce the best results. And, while locals may be most knowledgable about New Orleans' prospects, this problem is on a scale that it can solve on its own (nor can private industry).

Happy Engineer's Week!

It's Engineer's Week once again. This is far more important than Mardis Gras (which is tomorrow), or Ash Wednesday (this week).

While your Mardis Gras hangover may indeed make you feel the need to put Ashes on your head, let's face it. What has contributed more to your life?

Your stereo, created by engineers, or Mardi Gras beads? Mardi Gras beads are fricking dangerous. I had a client once who slipped on some and suffered a serious injury. I have never had a client slip and fall on a stereo. QED (or not).

Seriously though, there are several things you need to do for engineer's week.

1. Eat cherry pie. This is the single most important thing.

2. Admire the way engineers have made our life better.

3. Be nice to your favorite engineer (ideally after wiping your hands and face from having consumed said cherry pie).

Have a good week!