LSAT 163 = IQ 132

[simbad]

I thought that an IQ test was meant to provide a score which does not vary signifigantly over time.  If this is true, then the LSAT is a HORRIBLE IQ test substitute, considering how much of the test is learned, and how much improvment one can experience with practice.

Maybe those MENSA smart heads who consider LSAT 163 to be the equivalent of an IQ of 132 did study a little bit before they actually scored 163+ on LSAT and decided that you can get admitted to MENSA with an LSAT of 163! lol (MENSA surely presumes you have done your best before actually taking the LSAT that would serve as the basis of admission, so I guess there's no point in talking about "first-time LSAT takers only")

On another, more positive note, the fact is that if you practice long enough with IQ tests too you can raise your score on average by 5-10 points. lol

[zpops]

On another, more positive note, the fact is that if you practice long enough with IQ tests too you can raise your score on average by 5-10 points. lol

I never thought about that, but it certainly makes sense.  LOL, now I'm just picturing someone who's so stuck up and conceited that he'd actually study for an IQ test, just to show off his high score.

[simbad]

That was not what I meant zpops, the point I am trying to make is that these tests measure nothing.

[simbad]

Intelligence and aptitude tests measure no trait or ability that can be said to be predictive of success in real life.

LSAT questions are very easy for just about everyone to solve if he would have enough time to do it. The whole "merit" of the test taker is supposed to be the SPEED with which he solves these problems. He*l, do not lawyers have enough spare time to sit back in their offices and think the issues through? Lawyers are not supposed to be Bonds 007 who need to make life/death decisions off-hand! Things being as they are, I have no problem at this point figuring out why so many law students and lawyers speed themselves up to be speedy enough from the beginning and throughout their careers! On the other hand, is it not ironic that the writing sample that demonstrates to a certain degree the writing, analyzing, and problem-tackling ability of the candidate is not scored at all?

The bottom line is that the current political penchant and craze for testing comes at the cost of genuine learning and sustained achievement. There should come as no surprise then that the law schools are petrified in their old procedures of pure theory and pure abstraction. There is no teaching by observation and experience today in American law schools. It has always been believed that from law school will emerge the social elite who will become the governing class. What emerges, to the contrary, are youthful materialists, knowing nothing about everything, but versed in all tricks needed to embrangle a litigation and employed to perpetrate the injustices of daily life.

[lejla100]

It's not about ideology or character; it's a question of cognitive capacity.

In terms of brute brainpower, the "smartest" postwar presidents were Richard Nixon, a Duke Law School graduate with a reported IQ of 143; Jimmy Carter, who graduated in the top 10 percent of his Naval Academy class; and Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School. Deeply flawed presidencies all, despite their potential. In contrast, take high school graduate Harry Truman — railroad worker, clerk, bookkeeper, farmer, road inspector and small-town postmaster — or Ronald Reagan, sports announcer and B-list actor with mediocre college credentials. Despite their intellectual limitations, both achieved substantial political success as president. And, to press home the point, there is Franklin D. Roosevelt, a top-tier president in rankings of historical greatness, whom the late Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes branded "a second-rate intellect but a first-class temperament."

To put it bluntly, the president need not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he does need a full deck of cards. He must be comfortable in his own skin, free of emotional demons, and surround himself with competent people. With apologies to Saturday Night Live's Stuart Smalley, the successful president need not be a towering giant, he just needs to be good enough, smart enough — and, doggone-it, people must like him. Now consider the discussion, "Is George W. Bush smart enough to be president?" Unlike John F. Kennedy, who obtained an IQ score of 119, or Al Gore, who achieved scores of 133 and 134 on intelligence tests taken at the beginning of his high school freshman and senior years, no IQ data are available for George W. Bush. But we do know that the young Bush registered a score of 1206 on the SAT, the most widely used test of college aptitude. (The more cerebral Al Gore obtained 1355.) Statistically, Bush's test performance places him in the top 16% of prospective college students — hardly the mark of a dimwit. Of course, the SAT is not designed as an IQ test. But it is highly correlated with general intelligence, to the tune of .80. In plain language, the SAT is two parts a measure of general intelligence and one part a measure of specific scholastic reasoning skills and abilities. If Bush could score in the top 16% of college applicants on the SAT, he would almost certainly rank higher on tests of general intelligence, which are normed with reference to the general population. But even if his rank remained constant at the 84th-percentile level of his SAT score, it would translate to an IQ score of 115.

It's tempting to employ Al Gore's IQ:SAT ratio of 134:1355 as a formula for estimating Bush's probable intelligence quotient — an exercise in fuzzy statistics that predicts a score of 119. If the number sounds familiar, it's precisely the IQ score attributed to Kennedy, whom Princeton political scientist Fred Greenstein, in "The Presidential Difference," commended as "a quick study, whose wit was an indication of a subtle mind." As a final clue to Bush's cognitive capacity, consider data from Joseph Matarazzo's leading text on intelligence and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: The average IQ is about 105 for high school graduates, 115 for college graduates and 125 for people with advanced professional degrees. With his MBA from Harvard Business School, it's not unreasonable to assume that Bush's IQ surpasses the 115 of the average bachelor's-degree-only college graduate. George W. Bush has often been underestimated. Almost certainly, he's received a bad rap on the count of cognitive capacity. Indications are that, in the arena of mental ability, Bush is in the same league as John F. Kennedy, who graduated 65th in his high-school class of 110 and, in the words of one biographer, "stumbled through Latin, French, mathematics, and English but made respectable marks in physics and history." The feisty, sometimes-irreverent Bush's mental acuity may lack a little of the sharpness of his tongue, but plainly it is sharp enough. The real test for the president-elect will be whether he possesses the emotional intelligence — the triumph of reason over rigidity and restraint over impulse — to steer the course.

[zpops]

Well, we're certainly going off topic here, but I'll throw in the embarrassing fact that Bush failed to gain attendance to ANY law school, inspite of his parent's DEEP ties to Yale.  His ancestors include members of Skull and Bones, and members of the executive board of the university for god's sake!  And I believe he predominantly scored the "gentleman's C" in both undergrad and grad school, which essentially shows that he was in class and did nothing to deeply offend his professors. 

[wafrica22]

As to President Bush: The military and intelligence apparatus has taken over the reigns of foreign policy in close consultation with Wall Street, the Texas oil conglomerates and the military industrial complex. With key decisions taken behind closed doors at the CIA and the Pentagon, civilian political institutions including the President and the US Congress increasingly play the role of a faηade.

In other words, US foreign policy does not emanate from the institutions of civilian government (i.e. the Legislature and Executive). It exists because the US military-intelligence apparatus -- and the various powers behind it -- tend to override the institutions of civilian government in setting both the military and diplomatic agenda. In this process, which has reached a new stage during the G. W. Bush administration, the Commander-in-Chief, largely responds to the instructions of key advisers. While the illusion of a functioning democracy prevails in the eyes of public opinion, the US president has become a mere public relations figurehead, visibly with little understanding of key foreign policy issues.

[opaltopaz000]

I understand what you are trying to say, wafrica, given the actual situation with Iraq, but I do  not agree that the President of the United States is a mere public relations figure. The President of the U.S. is the most powerful man on earth. He may not be on the bright side of the IQ scale, but after all IQs do not matter, as you all said here.

[memme7]

When George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas back in '94, his friends began to notice a very curious character trait. 'We were out to dinner - the entire staff of the governors,' explained an unnamed source, 'And the bill came, and Governor Bush offered to pay. I noticed that he very guardedly took the bill and very deliberately signed the bill. Before the waitress took her copy, I looked down, and noticed that he signed in the place for his name a big X.' Weeks later, it became apparent to the Texas Legislature that the Governor Bush might be functionally illiterate. The little sister of the unnamed source said, 'The Texas legislator had presented to him a bill that would that would open up oil exploration off of Padre Island near a sanctuary for endangered sea turtles. He signed the bill - after sharpening his green crayon from his big box of Crayola - with an X.' 'My seven-year-old son, who was with me that day at work, noticed that he signed with an X, and began to laugh. Later that day, I took my son aside and said, 'That man - our governor is a functional illiterate. Do you know what that means' He isn't as lucky as you and me. He can't read. We can't make fun of people like that - it's not right.''

Now that the rumor of George Bush's functional illiteracy has surfaced in the press, Karl Rowe the head of the Bush campaign has denied it vehemently. 'Governor Bush is an avid reader.' To support this assertion, Governor Bush's campaign offered a press release that Governor Bush has been slogging his way through the following books: 'Blues Clues' - a sort of whodunit, 'Harry Potter,' 'Keith Hernandez's: Who's on first'' and the entire Paddington Bear series. But upon a closer examination of Bush's academic record, it appears evident that he did struggle in the area of reading. Initially George W. Bush was put into a slow reading group that met in a basement classroom, and a specially-trained teacher was brought in to help with their reading skills. In his second-year at Yale, he was moved out of this slow reading group and entered the regular English classes. By his third year, he became such an enthusiast for English that he decided to major in phonics.'

The Bush family has taken personally this attack on W. Bush's so-called functional illiteracy problem.
'It's a bunch of nonsense,' declared Barbara Bush, 'He went to Yale undergrad., and Harvard for graduate school. How could someone get through these fine institutions without learning how to read''
'It's not like he was some inner city kid who went there on a basketball or football scholarship, and the teachers just gave him passing grades to get him through,' former President Bush added. 'He had to work hard, he's a fine boy.'
In fact, a classmate of his from Exeter and Yale said that he really had to work hard in order to get into Yale. Everyday I would see Georgie toil away at the Prescott Walker Bush Memorial Wing at Yale in preparation for his college boards.


On the Today show with Katie Couric, George Bush was asked yet again about his battle with functional illiteracy and again he claimed that he was an avid reader.
'You've claimed to have read the entire Paddington Bear series''
'Yeah.'
'If that's the case, can you tell me where Paddington Bear is from: A) China B) Iceland C) Peru D) Norway''
'I'm not gonna play this type of gotcha journalism-'
'- would you like to use one of your life lines''
'I'll use my 50-50.'
'Okay remove the two wrong answers, your left with B)Iceland C) Peru''
'It's Iceland, right''
'Is that your final answer''
'Yeah.'
'It's Peru. Governor Bush, be honest with the American people. You've never read the Paddington Bear series. If you're prepared to lie to the American people on this issue, how can we trust you on anything else.'


Nevertheless it is apparent the Governor Bush has made great strides in overcoming adult functional illiteracy. At the Republican convention, it was evident that he gave one of his best speeches, though he did need to use his index finger to follow the teleprompter. Perhaps one of the most dramatic moments of his speech came when he made this promise. When I put my hand on the Cliff note's version of the Bible and swear to uphold the dignity of the office, the Republicans felt convinced that the integrity which he exhibited in this statement would overshadow the fact that he can only read at a third grade level.

http://jokezine.com/politics/bush.html

[memme7]

Here's a joke now

While visiting England, George W. Bush is invited to tea with the Queen. He asks her what her leadership philosophy is. She says that it is to surround herself with intelligent people. He asks how she knows if they're intelligent.

"I do so by asking them the right questions," says the Queen. "Allow me to demonstrate."

She phones Tony Blair and says, "Mr. Prime Minister. Please answer this question: Your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or sister. Who is it?"

Tony Blair responds, "It's me, ma'am."

"Correct. Thank you and good-bye, sir," says the Queen. She hangs up and says, "Did you get that, Mr. Bush?"

"Yes ma'am. Thanks a lot. I'll definitely be using that!"

Upon returning to Washington, he decides he'd better put the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the test. He summons Jesse Helms to the White House and says, "Senator Helms, I wonder if you can answer a question for me."

"Why, of course, sir. What's on your mind?"

"Uh, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"

Helms hems and haws and finally asks, "Can I think about it and get back to you?" Bush agrees, and Helms leaves. He immediately calls a meeting of other senior senators, and they puzzle over the question for several hours, but nobody can come up with an answer. Finally, in desperation, Helms calls Colin Powell at the State Department and explains his problem.

"Now look here Colin Powell, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother, or your sister. Who is it?" Powell answers immediately, "It's me, of course, you dumb ass."

Much relieved, Helms rushes back to the White House and exclaims, "I know the answer, sir! I know who it is! It's Colin Powell!" And Bush replies in disgust, "Wrong, you dumb ass, It's Tony Blair!"