People of reddit, what sort of insight has your profession given you about other people?

"People overrate school" SO MUCH THIS. I'm a PhD student and "professor" now (read: adjunct). I've had so many students that I thought were brilliant (super smart, could be future leaders, etc.), but who could not/would not for one reason or other do well on their exams, homework, essays, etc. Conversely some of my best "students" (people who got the best grades, got all the questions right, etc.) have been people I would probably never look to for interesting conversation (topics like what is life? what is it to be good? etc.) let alone trust with any sort of responsibility.

On a similar note, some of the smartest people I've met have been high school drop outs, GED earners, or never even went to college. And some of the dumbest people I've met have been PhDs, lawyers, went to "top" or "elite" undergrads, etc. I even have a friend who dropped out of college but knows hands-down more about history than my friend with a PhD in it who teaches at a university.

America's got a problem, and it's hiding in plain sight: we use educational credentials (grades, degrees) as indicators of things like innate talent or intelligence ("He went to Harvard? He must be super smart. Oh, she went to State University? Must be she isn't smart or ambitious enough") when in fact the correlation isn't all that great, and there are better explanations for why certain students end up at certain schools or with certain grades - namely factors such as family wealth, parental education, and the like.

As a professor, it kills me to see students think less of themselves because of, e.g., the undergraduate institutions to which they were and weren't accepted or did or did not attend. The kid in Harvard is there often because he came from a middle to upper class family, had parents who graduated from a good 4 year college, had money for prep classes and study materials, went to a private high school, didn't have to worry about working during school, had parents who could pay for uni application fees, tuition, etc. The kid who went to State U probably could have done just as well, except that he had middle to lower income parents, had to work during school, didn't have extra cash for prep classes, went to a public high school, would have had to take out a loan even if he did get in, etc. etc.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent