To wonder how smart do you actually have to be for some professions?

There's many threads were the posters have a professional job, earn six figures, yet wonder if they'd be better off on benefits. They don't seem to understand that spending money is different from not having enough and that they too, could do a weekly shop at farmfoods/iceland. So you can have a well qualified job, but be thick, going off the threads on here.

I work with tons of solicitors (including lots at large prestigious firms) and a lot of it is remarkably repetitive and mainly just involves reading a massive amount of material very very fast and being willing to put in long hours.

There are some who are exceptionally bright but there are lots whom I would class as very normal intelligence wise but hard working.

Barristers I've come across (mainly KCs) have largely been scarily intelligent, just incredibly quick to comprehend and analyse.

Its like any job - there will be brilliant ones and there will be some who have simply grafted their arse off.

Sorry but I disagree completely. You can’t buy the ability to do exams or job applications.

I have never hired anyone because of their senior school and university is a great leveller. The ‘gap’ in business for example isn’t there after uni.

A lot of kids in private school are there because they were struggling in mainstream and their parents or the council put them there because of it (I’m not talking about Eton for example as that is completely different). I have been to both and believe me private schools aren’t better.

That’s true. Most of them just lie about their credentials. See Rachel from accounts the business secretary whose name probably no one knows.

I work in healthcare and have worked with really stupid doctors. Stupid in a myriad of ways not isolated to intelligence.

They're excellent at rote learning but completely unable to think outside the box.

They're linear - Can I medicate it, cut it off/out or send it to someone else to deal with.

Ask them to think for themselves about a cluster of symptoms and they come up with a list of referrals per each symptom rather than looking for root cause. First line of care is pharmaceuticals. It’s depressing.

In relation to lawyers, it also depends on the type of law. Eg tax solicitor in a magic circle firm is a very different skill set to, say, real estate in a high street firm, or a criminal barrister. Some fields appeal more to academic book types, specialising in black letter law. Others are better suited to those who enjoy more client facing, or juggling multiple competing deadlines. It's a broad church.

Definitely thick and unintelligent.

And corrupt to boot. Deadly combination.

You absolutely need to be intelligent to be a solicitor - it’s all about critical thinking, logic and analysis. I am a former lawyer. Law school wasn’t rote learning - we had open book exams - but problem solving. As is the profession. You don’t memorise legislation and case law, you learn how to interpret them and apply them to the particular problem at hand.

Academically smart yes, not necessarily life smart

Doctors, lawyers.... i think so yes. Takes a degree of critical thinking and a number of differing intelligent traits... social intelligent, emotional intelligence, as well as being able to pass exams and study. Other jobs not so much... accounting for example. Yes you need to be good at maths, but that's about it. I know an accountant. Got rubbish at school, can't hold conversation about current affairs or deeper topics.... but happened to be good with numbers. So I guess there is a certain type of intelligence there. But if you met them you wouldn't thinking they were paticularly 'intelligent'.

Totally depends on the area

I'm an accountant of 25 years. Half big 4 half mid tier. I don't know any thick accountants or lawyers

Doctors have to be intelligent too

Do you want to come and work in my department? (Joking, obviously, there are no jobs...)

Also an academic. I think I probably grasp concepts quicker than most people, I retain information very well, I can make intellectual jumps many people can't, and I will sit with a difficult problem for a long time. I find the intellectual work satisfying. All those things makes my research good.

But I agree that I'm good at my job overall because I can manage and collaborate with people, I'm empathetic, I'm a reasonably competent administrator, I communicate complex ideas well. Some people are just research superstars, but it's getting much much harder to progress through the profession on "brilliance" alone.

Increasingly, I find "intelligence" alone very hard to define and separate from other qualities. What we think it looks like is so culturally conditioned, and to be useful it needs to be packaged with other qualities.

DH is in one of the professions the OP lists. He and his colleagues generally have a "sharpness" to them - they notice things, grasp a idea quickly, join dots at an almost ferocious speed, have incredibly mastery of ideas and material. It's a different kind of intelligence to my colleagues generally, but more or less? I couldn't say.

I've worked with lots of actuaries and they are usually very smart.

A bit of brain does help as does drive, motivation and energy. Think doctors.

And yes your connections - it was unusual in my practice to be state educated. In fact when people found out I was it became somewhat of a talking point as it was just an exception. The law society collect stats but I can’t recall them off the top of my head. What I learnt in private practice was it was a bit of an old boys club, the clients, partners etc had all gone to school together.

Thinking about a PP mentioning connections, it also speaks volumes that many family businesses fail when the next generation is handed the reins.

This shows you know nothing about the recruitment processes. It involves far more than “saying the right words”. There are aptitude tests in different areas (logic, maths etc), tests of interpersonal/ team working skills, individual tests under time pressure, as well as interviews. Then those who do not do well with clients/ workload management/ can’t manage the professional exams alongside this are weeded out during their training period and fired.

I’m a solicitor so can comment. Law is quite competitive. When I did my post grad (LPC) the statistics were 1 in 8 would go on to get a training contract which was necessary to qualify. Your post grad was self funded so it was a risk. Some unis charged around £14k, I paid £10k and had to support myself for that year too.

So if you had bad grades it was harder still, those with a 2:2 were really up against it and tbh were often told not to bother. There was one or two who went to work for family firms and who were thick, but overall you had to have an edge and academic flair.

I didn’t do well in my GCSE or a-levels (personal circumstances - victim of sexual crime and ensuing court case which took over my life for a few years) and I had to really work hard and take a long path to qualify. I was/am academic I just didn’t apply myself and have the grades.

So yes, in a nutshell. They’ll always be some exceptions.

Yes.

I’ve got some friends who are book smart but not street smart and I certainly wouldn’t call on them in an emergency because I’m not confident that they would know what to do in real life.

But flea circuses are fascinating!

Knowledge and intelligence aren’t the same thing.

What is your definition of intelligence? Is it just a number on the IQ scale?

I would say career success depends on much more than that. Sure intelligence will probably help with getting good grades but there are many people who get ok grades and then go on to be amazing in their profession because they have work ethic, personality, emotional intelligence and a whole host of other redeemable qualities.

Intelligence will only get you so far. I was a top ten student and there are a few students in the top ten who were exceptionally gifted academically but have not managed to translate that into a field of expertise where you would think they would end up. Eg the student who consistently was top of our class is now a beauty therapist and she may be a very good beauty therapist but it’s certainly not the most ‘intelligent’ vocation. Turns out she struggled socially and possibly was an undiagnosed austistic.

This.

I'd also say that just because you have book smarts it doesn't make you an all round intelligent person.

But life choices also matter. A partner in the Magic Circle is not automatically cleverer than someone practising law in a small town. They may well have different priorities and preferences. Being intelligent does not need to go hand in hand with material success for example. You may want or need to live somewhere away from a big city.

The age profile definitely resonates with me. The career I went into at 21 was madly competitive at the time and two decades later I don’t think I’d stand a chance. And we, as young women with great qualifications, and the pick of a multi day assessment process with a barrage of tests, interviews and exercises, were being put down and patronised by aged public school boys who were basically threatened by us deep down as they had walked into their jobs in the 70s waving their school ties ahead of them.