If someone has a 2:1 English literature degree , would you say they are very intelligent/academic?

[Curiousss]

Just basically this question, curious to know what people think.

Yes and no. Its a bit of a vague question and depends if you are comparing it to anything else.

You do need to have intelligence to get the grades for uni and you need to understand your subject to get your degree.

To get a degree in English Literature, I would think that you'd need to have an interest in it as well. There's lots of intelligent people that excel in other areas/subjects but would struggle in Eng. Lit. if they had no interest.

If I knew you personally and you lacked common sense in daily life, then no I would not think you were intelligent, degree or not.

There's lots of intelligent people that never go to uni for various reasons.

So many people go to uni now that a degree isn't really seen as amazing anymore. If you'd asked that same question 10 years ago, I'm sure people would have said you were very intelligent.

Regardless, be proud of your achievement!

Depends on how old they are. My kids' age - 70% get 2:1. My age, no 1sts a handful of 2:1 and the rest evenly split between 2:2 and 3rds.

So, more likely the older they are. If you assume a degree result indicates intelligence and not just aptitude in a specific area.

Yes I’d say you have above average intelligence and I think English Literature is a difficult subject.

Given that I didn’t go to university, I’d say they were very intelligent.

Compared to who?

Compared to Tim who skipped school from the age of 14, never took a single exam, has been sacked from every job for not turning up and now signs on, yes!

Compared to Stephen Hawking, no!

In general, I think it's fairly academic but it's hardly a niche topic.

Totally depends - partly on when and which university (both have implications for level of difficulty), but also on the individual. If someone has been dealing with wider socioeconomic or personal difficulties then it is generally harder to achieve academically than it is for someone who has had all the variously available legs up in life.

How?
Do they teach different learning material?

I think it's all so haphazard nowadays. I'm an English graduate who had a stab at a doctorate but dropped out. I know DH is technically more intelligent than me (gifted at maths and studied a STEM subject at a good university) but I wipe the floor with him when it comes to general knowledge. I am a member of a successful pub quiz team.

Both DDs attended an all girls' grammar. DD1 got an A* for A Level English Literature, even though her SPAG is poor and always has been. But, my God, she knows how to sit an exam, her school churned out Exam Robots.

DD2 is studying at a RG university and has a guaranteed graduate career with one of the Big Four. In her first year she shared a flat with students at the ex-polytechnic in the same city. They were all supposedly studying for the same 'degree' but DD2's breadth of knowledge was so much wider, and her course is much more academically rigorous.

Snap!

Mine was forty years ago

I think that one measure tells us very little. Have they gone on since then to do anything else? Like did they take the degree, do an MA and PhD and now they are a leading academic in their field? Did they become a journalist at a respected newspaper? Publish a book? Write critically lauded poetry? Contribute to politics or write policy? Someone’s intelligence/application of it doesn’t stop evolving with a degree result. Similarly someone with an oxbridge first might have gone on to do nothing much since, years of unemployment and smoking weed in front of the telly, I might not consider them intelligent 15-20 years later.

It's easier to catch up with English all you need is a passion for reading. Maths is a harder subject to learn and you have to start from the basics and work your way up.

I agree with this! I had a passion for English Lit. Enjoyed reading and I'm a naturally critical thinker. I flew through my degree and it didn't even feel like work.

I absolutely freeze at anything beyond basic maths!

It depends. If your 2:1 was in the eighties it was considered a very good degree. I, like the vast majority at that time had a 2:2. However, if it was from the past ten to fifteen years ago or so, not as much as the modern 2:1 is the equivalent of my eighties 2:2.

I graduated 5 years ago and have a 1st class Law degree (from an ex poly.) I’m proud of it, but I don’t myself to be intelligent. Though, maybe that’s my depression talking…

Me and my partner was having this discussion. After university that's when the hard work begins and you have to have the personality to sell yourself. Completing an Eng lit degree does not automatically get you a job as a journalist, a teacher or a writer. You have to prove that you can engage with your readers or students and that takes creativity. A lot of people would rather a job where they are told what to do because they don't know how to apply what they have learned.

If you wanted to get into politics you would have to be creative with the truth and be a good liar.

How can you possibly work out IQ from someone's degree?!!

Depends on your definition of intelligence.

Maybe depends on the person but I disagree with this. For me my English degree required a lot of critical thinking and opinions where you didn't necessarily know if you were always on the right path or not. There was a lot of extra reading to back up ideas too.

My DH is currently doing a cyber security degree and part of it is maths based. He was really struggling to work out one part recently. I've always been good with numbers but haven't done anything with it since Higher Maths in 1998. I took one look at his uni work and went "you do this this and this and bam there's the answer". Now ok when you get seriously into some maths problems (especially if you go into the physics side of it) then there can be various arguments and complex issues to deal with but for me Maths is very much, "here's the answer" and it's right or wrong. You'll have working out to show but it's very different IMO to comparing works from two different authors, or in one of my essays, finding conflicting reviews of a Dickens book from the actual time then comparing the two reviews and how they reflect on the work then and how we perceive it now. Even finding those reviews was a pain in the arse before I even wrote a word.

I think 2.1 shows average intelligence unless from Oxbridge.

If I got a 2.2 I wouldn't own up to it (again, unless Oxbridge). It's basically a badge to say that you're less intelligent than average (or didn't work very hard). You'd be better off not admitting to the degree.

Not great, but that's grade inflation for you - the grades are all bunched up towards the top of the scale. I got a first in a science subject, but it doesn't mean a great deal as so many people get a first these days.

I did a science degree after school and worked as a physicist. I love learning new stuff, so did an English degree in my 50s. I didn't find it difficult, but it required a different approach - basically I found that to get a good mark you had to comply with the latest trends or the fads of particular lecturers. There was no "right or wrong" as there is with science, yet original thought didn't seem to be encouraged. The degree wasn't with one of the prestigious unis 😁.

No. A degree does not indicate intelligence. If someone had a first from LSE/Imperial/Doxbridge etc I'd think they were clever, yes. But I know some people very good at maths, say, and the opposite in other areas. My sister is a psychiatrist and she's pretty life dumb (she's getting better).

I have a first class law degree and I’m pretty stupid if I’m being honest with you. I don’t think a degree indicates overall intelligence.

I know many people with degrees, from a variety of universities but wouldn’t consider that to be an automatic guarantee that they are clever. In fact, I think most degrees/academic programs really just reward those who have a natural affinity with absorbing volumes of information and regurgitating that info in an essay in such a way that meets the marking criteria and scores highly. And I say this as someone who studied English Literature at Salford University in the early 2000s and was on for a 2:2 until I had to drop out at the end of my second year to help care for my Mum.

On the flip side, my Dad passed his 11 plus in the 60s and got into the local Grammar School but hated it, dropped out, ended up at the Secondary Modern and ultimately left school with no qualifications at all. He’s enjoyed a long, successful career as a computer programmer without ever getting a formal qualification.

He is genuinely one of the most naturally intelligent people I know and possesses a huge wealth of general knowledge and trivia, plus the ability to recall it precisely at the drop of an hat.

Given the choice between some of the graduates I know and my Dad, I know who I’d be picking for my quiz team!!

I've also got an Eng Lit degree from a RG uni, from the 90s, I'd say I'm reasonably bright, but not necessarily very academic. DH on the other hand has a 1st and a PhD from one RG uni and is now a professor at another, and he would tell you he's not especially intelligent just persistent. The man has absolutely no common sense though, so I don't know how that impacts on the assessment of intelligence!