[orca17]

A lot depends upon what happens at home. My mother and father worked with me independently from a young age, and I was reading out of encyclopedias when I was four. I scored in the top 0.5 percent on the Florida college entrance test despite attending one of the worst high schools in the state.

[NCgirl2LVNV]

I did very well academically, but my early education - from kindergarten to the first year of high school - was in a foreign country without tests like the SAT where knowledge is gauged via very difficult written essay examinations, lengthy math word problems, an examination in the foreign language being studied (mine was French) and, to end it all, with an oral examination on a topic of your choosing in front of all your teachers.

When I moved to the U.S., I did well academically but poorly on standardized tests like the SAT because, in my view, they force students to think in terms of true/false and multiple choice. Moreover, tests like the SAT are not necessarily interdisciplinary. You can't demonstrate knowledge of the differences between baroque and romantic music movements or the techniques of Caravaggio and so on.

While this young woman should be applauded for such a distinguished achievement, my undergraduate and graduate college experiences as well as real life have taught me that intelligence and how smart someone may be go well above and beyond standardized testing.

Some of the smartest people I've known were self taught. Some of the least intellectually curious people were graduates of Ivy League institutions.