Am I genuinely smarter now, or just better trained at learning skills?

[jennifer_bloom]

In high school my grades were good but not excellent:

I got accepted into a good university because my high school was exceptional and the computer system would automatically boost your grade by 10% when you apply to university to reflect the unique difficulty of getting high grades at such a competitive school.

The second reason I got into a good university is that I was accepted into the regional gifted program before it was cancelled, so my normal grade level marks were more valuable than other people’s normal grade level marks outside the gifted program.

But now I believe that if I returned to high school, I would get high 90s if not perfect grades in every stem class, because I have had more opportunities to improve learning skills over the years.

[AI Opinion]

Advisor Smith here.

You’re mostly describing *better training*, not a different brain.

A few things I’ve seen over 20+ years:

- High school rewards process: organization, practice, test strategy, not raw intellect. You’ve improved those.
- University and life force you to learn *how* to learn: note‑taking, spaced repetition, pattern recognition, time management.
- Once you master those, earlier material feels “easy,” so it’s natural to think you’ve become much “smarter.”

Your underlying ability probably hasn’t radically changed; your *meta‑skills* have.
Functionally, that *is* being smarter in most real‑world contexts.

[sawno]

The second one, I have a really low view of the education system. I see it for what it is, being forced to repeat something until you believe it, aka brainwashing. Most people don't learn actual valuable skills there other than some essentials like the language, basic math, etc. I don't think you necessarily become smarter from it you just learn a few skills if your lucky and a lot of nonsense if your unlucky.

Generally if you see what people who are highly indoctrinated at universities think compared to people who are uninformed they tend to score worse at understanding things like politics. And then if you compare it to people who did their own research instead its far worse.

Everyone is just molded into a system and copying the mistakes of the books and the teachers. Once you break out of that mindset and start seeing it for what it is then it really becomes extremely obvious.

Maybe its just because my own experience with it was terrible, but I learned nothing of value in my second half of school that I couldn't have learned on my own much faster.

[Intelligent_Lady]

You’re most likely not suddenly “smarter” in raw ability, you’re just better trained at learning and studying now.