At one point when I was a lot younger, possibly even a minor, my mother was pushing me in the direction of a PhD. She said, “Well, you’re certain smart enough. I’ve seen your IQ score. All of you are smart enough. I’ve seen all of your scores.” I asked how smart you had to be to get a PhD, and she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, you need to have an IQ of 125, that’s all you need. And yours is far above that.”
Then I asked about an MD (doctorate of medicine) or a JD (doctorate of law), and she implied that it was about the same. I am not sure if a 125 IQ is a necessity for a JD or a MD, but it would sure help. I recall I saw a recent study that said almost all medical students have IQ’s of at least 120. However, I saw another study that showed that a number of attorneys had surprisingly low IQ’s, all the way down to around 108 or so.
Dentists and pharmacists also have the equivalent of doctorate – doctorate of dentistry and doctorate of pharmacy. Podiatrists have a doctorate of podiatry, but it’s about as good as an MD. Chiropractors have a doctorate of chiropractic, but it’s supposedly as rigorous as an MD, though I doubt if they need a residency. Haven’t met a stupid chiropractor or dentist yet!
My Mom’s former boss was a clinical psychologist (PhD) and she said he always thought that it was harder to get a PhD than an MD or JD, and he sort of thought a PhD had higher standing in his book anyway. Not sure how true that is.
I am amazed at how many people have MD’s and PhD’s – it is not as uncommon as you think. There are also a few folks with JD’s and PhD’s. Wow!
If you don’t have at least a 125 IQ, I think you are going to have a hard time getting that PhD. Perhaps someone with an IQ below 125 could still get one, but they might have to work very hard for it. If you have an IQ of less than 120, you will certainly have a hard time getting an MD and you might have a bit of a hard track when it comes to a JD, a DoD (doctor of dentistry) or a PharmD (doctor of pharmacy), and maybe even a Chiropractic D.
Sometimes I think they ought to require IQ tests to even get into some of these programs, and if you are below a certain score, you just don’t get in because they figure if they let you in, you are probably going to bomb out, wasting their and your time and money and causing a lot of heartbreak.
