THE INTELLIGENT STUDENT

The purpose was to investigate university students' representation of academic intelligence with regard to the subject in which they are majoring. A total of 235 undergraduates, aged 20 to 26, filled out a questionnaire in which they were requested to drink of tile prototype of tile ''intelligent student'' in their major and to rate on a 5- point scale how close each of the various intellectual abilities involved inacademic courses is to such a prototype. Analyses showed that die ''intelligent student'' was a multicomponential concept including both thinking and expressive abilities. Furthermore, the definition of an intelligent student varied as a function of the undergraduates' academic major: more precisely, students tend to overvaluate die specific abilities linked to their own major.