The "intelligent student" as perceived by undergraduates of different disciplines

Investigated undergraduates' representation of academic intelligence and the association of such representation with the subject in which they are majoring. 198 undergraduates (aged 20–26 yrs) filled out a questionnaire in which they were requested to think of the prototype of the intelligent student in their major and to rate on a 5-point scale how close each of the intellectual abilities involved in academic courses is to such a prototype. Analyses show that the intelligent student was a multicomponential concept including both thinking and expressive abilities. Furthermore, the definition of an intelligent student varied as a function of Ss' academic major; Ss tended to overevaluate the specific abilities linked to their own major