VaHigherEd.com

Whether or not your go to college may come down to one simple factor: your birth order.

That’s one of the unusual take-aways from this cover story in Time magazine from a few weeks ago.

(As the eldest of three boys, I was intrigued by the story but it had to ride around in my briefcase for awhile before I had a chance to read it.)

firstborns are generally smarter than any siblings who come along later, enjoying on average a three-point IQ advantage over the next eldest—probably a result of the intellectual boost that comes from mentoring younger siblings and helping them in day-to-day tasks. The second child, in turn, is a point ahead of the third. While three points might not seem like much, the effect can be enormous. Just 2.3 IQ points can correlate to a 15-point difference in sat scores, which makes an even bigger difference when you’re an Ivy League applicant with a 690 verbal score going head to head against someone with a 705. “In many families,” says psychologist Frank Sulloway,  “the firstborn is going to get into Harvard and the second-born isn’t.”

Perhaps, the article says, because of that disparity people who are firstborn tend to achieve more professionally.

In a recent survey of corporate heads conducted by Vistage, an international organization of ceos, poll takers reported that 43% of the people who occupy the big chair in boardrooms are firstborns, 33% are middle-borns and 23% are last-borns. Eldest siblings are disproportionately represented among surgeons and M.B.A.s too, according to Stanford University psychologist Robert Zajonc. And a recent study found a statistically significant overload of firstborns in what is—or at least ought to be—the country’s most august club: the U.S. Congress.

No doubt, my younger brothers may have a thing or two to say about that story.

Posted by Jeff Kraus