I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for this, but I'm kind of trying to find a turning point in my life.
I've been told repeatedly that I have a talent for math, or science (by qualified people). And I seem to be intelligent enough to understand large parts of math and physics. But I don't know if I'm intelligent enough to make a meaningful contribution to math or physics.
Lately I've been particularly sad, since my score on the quantitative general GRE, and potentially, the Math subject test aren't "outstanding". They are certainly okay (official 78 percentile, unofficial 68 percentile respectively). But that is "barely qualified" for a top 50 math program.
Given that I think these scores are likely correlated with my IQ (they seem to roughly predict my GPA so far 3.5, math and physics major), I worry that I'm getting clues that maybe I should "give up".
This would be painful for me to accept if true, I care very deeply about inference and nature. It would be nice if I could have a job in this, but the standard career path seems to be telling me "maybe?"
When do you throw in the towel? How do you measure your own intelligence? I've already "given up" once before and tried programming, but the average actual problem was too easy relative to the intellectual work (memorizing technical fluuf). And other engineering disciplines seem similar. Is there a compromise somewhere, or do I just need to grow up?
classes:
For what it's worth, the classes I've taken include Real and Complex Analysis, Algebra, Differential geometry, Quantum Mechanics, Mechanics, and others. And most of my GPA is burned by Algebra and 3rd term Quantum specifically. But part of my worry, is that somebody who is going to do well, would never get burned by courses like this. But I'm not really sure. It seems like one should fail sometimes, but rarely standard assessments.
Edit:
Thank you all for your thoughts, you are a very warm community. I'll give more specific thoughts tomorrow. For what it's worth, I'll be 24 next month.
Double Edit:
Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions. I think I will tentatively work towards an applied Mathematics PHD. It isn't so important that the school you get into is in the top ten, and there will be lots of opportunities to work on a variety of interesting important problems (throughout my life). Plus, after the PHD, transitioning into industry can be reasonably easy. It seems to make a fair bit of sense given my interests, background, and ability.
If you have a few hundred dollars (or it's covered by insurance) you could get an IQ test from a qualified professional. Your college might even offer this service for students attempting to see if they have learning disabilities.
And the compromise is to study economics. The academic market for economists with Phds is great.
A similar strategy worked successfully for my friend. As a student, he was very enthusiastic about math and programming, but a big part of that was influence of his friends, me included. Later he saw evidence that he was in these topics, let's say, above average, but not great enough. (He would be able to write simple programs, and he would get the job, but the more complex parts would be too abstract for him.) He tried studying informatics, and dropped out.
So he switched to economics, choosing some study that al... (read more)