[chrisdirkis]

The old joke is something along the lines of:

Q: What do you call the person who graduated last in their class in medical school? A: Doctor.

Sure, I'd probably prefer the higher performing doctor in this hypothetical scenario, but at the same time, it feels very much artificial (maybe a false dichotomy?). Sure, you always want the best for everything -- that's what "the best" means! Reality is that there are always going to be B students operating on people. If I were to propose my own false dichotomy, I might ask whether you prefer the B student who got tutored to pass the SAT, or one who self studied?

[john_moscow]

I am merely trying to simplify a complex matter to make it easier to understand/debate. I would say, in reality indeed a certain % of surgeons would be the B students. The problem is that some social policies would increase this %, while others would decrease it. In my opinion, giving points for anything other than raw measurable performance would increase this %.

To answer your question, I would prefer a person who is passionate about what they are doing and capable of thinking outside the box. However, unfortunately, it's not something that could be easily formalized. Sure, self-taught students would likely be better motivated than tutored ones, however once you begin counting it as a part of the score, people would start gaming the system. Someone would lie about not being tutored. Someone else would actually skip taking private lessons and will miss out on learning something important, because doing so would give them a better score. A much better solution, IMO, would be to point out and quantify the traits and skills the self-taught people show, and include them in the test, giving everyone a chance to learn and practice them.