Are you smarter than an 18 year old?

[Josquius]

Random theoretical.
For some weird reason you have to go and redo all of your end of school exams.
Do you think you'd do better with the advantage of experience? Or was so much of it worthless rote memorised crap that has since been completely expunged from your memory?

The poll is phrased simply for an overall average but please do go into more detail on subjects, how much prep you could get away with, and so on.

[Maladict]

Without time to prepare I would do significantly worse on maths, Latin, Greek and French. On Dutch, English, history and geography I like to believe I would do the same or slightly better, on average.

[Sheilbh]

I would do significantly worse. I can't remember the periods I studied in history for A Level (I get A Level and AS mixed up a little). Also I can't remember the texts I studied in English (ditto) and I know in both there were closed book exams.

I think drama was mainly coursework - though I'd be worse at that too.

Only did French to AS, but I could not do that exam now.

[Tamas]

Without time to prepare I would do significantly worse on maths, Latin, Greek and French. On Dutch, English, history and geography I like to believe I would do the same or slightly better, on average.

Same, without a serious refresher I'd fail math no doubt. I wouldn't be nearly as good in Hungarian (grammar and literature) as I was at the time. I would still likely ace History though, but it'd depend on the emphasis on exact dates.

[Grey Fox]

It would be significantly worse. Back when I was 18, I was studying electronics and I haven't kept up or use of most of those skills since. I don't write in french much anymore too.

[Josephus]

Obviously worse. None of my experience will help me with an essay on the differences between Locke and Hobbes, or on Religious Symbolism in Early Canadian Literature.  *

* Yes, some 35 years ago I did write exams on both those topics.

[Duque de Bragança]

Some refreshing would be needed indeed, mostly for written exams. Might have to redo a text commentary or dissertation or two to get back on an examination footing.
OTOH, my proofreading skills have significantly improved; I proofread a few years as a matter of fact.

For languages, may be better for oral exams. German is significantly better, for instance.
Castilian and Portuguese may be better, but no significantly. Probably the same for English.
OTOH, oral exams are also often a way to compensate for a bad mark in a written exam, in the French system.

Given the fall in requirement levels as in the general race to the bottom in French these days, I don't think it would be worse, probably better.
Some "bac" students did not know what ludique meant. 

As for History, depends on the period chosen for the exam, things might have changed.
Curious about what a Latin exam sounds like these days, oral mostly.

- Quod nomen tibi est?
- Ego nominor ...

 

I was following the Humanities path, so math, biology and physics would not be too hard to catch up I guess.
Don't know if IT was added in some way for high school.
Physical training/sports could be interesting as well. What sports? 

Since the regular marks, during the school year, gained importance over the final high school exam, it would not be critical actually.

[viper37]

Random theoretical.
For some weird reason you have to go and redo all of your end of school exams.
Do you think you'd do better with the advantage of experience? Or was so much of it worthless rote memorised crap that has since been completely expunged from your memory?

The poll is phrased simply for an overall average but please do go into more detail on subjects, how much prep you could get away with, and so on.

Worst on most subject without time to prepare.

I haven't touch physics since high school.  I know the basic theory, but 30 years later, don't ask me to come up with the proper stuff.

In maths, it was endless graphic drawing, so unless it changed, no, I'm gonna fail that.

French, I'm probably worst as I read much less novels in French than before.

English, I'm better.

History, I'm better too.

Other subjects, I can't remember.

[Josquius]

For me.
 I suspect on maths I might actually do a fair bit better, a lot of it being stuff I do use fairly regularly- certainly at uni I did far far better (an advantage of competent teachers?).
Physics- there too I think I might do better, though still terrible, especially if given a few hours to cram.
Computer science... is more of a random thing. So much of it is pretty low level so not stuff I regularly have to deal with. All depends on a roll of the dice of what questions come up. I remember even at the time it seemed a random subject.
Its on history, previously my strongest topic, where I might actually do worse; my overall knowledge of history is much better, both in depth and breadth, but the way history worked at A level was very focussed on particular tudor niches and contained a heavy amount of randomness.

[mongers]

Given my age and it's affects, far worse.

[Barrister]

Yeah there's no question far worse.

For some reason I still have my scientific calculator that I keep in my office.  I use it for basic math.  I have vague notions about what sign and cosign are, but I couldn't solve for them if my life depended on it.

And I hold a BSc - those exams would be even worse.

The more interesting question would be if I went back to write a law school exam.  They're open book so it wouldn't rely on wrote memorization - that's where after 20+ years practicing law I could kick some ass.

[Syt]

There was a quiz once on a German news site "How much math do you remember from school?" and having one math problem for each of the 13 years of school. I got to 11, but 12 and 13 with differential equations and stuff and ... I remember seeing them, and getting a B on my tests, but no idea what to do with them anymore like 15 years later.

[DGuller]

For the sake of this question, I think it should be assumed that you get some time to refresh the material.  Not enough to cram it, but enough time to put it back in your muscle memory.  I don't think anyone can come to an exam room cold and do well on timed exams, even in a subject of their expertise.

In my case, I think I would do better today than back then.  I've never been much of a crammer, so losing the cram memory would impair me less than most other people.  However, I find many things easier to learn now than I did back then, because the totality of my experience and exposure to different areas gives me a much more coherent knowledge base into which I can integrate new knowledge.  I think that once I start refreshing the material, a lot of things would click for me now in a way that they didn't when I was 18.

[Savonarola]

Without time to prepare; probably better in Spanish and English (world literature and humanities) about the same in (non-Calc based) Physics, somewhat worse in Math (Analytic Geometry) and Civics much worse in Religion (sacraments.)

I did take the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam about 12 years after completing my undergraduate degree (when the FE is usually taken.)  While I had forgotten nearly everything taught in undergraduate (outside of Mathematics and Electrical Engineering), I had learned how to study much better than I could when I was an undergrad, and much more so than I did when I was in high school.  So, with time to prepare, I think I could do better than I did at age 18.

[Eddie Teach]

I feel dumber now.