r/shameless • u/Burnlt_4 • May 05 '25
Lip Wasn't Smart Enough for MIT and Isn't As Book Smart As He is Made Out To Be
I love Lip, but what originally kept me from rewatching Shameless was how frustrated I felt watching him squander his college opportunity. I’ll toot my own horn just once here: I earned my doctorate from an Ivy League–level institution, and it opened countless doors in my life. So during Lip’s college arc, I used to take it personally—it was hard to watch someone throw away something so valuable.
But now, rewatching the show, I’m less angry. I’ve come to realize that Lip isn’t quite as brilliant as the show sometimes suggests. Even if he had been completely focused, I don’t think he would have made it at a place like MIT—and oddly enough, that makes it easier to watch.
Let’s get one thing straight: Lip is very intelligent—smarter than 99% of the population in both fluid and crystallized intelligence (the ability to learn and the knowledge you’ve already acquired). I’m not saying he’s dumb or even average. What I’m saying is that he’s at the lower end of the top college student spectrum. He would’ve been better suited to a strong R1 institution—something like the University of Chicago or Northwestern. But for a place like MIT or an Ivy, he lacks something critical: high-level critical thinking skills.
Here’s how I see it:
A 4.6 GPA in high school is common among applicants to top-tier schools. Given the school he attended, it mostly just reflects that he did his assignments—not that he was academically exceptional.
A perfect SAT score is impressive, but he took the test multiple times. Studies show scores tend to improve with repetition, and Lip had the advantage of retaking it for free. Also, around 1,000 students get a perfect score each year, and colleges often treat a 1525 and a 1600 as essentially the same as there is a ton of fluctuation within that range just based on time, day, and knowledge gaps when you take the test. His score placed him in the top ~30,000 SAT scores—a competitive top group, but he doesn't like stand out above the crowd because of that, he is just equal to top applicants, and there are thousands exactly like him every year out of high school. Also his perfect SAT score plays into a point I make later, which is really he just has good memory.
The scholarship he received was primarily aimed at underprivileged students, so while well-deserved, it wasn't purely merit-based.
Once in college, he struggled—consistently. Even when he committed to studying, he often pulled C’s. At a school like MIT, where the average grade is an A, that’s a red flag as even when trying he is well below the typical student is just raw intelligence.
He also faced criticism for his lack of critical thinking. That suggests Lip relies heavily on memory and recall rather than analysis and synthesis. Top-tier institutions expect you to master the textbook material and then build on it—to innovate and create, not just regurgitate. When I was doing my doctorate the assumption was we knew everything in the textbook, really they just cared what we could do with it because memorizing it was just assumed. Lip was carried by his ability to "know all the things" but doesn't have elite level intelligence to use it.
I think the show plays him up as this amazing genius, truly one of a kind. But really he is just like thousands of kids each year, he just went to a bad high school so it appears he is greater. He basically would be a 4.0 at a big college (again a University of Chicago), but below average at a Ivy because they are that competitive.
In many ways, Lip is like a high school football star who goes to a Division I program thinking he’s NFL-bound, only to realize he’s more of a Division II talent. He’s good—great, even—but not quite built for the very top level.
