Are medics really that clever?

I worked at a posh reception this evening, as a waitress to supplement my measly student loan. I've done this for about 4 years now, and normally the guests completely ignore you. This is ok, as in a sense we get paid to be invisible service providers. When people are outright rude, as does happen, I still get cross. Luckily this is rare. Rarer still though is when people treat you as a human as happened today.

I was topping up champagne for the guests, the employees and clients of (I think) a property firm. Two separate groups engaged me in conversation, which made me feel like a person instead of a robot. Both asked what I did when not waitressing/if I was a student, and what I studied. When I told them, both said I must be terribly clever, despite one having studied engineering at the same university as I attend, and the other having been to another prestigious university. I was basically embarrassed! And it's not the first time it's been said either. People seem to assume medics are very clever, which I actually disagree with. So many other courses seem conceptually harder than ours. I don't doubt that intelligence is there (and needed) in most medical students and doctors, but I don't think they have extra brains compared with other students. Rather than sheer intelligence, I think what we have is tenacity and a facility to manage great quantities of information. I'm not sure this is the same as intelligence. Any thoughts?