Or INTJ is what you get when you answer questions in a way that you expect to be conforming to what your fellow grad students will respect, before going to a meeting and revealing your result to them.
No. That's a very clever and cynical viewpoint but realistically, none of us cared about that. It's not like these were peers in the same lab whose opinion mattered. Nor did anyone really have a strong opinion about meyers briggs categories. If anything it almost got a little embarassing after the first five replies to keep answering the same thing as the other people - like going to a restaurant and everyone ordering, one after the next, that they want the blueberry pancakes. You almost feel like an automaton instead of being a unique and creative individual.
Right, I didn't mean to imply that everyone was lying, I just think that wanting to fit in with a group is a strong subconscious drive in such situations.
Edit: I was curious and did a quick search what the scientific literature says about this, and it seems like it is an accepted problem, though there are techniques used to reduce the effects. To quote one study:
"Regarding the use of self-report personality inventories, meta-analytic results have indicated that applicants are able to, and actually do, deviate from honest responses in order to make a good impression (Alliger & Dwight, 2000; Viswesvaran & Ones, 1999). "
Anyway one time the topic was Myers Briggs and so we all filled out our profiles in advance so we'd have something to discuss.
It was a group of 20 people, and we discovered that 19 of us were INTJ. The other was INTP. That was when I decided the test has strong predictive power, for the same reason you did. Even if it's just able to predict a preference for discussing personality tests with a plate of cherry pie. INTJ has a background rate of about 2%.