The present study examines how middle school students attending private schools in a major urban centre in India understand intelligence. The study focuses on mindset theory, which is a major framework in the literature on children's understandings of intelligence. Mindset theories distinguish individuals based on beliefs about the malleability of personal characteristics. The present study used a mixed-methods approach to study mindsets and conceptualised mindsets as social representations. Interviews indicate that the malleability of intelligence, the fundamental core of the mindset meaning system, is not an important distinction for students. Instead, distinctions based on definitions of intelligence, as academic or social, are more pertinent. Focus groups highlight how definitions are constructed in peer cultures and classroom contexts. The study contributes to the growing critiques of mindset theory. The study proposes cultural psychology and social representations theory as theoretical tools to address existing controversies within the mindset literature.