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When I was a kid they called me a child prodigy. When I became an adult, nothing really great happened to me. I am middle age age and only moderately successful.
Do you remember the kids in school who graduated early with a super high IQ and with a 4.5 GPA in mostly advanced classes? What happened to them? Were you one in High School? What happened in college?
My nephew has an IQ off the charts up near 175. He's a talk show host. My son has an IQ near 145, but he's the PhD nuclear physicist, not his cousin with the 30 points above him.
I didn't go to school with any prodigies. I graduated with high honors, though, and so did my siblings. We are teachers, college athletic coaches, journalists, and event planners. The smartest guy I went to high school with is a radiation oncologist these days...but even he wasn't a prodigy...just a guy who was good at science and had radiologists for parents. Another very bright college classmate graduated early and started college early. He ended up in film school, and works as a film editor now...lots of TV credits, mostly reality shows.
Not really sure what is a "prodigy" or how to precisely measure IQ
Suspect many who seemed smart at age 10 or so proved to be less smart/strategic/high-achieving in real-world post-college where various other skills prove more relevant than esoteric memory skills, etc (note how few Chinese kids ever amount to much in hedge fund or tech industry, though high % of Chinese at Stanford/Harvard undergrad)
That said, know several 30-somethings who are semi-retired from hedge fund or tech industry in SiliconValley or Manhattan, who finished college at Wharton or Stanford in 2yrs (by age 19), rose brilliantly in competitive industries as engineers or traders...achieved economic (and intellectual) freedom for life by their late 20s and now largely invest own money in interesting businesses/stocks/investments for fun
But suspect many who graduated top of HS/college class and with multiple degrees from elite colleges amount to very little on any intellectual or net worth basis in any hyperDarwinian industries like tech or hedge funds...which are littered with rather wealthy, rather smart <40yo guys who tend to be shrewd in math/analytics/business common sense but are often social misfits who poss dropped out of college and/or were not "well rounded" enough for any classic lib arts education at Stanford/Harvard and opted for vocational training at an engineering or finance undergrad for a couple yrs instead
Ahh, nothing compares to having more zeroes to your name than a 4.0 GPA guy in your HS class. GPA and IQ are not enough to secure suce$$ in this life (if that's what you are after). One may become a reasonably compensated grunt on a GPA alone, but it's rather unlikely. You got to have something else in addition to GPA & IQ to break to a trough. In my opinion, C+ and B students are the most successful, financially speaking. Drive, "will to power" (as Nietzsche would put it) is #1, social "skills", good, bad & nasty is #2, then come high IQ and GPA, if you don't have last two, you still can make it far on #1 & #2, but you cannot make it far on IQ & GPA alone. Many high IQ types don't have a "drive", they are either "above" mundane fights over higher perches in a chicken coop or they've been convinced by their admirers that good grades and work will be automatically rewarded by an invisible hand, good luck with that
I guess you could say I was surrounded by "prodigies," since I went to private schools for the "Gifted and Talented" - they had IQ requirements for acceptance, and also focused on getting students who excelled in the arts. I wasn't a stellar student myself, but was always the musician... played 3-4 instruments in my school bands/orchestras, won local competitions & scholarships, sat first chair at all-state, etc. And what do I do now? I'm a public reference librarian, who plays viola with community orchestras for fun. And that is all I really want/ed, so it's perfectly fine by me.
As for my former classmates, they ended up doing a variety of things... and thanks to Facebook, I know TOO much about their current lives. Some are predictably doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, and some of the women are well-educated SAHMs. A few ended up in high-profile positions, like one who's a Hollywood producer, and another who made gazillions during the dot-com boom (and I think he managed to keep it too). For the most part they are successful, as I would have expected from most of them.
Oh yeah, and a few of the SUPER geniuses from my schools went nutty, which isn't unusual for the highly gifted... one guy actually killed himself @ 18, another had a nervous breakdown during the SATs, and a couple of them went "hippie" on the world. Not all that surprising, since many of my classmates had ridiculous pressure from their parents.
I think schools fail kids miserable in middle school.
-Most kids from elementary school are somewhat "intact"...meaning, they've got good self esteem, they want to learn, they don't "hate school" with a passion. They aren't old enough. I think a lot of growth can be fostered when you're 10 or 11 years old, before middle school.
Then middle school hits, and kids get lost. I remember one of my friends in the early 90's, he was "gifted", thought of as very smart. but a lot of schools don't have the right programs for kids like that. They get lumped in with everyone else. They aren't challenged enough. They aren't given enough time to develop their talents. This was before the testing mania, I'm sure it's worst now.
So what happens? They kind of go over a curve, and slope back down from 9th to 12th grade. Some of these kids could go onto be facebook ceo's, or stanford scientists, etc. For every "genius" that goes onto sillicon valley or manhattan hedge funds, another 10 or 15 are at starbucks right now.
One girl I knew got accepted into harvard, but she turned it down! I wonder how that turned out in this economy.
Interesting question.
No real prodigies but some really smart kids. My graduating class was unusual for the time and area. Class of 1972, rural, semi-poor, farming/mining/manufacturing area in northwestern PA and a little more than 1/2 went on to college (100 or so) which was unheard of then.
Some are engineers, doctors, others are teachers, accountants, factory workers, technicians with a couple ne'er do wells thrown. One kid tried for almost 20 years to get into Med school (he finally did).
Some never reached the potential they showed, others exceeded it. The smartest girl (who was my best friend for most of our lives) got married 2 days after graduation, which was all she ever wanted to do (one reason we never really dated but were just friends, I wasn't interested in that).
We're at the age now where we're showing the signs of disease, some have died (my friend from the above, heart attack at age 50) while some are on their 2nd, 3rd or, in a couple cases, 4th marriage.
Pretty standard no matter the IQ.
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Some are predictably doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, and some of the women are well-educated SAHMs. A few ended up in high-profile positions, like one who's a Hollywood producer, and another who made gazillions during the dot-com boom (and I think he managed to keep it too). For the most part they are successful, as I would have expected from most of them.
