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43 People Reveal What The Smart Kid From Their Class Achieved In Life
When you’re a kid, school feels like your whole world. You spend years surrounded by the same classmates, getting used to the same routines and seeing the same faces every day. But once graduation comes around, everyone goes their separate ways, and there’s no telling where life might take them.
Recently, Redditors asked people to share what happened to the smartest kids from their schools, and they came through with plenty of interesting stories. Some went on to become just as successful as everyone expected, while others took very different paths. Scroll down to read what became of them.
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#1
Got her PhD in psych and has written multiple papers on forced perfectionism in children.
She was always naturally brilliant, but God forbid she be anything less than perfect for her parents. Every club, every sport, every "volunteer" position, she had to do it all. Most people had no idea she was dealing with so much bad things at home.
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#3
I was a "smart" kid in both high school and college (top 1-2% in the class for each).
Those who place highly in school are just very good at... school. I placed top 5 in a class of 600 in high school and while I am remarkably good at school, I am... trash in the real world. I got a 4.0 GPA in my undergrad at a top 5 school for my degree, a very rigorous program.
I very quickly learned how to optimize and "game" the world of school. Everything is taught to you, there are so many resources, and every problem given to you has an intended solution, and rather than being "inventive", your job is just to find the intended solution. I am very good at this. If it's an easy class, there's no explanation necessary, and if it's a harder class, there's solution was usually just a fusion of multiple topics we learned in the class that we had never used in conjunction before. It was only a matter of brute force and elimination to determine the right path to take for most of these things, and there were rarely surprises.
Then comes the real world. It's so open-ended I don't even know where to start. You're being asked to solve potentially unsolvable problems. There are no guide rails or limits to the material you may need to draw from. I drowned so fast. So hard. It's so fascinating to me.
I'm currently unemployed because I've felt so overwhelmed by any employer I've been with. No one is on your side, and even doing the "right" thing is not the right answer in a lot of cases. There's office politics which were never taught to me. It was so much simpler back then.
#4
There were a lot of intelligent and/or high achieving students at my high school, many of whom came from money, and many of whom went on to ivy leagues and top UCs, then on to grad school, etc. I don't keep up with most of them or know where they ended up, as I moved away after high school and never moved back.
There were 5 national merit scholar finalists in my graduating class, and I do know a little about them. One went on to undergrad at Yale, got his MD at Columbia, did his residency at UCLA, and is now an oncologist. One went to Harvard then Stanford, and is now a trial attorney. One went to Dartmouth, got her PhD and became a biologist. My ex did his undergrad at Brown, went on to Stanford for his PhD, and is now a materials engineer. And I went on to a top public university, dropped out during the financial crisis when my campus job was cut, and fell into whatever jobs I could find to pay the bills.
Fast forward through the chaos of my early twenties, and the rest is rather boring. I fell in love and got married, bought a house, and started my own business. At face value, I'm by far the least successful of the bunch. But my life is happy and full, I live comfortably, and I'm extremely grateful.
I'm also the only one who didn't come from a wealthy two parent family, and didn't have significant financial assistance. So I'm pretty proud of where I've ended up, all things considered. It took a lot of hard work to get here.
#5
One is a Supreme Court justice. I married the other one and then I divorced him. He is a jerk.
#6
She went to boarding school with me and was my neighbor. We were at a boarding school specifically for academic achievement, so for her to be the smartest really is saying something, but she truly was. She could tell you so much about almost any topic, and taught me linear algebra on the floor of her dorm. We chose the same college, and were friends there too. She wasn’t just smart, she was kind, and funny, and she thought so deeply about the world and wanted to change the lives of so many. She went into soil science and biological engineering hoping to help with crop production during the era of global climate change. We both were placed in pretty high class placements our freshman year due to our classes in high school (think 300-500 levels for US colleges). I thought she (like me) was just struggling with the work load and adjustment to college and a new city.
Just before our Thanksgiving break our freshman year, she took her own life after jumping off her dorm building. I found out later that she was basically bullied to by a girl in her department who was jealous of her accomplishments as a freshman in college. She’d always had mental health issues, but I never expected that she’d be bullied to such a degree in college. It was awful to see, and even after her passing this girl didn’t stop. I can’t tell you what she would’ve been in life, or the things she could’ve done, but she was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met (and I’m an electrical engineer so I’ve met a good few). I wish this life had been kinder to her, I’d love to have gotten to see what amazing things she could’ve accomplished.
#7
The valedictorians are now:
- aspiring math teacher
- aspiring marine biologist
- mechanical engineer at lockheed martin
the salutatorian is a software engineer at apple.
#8
If we are going strictly on top ten GPA, I know this because I am friends with several still:
- C suite at Fortune 500
- burned out after college
- went to one of the military academies, high ranking in that service
- went into the navy, became naval nuclear engineer
- went to theology school, became a pastor
I guess I'll toot my own horn as well since at least 2 of those guys have acknowledged I was smarter than them but my GPA did not reflect it:
- started college 2 years early, burned out of education before I was 18, but have a successful career in IT and am Director at an org that has won the "journalism EGOT" of a Pulitzer, Peabody, Murrow, and Polk awards.
#9
Our smartest guy was awesome and universally liked by all in school ( He avoided all the stereotypes - could throw a ball , do a pushup & pullup , sip a drink , bust a move in club and would get in trouble together with rest ) . He went on doing what he liked already in school - Physics and Mathematics university and became a professor. Can see him on tv often or in local youtube shorts talking about school / his students / experiments and in general he is a good PR = education can be fun.
#10
One of the smartest was also Homecoming Queen. She was funny, dynamic and cute.
She goes away to a respected liberal arts school on the West Coast.
From there, she goes to medical school. Turns out, she gets kicked out for cheating but never tells her family. Facebook takes off around the time she would be starting life as a doctor. She works at a hospital and posts about doing "rounds." Everyone assumes she is a doctor and she never corrects them. Her family thinks she is a doctor.
A mutual friend is at her house and is concerned for her child and call CPS. The kid is taken away from her and there is a hearing. He mon shows up and here's for the first time when the daughter takes the stand that she is a doctor. Yikes.
We had a high school reunion. Her date (we didn't go to school with him), later sends an email to everyone in attendance that she is a fraud and a fake. Lol. We were a small class of 50 kids. We no longer have hugh school reunions because no one wants the drama.
#11
One married an evangelist and moved to Montenegro. One moved to Oregon to do his PhD and been living there ever since. One became a doctor. Good jobs but not crazy impressive. The most impressive are the combination of upper-middle class and above average brain. They founded big startups and expanded their family owned companies. The rich ones are slackers. Still rich but didn’t seem to have grown much.
#12
The odds the smartest student being the valedictorian is really low. People associate academic achievements with being the smartest but it's usually almost never the case that the weird guy who skipped a grade and was in the gifted program in elementary would ever try to be valedictorian. Most of the time they're just above average or regular smart people who are extremely studious. Most of the really smart gifted kids I knew grew up winning math olympiads to compensate for their low gpa that they neglect throughout school and getting a full scholarship on top universities by barely trying.
#13
I was my high school valedictorian and the definition of an overachiever--varsity athlete, student council, National Honor Society, high ACT score. Went to a state school with intentions to go to medical school, had a breakdown my junior year from stress and fear I'd never be good enough for medical school, changed my major to respiratory therapy, and have been working in that field ever since. I'm good at my job and enjoy it, and it pays well enough, so even though I didn't become a doctor, I think I'm doing all right all things considered.
#14
Valedictorian: Lawyer, small town firm, doing well but nothing crazy.
Actual smartest (in my opinion): Doctor, small town hospital, doing well but nothing crazy.
#15
Went to Berkeley then MIT, our families have been good friends since I was in 5th grade. He’s trying to become an astronaut and I’d like to reach out again and go visit.
#16
One was my best friend growing up, lived across the street from me (grew out of touch after graduation) but he went to a great college worked on Wall Street but then burnt out in his late 20s and struggled with mental health issues. Right now, he works a part-time job at a grocery store but that's about it.
#17
My sister was one and she is now married and working at a daycare at the military base her husband is stationed at. She wanted to go to school to be a doctor when she was in high school then an english teacher and then kept changing her major until she ended up with a degree in early childhood education. She said it was a lot harder to keep up with the studies in college than in high school because of all the freedom she had.
Now I was actually valedictorian and I went to a private university in a different state for two years then both my parents almost died and I had a nasty incident with my old best friend and I just couldn’t take being there anymore. Transferred back home and now work with my father after getting my mechanical engineering degree. I want to be a professor but that’s most likely far into the future for me.
#18
The valedictorian and salutatorian from my high school became a successful and respected doctor and a successful and respected lawyer/executive respectively. I know everyone loves hearing about falls from grace but these guys were hard workers who didn't let up in adulthood. Good for them, neither were jerks when my I last knew them.
#19
It's a mixed bag, we had a bunch of really smart kids but we were all from a tiny extremely poor rural town in a rural county with only about 30k people. 1 high school for everyone, a group of us even were sent by Duke University to take the SAT in 7th grade. I got an award for my verbal SAT score, my math was low but considering I hadn't even had algebra yet that makes sense. One of the kids made like a 1200 out of the 1600 possible at the time. He burned out by our senior year, got busted for d***s after school and last I heard digs pools. On the other end, one is a doctor and very successful. I haven't kept up with most of them, the ones of us that moved away seem to have done the best. The poverty is really soul crushing at times and a lot of people got trapped by the cycle there. I ended up with a couple of master degrees(Computer Science and Pscyhology), tried to be an astronaut until I got sick and became disabled four years ago and had to give up that dream. I work for the gov as a DevSecOps engineer instead, remotely thankfully, as it makes managing my health a lot easier.
#20
Got MS while in college, which went downhill rather quickly.
It s***s. She is a lovely person who wanted to teach elementary school, and it completely derailed her plans.
#21
Smartest kid went to the air force academy and recently retired. he was flying f-35s at the end of his career, pretty bad a*s. probably making bank as an airline pilot now.
#22
Top 3 of my high school class (2007) in an upper class suburban neighborhood that was predominantly white:
1. Adjunct professor. Lives at home. Teaches a few undergraduate math classes. Had major burnout from academia.
2. Purposely underachieves. Has worked as an entry level engineer doing basic design work for nearly two decades at a mom and pop fabrication shop. He is upfront about taking on zero responsibility and trades lower than average pay for work life balance. Huge stoner. Lives in a log cabin off grid. Hermit. That part is not surprising- he was never very social.
3. OD’d about a decade ago. Dropped out of college, in and out of rehab. Sad story.
#23
Dude became a d**g a****t, went to jail, and now is selling peptides on tiktok. He just bought a Lamborghini. I guess he was smart enough to figure out what d***s are good lol.
#24
My friend was accidentally tied for valedictorian. She genuinely didn’t care so she let the girl who did care and had actually tried take the title.
As far as I know my friend didn’t finish college. She was a drifter by choice for a while. One year she was in my city and we had a great w**d thanksgiving together.
Last thing I heard was her boat running a shore without her on it. She hasn’t been found yet. It’s been over a year.
#25
Valedictorian - now a Veterinarian who works primarily on horses (I think). Probably a name for that, no idea. She was wicked smart. Lives in Texas (High school was on east coast)
Salutatorian - An internal med doctor. Also wicked smart. Somewhere in the midwest
I think the 3rd smartest is an attorney. 4th is some loser pro-life Christian outreach idiot.
I was no where near the top of the class, but I am a Director of Quality in a large manufacturing facility. So there's that.
#26
Our valedictorian went to school for mathematics and ended up switching majors to music. Now she is an opera singer. Our salutatorian went to school for excercise science and now does makeup tutorials and hosts sourdough workshops.
#27
Valedictorian in my high school class got hooked on op**tes. Last I heard, he got busted breaking into somebody's house.
#28
I was valedictorian of my class and got kicked out of my home the morning after graduating, at age 17. My parents were beginning a nasty divorce, and there was a lot of collateral damage including letting the family house get foreclosed. I still got to be the first person in my family to get a bachelors degree from the local uni. It hasn’t helped as much financially as I had hoped, but I’ve built a stable loving family of my own and that makes me very happy.
#29
He went to Harvard and owns his own aerospace company. From a town of 8k population. He's a bad a*s.
#30
CIA recruited out of College, then moved on to corporate recruiting. Now head of executive recruiting at Capital One and works in NYC. Prob a power player.
#32
Earns 200k in the city while his wife gets the old in and out from the dumbest kid in the class(I'm not kidding).
#33
Got her masters in honey/bee science and started working for the federal government, had 3 kids, started a side business because that wasn't enough work for her apparently lol. I adore her and she makes all the rest of us look like lazy bums.
#34
I went to school, got my Masters in physics, had a child, and work a six-figure job in aviation. I managed to escape the opoid epidemic that blew through that little town when I moved from the south USA to Seattle, WA. A few of my classmates died, which for a small town seems like a lot.
I still look up some of my classmates. It makes me sad to see what happened to some of them. I've got survivors guilt, like I don't deserve such a good life.
#35
Of the ones that I still know about..........2 are oncologists, 2 are college professors, 1 is a high school teacher, 1 is a dean at a private school. A couple more are bank managers, one is the mayor of our city and a couple more own their own small businesses. Looking back now on all of them, I'm not sure which was "the smartest kid", probably one of the college professors. She seemed to always do well without a lot of extra effort.
#36
Top of my class was a trust fund kid. He went to college. Now he travels and is trying out new places to live. .
#37
Triple majored in an Ivy League for undergrad, got a law degree from a top 10, is an international corporate lawyer pulling in multiple 7 figures a year, sits on the boards of a couple of NGOs on the side.
She's done well in life.
#38
Don’t have a clue. I spent twelve years trying to get away from those people… I’ve never looked back.
#40
My friend Joe back in highschool memorized several different windows product keys and could recite them. He built Netflix-like streaming in a rich guys house one time. He had this server box filled with like 2.5TB of pirated movies and TV shows he’d been downloading and ripping from DVDs for years. He created a slick program to browse the movies and even had it assigned to TVs and wall-mounted tablets throughout the house, long before touch screens were a cheap commodity. It was seriously impressive, and he was a g*****n genius for coming up with it.
He eventually went into the marines and dropped out of boot camp after having a panic attack caused by a nurse putting amphetamine puffers up everyone’s noses. After that he got into d***s. Now he’s serving like 20+ years for d**g and s****l a*****t charges.
#41
The kid who got a perfect score on the ACT became a librarian. This might sound small, but homie got a city job at 22 and he has worked his way up and I think he's to a point where he doesn't have to deal with the general public very much. I think he's doing pretty good.
#42
Our valedictorian dropped out of college two years in and after a stint as a garbage collector, now works the front desk at a hotel.
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