Do children who perform best early in life later become adults who reach the highest levels? A paper in Science last December poses a question that more of us should ask. According to the paper, the answer, across several fields, is usually no.
The paper, by Arne Güllich, Michael Barth, David Hambrick, and Brooke Macnamara, reviews evidence on the development of world-class performers. The authors pulled together 19 datasets covering 34,839 adult international top performers, including Nobel laureates in the sciences, Olympic champions, leading classical composers, and top chess players. They compared this evidence with 66 studies of young performers and adults below the very top.
Among young people, early performance, intense practice, and focused training often predict better performance later in childhood or adolescence. This is what most of us would expect. That’s why there are so many elite schools, youth academies, gifted programs, and coaching centres. The idea is that if you identify the gifted child ahead of the rest, give him or her better resources and focused training in one area, then he or she is more likely to move further ahead.
What the paper found, however, is that the pattern changes at the highest levels of adult achievement. World top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players were nearly 90% different. International-level junior athletes and later international-level senior athletes showed a similar split. Top secondary students and later top university students were also nearly 90% different, though I would be cautious about applying that academic comparison directly to India because the sorting funnel from school is strong.
The clearest evidence comes from fields where performance can be measured across time. In terms of performance, sports and chess are easier to compare than law, medicine, business, or literature because rankings, records, and levels of competition can be followed from youth to adulthood. Even academic achievement is difficult to interpret because each career stage rewards different things. A school topper and a major scientist are not being measured by the same outcomes at different points in their lives.
But the paper did find some interesting trends. Many of the best adult performers had progressed more slowly when they were young. They had developed skills across more than one activity and specialized later than the children who dominated early. The metaphorical tortoise does seem to beat the hare.
The authors suggest three possible reasons. The first centres on exploration. A child who tries several things may find a field that better matches their ability and interests, compared with a child pushed early into a field chosen by adults. The second is about breadth. A child trained across several activities may become better at learning new skills than a child drilled narrowly in one set of tasks. And the third focuses on mental development and capacity. A child given more time before specializing may avoid burnout, injury, loss of interest, or being trapped in a path chosen too soon, compared with a child whose early success creates pressure to continue on an imposed pathway.
I found this interesting because it runs completely counter to the educational logic most of us grew up with. Parents push children into coaching classes early. Children are compared with peers who appear more focused, have learned marketable adult skills, or have accumulated credentials. Reading for pleasure, arts, drama, and the humanities are pushed aside unless they can be converted into marks, certificates, or tangible “applied” value. Hobbies are treated as distractions.
India also has a culture of considering early rank a predictor of future success in life. Class 10, Class 12, JEE, and NEET are public sorting events. Toppers are photographed with politicians, interviewed by newspapers, put on billboards, used in advertisements for books and coaching classes, and identified as the national paragons of excellence.
At the risk of belabouring an obvious fact that we all know, exam rankings measure performance in one setting. Talent, training, family structure, school quality, and the ability to crack a competitive system are mixed together inside that result. So how well is ranking a predictor of whether someone will later do original work, build institutions, ask better questions, or thrive in a field where the rules are opaque?
Or, more narrowly put, what happens to toppers years later? This is hard to find out. We have a lot of anecdotal, word-of-mouth evidence and surprisingly little long-run public data on this. The best source I found was an Indian Express report that tracked 86 national Class 10 and Class 12 toppers from CBSE, ICSE, and ISC examinations between 1996 and 2015. More than half were living or working abroad. The United States was the most common destination. Many were in science and technology, and IITs were a common undergraduate stop.
The same investigation found that the toppers were drawn heavily from the science stream. Of the 86 toppers, 74 had studied Science in Class 12, and 12 had studied Commerce. The social profile was also narrow and skewed almost entirely towards privileged classes and communities. Of the 76 toppers who responded to the newspaper’s questionnaire, only five were first-generation college-goers.
Many toppers told the newspaper that school had given them a head start but had also left gaps. They spoke of textbook-heavy preparation and weak exposure to writing, communication, teamwork, career choice, and the messier demands of adult life.
A report by ThePrint tracked 20 IIT-JEE All India Rank 1 holders from 2000 to 2019. All 20 were men. Twelve were working outside India. Earlier rank holders had more often moved towards academia and research. Later ones were more likely to move towards technology, startups, finance, or industry.
So what do we make of all this? These are small datasets, but they complicate any easy argument. In the Indian setting, early rank determines opportunity because of gating. We all know that India’s exam system doesn’t just identify talent; it also allocates a scarce opportunity. A top rank can bring a superior institution, a talented peer group, and a lifelong network. Once those advantages accumulate, later success may compound. There really are not that many opportunities for late bloomers, though this is certainly changing now.
But even with all these specific counterpoints and caveats, there needs to be more awareness of what the Science review found. Kids are already under immense pressure to conform and excel in narrow disciplines early on. Tiger moms and disciplinarian, know-what’s-best-for-you dads should know there isn’t just one chance or one path to succeed in life. It turns out there’s hope for all of us to become the best versions of ourselves yet.
(Anirban Mahapatra is a scientist and author, most recently of the popular science book, When The Drugs Don’t Work: The Hidden Pandemic That Could End Medicine. The views expressed are personal.)