Was Elon Musk A Gifted Kid?
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Elon Musk was certainly not the kind of kid who played video games and went to bed at a reasonable hour for no particular reason. Okay, he did play video games, but he also attempted to create his own at age 12. And he actually made and sold his own space-themed game, Blastar, to a magazine for about $500. That may not be astronomical, but as a middle school student in the 1980s, that was significant. Most kids were learning how to beat Mario—how to code out an entire game from scratch or how to make it worth selling for money were not things most kids were doing at that age. That's the kind of stuff that leads people to believe Musk was certainly a prodigy right out of the gate.
He Read Pretty Much Everything He Could Find And Sometimes Did It For Over Ten Hours A Day Like It Was Normal
One of the most noticeable signs that Musk was a prodigy as a child was how much he read. Not just a few—a lot. According to his brother Kimbal, Musk read two books per day as a child. That’s hundreds of pages in just a few hours. He didn’t limit himself to light fare either. He read things like encyclopedias, science fiction, and even texts on physics and engineering. While other kids were reading comic books or playing sports, Musk was learning about the universe on his own. That kind of voraciousness for learning is not typical, and it’s one of the reasons he stood out as an early age.
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His School Life Was Not Always Easy But His Intelligence Was Obvious Even If He Was Not Always Popular
Although Musk was obviously intelligent, school wasn’t really his scene. Growing up in South Africa, he was frequently teased as a kid and had few close friends. Teachers did notice his ability, however. He had this obsessive curiosity and would focus for hours on things he became interested in. There would be this particular teacher who would be like he would tune out in class, zoning in, thinking super hard, like he is trying to work out some problem in his head. Not that he was bored or anything—it's just that his mind would wander all the time. He wasn’t the straight-A, teachers' favorite type of whiz kid, but he was definitely on another level.
He Was Accepted Into Prestigious Universities And Took On Two Majors At Once Because He Wanted To Learn Everything
By the age at which he had reached college, Musk had already made it quite clear he wasn’t going about things the conventional path. He moved to Canada, attended Queen’s University for a bit, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he double majored in economics and physics, which is not done unless one is decidedly serious about learning. He even got into a PhD program in applied physics at Stanford but left after two days in order to get directly into tech startups. Not everybody drops out of Stanford on account of being too ambitious. That is quite indicative.
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People Sometimes Underestimate That Being Gifted Is Not Just About IQ But About How Much You Obsess Over Big Ideas
When people hear the term gifted, they tend to think about kids who have perfect scores on their IQ or who have high IQs. Musk certainly had the numbers—his IQ is usually approximated as being in the range of 155—but that wasn’t the end of it. What actually made him gifted was just how much he cared about big questions. He would ask questions like how do people get to live on other planets or how do you get clean energy for everybody. Giftedness is not just being smart—it’s enough caring to keep pursuing impossible questions. And Musk never really ceased doing that.
There Is Data Showing That Many High Achievers Show Early Signs And Elon Musk Absolutely Fits That Pattern
According to research from the National Association for Gifted Children, a lot of high achievers show early signs like advanced reading skills, intense curiosity, and strong problem-solving before age 10. Elon Musk hit all of those. On top of that, a 2022 report by the Davidson Institute (which supports gifted youth) said that early exposure to technology and access to creative tools often leads to long-term success in STEM careers. Musk’s childhood definitely followed that track. He had a computer at age 9 and was coding shortly after. It’s not surprising that the kid who wrote his first game at 12 went on to build rockets and electric cars.
