Even if you got perfect grades on everything you did, how is that special? Perhaps you merely provided the expected answers and work to everything. Being special should involve doing something untested, maybe even scoring badly on the tests in the meantime.

Only if your classmates can do better than 90% of the rest of the developed and emerging world.

THAT is the real question. And, frankly, for the vast majority of Americans... an honest answer to that question sucks to think about.

That would put you in the 1%, right?

I posit that even being in the top 10% is probably fine. The problem is a global economic system that isn't growing with the population and funneling the money to the 1%, as opposed to the 10% (which now just get by), much less 50 or 100% of the humans on the planet.

Better at what? Special to whom?