50th percentile outcome is mediocrity, depression, booze.
This isn't gloating at their expense, because I was one. This is a fucked-up society and the "tallest nail" phenomenon ensures that most people like them eventually reach a stage of life where they don't do well, and it's harder to recover once that "golden child" image (untarnished success, monotonic progress) is lost and the world would rather invest in someone else.
Is it? I'd love to see some real data on this. For sure, some have succeeded. But there have been a lot who've not done much (especially in academia, which seems to tolerate laziness if you're smart).
Outside of academia, one who I know pretty well (he actually went to IMO, not just MOP) was no-offered at two different hedge funds because of the "tallest nail" phenomenon. When people found out that he'd attended IMO, there was a certain glee with which his co-workers (at least, in one of those two firms) made sure that he failed. After that, he was pretty much unhireable.
This isn't gloating at their expense, because I was one. This is a fucked-up society and the "tallest nail" phenomenon ensures that most people like them eventually reach a stage of life where they don't do well, and it's harder to recover once that "golden child" image (untarnished success, monotonic progress) is lost and the world would rather invest in someone else.