The Outliers Gladwell Analysis

Malcolm Gladwell makes many debatable claims in his book “The Outliers”. One of these controversial topics is brought up in chapter three when he talks about a person’s IQ and how that relates to one’s success. Gladwell says, “The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.”After reading “Outliers” I believe that this is the greatest controversial topic. I agree with Malcolm Gladwell because there are a high amount of people who are not incredibly smart that are very successful, success can be viewed differently by different people, and from my own experiences on the U-High

soccer team.
There are tons of people in our world today who have become very successful and these people find success in different ways, many of which do not require a super high IQ.

Some people work hard their whole life to achieve success and others just seem to be born talented in a certain field that they prevail in. One of the ways an individual can attempt to become successful is by working diligently in school to obtain a proper education. Access to advanced education is key if you would want to become very intelligent and furthermore the so called “gifted programs” in these advanced education systems are supposed to make you even smarter.People have wondered if going through gifted programs would make you more successful in your adult life.There was a man named Richard Terman, who wanted to take a group of kids in these gifted programs, his “Termites”, and track how successful they were later in life. He was hoping to find that the kids that were in advanced classes would in fact become very successful adults and he was right. When his Termites were adults many of them became experts in different fields. Terman measured the success of the chosen people by looking at awards they have achieved and all of the writings that they have published and the amount of these achievements was fairly

high which would help prove Terman was correct in thinking that gifted children grow up to be successful adults. While the number of awards and publishings maybe have looked high, in reality compared with everyone else, and the amount of awards and publishings they received, the success of the Termites would have actually been lower than the average expert in the specific fields. However Terman neglected to say anything about this when he was showing the world how successful the Termites were, so there was no real revelation that gifted programs actually didn’t lead to success in the adult life of the children who are in them. This study done by Richard Terman strongly shows that it does not take someone with a high IQ to be a real success story in this world.
Now you may think that these Termites were successful, but many people wouldn’t think that they are because they have different definitions of success. To someone who wants to be an expert in a certain field that a Termite was also an expert in would consider that Termite extremely successful. However, somebody who is aspiring to become a professional football or soccer player would look at them and say, “Who cares?”. They would look at a famous football or soccer player like Aaron Rodgers or Cristiano Ronaldo and see them as incredibly successful. This is because every person has their own definition of success that is specific to themselves, and it is based around their hopes and desires in their own life. In fact, for some of these people who’s definition of success is something that doesn't require a high IQ, they can be successful in their own eyes while having a lower IQ. For example, Lebron James, debatably the best, most successful player that the NBA has ever seen, went straight from high school to the NBA, skipping college. By skipping college James gave up an important part of his education in his own pursuit of success. Someone who I define as successful is my father. My father, Tom, worked hard in high school and college, double majoring in business and technology. Now he works in a managing position at state farm and makes enough money to easily support himself and his family of three kids and a wife. I define him as successful because he has a fantastic job, a wonderful family, and he is happy with where he is in life and those are things that I aspire to have at some point in my own life.
After reading “The Outliers” I have started to think about how what Malcolm Gladwell says in his book applies to my life.

Currently I am on the U-High varsity soccer team with many of my other classmates. I am currently taking a hand full of very hard, challenging courses this year and by taking these hard classes I am learning tons of new subjects, therefore raising my IQ. According to Kendra Cherry, a professional psychologist, the average IQ ranges anywhere from 85 to 120. While reading about IQ I was inquisitive to know what my own score would be so I took an online IQ test. I know that this test was probably not the most accurate test in the world but it gives a baseline, which for me was 138. This shows that my IQ is on the high range compared to the average scores. Also I am a junior this year, while there are players from every other grades on the team as well. I am on the varsity team, but I do not start and I very rarely have the chance to enter the game. On the other hand a teammate of mine, who is a freshman, starts in every game. Since I am a junior and he is a freshman, I have had more education because I have been in school for that much longer than him. Also my IQ is above average while his is probably a little bit lower than mine. Even though I have a higher IQ than him, he is a more successful soccer player than I am. Knowing this you could make the assumption that a higher IQ does not necessarily lead to being more successful in soccer.

.
“The Outliers” has some debatable claims in it made by the author ,Malcolm Gladwell, about success and how to be successful.One of his claims about how high IQ does not necessarily lead to success was very questionable. After looking into how a study done by Richard Terman about gifted children helps support Terman, people's definition of success, and my own personal experiences with how IQ affects success I can agree with Gladwell’s claim in “The Outliers” because all three of these reasons I examined seemed to help prove that a higher IQ doesn't necessarily lead to success.