There was one post that talked about longterm outcomes. I remember a study on Hunter students, wondering if they would find a bunch of "Bill Gates", they didn't but they did find successful, contented people.
And the comment I found sort of addressed the Bill Gates factor. I saw a documentary on the founding of Microsoft a few years ago. Bill Gates talked about how he and Paul Allen were high school buddies who were really into computers and got into some mainframe that IBM made. It was some new thing and they were in contact with IBM and really got into it and IBM started referring clients to them for consulting. By 11th grade they were the leading consultants for that mainframe. It was just a hobby but the motivation thing was there to dig, dig, dig.
The post I saw talked that if PG kids do not find something that motivates them, they fall off performance and many just coast into oblivion unless they find somethiing to dig their teeth into. I paraphrase, but it was interesting to see from the other side.
Ren