Elon Musk, the wunderkind who dropped out of Stanford after just 2 days

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

Published Mar 4, 2021

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As soon as I type in Elon Musk into the search bar, the first thing Google throws out is net worth. It’s the first question many ask.

Interesting enough, after his Bitcoin fiasco where he lost about $15-billion in one day, Musk is still the richest person on the planet with a net worth of $197-billion, putting him miles ahead of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder didn’t get to where he is on pure grit and motivation. Intelligence and intellect played a huge part.

And despite Musk being called many things over the years due to his outlandish and sometimes maverick ideas, the word “wunderkind” comes to mind.

His mother Maye Musk further cemented this after posting a copy of her son’s computer aptitude test from the University of Pretoria when he was just 17 years old.

Taking to Twitter, the proud mom wrote: “.⁦⁦@elonmusk I found your computer aptitude test from when you were 17. If I remember correctly, they had to retest you because they had never seen such a high score. No wonder you are such a brilliant engineer.”

Musk scored an A+ on both Operating and Programming as a first year student at UP.

The tweet quickly went viral with 12.2K retweets and 156.3K likes. And despite this, many comments dragged Musk for his previous misdemeanours.

Loathe him or hate him, the Pretoria-born Musk has a knack for the uncanny and although his reasoning goes beyond what is humanly possible, it’s because of this that his inventions have enjoyed immense success.

And if you think there’s no more than meets the eye when it comes to this eccentric billionaire, think again.

Interesting Engineering managed to dig up five facts you might not know about Elon Musk.

He began building rockets as a child

During a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, Musk claimed he started building rockets when he was a kid. “I’m shocked that I have all my fingers," he told journalist Neil Strauss.

At age 9, he taught himself to code

Musk reportedly taught himself to code at 9 and then used that knowledge to develop his first videogame at age 12 which was ironically a space-themed game called ’Blastar’.

Tesla's Model Y is displayed at Tesla's design studio in Hawthorne, California. Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the electric car pioneer plans to build a new factory near Berlin. Picture: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File

He dropped out of Stanford after just two days

According to Interesting Engineering, Musk attended Stanford to study physics but dropped out after just two days.

He makes less than R605 000 as Tesla CEO

Apparently, Musk doesn’t even bother to cash in his Tesla cheques.

Avengers, assemble

Many know that Musk is the inspiration behind Iron Man’s Tony Stark, but interestingly enough, Iron Man 2 was filmed at Space X headquarters.

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