[ryukoposting]

There's some nuance to the "work ethic" factor. Work ethic makes a big difference in academic outcomes, but it depends on where that work is targeted.

Anecdotal evidence, part 1:

I grew up in the suburbs and went to public schools that, at the time, were good-not-great within the state. In that setting, I was a high achiever by any sensible metric. I was friends with a lot of the other "smart kids," and I definitely worked harder than some of them, but outside of school, I was also working on different things. My hobbies and extracurriculars weren't strictly academic, but they certainly set me up for academic success better than sports or video games would have.

Anecdotal evidence, part 2:

One of my classmates was "freak of nature" levels of gifted. I shared math classes with him for three years of high school, and to my knowledge he got one math test question wrong in that entire time period. He was also one of the school's best tennis players, and he made it into so many state concert bands/jazz bands/choir groups that their schedules overlapped and he couldn't do all of them. Last I checked, he was finishing up a PhD in neuroscience. But get this: he was our salutatorian, solely because someone else who did no sports and few clubs took more summer classes, and thus had the same GPA with more total credit hours.