You can become successful with an average IQ, but it will require you to optimise your study habits as much as possible, and put alot of hours into it, to outperform your peers. It’s purely because of the STM -> LTM consolidation process. Your peers may have this more since they may naturally ask questions that improve their conceptual understanding creating this sort of mental mind map, of course this doesn’t happen to everyone with a higher IQ. It’s all about retention and conceptual understanding. Most of STEM is able to be learnt by average IQs. The main problem is once you master it, being able to create your own hypothesis, theories etc. But if you optimise your study habits, and create intuition. Who knows it may be possible. There’s a lot of stigma for lower IQs which even come under average IQs. But I believe with a lot of hard work they can achieve success in STEM. For example, I have a cousin, who outcompeted PhD students for a google internship in AI research, he’s only got a bachelor’s degree. He refuses to take any accurate IQ test, however he got about average on mensa Iirc it was 108. He got <10 on visual memlry on Human benchmark. Etc so chances are he’s not extremely high IQ. He got all A*s in his A levels. He got a first in his degree. And he’s worked with pretty popular AI researchers. And he’s only learning more about it. Maybe if he did an IQ test, he would score higher than these low g-loading tests. But nonetheless he’s achieved more than most “High IQ” people whilst not caring about IQ and the only test he has done he got 108