Are billionaires smarter than the average person?

How much do smarts factor in when it comes to success? A fair bit, according to research that finds a strong link between smarts and wealth.

Jonathan Wai, research scientist at Duke University's Talent Identification Program, a non-profit organization serving academically gifted and talented youth, says his research generally found that billionaires are not "ordinary" when it comes to cognitive ability and education.

His research titled, "Investigating America’s Elite: Cognitive Ability, Education, And Sex Differences," showed overall, billionaires tended to be the brainiest people, or rather "attended a school requiring standardized test scores that likely places them in the top one percent of ability," the study states.

These so called "elite schools" include California Institute of Technology, Princeton, Yale or Harvard universities. Some 45 per cent of billionaires are part of the top 1 per cent of smart people. That compares to Fortune 500 CEOs; 41 per cent of senators, and nearly 41 per cent of federal judges.

As well, billionaires appear to be concentrated in the technology and financial services sectors, says Wai, who found that 63 per cent in tech and 69 per cent in finance were among the smartest. Billionaires in the fashion, retail, food and beverage spaces were less smart.

Whether elite school or not, Wai found that some 88 per cent of billionaires went to college and graduated.

What's the key takeaway when it comes to smarts and billionaires? "Billionaires are generally a lot smarter than the average person," says Wai, but he adds: "It does not hurt to be very smart ... High motivation, hard work and also a bit of luck probably has a role to play."

Although the findings are largely based on analyzing schools that people attended, and elite schools require high test scores to get in. But he does acknowledge IQ isn't the only way into elite schools as other routes of admittance include legacy preferences and sports scholarships. As well, no surprise that a lot of smart people can't get into elite schools because of financial reasons.

All about education?

Steve Siebold, who has spent nearly three decades interviewing millionaires and billionaires and author of How Rich People Think, questions this way of measuring intelligence. He says formal education has nothing to do with how much wealth one can acquire.

"If you know the right people you can get into any school in the country. You can do almost anything if you know the right people," says Siebold.

"The problem with this is that it tells the average person that they can't be wealthy because they don't have what it takes to get into these schools," he adds. "The question is not are you smart. It's how are you smart. There's different kinds of intelligence."

Siebold says while the rich respect the power of formal education, they usually don’t associate it with building a financial empire. Many of the world’s wealthiest people have little formal education, and have amassed their wealth through acquisition and subsequent sale of specific knowledge.