Elon Musk is now one of the greatest technologists of all time, and his potential had been noticed when he was just 17 years old.
Elon Musk’s mother Maye Musk has shared the results of Elon Musk’s computer aptitude test results from when he was 17 years old. “While sorting through photos, I came across computer aptitude test results of Elon Musk at 17. My genius boy. Proud mom,” she posted on X.
The document she’d attached is on the letterhead of University of Pretoria in the capital of South Africa. It’s written by the “Office of the Director: Information Management” at the university. “To whom it may concern: Elon Musk: Computer Aptitude Tests,” it says.
“I have requested ISM (SA) to conduct aptitude tests on Elon Musk regarding computing programming etc,” the letter says. “The results are outstanding ie, Operating A+, Programming A+,” it adds. The letter is signed by the Director of Information Management.
This letter had presumably been requested by Musk for his college admissions. Back in 1989, computer science wasn’t as popular a field as it is today, and expertise in the area was rare. Also, it appears that operating a computer was a skill that students were tested on, and Musk seems to have made an A+ there, in addition to having made an A+ in programming.
Musk had been a programmer from a young age. When he was just 12, he’d coded a game called Blastar, which was published in an industry trade magazine called PC and Office Technology. He’d also been paid $500 — a handsome amount in those days — for developing the game. His mother, Maye, had said that she felt that Elon was a genius from an even younger age. “I would say from the age of three, I thought he (Elon Musk) was a genius,” she’s previously said. “He would reason with me, and his reasoning was sensible.” And with Musk now at the age of 54 having created everything from rocket companies to electric cars to brain-computer interfaces and become the richest man in the world, he appears to have more than lived up to his early potential.