Most Likely to Succeed

In MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED, director Pamela Littky follows four highly-intelligent students through college and beyond to see how they do in the real world after being designated "most likely to succeed" in high school. Sarah is the Florida daughter of two pastors. She's the definition of broad-minded, accepting her family's Christianity but also finding value in tenets of Judaism and Islam. After college and graduate school, she moves to Dubai where she works in global financial security, preventing money laundering and terrorist-funding. Quay is a low-income Detroiter raised with her three sisters by a single mom with severe heart problems. Fifth in her class, Quay's college loan falls through and instead of heading for Virginia, she remains in state for college, dropping out when her mother dies at the age of 46. Through grit and determination, she graduates ten years after high school and becomes a teacher. Peter's parents are both professors. He grows up solidly middle-class in Los Angeles, self diagnosing his position on the autism spectrum, and trying to fix his social issues by mimicking behavior he sees in "normal" kids around him. He graduates from Brown magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with no student debt, then moves to San Francisco to work at a tech start-up. He later realizes how lucky and privileged he was. Second in his class, Charles, another Detroiter, was born addicted, as his mother was a crack addict. His adoptive parents were nice enough but moved to another state during his senior year, leaving him to fend for himself. By film's end, he's moving up the corporate ladder at an insurance company, doing his best to inspire other young black students.