Obviously, geniuses exist, but I was still skeptical.
The modern ones are sadly just another checkbox for college admissions, full of cheaters gaming the metrics.
Do you happen to have a list available? I saw a few among the winners, but I wasn't able to find much about non-winning top placers.
The ones I could find won their Nobel much later than their Talent Search win (40+ years, and in one case more than 60 years after), so it might be premature to rule out the more modern contestants. (at least based on that alone)