I don't think that is what science agrees with. IQ correlates pretty strongly with educational achievement. You can disagree with IQ all you but one thing it pretty surely doesn't measure is work ethic.
I went to a top tier high school and a top tier university. At a top tier university, in STEM at least, the fraction of students who had both high IQ and could work incredibly hard was noticeable. The fraction of STEM people who could get an A without working hard was low to nonexistent.
