Background: Gifted students or students with academic potential need an enriching environment to achieve an outstanding performance. However, phenomena such as school segregation negatively affect the transformation of intellectual potential into academic talent. Objective: To compare the distribution of gifted students from the fifth grade of elementary school to the fourth year of high school in the Province of Concepción, Chile, coming from families of low, medium and high socioeconomic status, determined by the type of educational institution in which they study. Method: Six hundred fifty (650) students aged between 11 and 17 participated in the study and answered the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Test, which allowed the identification of the intellectual potential based on the cut-off score. Results: Statistically significant differences were found in the intellectual potential am...