Selingo WSJ Essay
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Anonymous
Mistakes were made!! Make sure your kids don't make the same mistakes you did. The US wants people to spend their money, not save it!! |
Anonymous
You didn't answer the question. Obviously we know you think $25M is. But where is the line for you between super wealthy and just plain wealthy? |
Anonymous
What kind of high school did you attend? How did you do well enough at an Ivy to get into Med school? I was low income and loads of aid at an Ivy from a rinky dink rural high school same time as you and my grades were crushed. High school had been no effort, we didn’t even have final exams, no APs, so when I got into college i struggled. Did you come from a high cost of living region, I thought making $50k out of college was “making it” — and didn’t understand the poor career choices I was making following my “passion” and “idealism”. |
Anonymous
I work with a guy who is likely one of the 10 richest in Alabama and he sends his kids to Vandy and Princeton and he said most of the kids from the private Hs are attending the same elite private colleges as private schools in the northeast. Very few of the school’s grads attend Auburn or Alabama (Alabama is 60% OOS). I don’t think the truly wealthy are much different regardless of where they live. |
Anonymous
| Among Ivies there is great disparity in alumni networks/ connections. HYP and maybe Dartmouth. Duke and Notre Dame connections are National like HYP and Duke is strongest in the South. As for sleepers look at Holy Cross and Colgate. Holy Cross has grads on many top corporate boards probably more than Dartmouth. Colgate does well on Wall Street but is weak in corporate America. |
Anonymous
I only said that we aren’t desperate for Ivy+ schools as many seem to be because there is a safety net for my kids that most don’t have. I personally went to a Public school, not an elite private. |
Anonymous
Obviously depends on your lifestyle and where you live, but I’d argue that people with a net worth above $15M are super wealthy. Not quite “ultra” wealthy, but getting close. |
Anonymous
I am not the PP, but DW and I are also previous low-income couple, met at an ivy (late 90s) and we are white. One of our closest friend couples from those undergrad days is also white, non-rich: one-FGen, one middle class couple. Three of the four of us are MDs, one is a lawyer who went to harvard law. He was probably the poorest of all of us in college and also the smartest (but we were all smart, magna or summa cum laude). My med school (T5) had about half of the class who had been on financial aid as undergrads, yet at the time the med school was still 75% white. Guess what we were the ones who paid off our loans the fastest because we were used to living on less in college. Even the rich ones typically had some personal loans--it was not many who had parents paying the entire cost of med tuition and living expenses. One of the wealthiest kids in my entire med school came from my ivy and happened to be URM and his dad was one of the first to get an MD in his home country. You are quite narrow minded individual to think that low-income means URM or vice versa. |
Anonymous
Above $75M is super wealthy. |
Anonymous
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Curious about these network effects you think will boost you into a new social class?
I was a poor white kid heading to an Ivy; I didn’t hang out with the super rich kids who spent every weekend on some expensive getaway, or even eating at restaurants, and school nights drinking. I didn’t even have cash to go to a coffee shop or things like that. I was working late in labs and working 15 hrs for work study job. They majored in history or literature and often had already read the material while at elite high schools, so had a lot more leisure time. I can see if you are a strong player on a sports team, and networking there, or a hot girl, you can mingle with the upper class, but they weren’t going to be besties with me because I helped them with their laptop! They stuck to their own circles mostly, and circumstances reinforced that. |
Anonymous
If you had the experience of an elite private/ivy you might feel differently. Plenty of families with safety nets choose elites when their kids get in, hollywood rich at Brown, Amherst; Bidens at Penn. The ones who do not get kids in are the ones who like to shout about elite not being needed. Of course they are not needed but they do provide a small boost when your kid has goals of top law or similar where certain schools help. Generational-wealth families have kids at my kid's ivy and at sibling's kid's WASP school. The kids are almost all driven and chasing big goals that their elite school will help them get, whether uber rich, regular full pay, or the more than half on aid. My kid has a very good friend with true generational wealth and another on lots of aid. They are real friends and have been since freshman year. There is more mixing than people on dcum think. The WSJ Essay does not argue elite doesn't help it just provides a counter that it is not the end all be all. And it isn't. But it is nice to have that elite degree and the uber rich smart families agree |
Anonymous
It is different at elites now and it started changing in the late 90s when more and more aided students and diverse students were admitted. Now well over half are on need based aid, meaning over half have work-study jobs. Even those who are full pay often have research or TA jobs which are paid. White and rich is a distinct minority, and even that group which includes my kid, usually choose to work to build the resume. Outside of athletic teams which are not a large portion of undergrads at ivies, there is a lot of mixing. Those who choose greek or other organizations do not have the Southern-greek dynamics of class division and thousands of $ a semester and focused on new clothing for multiple events. Greek is not needed and when chosen it is very reasonable cost compared to big publics, without the shallow focus. On campus college-sponsored events are cheap or free; they bring in many high-level speakers in a variety of fields and have large parties/concerts in spring with current artists. Off campus arts have student discounts such as $10-15 tickets. Your description is more in line with what happens at schools that still have majority full-pay and majority greek, especially smaller schools where athletes are 35% of the student body. |
Anonymous
Another huge difference these days is start-up culture. Until the Internet, you just didn’t have students starting companies as undergrads, while now it’s a constant topic among many elite school kids. There is actually lots of mingling of classes based on talent and money. My UMC kid has partnered with a super wealthy kid and a kid 100% on FA for a startup. The super wealthy kid won’t invite the other two to Aspen but understands the founder talents everyone brings. It’s not uncommon for kids to honestly answer they picked a top school to find their co-founders. |
Anonymous
| Who needs Selingo when the parents of DCUM know everything there is to know about colleges. |
Anonymous
Long ago I went to an expensive private K-12. I still keep up with my friends from back then. Many of them were (and are) generationally wealthy. But those connections haven't done anything for me career-wise, because those people often did not have (and do not have) "real" day jobs. If they have jobs at all, and many don't, they are luxury / hobby jobs. They are artists, authors, professors, etc. - none of which they need to do to put food on the table. All this despite generally going to elite colleges, which was much easier to do in those days. I can only think of one guy who became a player in the finance world. So don't knock yourself out making "connections" with rich kids, those connections may not do anything for you. You want to make connections with other UMC striver types, not the types who inherited wealth and don't need to do anything with their lives. |