Selingo WSJ Essay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population.

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax.

I can give you one reason we did: my kid is not going to marry someone with 200k in student loans.

Now, maybe they won’t marry someone from college. Fine. But if they do, they’ll either be wealthy or they got plenty of aid.

I’ve seen too many of my friends weighed down by partners debt (and then sometimes divorce anyway in their 40s)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/the-elite-college-myth-268c4371?st=zZtGi8&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt from his new book. His basic point is that career paths are more affected by personal ties, such as what region you come from, than the brand of the school. He claims that Ivy-plus outcomes are no different than highly ranked public universities such as Texas, UCLA and Ohio State (although I wouldn't put Ohio in that list, LOL) for most fields.

The problem, of course, is that in the DMV, desirable career paths are affected by the brand of the school, hence the worrying and lamentations on this board.

Are lower and middle-class family is going to get the same amount of assistance to go to Ohio State or UCLA as they do at rich need blind Private schools? Not sure but if you can get yourself into some top schools you can get significant financial assistance and a very fine education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population.

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax.

Fair point, though families in the 85-95%ile will actually qualify for the most need-based aid from the top schools: Princeton Penn MIT Yale provide aid for household incomes up to around 250k. The rest of the ivy+ is up to 200ish as a need-aid cutoff. Marginally lower ranked privates in the 24-30 range are no where close to the same financial aid yet almost as hard to get accepted to.

For the full pay families, which we are (as well as former low income/FG), some will want to pay for the name, of course, and some are so rich they do not consider 93k a year expensive.
Others will want to spend the $ even if they are not too far above the full-pay line of 250kish because our experience at similar schools made a lasting positive impression based on the experience. I wanted my kids to have what I had: uber smart peer group who became lifelong friends, small classes with engaged faculty. I wanted our kids to have a chance at the same and are quite happy and proud to be full pay as well as to donate to financial aid for the next generation who needs aid. Mine are at different ivy/elites than I attended and so far it is beyond their and our expectations, and frankly less rich-white/pretentious than our DMV private school which is a welcome change. Hopefully our third gets into a similar level of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/the-elite-college-myth-268c4371?st=zZtGi8&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt from his new book. His basic point is that career paths are more affected by personal ties, such as what region you come from, than the brand of the school. He claims that Ivy-plus outcomes are no different than highly ranked public universities such as Texas, UCLA and Ohio State (although I wouldn't put Ohio in that list, LOL) for most fields.

The problem, of course, is that in the DMV, desirable career paths are affected by the brand of the school, hence the worrying and lamentations on this board.

Which careers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

if the goal is marrying top 1% then go to Colorado college or Baylor, there are many more 1%ers there than at elite schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/the-elite-college-myth-268c4371?st=zZtGi8&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt from his new book. His basic point is that career paths are more affected by personal ties, such as what region you come from, than the brand of the school. He claims that Ivy-plus outcomes are no different than highly ranked public universities such as Texas, UCLA and Ohio State (although I wouldn't put Ohio in that list, LOL) for most fields.

The problem, of course, is that in the DMV, desirable career paths are affected by the brand of the school, hence the worrying and lamentations on this board.

Which careers?

law

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population.

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax.

. Mine are at different ivy/elites than I attended and so far it is beyond their and our expectations, and frankly less rich-white/pretentious than our DMV private school which is a welcome change. Hopefully our third gets into a similar level of school.

Truth at D24’s ivy compared to the private high school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/the-elite-college-myth-268c4371?st=zZtGi8&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt from his new book. His basic point is that career paths are more affected by personal ties, such as what region you come from, than the brand of the school. He claims that Ivy-plus outcomes are no different than highly ranked public universities such as Texas, UCLA and Ohio State (although I wouldn't put Ohio in that list, LOL) for most fields.

The problem, of course, is that in the DMV, desirable career paths are affected by the brand of the school, hence the worrying and lamentations on this board.

Which careers?

law

NP. Different game entirely, because the law school matters, not the undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The essay kind of talks out two sides. Says the elite schools don’t matter in the end, but then also says graduates of elite schools are 60% more likely to end up at elite jobs (think he used Goldman as an example) and secure higher salaries out of undergrad.

Also, it shows a chart that says out of a Microsoft pool of entry level employees, 3500 out of around 12,000 come from colleges with 20% or less acceptance rates. It’s the largest group though that leaves 8500 employees coming from less selective schools.

Again, the issue with this is that there are only like 25 colleges (most of which are relatively small) that fit this criteria while there are thousands that fit the other criteria of higher acceptance rates.

My takeaway was that at Microsoft it definitely pays to come from a sub-20% acceptance college.

I also don’t get looking at Fortune 50 companies as a good measure. Outside of tech, you just won’t see many top school grads wanting to work at Exxon or CVS or a good 30 of the F50 companies.

I think you missed the point. The point is that “elite” jobs are not the only possible career path (the example of regional employees recruiting from regional schools); and that not going to an elite school does not completely bar you from an “elite” job. IOW - the panic is not justified unless you are deadset on maximizing your child’s changes of working at Goldmans (which is a pretty pathetic way to parent but you do you).

I also think the vignette about the job at Illumination was great. mainly because she ended up with an absolute dream job (designing rides at Universal, OMG!!) that is SO much more fun and better than all the miserable money you get working at McKinsey. Which one among us would rather our kid end up a management consultant than designing 3D rides? I hope not many. And also because it shows that while many smart kids to to Ivys there IS a cultural or values issue - privileged kids think they don’t need to do the grunt work or think it is not part of the path to success. I have absolutely seen this at my Ivy law school where it seemed like people literally could not conceive of any path other than BigLaw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Sure if your only goal for your kids is that they enter the 1% and marry rich - you should sweat getting them into Princeton. I don’t think that is the only goal most parents have for their kids. Maybe I am wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population.

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax.

I can give you one reason we did: my kid is not going to marry someone with 200k in student loans.

Now, maybe they won’t marry someone from college. Fine. But if they do, they’ll either be wealthy or they got plenty of aid.

I’ve seen too many of my friends weighed down by partners debt (and then sometimes divorce anyway in their 40s)

Lol. So you spent an extra $100k on tuition to prevent your child from marrying someone with $200k student loan debt? Leaving aside the absurdness of thinking you can control who your child marries, you could have just invested that $100k for future needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/the-elite-college-myth-268c4371?st=zZtGi8&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt from his new book. His basic point is that career paths are more affected by personal ties, such as what region you come from, than the brand of the school. He claims that Ivy-plus outcomes are no different than highly ranked public universities such as Texas, UCLA and Ohio State (although I wouldn't put Ohio in that list, LOL) for most fields.

The problem, of course, is that in the DMV, desirable career paths are affected by the brand of the school, hence the worrying and lamentations on this board.

Which careers?

law

I’m at one of the most desirable government attorney jobs in DC (FinReg) and we have a broad diversity of law schools and colleges represented. I think that is what you Ivy obsessed don’t get: even if Harvard opens some doors those doors are not closed to everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to an Ivy and most of my close friends from college are psychologists, artists, or scientists. I think the quality of education affected the quality of our thinking, but the name brand of the university has had no effect on our careers (maybe for the scientists who are in academia but not for the rest of us). For lawyers maybe it’s a different story.

Don’t you think it is possible that that an Ivy accepted them because they were smart rather than it made them smart?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population.

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax.

I can give you one reason we did: my kid is not going to marry someone with 200k in student loans.

Now, maybe they won’t marry someone from college. Fine. But if they do, they’ll either be wealthy or they got plenty of aid.

I’ve seen too many of my friends weighed down by partners debt (and then sometimes divorce anyway in their 40s)

Lol. So you spent an extra $100k on tuition to prevent your child from marrying someone with $200k student loan debt? Leaving aside the absurdness of thinking you can control who your child marries, you could have just invested that $100k for future needs.

Also, why would anyone believe that everyone at elite schools graduates debt-free? There are definitely kids at elite schools with substantial student debt. That’s what happens when the “meets needs” financial aid doesn’t meet the family’s true need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population.

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax.

I can give you one reason we did: my kid is not going to marry someone with 200k in student loans.

Now, maybe they won’t marry someone from college. Fine. But if they do, they’ll either be wealthy or they got plenty of aid.

I’ve seen too many of my friends weighed down by partners debt (and then sometimes divorce anyway in their 40s)

Lol. So you spent an extra $100k on tuition to prevent your child from marrying someone with $200k student loan debt? Leaving aside the absurdness of thinking you can control who your child marries, you could have just invested that $100k for future needs.

Also, why would anyone believe that everyone at elite schools graduates debt-free? There are definitely kids at elite schools with substantial student debt. That’s what happens when the “meets needs” financial aid doesn’t meet the family’s true need.

My niece just started at a $$$ elite school full pay. If she marries a full pay fellow student that means that collectively they will have paid $500k more to the school than if they went to the (very good) state flagship they both could have attended. So if their parents had invested that $500k instead of spending it on tuition this young couple could buy a house when they get married with that money.