Are only kids of wealthy parents in elite professions majoring in arts/going to elite colleges?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We will have an oversupply of CS people, like we had librarians, pharmacists, and nurses in the past. The top ones, with keen business sense and strong interpersonal relationships, will make top $ and know which startup to join. The rest will end up at Accenture, writing code and building databases for some tired federal agency, and getting paid $150K/year.

Getting a $150k starting salary with only a bachelors is a huge deal.

Whose getting that!?!

Starting salary at most consulting firms like Bain, McKinsey and Accenture is above $100k plus joining bonus.

One of these things is not like the other.

This is hilarious with Accenture on the list. My H started at Bain after Ivy and his salary was 180k. I was at Lehman (I know, I'm old) and my first year salary with bonus was 220k. This was decades ago.

Maybe Bain Capital, but Bain & Co (the consulting firm) does not and has not ever paid $180k right out of college (not even in the golden years that preceded the financial crisis). Or are you referring to post-MBA comp?

No consulting firm is offering $180k base salary to undergrad hires, no matter which college or which company.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why such disdain for those majoring in “vocational” degrees? I majored in accounting because as someone with few means, I needed something that would get me straight into a job. I didn’t have much room for error or creativity.

They are telling us we are supposed to know our place.

It's because posters on this site time and again show disdain for students who study the liberal arts, or more accurately the humanities. No one needs disdain the other. Everyone has a different path.

It's kind of ridiculous to condescendingly call a STEM degree a "vocational school." An engineering degree imparts actual knowledge, just like a liberal arts degree.
Yes, it may be different knowledge, but it's hardly inferior knowledge. I have a MA and a JD, but I doubt I would have made it through an engineering degree.

It's vocational in the sense that it is job training. There has been ongoing tension with respect to whether education should be primarily about training young people for jobs or have a broader mission to prepare them to be more fully integrated humans and citizens.

Is it, though? Do you have an engineering degree? I don't know that it provides training for any exact job. Would you call law law school vocational? You need it to be a lawyer (except for in CA), yet it doesn't really provide job training.

Yes, I would call law school vocational. I'm a lawyer, fwiw.

Agreed, except that most vocational schools provide more practical education as to the vocation. I’m also a lawyer

I am a lawyer as well, and law school is definitely vocational training.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Cringe. If you're not from that pedigreed background K-12, or at least 9th-12th (boarding or upper end day school), your kids were never entering that rarefied orbit in college. Rich kids see right through the interlopers and pretenders. They are magnets to each other and tend to box out the unwashed. That's not to say your kid wouldn't have hung out with rich kids, but s/he will very likely hang out with some rich kids at their state university. Let me know how many rich kids still hang out with your middle class kid after everyone graduates. Let me know when a rich kid puts a ring on your middle class daughter's finger. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all. And your mere interest in this is of course desperate, creepy and weird, so why wouldn't you expect rich kids to be sketched out by your status-climbing low born offspring? Exactly.

Liberals Arts education is for rich people's kids or pretenders.. CS is the way to go right now. Get those 500K salaries (by the time you are 30) and marry someone of similar "pedigree". F'ck the rich. Become rich on your own terms. Such a couple can easily end up with 20 mil+ by the time they want to retire.

This is how generations pivot and family trees change, people!

I personally studied liberal arts. CS was for the awkward way back then...

Smart kids are doing combo of STEM and liberal arts/humanities to become more desirable for employers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Well, poor students with free financial aid rides also get flexibility to chose majors they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Cringe. If you're not from that pedigreed background K-12, or at least 9th-12th (boarding or upper end day school), your kids were never entering that rarefied orbit in college. Rich kids see right through the interlopers and pretenders. They are magnets to each other and tend to box out the unwashed. That's not to say your kid wouldn't have hung out with rich kids, but s/he will very likely hang out with some rich kids at their state university. Let me know how many rich kids still hang out with your middle class kid after everyone graduates. Let me know when a rich kid puts a ring on your middle class daughter's finger. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all. And your mere interest in this is of course desperate, creepy and weird, so why wouldn't you expect rich kids to be sketched out by your status-climbing low born offspring? Exactly.

I was a poor white girl who attended Stanford majoring in English. Luckily, my dormmate was an heiress who ended up introducing me to my wealthy husband. So it’s not true that the uber-rich stick together at college and are impenetrable, socially. My husband paid off my MFA loans too, lol.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The top 5 majors just declared in my sophomore son’s class at his top 10 SLAC this year in order are CS, Biology, Econ, Chemistry, then English, with CS having almost two times as many majors as Bio.

People really don’t understand what a liberal arts education is.

Is this Carleton? I saw their numbers the other day, very interesting.

This is why there is such a shortage of physics teachers. Where are the physics majors.
And only about 1% of the physics majors actually go into teaching anyway

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Cringe. If you're not from that pedigreed background K-12, or at least 9th-12th (boarding or upper end day school), your kids were never entering that rarefied orbit in college. Rich kids see right through the interlopers and pretenders. They are magnets to each other and tend to box out the unwashed. That's not to say your kid wouldn't have hung out with rich kids, but s/he will very likely hang out with some rich kids at their state university. Let me know how many rich kids still hang out with your middle class kid after everyone graduates. Let me know when a rich kid puts a ring on your middle class daughter's finger. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all. And your mere interest in this is of course desperate, creepy and weird, so why wouldn't you expect rich kids to be sketched out by your status-climbing low born offspring? Exactly.

Liberals Arts education is for rich people's kids or pretenders.. CS is the way to go right now. Get those 500K salaries (by the time you are 30) and marry someone of similar "pedigree". F'ck the rich. Become rich on your own terms. Such a couple can easily end up with 20 mil+ by the time they want to retire.

This is how generations pivot and family trees change, people!

I personally studied liberal arts. CS was for the awkward way back then...

.

Ha. This is very true. How things have changed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Cringe. If you're not from that pedigreed background K-12, or at least 9th-12th (boarding or upper end day school), your kids were never entering that rarefied orbit in college. Rich kids see right through the interlopers and pretenders. They are magnets to each other and tend to box out the unwashed. That's not to say your kid wouldn't have hung out with rich kids, but s/he will very likely hang out with some rich kids at their state university. Let me know how many rich kids still hang out with your middle class kid after everyone graduates. Let me know when a rich kid puts a ring on your middle class daughter's finger. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all. And your mere interest in this is of course desperate, creepy and weird, so why wouldn't you expect rich kids to be sketched out by your status-climbing low born offspring? Exactly.

The athletes and cool kids certainly intermarry with the rich at elite schools. I guess you were neither?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Cringe. If you're not from that pedigreed background K-12, or at least 9th-12th (boarding or upper end day school), your kids were never entering that rarefied orbit in college. Rich kids see right through the interlopers and pretenders. They are magnets to each other and tend to box out the unwashed. That's not to say your kid wouldn't have hung out with rich kids, but s/he will very likely hang out with some rich kids at their state university. Let me know how many rich kids still hang out with your middle class kid after everyone graduates. Let me know when a rich kid puts a ring on your middle class daughter's finger. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all. And your mere interest in this is of course desperate, creepy and weird, so why wouldn't you expect rich kids to be sketched out by your status-climbing low born offspring? Exactly.

Liberals Arts education is for rich people's kids or pretenders.. CS is the way to go right now. Get those 500K salaries (by the time you are 30) and marry someone of similar "pedigree". F'ck the rich. Become rich on your own terms. Such a couple can easily end up with 20 mil+ by the time they want to retire.

It's far more likely that they'll live paycheck-to-paycheck in a high-COLA area like San Francisco or New York, especially if they stall out at $500k-ish total comp (like many do in bigtech). Lifestyle creep is tough to avoid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why such disdain for those majoring in “vocational” degrees? I majored in accounting because as someone with few means, I needed something that would get me straight into a job. I didn’t have much room for error or creativity.

They are telling us we are supposed to know our place.

It's because posters on this site time and again show disdain for students who study the liberal arts, or more accurately the humanities. No one needs disdain the other. Everyone has a different path.

It's kind of ridiculous to condescendingly call a STEM degree a "vocational school." An engineering degree imparts actual knowledge, just like a liberal arts degree.
Yes, it may be different knowledge, but it's hardly inferior knowledge. I have a MA and a JD, but I doubt I would have made it through an engineering degree.

It's vocational in the sense that it is job training. There has been ongoing tension with respect to whether education should be primarily about training young people for jobs or have a broader mission to prepare them to be more fully integrated humans and citizens.

Is it, though? Do you have an engineering degree? I don't know that it provides training for any exact job. Would you call law law school vocational? You need it to be a lawyer (except for in CA), yet it doesn't really provide job training.

Yes, I would call law school vocational. I'm a lawyer, fwiw.

Agreed, except that most vocational schools provide more practical education as to the vocation. I’m also a lawyer

I am a lawyer as well, and law school is definitely vocational training.

Most (all?) law schools don't meet Merriam Webster's definition of a vocational school:

": a school in which people learn how to do a job that requires special skills.
He went to a vocational school to learn auto repair."

Whether they should attempt to do so has been debated for some time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At Harvard a high % of kids major in CS, which surprises as I thought it hardly matters what you major in if you get in there.

But if you’re at a state school, especially a “lower tier” one, the history or English majors are going to be teaching high school. You’d be wise to major in nursing, CS, engineering or accounting at such a school. Nothing wrong with that, but they’re not going to be recruited to IB.

Very true.

LOL no. You all obviously have no idea at all what you're talking about and should really stop embarrassing yourselves like this. I've never known a history or English major with any brains at all to have any trouble getting a well-paying job if that's what they wanted. Yes, including those from "lower tier" state schools. Nobody cares where you got your degree from except this subset of desperate social climbers here on DCUM.

MY English major niece who graduated from NYU has been steadily employed by Tech firms. She gets recruited to change jobs all the time.
She makes really good money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would rather take consulting job as an undergrad over spending 10 years of spending on medical education and earning tiny stipends during residency and fellowship. If you add cost and lost wages, a consultant is better off than your pediatricians and family practice docs. As far as doing good, consultants do lots of projects during their professional lives and many many of those are amazingly beneficial for humans, nations, environment and animals.

You forgot the /s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would rather take consulting job as an undergrad over spending 10 years of spending on medical education and earning tiny stipends during residency and fellowship. If you add cost and lost wages, a consultant is better off than your pediatricians and family practice docs. As far as doing good, consultants do lots of projects during their professional lives and many many of those are amazingly beneficial for humans, nations, environment and animals.

You forgot the /s

"Consulting" in what? In what field/area is someone fresh out of undergrad with a liberal arts degree qualified to consult??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At Harvard a high % of kids major in CS, which surprises as I thought it hardly matters what you major in if you get in there.

But if you’re at a state school, especially a “lower tier” one, the history or English majors are going to be teaching high school. You’d be wise to major in nursing, CS, engineering or accounting at such a school. Nothing wrong with that, but they’re not going to be recruited to IB.

CS is now the most popular major at Princeton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems that the kids I know going to T-10 schools and are majoring in things like philosophy or sociology are from families that are in big law, IB, or medicine. They also have generational wealth from grandparents. We are first generation college grads with no parental help but worked our way up to UMC with no advice or mentoring. Our kids did well enough to get merit at some private universities but ultimately chose the state flagship to save money. They also pursued majors that led to high paying fields upon graduation. But are people like us short-changing our kids in not providing them with a liberal arts education at an elite school so they can join the rarefied alumni clubs and networking opportunities that lead to the truly big bucks?

Cringe. If you're not from that pedigreed background K-12, or at least 9th-12th (boarding or upper end day school), your kids were never entering that rarefied orbit in college. Rich kids see right through the interlopers and pretenders. They are magnets to each other and tend to box out the unwashed. That's not to say your kid wouldn't have hung out with rich kids, but s/he will very likely hang out with some rich kids at their state university. Let me know how many rich kids still hang out with your middle class kid after everyone graduates. Let me know when a rich kid puts a ring on your middle class daughter's finger. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all. And your mere interest in this is of course desperate, creepy and weird, so why wouldn't you expect rich kids to be sketched out by your status-climbing low born offspring? Exactly.

Liberals Arts education is for rich people's kids or pretenders.. CS is the way to go right now. Get those 500K salaries (by the time you are 30) and marry someone of similar "pedigree". F'ck the rich. Become rich on your own terms. Such a couple can easily end up with 20 mil+ by the time they want to retire.

This is how generations pivot and family trees change, people!

I personally studied liberal arts. CS was for the awkward way back then...

Smart kids are doing combo of STEM and liberal arts/humanities to become more desirable for employers.

This^^^

I always encourage kids who choose the LA/Humanities (non stem) majors to consider a minor/focus on something STEM or business. Basically, major in what you love, but pick a minor that will help make you more marketable/make it a bit easier to get a job. Not a ton of jobs that say "looking for an English or art history major", but those majors with the right minor will make your very marketable