I find it annoying when people get on here and say it really doesn't matter where your kid goes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the obsession many parents have right now comes from economic anxiety as our country and world are going through economic transition and nobody really knows how it'll end and where their kid will be when the merry-go-round stops spinning.

People aren't even sure what majors will be the best 5-10 years from now. What jobs will AI replace? How will the global economy impact what type of job prospects my kid has in the future? This anxiety leads people to see the path narrowing to success, even to maintain their own level (much less advance) that they obsess over anything they think they can control.

I think people fool themselves into thinking they know what will lead to success in the future. It's sad that kids and teens are often the ones paying the price for their parents (well-intentioned) economic anxiety and the comfort it brings them to think they've solved the future.

At least these people have good reasons.
Affluent Whites have had the obsession since long time ago when they actually don't even need it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It matters to me. I want my child to experience a bigger world than the one she’s grown up in, and I hope she doesn’t come back to the suburbs. I never wanted to end up there but I did. Almost all of the people I know who went to state schools came back home and live boring 2.5 kids soccer lives. Maybe they’re happy. I think some of them are. But I think a lot of them just never thought any bigger. She doesn’t have to go to an Ivy League school. She wouldn’t get in. But I want her to go somewhere where she’s exposed to a lot of different people and has options to experience things she wouldn’t otherwise. And you can tell me that’s not true and give me examples but I see it all around me.

Totally agree! People are kidding themselves and being defensive just in case their little darlings end up at a dreaded place like GMU.

GMU CS >>> UVA humanities

Now It really matters

Bitshifted. You played yourself

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have several female friends who went to Harvard undergrad.

All got great jobs out of college: venture capitalist, editor at a publishing house, microfinance, investment banking. One went on to Harvard Law then was an associate at a top NYC firm.
Then they had kids....

ALL of them have mommy tracked themselves if they stayed in the same field. One completely changed careers to something more family friendly. Two aren't even working any more because of family needs.

My point is, yes, going to a top school can set you up for a great career but you may not want to stay there. All of those women are exactly where many other moms have ended up, despite the college they attended.

So…are you basically saying women for the most part still go to college for their MRS degree? Sure sounds like it.

NP

I'm a little older and what I see is a career pattern for some women that is different from the career pattern for men. Men coast at the end of their careers. Women coast in the middle of their careers.

Men tend to go straight through from graduation to retirement and their most creative productive time tends to be their early career in their 20s, 30s and 40s. By their 50s and 60s, they tend to be more satisfied with where they are at and coast more.

Women tend to have a productive decade from 25-35 and then a pause in their career while they raise kids and then a return to being highly productive/creative when their kids are older or out of the house. I know a lot of women in their 50s and 60s who are doing some really ambitious stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but it doesn’t matter. It matters to the the overbearing helicopter parent that wear their kid’s college brand like a designer handbag and that we will be directionless and aimless when DC leaves the nest. But for your kid, their employer will care that they went to school but not where. The exception, of course, is on both extremes. If they go to a top 5-7 school, great, they get bonus points (except for the many employers that specifically don’t want someone with those credentials because they tend to believe that they are entitled to an accelerated journey). On the other extreme, if they went to an online school or a super esoteric school, there better be a good reason.

Other than that, schools #7-150 or so are completely interchangeable in the real world.

I'm sorry but I just don't agree that this applies to everyone. The assumption that wealth & eduction correlates with Middle class white culture is so off-putting. I'm asian and a child of immigrants- I've seen way too many successful lives destroyed by events that would never be life 'destroyers' for their white peers b/c of a lack of exposure to ideas/UMC ways of doing things and confidence. The difference that going to a top ten law school would make for my kid even though their parents are lawyers will be much much bigger than it is for your kids and there are plenty of immigrants, brown and black people and even first generation college grad white posters here and we know better than you how social mobility works b/c its something we have experienced for ourselves, not just read about in the Atlantic and VOX. I've seen first hand the difference in girls who go to George mason vs. even UVA/George Washington and what they've gone on to do with their lives. Exposure to a wider set of possibilities and the self concept that you are one of the ppl who should be applying to post docs at Magdalen college and MS at LSE and opening businesses with friends you met at NYU Beijing are vastly different than a fed contractor driving to target and their home in Burke with no USAID/FSO posting in sight day after miserable day. Many ppl on here have benefited from their superior merit and work ethic and want make sure that their kids move that one rung up to having even more choices and possibilities when their grandparents struggled and sacrificed. That is what ppl move here for, if I wanted to keep treading water, my father should've stayed home and not left his family and everyone he held dear.

You are so wrong. People don’t define themselves at age 18, and where you go to undergrad doesn’t dictate who you are. Trust me, Harvard doesn’t have a lock on sophistication, international kids are everywhere, study abroad or any number of experiences can be life changing. Kid should go where they feel optimistic, good about what they are doing and excited for the future. This may very well not be some hyper-competitive environment where people are valued by who they or their parents are or what they are entitled to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but it doesn’t matter. It matters to the the overbearing helicopter parent that wear their kid’s college brand like a designer handbag and that we will be directionless and aimless when DC leaves the nest. But for your kid, their employer will care that they went to school but not where. The exception, of course, is on both extremes. If they go to a top 5-7 school, great, they get bonus points (except for the many employers that specifically don’t want someone with those credentials because they tend to believe that they are entitled to an accelerated journey). On the other extreme, if they went to an online school or a super esoteric school, there better be a good reason.

Other than that, schools #7-150 or so are completely interchangeable in the real world.

I'm sorry but I just don't agree that this applies to everyone. The assumption that wealth & eduction correlates with Middle class white culture is so off-putting. I'm asian and a child of immigrants- I've seen way too many successful lives destroyed by events that would never be life 'destroyers' for their white peers b/c of a lack of exposure to ideas/UMC ways of doing things and confidence. The difference that going to a top ten law school would make for my kid even though their parents are lawyers will be much much bigger than it is for your kids and there are plenty of immigrants, brown and black people and even first generation college grad white posters here and we know better than you how social mobility works b/c its something we have experienced for ourselves, not just read about in the Atlantic and VOX. I've seen first hand the difference in girls who go to George mason vs. even UVA/George Washington and what they've gone on to do with their lives. Exposure to a wider set of possibilities and the self concept that you are one of the ppl who should be applying to post docs at Magdalen college and MS at LSE and opening businesses with friends you met at NYU Beijing are vastly different than a fed contractor driving to target and their home in Burke with no USAID/FSO posting in sight day after miserable day. Many ppl on here have benefited from their superior merit and work ethic and want make sure that their kids move that one rung up to having even more choices and possibilities when their grandparents struggled and sacrificed. That is what ppl move here for, if I wanted to keep treading water, my father should've stayed home and not left his family and everyone he held dear.

+1
AMEN!!

Thank you. It is nerve wrecking to have discussions on this board because the majority lack basic knowledge about the experiences of immigrants especially brown and black people.

+1 have to agree. I'm a child of uneducated immigrants, and I went to a no name state u. I think if I had gone to a "better" school, it would've broadened my horizons, and I could've achieved a lot more.

that's not to say that I don't have a great life. I have a umc life, and I'm thankful for it. I eventually ended up at a FAANG. But, going to no name state u meant that I did not have that exposure and network to venture out more.

You don't have to go to a T10 to get that kind of exposure and experience, but where you go can and, often times, does impact the trajectory of your career.

+1000

Anyone who's in denial about the fact that where you go to college matters is just delusional. There was that study showing that the top 1% is disproportionately dominated by elite colleges.

Going to an elite college matters, full stop

The 1% buy their way into those colleges. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and a bazillion other failsons are Ivy league educated because their parents bought their way in.
There are some success stories like Bill Gates, but there are similiar stories for strong state universities like UVA or Illinois or UW or Michigan.

The average Ivy League degree is worth about $100,000 to $200,000 increase in LIFETIME earnings over the average lifetime earnings of any 4 year graduate. That's not that much money over a 40-50 year career.

There are some careers where Ivy League is super important - government, law (especially if you want a high profile judicial appointment), and media. But for the rest of the world, it just doesn't matter.

Not true! Important for finance and consulting as well.

and medicine and academics...

the list goes on...

It matters where you go to law school or medical school or grad school for those fields. Undergrad doesn't matter much at all. It's a whole other application process and applicants are accepted from every undergraduate program. My very mediocre undergrad school regularly placed (very middle class) kids into T14 law schools and into T10 medical schools and top graduate programs.

[Anonymous]

I went to a no-name undergrad state school with a fantastic internship senior year. Afterwards I did 2 years on Capitol Hill with my senator, then landed at Georgetown Law. I laugh at those parents paying 85K a year for undergrad.

I loved that no-name institution so much more than Georgetown. Great professors. Encouraging my kids to go there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a no-name undergrad state school with a fantastic internship senior year. Afterwards I did 2 years on Capitol Hill with my senator, then landed at Georgetown Law. I laugh at those parents paying 85K a year for undergrad.

I loved that no-name institution so much more than Georgetown. Great professors. Encouraging my kids to go there.

I bought a lottery ticket in 1998 just as others are going to college. My lottery ticket paid off and I laugh at all the people going to college. Suckers!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes it matters, other times it doesn't. I had surgery recently and the surgeon went to UMD as an undergrad, then to the mormon college and then a practically unheard of women's hospital in the midwest. She then quickly became the top surgeon of a specialist women's interest at Johns Hopkins by her mid30s.

Clearly in her case, it was her skills that mattered and that carried her to success, not the colleges she attended. She wasn't at Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins as a student.

I’m Catholic, but I have been impressed with every Mormon I’ve known. Smart, clean, thrifty. None have had more than one spouse.

I knew some in the military & they were wonderful to work with. No stumbling into the office hung over. No need for coffee breaks.

That's great. Nothing to do with the post you're responding to, however.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a no-name undergrad state school with a fantastic internship senior year. Afterwards I did 2 years on Capitol Hill with my senator, then landed at Georgetown Law. I laugh at those parents paying 85K a year for undergrad.

I loved that no-name institution so much more than Georgetown. Great professors. Encouraging my kids to go there.

You do realize there are plenty of us where quite honestly the difference between paying $85k or $25k is essentially a rounding error.

I guess we should all laugh at you? What kind of attitude is this? BTW…no law school needed to I gather become way more successful than you.

[Anonymous]

I think it matters where you go to college but what matters are the specific aspects of the educational experience there, not a particular ranking in USNWR. Caveat that, yes, I acknowledge in some fields ranking aka prestige does matter. But my kids aren't interested in banking, consulting, etc.

What mattered to us in figuring out the list was elements like...
Freshman retention rate -- are students happy, and largely have the money to stay
Graduation rate
Faculty w/ terminal degrees
Relative size of the intended major - for kid looking at LACs I wanted her major to be a substantial program at the school, not just a few kids. Less of an issue at bigger schools
Specific experiences offered to students in the majors they wanted. For example, DS is getting great experience in a university program that is largely staffed by students in his major.
Info on what jobs grads from those majors are doing now (know this is partial info since many students don't share that info)
Student satisfaction with the school based on sites like Unigo and Rate My Professor (again with the knowledge that this is limited data but one of many data points)

You can have all of these things and not be a USNWR T20 school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but it doesn’t matter. It matters to the the overbearing helicopter parent that wear their kid’s college brand like a designer handbag and that we will be directionless and aimless when DC leaves the nest. But for your kid, their employer will care that they went to school but not where. The exception, of course, is on both extremes. If they go to a top 5-7 school, great, they get bonus points (except for the many employers that specifically don’t want someone with those credentials because they tend to believe that they are entitled to an accelerated journey). On the other extreme, if they went to an online school or a super esoteric school, there better be a good reason.

Other than that, schools #7-150 or so are completely interchangeable in the real world.

I'm sorry but I just don't agree that this applies to everyone. The assumption that wealth & eduction correlates with Middle class white culture is so off-putting. I'm asian and a child of immigrants- I've seen way too many successful lives destroyed by events that would never be life 'destroyers' for their white peers b/c of a lack of exposure to ideas/UMC ways of doing things and confidence. The difference that going to a top ten law school would make for my kid even though their parents are lawyers will be much much bigger than it is for your kids and there are plenty of immigrants, brown and black people and even first generation college grad white posters here and we know better than you how social mobility works b/c its something we have experienced for ourselves, not just read about in the Atlantic and VOX. I've seen first hand the difference in girls who go to George mason vs. even UVA/George Washington and what they've gone on to do with their lives. Exposure to a wider set of possibilities and the self concept that you are one of the ppl who should be applying to post docs at Magdalen college and MS at LSE and opening businesses with friends you met at NYU Beijing are vastly different than a fed contractor driving to target and their home in Burke with no USAID/FSO posting in sight day after miserable day. Many ppl on here have benefited from their superior merit and work ethic and want make sure that their kids move that one rung up to having even more choices and possibilities when their grandparents struggled and sacrificed. That is what ppl move here for, if I wanted to keep treading water, my father should've stayed home and not left his family and everyone he held dear.

+1
AMEN!!

Thank you. It is nerve wrecking to have discussions on this board because the majority lack basic knowledge about the experiences of immigrants especially brown and black people.

+1 have to agree. I'm a child of uneducated immigrants, and I went to a no name state u. I think if I had gone to a "better" school, it would've broadened my horizons, and I could've achieved a lot more.

that's not to say that I don't have a great life. I have a umc life, and I'm thankful for it. I eventually ended up at a FAANG. But, going to no name state u meant that I did not have that exposure and network to venture out more.

You don't have to go to a T10 to get that kind of exposure and experience, but where you go can and, often times, does impact the trajectory of your career.

+1000

Anyone who's in denial about the fact that where you go to college matters is just delusional. There was that study showing that the top 1% is disproportionately dominated by elite colleges.

Going to an elite college matters, full stop

The 1% buy their way into those colleges. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and a bazillion other failsons are Ivy league educated because their parents bought their way in.
There are some success stories like Bill Gates, but there are similiar stories for strong state universities like UVA or Illinois or UW or Michigan.

The average Ivy League degree is worth about $100,000 to $200,000 increase in LIFETIME earnings over the average lifetime earnings of any 4 year graduate. That's not that much money over a 40-50 year career.

There are some careers where Ivy League is super important - government, law (especially if you want a high profile judicial appointment), and media. But for the rest of the world, it just doesn't matter.

Not true! Important for finance and consulting as well.

and medicine and academics...

the list goes on...

It matters where you go to law school or medical school or grad school for those fields. Undergrad doesn't matter much at all. It's a whole other application process and applicants are accepted from every undergraduate program. My very mediocre undergrad school regularly placed (very middle class) kids into T14 law schools and into T10 medical schools and top graduate programs.

Maybe it’s just me…but more often than not, when I look up the education of my Georgetown specialists they graduate from some completely random medical schools.

I don’t really understand the “business” of medicine so maybe it is different for plastic surgeons or orthopedists.

[Anonymous]

Some PPs on here who paid a fortune for undergrad are really pissed off they landed at the same law school as those of us who weren't foolish enough to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the obsession many parents have right now comes from economic anxiety as our country and world are going through economic transition and nobody really knows how it'll end and where their kid will be when the merry-go-round stops spinning.

People aren't even sure what majors will be the best 5-10 years from now. What jobs will AI replace? How will the global economy impact what type of job prospects my kid has in the future? This anxiety leads people to see the path narrowing to success, even to maintain their own level (much less advance) that they obsess over anything they think they can control.

I think people fool themselves into thinking they know what will lead to success in the future. It's sad that kids and teens are often the ones paying the price for their parents (well-intentioned) economic anxiety and the comfort it brings them to think they've solved the future.

I think DCUM is one big example of economic anxiety. I’m anxious as well about my kids’ futures. I’m not sure an elite school will make a difference. When it all pans out, I think it will be the 1% vs everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some PPs on here who paid a fortune for undergrad are really pissed off they landed at the same law school as those of us who weren't foolish enough to do so.

Are they though? Or are you just projecting?

[Anonymous]

Well said, PP, about us being concerned with our kids’ economic future and whether AI will replace many careers. That’s my concern too. Just want them to be secure.