$80k In Debt Worth It for Ivy Undergrad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

NP here, it would absolutely NOT be fine. If someone left an elite school with only 3 semesters left, it marks them as a loser, a quitter, and a lazy worker with no perseverance. Anyone with even a tiny amount of grit would've sucked up the student debt and stayed at the school, since they had already invested so much time and money into it. $80k is NOTHING when you consider that restarting would be much more expensive (both time-wise and financially). Any student with even a small amount of common sense would realize that leaving Columbia five semesters in is equivalent to academic and professional suicide, even if it's because the school dropped all of your financial aid.

+1. There is literally nothing she can say to explain away dropping out of Columbia. I had a classmate at HYP diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and he finished out the degree. OP, if you don’t finish your whole life is a red flag. Nothing you’d do would make up for it. And it’s unlikely you’re going to marry well because frankly, you’re annoying and also depressed (and not already dating someone).

You have to finish or your life is going to be hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

NP here, it would absolutely NOT be fine. If someone left an elite school with only 3 semesters left, it marks them as a loser, a quitter, and a lazy worker with no perseverance. Anyone with even a tiny amount of grit would've sucked up the student debt and stayed at the school, since they had already invested so much time and money into it. $80k is NOTHING when you consider that restarting would be much more expensive (both time-wise and financially). Any student with even a small amount of common sense would realize that leaving Columbia five semesters in is equivalent to academic and professional suicide, even if it's because the school dropped all of your financial aid.

Friend, she still got in to Columbia. they know she's not lazy.


OP, you're gonna be okay. If you put your mind to it you can finish at Columbia. If you want to come back to school later, you will (though I'm not sure I would count on one of those nice schools giving you a full ride). But if you don't, it's probably because you found something that made you happy. It might suck for a while, but you're gonna find something that makes you happy regardless.

Also fwiw, I've never had these types of issues but I heard family cutting ties (financially or otherwise) is rarely permanent. They want what's best for you (probably), and they'll want to reconnect. I know this is probably a really taxing part of the decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

NP here, it would absolutely NOT be fine. If someone left an elite school with only 3 semesters left, it marks them as a loser, a quitter, and a lazy worker with no perseverance. Anyone with even a tiny amount of grit would've sucked up the student debt and stayed at the school, since they had already invested so much time and money into it. $80k is NOTHING when you consider that restarting would be much more expensive (both time-wise and financially). Any student with even a small amount of common sense would realize that leaving Columbia five semesters in is equivalent to academic and professional suicide, even if it's because the school dropped all of your financial aid.

+1. There is literally nothing she can say to explain away dropping out of Columbia. I had a classmate at HYP diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and he finished out the degree. OP, if you don’t finish your whole life is a red flag. Nothing you’d do would make up for it. And it’s unlikely you’re going to marry well because frankly, you’re annoying and also depressed (and not already dating someone).

You have to finish or your life is going to be hell.

Looks like you're the one who needs therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

NP here, it would absolutely NOT be fine. If someone left an elite school with only 3 semesters left, it marks them as a loser, a quitter, and a lazy worker with no perseverance. Anyone with even a tiny amount of grit would've sucked up the student debt and stayed at the school, since they had already invested so much time and money into it. $80k is NOTHING when you consider that restarting would be much more expensive (both time-wise and financially). Any student with even a small amount of common sense would realize that leaving Columbia five semesters in is equivalent to academic and professional suicide, even if it's because the school dropped all of your financial aid.

Friend, she still got in to Columbia. they know she's not lazy.


OP, you're gonna be okay. If you put your mind to it you can finish at Columbia. If you want to come back to school later, you will (though I'm not sure I would count on one of those nice schools giving you a full ride). But if you don't, it's probably because you found something that made you happy. It might suck for a while, but you're gonna find something that makes you happy regardless.

Also fwiw, I've never had these types of issues but I heard family cutting ties (financially or otherwise) is rarely permanent. They want what's best for you (probably), and they'll want to reconnect. I know this is probably a really taxing part of the decision.

Not finishing at an Ivy, especially given the crazy grade inflation they have, is a big red flag that OP is a lazy POS. PP, you sound like a loser.

[Anonymous]

OP I really hope you're not listening to any of this advice after somebody suggest 800k a year was a "medium" finance job

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

Whatever job you apply to whether it is nonprofit or finance, you will have the advantage over a no name school. It can be the difference between a job interview or not.

You sound pretty annoying, OP. Go drop out or whatever.

You may find it hard to cover your rent, build credit, buy a car, food, gas by having a job without a college degree with no parental financial support. It is unlikely you will miraculously go back to some amazing college experience after taking a few years off. You will either be much older than your classmates and have a different bad college experience or I would bet on you won’t go back at all. Just suck it up and get the degree.

I have 3 kids and I always tell them to finish what they signed up for.

You are giving them bad advice. One of the smartest things you can do is quit something that isn't working or isn't getting you closer to what you want. It's very limiting if you can't try a thing without having to see it through to the end. Knowing when to quit, and giving yourself the ability to quit, is much better.

Pp here. My kids are in elementary school. Sometimes they sign up for something and want to quit. I have them finish out the session.

We have a high income so 80k is not a big deal for us. I would have made sure the college and major would have been a good fit.

Perhaps OP doesn’t need college.

[Anonymous]

OP, you are getting a ton of conflicting advice, I think which is lending itself to your paralysis.

What's key is to remember is that typically when seeking counsel, you're going to look at someone's resume. Here, you have no clue who is a random SAHM who married well born after going to some random private non-Ivy university, on third thinks they hit a home run, vs who is a POC with similar parents and similar opportunities. The latter group would have varied experiences that you should consider and I would suggest you take the former's advice with a huge grain of salt.

It would be interesting if you'd ask the posters to give a little background info such as (a) tier of school they graduated from (i.e,. HYP, Seven Sisters, Big Ten), (b) current income/field and (c) if they had strong standardized test scores (just guessing that you do based on the two threads). You want to hear from POCs who also went to Ivies or similar who didn't have totally smooth sailing (which is all of us I bet) but who stuck it out and how their degrees have helped them, if at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you are getting a ton of conflicting advice, I think which is lending itself to your paralysis.

What's key is to remember is that typically when seeking counsel, you're going to look at someone's resume. Here, you have no clue who is a random SAHM who married well after going to some random private non-Ivy university, born on third thinks they hit a home run, vs who is a POC with similar parents and similar opportunities. The latter group would have varied experiences that you should consider and I would suggest you take the former's advice with a huge grain of salt.

It would be interesting if you'd ask the posters to give a little background info such as (a) tier of school they graduated from (i.e,. HYP, Seven Sisters, Big Ten), (b) current income/field and (c) if they had strong standardized test scores (just guessing that you do based on the two threads). You want to hear from POCs who also went to Ivies or similar who didn't have totally smooth sailing (which is all of us I bet) but who stuck it out and how their degrees have helped them, if at all.

Ugh, sorry fixed a few typos.

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

Whatever job you apply to whether it is nonprofit or finance, you will have the advantage over a no name school. It can be the difference between a job interview or not.

You sound pretty annoying, OP. Go drop out or whatever.

You may find it hard to cover your rent, build credit, buy a car, food, gas by having a job without a college degree with no parental financial support. It is unlikely you will miraculously go back to some amazing college experience after taking a few years off. You will either be much older than your classmates and have a different bad college experience or I would bet on you won’t go back at all. Just suck it up and get the degree.

I have 3 kids and I always tell them to finish what they signed up for.

You are giving them bad advice. One of the smartest things you can do is quit something that isn't working or isn't getting you closer to what you want. It's very limiting if you can't try a thing without having to see it through to the end. Knowing when to quit, and giving yourself the ability to quit, is much better.

Pp here. My kids are in elementary school. Sometimes they sign up for something and want to quit. I have them finish out the session.

We have a high income so 80k is not a big deal for us. I would have made sure the college and major would have been a good fit.

Perhaps OP doesn’t need college.

You really have bad take after bad take here, don't you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I think the best thing to do for me is to leave my current school and wait until I'm 24 to transfer to another school (maybe that's Smith, maybe it's somewhere else) so I can graduate as cheaply as possible.

I'd be much happier at a cheap state school or 7 sisters school.

If I didn't have the threat of loans hanging over my head (and currently, I don't have any student loans in my name at all; I would have to take them out for my last 3 semesters at Columbia), I'd go into a low-paying but meaningful job in either publishing or environmental education.

So maybe I'll go to a Seven Sisters for free and have less opportunities than if I stayed at Columbia.

And if I find myself in one of those toxic environments... so what? I'll probably jump ship to a higher paying gig in corporate communications or any of the other industries I'm interested in.

These are your alternatives to staying at Columbia? Totally unrealistic and ill-advised. You are about to make a huge mistake and you're too stubborn and naive to listen to the wise posters who've tried to talk some sense into you. You don't have to like Columbia's culture, you don't have to have friends, just finish your degree! Focus totally on your schoolwork, get ahead in credits, graduate a semester early to save money, and move on with your life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I think the best thing to do for me is to leave my current school and wait until I'm 24 to transfer to another school (maybe that's Smith, maybe it's somewhere else) so I can graduate as cheaply as possible.

I'd be much happier at a cheap state school or 7 sisters school.

If I didn't have the threat of loans hanging over my head (and currently, I don't have any student loans in my name at all; I would have to take them out for my last 3 semesters at Columbia), I'd go into a low-paying but meaningful job in either publishing or environmental education.

So maybe I'll go to a Seven Sisters for free and have less opportunities than if I stayed at Columbia.

And if I find myself in one of those toxic environments... so what? I'll probably jump ship to a higher paying gig in corporate communications or any of the other industries I'm interested in.

These are your alternatives to staying at Columbia? Totally unrealistic and ill-advised. You are about to make a huge mistake and you're too stubborn and naive to listen to the wise posters who've tried to talk some sense into you. You don't have to like Columbia's culture, you don't have to have friends, just finish your degree! Focus totally on your schoolwork, get ahead in credits, graduate a semester early to save money, and move on with your life.

Ehh.... If OP is okay with graduating from a state school like a UC or a Cal State (and I think that's a big IF since she seems like a prestige-chaser), I think it's a fine plan and not the huge mistake PP is making it out to be.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

Whatever job you apply to whether it is nonprofit or finance, you will have the advantage over a no name school. It can be the difference between a job interview or not.

You sound pretty annoying, OP. Go drop out or whatever.

You may find it hard to cover your rent, build credit, buy a car, food, gas by having a job without a college degree with no parental financial support. It is unlikely you will miraculously go back to some amazing college experience after taking a few years off. You will either be much older than your classmates and have a different bad college experience or I would bet on you won’t go back at all. Just suck it up and get the degree.

I have 3 kids and I always tell them to finish what they signed up for.

You are giving them bad advice. One of the smartest things you can do is quit something that isn't working or isn't getting you closer to what you want. It's very limiting if you can't try a thing without having to see it through to the end. Knowing when to quit, and giving yourself the ability to quit, is much better.

Pp here. My kids are in elementary school. Sometimes they sign up for something and want to quit. I have them finish out the session.

We have a high income so 80k is not a big deal for us. I would have made sure the college and major would have been a good fit.

Perhaps OP doesn’t need college.

You really have bad take after bad take here, don't you.

I am in my mid forties. I was a dreamer. I am ivy educated. I’m currently staying home with my three children.

I used to be a high earner. Dh earns a seven figure income. When my youngest starts going to school, I plan to work in non profit or something meaningful.

I have witnessed many make poor decisions over the years. Dropping out of college was never a good decision for all the people I knew who did this. It is unclear why Op lost her financial aid. I knew several who lost financial aid due to losing full time student status. For a kid without means, that $20k was too much for a young kid to overcome. Those types of students did not go back. Sure, you hear about about people like Bill Gates but that is definitely the outlier. $20k back in the 90s. $80k in 2022.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I think the best thing to do for me is to leave my current school and wait until I'm 24 to transfer to another school (maybe that's Smith, maybe it's somewhere else) so I can graduate as cheaply as possible.

I'd be much happier at a cheap state school or 7 sisters school.

If I didn't have the threat of loans hanging over my head (and currently, I don't have any student loans in my name at all; I would have to take them out for my last 3 semesters at Columbia), I'd go into a low-paying but meaningful job in either publishing or environmental education.

So maybe I'll go to a Seven Sisters for free and have less opportunities than if I stayed at Columbia.

And if I find myself in one of those toxic environments... so what? I'll probably jump ship to a higher paying gig in corporate communications or any of the other industries I'm interested in.

These are your alternatives to staying at Columbia? Totally unrealistic and ill-advised. You are about to make a huge mistake and you're too stubborn and naive to listen to the wise posters who've tried to talk some sense into you. You don't have to like Columbia's culture, you don't have to have friends, just finish your degree! Focus totally on your schoolwork, get ahead in credits, graduate a semester early to save money, and move on with your life.

Op is naive. Why even bother posting on here?

My smartest friend in high school didn’t go to college at all. She didn’t like the culture. She has literally done every type of job and never found one she liked. She never got married. She doesn’t have kids. She got into drugs. She couldn’t keep a steady job and hated going home since her mom would nag her. For the past 20 years, she had lived with one bad boyfriend to the next. She will crash at friend’s couches.

[Anonymous]

[\quote] (I know, I’m a pathetic failure).

I haven't read all 18 pages. But, no, you're not. Hugs to you OP.

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

NP here, it would absolutely NOT be fine. If someone left an elite school with only 3 semesters left, it marks them as a loser, a quitter, and a lazy worker with no perseverance. Anyone with even a tiny amount of grit would've sucked up the student debt and stayed at the school, since they had already invested so much time and money into it. $80k is NOTHING when you consider that restarting would be much more expensive (both time-wise and financially). Any student with even a small amount of common sense would realize that leaving Columbia five semesters in is equivalent to academic and professional suicide, even if it's because the school dropped all of your financial aid.

This is just sad. The debt will imprison her. Only in the US do people think this way.