Perspective on the Madness

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of us parents who attended selective colleges have been hired/mentored/supervised by colleagues who went to less selective undergrad and professional schools? That small group of selective schools doesn’t have a monopoly on talent and workplace readiness. Just some food for thought. Signed, WASP and T-14 law grad with hand raised high.

Sigh. Nobody thinks that selective schools have a monopoly on talent. But they have a disproportionate impact in the business, political, legal world than their size would predicate. If there were 100 bananas and 100 schools, 3 selective, 97 not, the 3 schools don't get all 100 bananas, they get 15. Just some real food for thought. Signed, 6th Grader with an understanding of bananas.

Signed, 6th Grader with t

This. Elite grads are out of proportion in various fields.
Spouse’s medical practice, adult subspecialty: undergrad degrees include 3 Top10, 5 top15-25, 3 T75/non-topLac.

My law practice, regional not a high dollar one: 2 top10, 3 Top25, 1 lower. Undergrad.

The four nonprofits we care about: 3 of the 4 went to T25/top Lac.

[Anonymous]

I went to a no name school, and have a great career. I remember having to teach a new kid on the team from Harvard, how to fill out a timesheet, numerous times. The put a 8 in a box and click enter, was so far beyond his capabilities. I have mentored numerous new hires on various topics, but never on timesheets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of us parents who attended selective colleges have been hired/mentored/supervised by colleagues who went to less selective undergrad and professional schools? That small group of selective schools doesn’t have a monopoly on talent and workplace readiness. Just some food for thought. Signed, WASP and T-14 law grad with hand raised high.

Sigh. Nobody thinks that selective schools have a monopoly on talent. But they have a disproportionate impact in the business, political, legal world than their size would predicate. If there were 100 bananas and 100 schools, 3 selective, 97 not, the 3 schools don't get all 100 bananas, they get 15. Just some real food for thought. Signed, 6th Grader with an understanding of bananas.

Signed, 6th Grader with t

You have amazing writing skills for a 6th grader!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a no name school, and have a great career. I remember having to teach a new kid on the team from Harvard, how to fill out a timesheet, numerous times. The put a 8 in a box and click enter, was so far beyond his capabilities. I have mentored numerous new hires on various topics, but never on timesheets.

No offense...but what "great career" requires anyone to fill out a timesheet?

Are you referring to a law associate having to report hours or someone at McKinsey reporting hours?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my field, all top spots are filled by Ivy grads. It’s going to greatly depend on what field you are in. Most it doesn’t matter, a few select fields it really matters. Stem it doesn’t matter.

Name the field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not in terms of jobs but in terms of money Musk (UPenn), Bezos (Princeton), Larry Ellison (dropout UIUC), zuck & gates (dropout Harvard), Page (UMich), Brin (UMaryland), Dell (dropout UTA), Ballmer (Harvard), Bloomberg (JHU) have all the bananas.

Steve Jobs (dropout Reed College)
Mark Cuban (University of Pittsburgh college, Indiana University MBA)

Jobs' kids attended Stanford and Harvard. Cuban has a kid at Vanderbilt and a crew recruit daughter going to UCLA.

What does it matter where the kids go? They are nepo babies now. Ofc they'll inherit privilege. It's the schools the parent went to (Mark Cuban) who made the wealth that matters.

+1, this is such a weird take. Of course the kids of these people can go wherever they want. It’s not really the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my field, all top spots are filled by Ivy grads. It’s going to greatly depend on what field you are in. Most it doesn’t matter, a few select fields it really matters. Stem it doesn’t matter.

+1 we paid for the Ivy because my kid is in one of those fields. Rising college sophomore and the internship and Fall sophomore study abroad at prestigious European university all are part of it and connections, etc.

Genuinely curious as to the fields where this is still a big thing. Comp lit? 16th Century Renaissance history?

Academia, investment banking, journalism (although you'd better have an Ivy degree AND a trust fund for the latter).

international relations/policy/public affairs/state dept (and add gtwon/gw)

You are describing fields that employ only a tiny fraction of adults and also that don’t pay very well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many of us parents who attended selective colleges have been hired/mentored/supervised by colleagues who went to less selective undergrad and professional schools? That small group of selective schools doesn’t have a monopoly on talent and workplace readiness. Just some food for thought. Signed, WASP and T-14 law grad with hand raised high.

Pomona undergrad and Vanderbilt law isn't the flex you think it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a no name school, and have a great career. I remember having to teach a new kid on the team from Harvard, how to fill out a timesheet, numerous times. The put a 8 in a box and click enter, was so far beyond his capabilities. I have mentored numerous new hires on various topics, but never on timesheets.

Timesheet jobs are not the jobs that elite kids end up getting. I have never had to fill one out other than the summer i was a server in a restaurant. They are not hard. This Harvard kid was likely a dud compare to most colleagues. There is no way most ivy grads would have trouble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're in the midwest- at my DS's private HS there are kids with 1530-1600 SAT scores, grades, etc. (I know this because it's a small school, kids talk, parents talk, etc). If the parents don't have money, the kids go in-state, honors or out of state on schools that offer a lot of merit and financial aid.
A lot of talent doesn't go to the Ivy League or T20- it's too expensive for most families, especially if there are multiple bright siblings.

If the parents qualify for need based aid, there is no better deal than the ivies especially Princeton Harvard Penn Yale who have the best financial aid. For many brackets of income up to around 200-225k household, the top schools have a lower net cost than instate. We know families who got zero need based aid from WM but got financial aid at the ivy making the net cost less than WM in-state. Same with UVA: engineering in state full cost is 50k. They pay 43k all in at the ivy. These are not the neediest families—those have $0 cost of attendance at almost all schools—but they are families with need and the ivies do the best job covering the gap. Other top 15 privates with high endowments also give great need based aid.

It's not just Ivy League. Stanford, MIT, Vanderbilt, Rice, Northwestern, CalTech, Williams, Pomona all offer exceptional financial aid. Very few middle class students are priced out of these schools.

The fact is that getting a good job is difficult. And a resume with a T20 school is going to get looked at. Plus, the networking is often great. My kids go to "elite" schools with financial aid that brings the cost below state flagships. And they are getting great paid internships because of the school brand. They wouldn't have these opportunities if they had gone to a public school.

I guarantee you that kids at top publics have access to those same internships. Because in any field, there is recruiting at these places.

[Anonymous]

People don’t need to argue with anecdotes, there are studies on this. There was the big one in Nature last year that looked at the backgrounds of 26k+ high achievers. Yes, top schools are overrepresented but also, yes, the majority of high achievement people in non-academic fields (academia is a different story) didn’t attend a top-top school. And a lot of the people identified as having attended a top school went there for grad school instead of undergrad.

OP is not wrong that people need to chill a bit. There is life and opportunity outside of four years of college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're in the midwest- at my DS's private HS there are kids with 1530-1600 SAT scores, grades, etc. (I know this because it's a small school, kids talk, parents talk, etc). If the parents don't have money, the kids go in-state, honors or out of state on schools that offer a lot of merit and financial aid.
A lot of talent doesn't go to the Ivy League or T20- it's too expensive for most families, especially if there are multiple bright siblings.

If the parents qualify for need based aid, there is no better deal than the ivies especially Princeton Harvard Penn Yale who have the best financial aid. For many brackets of income up to around 200-225k household, the top schools have a lower net cost than instate. We know families who got zero need based aid from WM but got financial aid at the ivy making the net cost less than WM in-state. Same with UVA: engineering in state full cost is 50k. They pay 43k all in at the ivy. These are not the neediest families—those have $0 cost of attendance at almost all schools—but they are families with need and the ivies do the best job covering the gap. Other top 15 privates with high endowments also give great need based aid.

It's not just Ivy League. Stanford, MIT, Vanderbilt, Rice, Northwestern, CalTech, Williams, Pomona all offer exceptional financial aid. Very few middle class students are priced out of these schools.

The fact is that getting a good job is difficult. And a resume with a T20 school is going to get looked at. Plus, the networking is often great. My kids go to "elite" schools with financial aid that brings the cost below state flagships. And they are getting great paid internships because of the school brand. They wouldn't have these opportunities if they had gone to a public school.

I guarantee you that kids at top publics have access to those same internships. Because in any field, there is recruiting at these places.

OP is referencing non-selective random schools...top publics are both well-known and also quite selective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People don’t need to argue with anecdotes, there are studies on this. There was the big one in Nature last year that looked at the backgrounds of 26k+ high achievers. Yes, top schools are overrepresented but also, yes, the majority of high achievement people in non-academic fields (academia is a different story) didn’t attend a top-top school. And a lot of the people identified as having attended a top school went there for grad school instead of undergrad.

OP is not wrong that people need to chill a bit. There is life and opportunity outside of four years of college.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People don’t need to argue with anecdotes, there are studies on this. There was the big one in Nature last year that looked at the backgrounds of 26k+ high achievers. Yes, top schools are overrepresented but also, yes, the majority of high achievement people in non-academic fields (academia is a different story) didn’t attend a top-top school. And a lot of the people identified as having attended a top school went there for grad school instead of undergrad.

OP is not wrong that people need to chill a bit. There is life and opportunity outside of four years of college.

Here is the Abstract from the study you cite. Hard to square this with your conclusion:

The highest-achieving figures in politics, business, academia, and the media dominate public discourse and wield great influence in society. Education—perhaps especially at “elite” colleges and universities—may lie at the heart of the divide between the general public and these top achievers. In this paper, we build a new data set for the American “elite” and systematically examine the link between selective schools and outstanding achievements. In Study 1, across 30 different achievement groups totaling 26,198 people, we document patterns of attendance at a set of 34 “Elite” 34 schools, the 8 Ivy League schools, and Harvard University in particular. In Study 2, we surveyed 1810 laypeople to estimate how well they are aware of the key empirical facts from Study 1. We found that exceptional achievement is surprisingly strongly associated with “elite” education, especially obtaining a degree from Harvard, and the general public tends to underestimate the size of this effect. Attending one of just 34 institutions of higher education out of the roughly 4000 in the U.S. appears to be a critical and surprising factor separating extraordinary achievers from others in their fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People don’t need to argue with anecdotes, there are studies on this. There was the big one in Nature last year that looked at the backgrounds of 26k+ high achievers. Yes, top schools are overrepresented but also, yes, the majority of high achievement people in non-academic fields (academia is a different story) didn’t attend a top-top school. And a lot of the people identified as having attended a top school went there for grad school instead of undergrad.

OP is not wrong that people need to chill a bit. There is life and opportunity outside of four years of college.

Here is the Abstract from the study you cite. Hard to square this with your conclusion:

The highest-achieving figures in politics, business, academia, and the media dominate public discourse and wield great influence in society. Education—perhaps especially at “elite” colleges and universities—may lie at the heart of the divide between the general public and these top achievers. In this paper, we build a new data set for the American “elite” and systematically examine the link between selective schools and outstanding achievements. In Study 1, across 30 different achievement groups totaling 26,198 people, we document patterns of attendance at a set of 34 “Elite” 34 schools, the 8 Ivy League schools, and Harvard University in particular. In Study 2, we surveyed 1810 laypeople to estimate how well they are aware of the key empirical facts from Study 1. We found that exceptional achievement is surprisingly strongly associated with “elite” education, especially obtaining a degree from Harvard, and the general public tends to underestimate the size of this effect. Attending one of just 34 institutions of higher education out of the roughly 4000 in the U.S. appears to be a critical and surprising factor separating extraordinary achievers from others in their fields.

Maybe OP isn’t referring to “exceptional achievement” but to being able to have a satisfying career and a comfortable life with plenty of cushion to fund college and retirement.