Help me understand the Ivy obsession

[Anonymous]

Why do you need to understand it? If you don’t buy into it, there is zero impact on you. Go about your life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is filled with prole strivers who are status obsessed. That's why. Most confident rich people don't give a damn about the Ivy League.

Sure, that's why they try to find workarounds to buy their kids in. Les Wexner sent his kids to Harvard, Jamie Dimon sent his kids to Duke, Stephen Mandel sent his kids to Dartmouth, and so on and so forth.

Are you mingling with billionaires? Obviously you're not, so why cite 3 of them to prove your ridiculous point. When I say rich I mean multi-millionaires; $5 million to $50 million net worths. None of the millionaires I know are obsessed with the Ivy League. Their smart kids apply where ever they want. The most exclusive tend to be places like UVA, Vandy, Duke, Wake Forest and NYU. But often it's just small liberal arts colleges, if not some Southern "party" school. There is not this insatiable dog eat dog obsession with the "t20" or "t10" like the weirdos on here and College Confidential.

Not sure why those were selected. UVA on average family income is far below a lot of private schools, and there are schools like Washington University, Colgate, Washington and Lee that probably have higher high income and wealth concentrations than any of those schools.

[Anonymous]

Its all a matter of perception which the Ivies themselves help boost. There's nothing that special about the Ivies that cannot be found at other top schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is filled with prole strivers who are status obsessed. That's why. Most confident rich people don't give a damn about the Ivy League.

Sure, that's why they try to find workarounds to buy their kids in. Les Wexner sent his kids to Harvard, Jamie Dimon sent his kids to Duke, Stephen Mandel sent his kids to Dartmouth, and so on and so forth.

Ever notice these rich connected people, including POTUS, never try to get their kids into MIT? It's because they would likely not survive their first semester.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is filled with prole strivers who are status obsessed. That's why. Most confident rich people don't give a damn about the Ivy League.

Sure, that's why they try to find workarounds to buy their kids in. Les Wexner sent his kids to Harvard, Jamie Dimon sent his kids to Duke, Stephen Mandel sent his kids to Dartmouth, and so on and so forth.

Ever notice these rich connected people, including POTUS, never try to get their kids into MIT? It's because they would likely not survive their first semester.

Tony Stark.

The reality is schools have a lot of ways of admitting who they want to admit without it impacting their ranking stats. With the deemphasis of standardized tests and a much lower percentage submitting, relativly few schools providing class rank (if you look at the CDS data, it is often only about 20% at selective universities with class rank reported), and high school GPAs differing greatly between schools and states (so it is not used as a USNWR input), there is not a lot of impact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is filled with prole strivers who are status obsessed. That's why. Most confident rich people don't give a damn about the Ivy League.

Sure, that's why they try to find workarounds to buy their kids in. Les Wexner sent his kids to Harvard, Jamie Dimon sent his kids to Duke, Stephen Mandel sent his kids to Dartmouth, and so on and so forth.

Ever notice these rich connected people, including POTUS, never try to get their kids into MIT? It's because they would likely not survive their first semester.

MIT and Caltech are outliers. They are about as close to true meritocracy as you get in the U.S.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe because there are posts that are basically the same as yours two or three times per week? You realize you are feeding the obsession, yes?

That said, I will take a crack. My own view is that because the incredible, outsized outcomes seem to be clustered in elite schools. If you look at the ranks of billionaire hedge fund, P/E, start-up founders, etc., it is shocking how it is clustered in just like 10 schools. Of course, not everyone graduated...but just look at the current thread on Open AI the current hottest tech start-up...Stanford drop-out, Harvard drop-out and Duke graduate. Look at the people/founders getting all the press currently...Musk from Penn, Zuckerberg from Harvard, Bezos from Princeton, etc. The amount of VC that flows to graduates of the top 10 schools is like 20x the amount flowing to all the other schools combined.

It is no different than if you are an athlete hoping to make it to the Pros. If you want to play pro football, sure you might get drafted out of North Dakota State, but the number of players drafted out of Alabama guarantees that every pro team is always paying attention to Alabama...while they only pay attention to North Dakota State because one player (Carson Wentz as an example) emerges to generate some buzz.

There will always be the folks arguing that Bezos would still have founded Amazon even if he had gone to the University of New Mexico...but of course he didn't and that is just theoretical. Yes, 98% of the graduates from Ivy League schools will go on to lead normal, decent lives...and some may fail miserably. But everyone thinks they can be in the 2% that succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

You obviously did not read this article.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/

Most top CEOs don't have an Ivy League degree.

[Anonymous]

Most Fortune 500 CEOs did not attend Ivy League schools, data shows.

https://news.yahoo.com/most-fortune-500-ceos-did-215926039.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is filled with prole strivers who are status obsessed. That's why. Most confident rich people don't give a damn about the Ivy League.

Sure, that's why they try to find workarounds to buy their kids in. Les Wexner sent his kids to Harvard, Jamie Dimon sent his kids to Duke, Stephen Mandel sent his kids to Dartmouth, and so on and so forth.

Ever notice these rich connected people, including POTUS, never try to get their kids into MIT? It's because they would likely not survive their first semester.

MIT and Caltech are outliers. They are about as close to true meritocracy as you get in the U.S.

1000+

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe because there are posts that are basically the same as yours two or three times per week? You realize you are feeding the obsession, yes?

That said, I will take a crack. My own view is that because the incredible, outsized outcomes seem to be clustered in elite schools. If you look at the ranks of billionaire hedge fund, P/E, start-up founders, etc., it is shocking how it is clustered in just like 10 schools. Of course, not everyone graduated...but just look at the current thread on Open AI the current hottest tech start-up...Stanford drop-out, Harvard drop-out and Duke graduate. Look at the people/founders getting all the press currently...Musk from Penn, Zuckerberg from Harvard, Bezos from Princeton, etc. The amount of VC that flows to graduates of the top 10 schools is like 20x the amount flowing to all the other schools combined.

It is no different than if you are an athlete hoping to make it to the Pros. If you want to play pro football, sure you might get drafted out of North Dakota State, but the number of players drafted out of Alabama guarantees that every pro team is always paying attention to Alabama...while they only pay attention to North Dakota State because one player (Carson Wentz as an example) emerges to generate some buzz.

There will always be the folks arguing that Bezos would still have founded Amazon even if he had gone to the University of New Mexico...but of course he didn't and that is just theoretical. Yes, 98% of the graduates from Ivy League schools will go on to lead normal, decent lives...and some may fail miserably. But everyone thinks they can be in the 2% that succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

You obviously did not read this article.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/

Most top CEOs don't have an Ivy League degree.

Maybe you didn't read my post. I know most Fortune 500 CEOs didn't go to any Ivy League school, but most parents and kids couldn't name 99% of the Fortune 500 CEOs, but they all know Musk, Zuckergerg, Bezos, etc. and articles about them seem to name-drop their schools fairly regularly. I am not trying to justify the Ivy League obsession, but trying to explain it.

Also, many parents/kids in the DMV know about hedge funds, VCs, P/E, top consulting, Goldman Sachs, etc. They aspire to become super-wealthy in those places, not to grind their way to the top of GE or 3M.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe because there are posts that are basically the same as yours two or three times per week? You realize you are feeding the obsession, yes?

That said, I will take a crack. My own view is that because the incredible, outsized outcomes seem to be clustered in elite schools. If you look at the ranks of billionaire hedge fund, P/E, start-up founders, etc., it is shocking how it is clustered in just like 10 schools. Of course, not everyone graduated...but just look at the current thread on Open AI the current hottest tech start-up...Stanford drop-out, Harvard drop-out and Duke graduate. Look at the people/founders getting all the press currently...Musk from Penn, Zuckerberg from Harvard, Bezos from Princeton, etc. The amount of VC that flows to graduates of the top 10 schools is like 20x the amount flowing to all the other schools combined.

It is no different than if you are an athlete hoping to make it to the Pros. If you want to play pro football, sure you might get drafted out of North Dakota State, but the number of players drafted out of Alabama guarantees that every pro team is always paying attention to Alabama...while they only pay attention to North Dakota State because one player (Carson Wentz as an example) emerges to generate some buzz.

There will always be the folks arguing that Bezos would still have founded Amazon even if he had gone to the University of New Mexico...but of course he didn't and that is just theoretical. Yes, 98% of the graduates from Ivy League schools will go on to lead normal, decent lives...and some may fail miserably. But everyone thinks they can be in the 2% that succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

You obviously did not read this article.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/

Most top CEOs don't have an Ivy League degree.

Maybe you didn't read my post. I know most Fortune 500 CEOs didn't go to any Ivy League school, but most parents and kids couldn't name 99% of the Fortune 500 CEOs, but they all know Musk, Zuckergerg, Bezos, etc. and articles about them seem to name-drop their schools fairly regularly. I am not trying to justify the Ivy League obsession, but trying to explain it.

Also, many parents/kids in the DMV know about hedge funds, VCs, P/E, top consulting, Goldman Sachs, etc. They aspire to become super-wealthy in those places, not to grind their way to the top of GE or 3M.

Widen. Your. Lens.

Tim Cook - Apple CEO, Auburn, what a grinder.

Darren Woods - ExxonMobil CEO, Texas A&M, what a grinder.

Karen Lynch - CVS Health CEO, Boston College, what a grinder.

Mike Wirth - Chervron CEO, Boston College, what a grinder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe because there are posts that are basically the same as yours two or three times per week? You realize you are feeding the obsession, yes?

That said, I will take a crack. My own view is that because the incredible, outsized outcomes seem to be clustered in elite schools. If you look at the ranks of billionaire hedge fund, P/E, start-up founders, etc., it is shocking how it is clustered in just like 10 schools. Of course, not everyone graduated...but just look at the current thread on Open AI the current hottest tech start-up...Stanford drop-out, Harvard drop-out and Duke graduate. Look at the people/founders getting all the press currently...Musk from Penn, Zuckerberg from Harvard, Bezos from Princeton, etc. The amount of VC that flows to graduates of the top 10 schools is like 20x the amount flowing to all the other schools combined.

It is no different than if you are an athlete hoping to make it to the Pros. If you want to play pro football, sure you might get drafted out of North Dakota State, but the number of players drafted out of Alabama guarantees that every pro team is always paying attention to Alabama...while they only pay attention to North Dakota State because one player (Carson Wentz as an example) emerges to generate some buzz.

There will always be the folks arguing that Bezos would still have founded Amazon even if he had gone to the University of New Mexico...but of course he didn't and that is just theoretical. Yes, 98% of the graduates from Ivy League schools will go on to lead normal, decent lives...and some may fail miserably. But everyone thinks they can be in the 2% that succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

You obviously did not read this article.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/

Most top CEOs don't have an Ivy League degree.

Maybe you didn't read my post. I know most Fortune 500 CEOs didn't go to any Ivy League school, but most parents and kids couldn't name 99% of the Fortune 500 CEOs, but they all know Musk, Zuckergerg, Bezos, etc. and articles about them seem to name-drop their schools fairly regularly. I am not trying to justify the Ivy League obsession, but trying to explain it.

Also, many parents/kids in the DMV know about hedge funds, VCs, P/E, top consulting, Goldman Sachs, etc. They aspire to become super-wealthy in those places, not to grind their way to the top of GE or 3M.

Widen. Your. Lens.

Tim Cook - Apple CEO, Auburn, what a grinder.

Darren Woods - ExxonMobil CEO, Texas A&M, what a grinder.

Karen Lynch - CVS Health CEO, Boston College, what a grinder.

Mike Wirth - Chervron CEO, Boston College, what a grinder.

I don't understand your point. I completely agreed most Fortune 500 CEOs don't come from Ivy League schools. However, most kids don't sit around just dreaming about becoming the CEO of CVS someday, and not many Ivy League kids want to work for Fortune 500 companies (outside of Tech).

Yes, they are grinders...that is a great attribute...but Mike Moritz (Wharton) at Sequoia Capital or Steve Schwartzman (Yale) at Blackstone or Ken Griffin (Harvard) at Citadel could buy and sell all three of them combined about 500x over.

I am trying to explain the Ivy League obsession, and you just come back with lists and articles that do nothing to dispel the obsession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe because there are posts that are basically the same as yours two or three times per week? You realize you are feeding the obsession, yes?

That said, I will take a crack. My own view is that because the incredible, outsized outcomes seem to be clustered in elite schools. If you look at the ranks of billionaire hedge fund, P/E, start-up founders, etc., it is shocking how it is clustered in just like 10 schools. Of course, not everyone graduated...but just look at the current thread on Open AI the current hottest tech start-up...Stanford drop-out, Harvard drop-out and Duke graduate. Look at the people/founders getting all the press currently...Musk from Penn, Zuckerberg from Harvard, Bezos from Princeton, etc. The amount of VC that flows to graduates of the top 10 schools is like 20x the amount flowing to all the other schools combined.

It is no different than if you are an athlete hoping to make it to the Pros. If you want to play pro football, sure you might get drafted out of North Dakota State, but the number of players drafted out of Alabama guarantees that every pro team is always paying attention to Alabama...while they only pay attention to North Dakota State because one player (Carson Wentz as an example) emerges to generate some buzz.

There will always be the folks arguing that Bezos would still have founded Amazon even if he had gone to the University of New Mexico...but of course he didn't and that is just theoretical. Yes, 98% of the graduates from Ivy League schools will go on to lead normal, decent lives...and some may fail miserably. But everyone thinks they can be in the 2% that succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

You obviously did not read this article.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/

Most top CEOs don't have an Ivy League degree.

Maybe you didn't read my post. I know most Fortune 500 CEOs didn't go to any Ivy League school, but most parents and kids couldn't name 99% of the Fortune 500 CEOs, but they all know Musk, Zuckergerg, Bezos, etc. and articles about them seem to name-drop their schools fairly regularly. I am not trying to justify the Ivy League obsession, but trying to explain it.

Also, many parents/kids in the DMV know about hedge funds, VCs, P/E, top consulting, Goldman Sachs, etc. They aspire to become super-wealthy in those places, not to grind their way to the top of GE or 3M.

Widen. Your. Lens.

Tim Cook - Apple CEO, Auburn, what a grinder.

Darren Woods - ExxonMobil CEO, Texas A&M, what a grinder.

Karen Lynch - CVS Health CEO, Boston College, what a grinder.

Mike Wirth - Chervron CEO, Boston College, what a grinder.

I don't understand your point. I completely agreed most Fortune 500 CEOs don't come from Ivy League schools. However, most kids don't sit around just dreaming about becoming the CEO of CVS someday, and not many Ivy League kids want to work for Fortune 500 companies (outside of Tech).

Yes, they are grinders...that is a great attribute...but Mike Moritz (Wharton) at Sequoia Capital or Steve Schwartzman (Yale) at Blackstone or Ken Griffin (Harvard) at Citadel could buy and sell all three of them combined about 500x over.

I am trying to explain the Ivy League obsession, and you just come back with lists and articles that do nothing to dispel the obsession.

The obsession is your own.

That would be Schwarzman. I too am a Yale alum, and ate many dinners at Commons, now the Schwarzman Center.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe because there are posts that are basically the same as yours two or three times per week? You realize you are feeding the obsession, yes?

That said, I will take a crack. My own view is that because the incredible, outsized outcomes seem to be clustered in elite schools. If you look at the ranks of billionaire hedge fund, P/E, start-up founders, etc., it is shocking how it is clustered in just like 10 schools. Of course, not everyone graduated...but just look at the current thread on Open AI the current hottest tech start-up...Stanford drop-out, Harvard drop-out and Duke graduate. Look at the people/founders getting all the press currently...Musk from Penn, Zuckerberg from Harvard, Bezos from Princeton, etc. The amount of VC that flows to graduates of the top 10 schools is like 20x the amount flowing to all the other schools combined.

It is no different than if you are an athlete hoping to make it to the Pros. If you want to play pro football, sure you might get drafted out of North Dakota State, but the number of players drafted out of Alabama guarantees that every pro team is always paying attention to Alabama...while they only pay attention to North Dakota State because one player (Carson Wentz as an example) emerges to generate some buzz.

There will always be the folks arguing that Bezos would still have founded Amazon even if he had gone to the University of New Mexico...but of course he didn't and that is just theoretical. Yes, 98% of the graduates from Ivy League schools will go on to lead normal, decent lives...and some may fail miserably. But everyone thinks they can be in the 2% that succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

You obviously did not read this article.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/

Most top CEOs don't have an Ivy League degree.

Maybe you didn't read my post. I know most Fortune 500 CEOs didn't go to any Ivy League school, but most parents and kids couldn't name 99% of the Fortune 500 CEOs, but they all know Musk, Zuckergerg, Bezos, etc. and articles about them seem to name-drop their schools fairly regularly. I am not trying to justify the Ivy League obsession, but trying to explain it.

Also, many parents/kids in the DMV know about hedge funds, VCs, P/E, top consulting, Goldman Sachs, etc. They aspire to become super-wealthy in those places, not to grind their way to the top of GE or 3M.

This. It's a self-reinforcing thing. People who go to those schools and the people who report on them make a point of name dropping the college. They don't mention the college if they don't think it's elite to start with. When we started getting into college search mode I made a point of looking people up who had careers of interest to my kids and so was able to show them how successful people come from all over. But if you just rely on what gets shouted about, you only hear that limited set of schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Full disclosure- I went to Princeton. I grew up in an immigrant household with zero expectation for going to an ivy. And I somehow got in and it was fine. I loved the social aspects and the resources but the education wasn’t all that great. Anyway, forward to the real world and my classmates are doing okay- most of them followed the cookie cutter pathway to law school / med school/ business school. Some have not found their way. Some wasted the education and have done nothing with it. We have some people who are SAHM or working on their 8th year of a phd.

But- in the working world, I’ve worked with people from all schools/ universities and they are thriving (despite not going to ivy leagues.) The world is much bigger than ivys and after a while going to an ivy means nothing : it becomes more about work performance, emotional IQ, and getting the job done. My Princeton degree maybe comes into play when I apply for a job but otherwise who cares?

I think seeing all of this makes me less enthusiastic / intense about my own kid going to an ivy. I don’t quite get the emphasis/ obsession. I’m more concerned with my daughter having a really good education from k-12 so she can tackle any career she wants. I just saw a post about not going to a top private school because it won’t get you into an ivy. Why is it all about ivys? Isn’t the goal of parenting to help your kid have a great foundation/ school environment that works for them? What are you assuming an ivy will do for your kid? Look around your work- did everyone go to an ivy? Is everyone who is successful only from an ivy?

How do you define success? Is it mainly in terms of career? I’m a happily married mother of 3. I have an Ivy PhD but I’m a SAHM these days. So am I one of those people who wasted that education because I didn’t put it toward making the big bucks?

Fwiw I did make a big pivot in my life choices but my days studying at university were some of my happiest, regardless of what came or didn’t come next.