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If you went to top schools but your kids are attending a lower tier, are you worried about downward mobility?
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Anonymous
Because these schools have the programs she’s interested in and I don’t think the peer quality is low at all. |
Anonymous
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My kids don't have the drive I had as a young person because they've lived a privileged life due to my drive.
I grew up poor. I learned early in life that education was going to be my ticket out of my small, backwards town. Education = freedom & choices. I grinded nonstop in school to be at the top of my class. I started doing odd jobs at age 10 to save money. I learned to lie to my parents about how much money I'd made because they used me as their mini ATM. I hid 50% of what I made and then brought the rest home. I worked multiple jobs once I was old enough to get a work permit and get hired (~age 15). I was able to go to an ivy for college and go into a top grad school after. I wanted to give my kids the life I never had, but it's a double-edged sword for sure. They are not spoiled brats because I made sure of that, but they don't know struggle. They don't know poverty. They don't know the anger of working for 8 hours in the heat & humidity of the South to earn $30 only to have $15 of it taken by your mom & dad to buy cigarettes and beer. They've never gone to bed hungry or experienced a Thanksgiving without food or a Christmas without gifts. They've never even experienced a freakin' Spring Break without a trip! They're smart kids and they do well in school, but they don't have the drive. My oldest does to an extent. She went to an ivy for undergrad and is now in law school at Penn. But she lives a life vastly different than many of her peers because she's never had to have a job to pay for school or an apartment. My middle two are at mid-tier colleges where they are doing great. Both are also very happy, which is really all any parent ever wants. It's a blessing that they don't have to worry about the things I did at their ages. I try to make sure they understand that as much as possible. I also try to stress the importance of smart financial decisions and building generational wealth. Stress the importance of continued success so that their kids can live the same types of lives they have. |
Anonymous
It's a legitimate question. Clemson isn't even Syracuse or Pitt level. |
Anonymous
Considering that the Fortune 500 is a broad grouping and is weighted toward companies that do boring things like making toasters, baked beans, insulation, aluminum, etc it's not a surprise that you see a lot of state college grads there. Ivy grads tend to gravitate to the more interesting work in high finance, consulting, tech, etc. |
Anonymous
I never said it was one of these, this poster (you) assumed, to criticize. |
Anonymous
Irrelevant. The premise of the question is about downward mobility and lower quality lifestyle, not boring vs interesting work. P.S. consulting and the lower levels of banking are boring AF. |
Anonymous
Having lived in South Carolina for years I can assure you that there are plenty of people who are well off who went to Clemson. The OP’s question is ridiculous. I am not from SC and attended a school that DCUMers think is far superior to Clemson. |
Anonymous
| Statistically, it’s really unlikely. We’re an upper middle class family, both parents harvard alum. Our kids will end up fine going to “worse” schools. They’ll take up safe degrees in engineering and applied math and likely outearn us. I’m not expecting them to reach wealthy status, but it would be nice. |
Anonymous
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No. In the first place, the elite colleges have changed dramatically in their intake since the 1990s, deliberately so. It's a social engineering program, not meritocracy, or to put it better, much less of a meritocracy it may have been 20-30 years ago. So many kids who'd have gone to the Ivies are now at state schools or other private colleges. Making this comparison to our generation's experiences with elite colleges is apples and oranges.
Having said that, I know quite a few wealthy families, either self made via businesses or professions, or established family wealth, and their kids go all over the place. In certain parts of the country, especially the South, going to the flagship state university is all that really matters, followed by the fraternity/sorority. And in my profession, the most successful people come from a huge range of colleges. The Ivies do not have a stranglehold and whatever presence they may have had is rapidly being diluted. |
Anonymous
| I feel like most people on this thread have never set foot on the Clemson campus. They have no idea. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
This level of rankings obsession is like Zeno’s paradox of increasingly minute distances. |
Anonymous
… where they cover making toasters, baked beans, insulation, aluminum, etc and not even a the decision-makers. |
Anonymous
I love it when people call out others for being "rankings obsessed" and the others in question have said absolutely nothing about rankings. |
Anonymous
DP. Both the OP and the “Clemson isn’t even Syracuse or Pitt level” poster either directly mention rankings or imply them. |