Reply to What would you advised a teen who is looking for a college major with good earning potential?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "What would you advised a teen who is looking for a college major with good earning potential?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You know what the upper middle class does? They get into the best, most elite college they can. Because your college matters a heck of a lot more than your major. If you are a graduate of HYP or AWS, you don't need to major in "finance" (in fact, these elite schools don't offer pre-professional degrees at all), but you can major philosophy and simply sign up for an on campus interview your senior year for companies like Goldman or McKinsey. I graduated from AWS, and I remember signing up to interview at a number of these top firms at the career counseling office. Once you get admitted into these tippy top tier schools, these companies come looking for you--not the other way around.[/quote]

What's HYP and AWS?[/quote]

Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore--these are reliably elite undergraduate institutions (at universities and liberal arts colleges) that have cache in higher socio-economic brackets. If you are from the west coast, I would also throw in Stanford and Pomona.[/quote]
And less than 1% of the population will ever graduate from these schools. So, not really relevant to, well, the vast majority of people.[/quote]
And only happens if your  parents are already wealthy. They filter for social class clues to make sure you are a fit for their wealthy clients. Being smart has little to do with it. I went to HYP from working class, and the paths for my friends from UMC very different from those of us on aid.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/23/why-are-working-class-kids-less-likely-to-get-elite-jobs-they-study-too-hard-at-college/?utm_term=.64d98efb1a92[/quote]

How was your experience going from working class to HYP?  Which one did you go to?  What did you study and what do you do now?  In retrospect, would you have chosen to go elsewhere?[/quote]

Hah too identifying:). But like many working class I studied something practical (engineering) which meant I could get a job without further schooling or debt. But i gravitated to safety of big company jobs (bc early on a month or two without pay meant I was back in the sticks with my parents -- no savings or means to pay rent.  I work at IT for DOD contractor, honestly a job I likely would have even if I had gone to state flagship school. So I think outcome was about the same, I didn't leverage the Ivy degree very well at all and too outside those circles while in college to make career connections that matter.

If I was a cute woman, I suspect the outcome would have been different -- just how the work works, but I see any examples of folks marrying up. Honestly my DW is much smarter and from a higher class than I was (which had some complications when bringing family together), and coming from Ivy I think gave me some cache while dating.

I am happy with my experience (liked it a lot while I was there) but I do wish I had made better use of it. Might have been happier overall going to state, getting a job 4 hours from home in nearest small city, and never venturing out. Would have been financially far more comfortable -- ignorance is bliss sort of thing. [/quote]

How do you imagine it would have been different as a cute female?

I am a very good looking female engineer.

I wonder how you thought that would change your experience.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics