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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe it's too early to tell or maybe she just didn't capitalize on all the opportunities (I suspect very few do) but it most certainly has not [i]changed her life[/i]. The thing I do notice is overall a higher percentage of deeply committed pre-med students than my son's peers at the state flagship. Other than that there's this laughable idea that an elite college is a golden ticket to a $150,000 job offer and a rich spouse and that's just not accurate. The plum six-figure job offers are scarce and go to the connected and elbowy overachievers with perfect grades. And generally the rich socialize with the rich. If you want your child in that orbit they need to be in that orbit by 9th grade at some ritzy prep or boarding school.

I have a niece at Cornell who is close with my daughter and she has had a similar experience. At Cornell the rich are in the rich kid sororities and fraternities.

A few years back we were caught up in the admissions frenzy but in retrospect it seems so nutty. I'm [now] far more impressed with a parent who tells me their kid is at a less selective school but just got into medical school than some Ivy League parent who tells me their ubiquitous kid is going into "consulting" for $60,000 a year or some second rate grad program.[/quote]

My kid went to a T15 LAC (not going to name it here:-).) I'm not sure if that qualifies as "elite," but it's a good school. It had a mix of very rich kids, some poor kids on FA, and mostly upper-middle class kids, and they all seemed to bond and get along. No barriers between rich and poor. Most of them weren't particularly status-conscious or interested in getting rich, at least not as undergraduates. In fact, getting rich was rather frowned upon as bourgeois. Kid met future spouse at school, married young, one partner earning $200K a year at 24, the other in a really good grad program, both very happy, lots of friends and interests. Perhaps they got a bit lucky.

There are many ways to be successful. Your DD must be very bright and hard-working to have gotten into an elite school, and she probably got an excellent education. That counts for a great deal, even if she isn't making a lot of money. An elite education is in itself an achievement that will always enrich your child's life in non-monetary ways. And don't be discouraged if she isn't blazing trails a few years out of school. As she gets older, that education will assert itself. If she has children, her education will help her to nourish their minds. If she joins a book club, she will enrich the experience of other members. [/quote]

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