Anonymous wrote:If you attend an Ivy school, you need to think strategically and make "connections" that you can use after graduation and later in life. The joke is on you if you can't.

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Anonymous wrote:Parents of a golf athlete at an Ivy here. Almost all of the team members are from rich families and UMC. No team members are from MC/LMC. They also hang out with other rich regular students. Poor students are not invited, according to DC.

Duh. It's GOLF.

Anonymous wrote:Very few rich white kids left in the ivies due to DEI and FGLI initiatives. They have found other places to go.

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So called 'connections' is BS for the most part for normal middle class folks.

Exactly

If you come from LC/MC, what do you bring to the table that those rich white kids want to hang out with you? It is like a person who is fat, broke and lazy but yet wants to have a beautiful model girlfriend. The real world does not operate that way.

My DS, from a MC family, just finished his first-year at an Ivy school as a recruited athlete and this is what he told me: 1- Wealthy kids wanted to hang out with him because they want to be "cool"; 2- They can tag with him to cool parties and talk to pretty girls that they can't do that on their own; 3) My DS can play guitar and sing, so girls are naturally drawn to him (it also happened in HS), and those wealthy kids want to hang out with DS because they want to be like him. One of the wealthy kids, whose father is a CEO of a F500 company, flew him to Vail during winter break in a private jet to stay at his parents' vacation home for two weeks and gave him 10K spending money. He also promises DS that his mother will get DS an internship if DS is his friend during the next four years in college and beyond.

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So called 'connections' is BS for the most part for normal middle class folks.

Exactly

If you come from LC/MC, what do you bring to the table that those rich white kids want to hang out with you? It is like a person who is fat, broke and lazy but yet wants to have a beautiful model girlfriend. The real world does not operate that way.

My DS, from a MC family, just finished his first-year at an Ivy school as a recruited athlete and this is what he told me: 1- Wealthy kids wanted to hang out with him because they want to be "cool"; 2- They can tag with him to cool parties and talk to pretty girls that they can't do that on their own; 3) My DS can play guitar and sing, so girls are naturally drawn to him (it also happened in HS), and those wealthy kids want to hang out with DS because they want to be like him. One of the wealthy kids, whose father is a CEO of a F500 company, flew him to Vail during winter break in a private jet to stay at his parents' vacation home for two weeks and gave him 10K spending money. He also promises DS that his mother will get DS an internship if DS is his friend during the next four years in college and beyond.

So you need a hook not just to get in these places, but also later to be part of the beneficial 'networking' environments people see there.

FWIW my kid goes to a lower tier private school and has classmates with the same sort of wealth and connected parents. Actually, you can see this at publics too. Lots of the MC athletes hang out with the fraternities (who are kids of donors and legacies and wealthy) etc. NONE of this dynamic is exclusive to Ivys.

Yes, but you can make it "in" if you're exceptionally outgoing, good looking and charismatic.
My son's a senior at a top private high school and although we're upper middle class (at best), he moves seamlessly with the popular rung of the super rich. He's invited to Nantucket and Aspen and Europe with classmates. They adore him because he's super funny, deprecating, etc and I think most importantly---weirdly confident. He doesn't feel inferior to anyone.

Now, I'm not sure if any of this is actually to be admired. We (the parents) aren't fans of aiming to be friends with the rich and popular but it's how he's wired. That's another conversation.

I have two other kids who are very different.

Agree 💯 - I see this with my own kids. Some are just better at this than others.

Also agree w ppl who say this is life. Good to have your kids socialize and do ECs that involve lots of interpersonal interaction.

It's just good looks. Young people care if you're hot. If you are, they'll do anything to appeal to you. Then apply this to jobs, and the rest of life...
If you aren't hot, get back to grunt work.

Most of “good looks” is about grooming, clothing choices and signifiers of wealth/class.

Yes, tell your kid that. Not everyone can be hot.

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me or is the phrase “rich white” almost a slur nowadays?
Rarely is something nice said about someone labeled that way.

Anonymous wrote:The wealth on this graph at Brown doesn't surprise me. My family friend's son is at Brown. Lots of uber wealthy kids and many kids or nieces/nephews of celebrities. The rich/adjacent celebrity kids not surprisingly hang out together and form cliques based on where they holiday and live or have their second homes.

Anonymous wrote:The wealth on this graph at Brown doesn't surprise me. My family friend's son is at Brown. Lots of uber wealthy kids and many kids or nieces/nephews of celebrities. The rich/adjacent celebrity kids not surprisingly hang out together and form cliques based on where they holiday and live or have their second homes.

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Anonymous wrote:The good news is that there are other cliques at Ivies and SLACs besides athletes and rich kids! There are also different flavors of minority kid cliques, the LGBTQ clique, the theater kid clique, the Woke Kid clique.

Yes if you are a middle class white suburban straight kid you might have trouble fitting in… not least because you are the rarest type of kid to get accepted. How did you even get in here, bro?

Middle class white suburban kids are one of the most abundant at the top schools after wealthy people who don't need financial aid.

Those are mostly athletes. I meant middle class white suburban straight kids who are not athletes.

A lot of the ivies have a warped u shaped income distribution, where MC is at the bottom of the U, and the wealthy part of the U much higher than the lower income part of the U.

Basically, those schools are mostly made up of full pay rich.

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Anonymous wrote:Parents of a golf athlete at an Ivy here. Almost all of the team members are from rich families and UMC. No team members are from MC/LMC. They also hang out with other rich regular students. Poor students are not invited, according to DC.

Not my kid's experience on equestrian. We are FA fam, and some kids are very rich in equestrian. The (likely because who knows really) richest kid was the nicest and most down to earth. Another middle class kid was the most clique-ish.

Of my kid's general friend group, she is on the poorer end (we ar MC). That group has LMC, MC, UMC, well off, rich and super rich. All nice kids, and a great group of friends.

Anonymous wrote:Parents of a golf athlete at an Ivy here. Almost all of the team members are from rich families and UMC. No team members are from MC/LMC. They also hang out with other rich regular students. Poor students are not invited, according to DC.

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Anonymous wrote:Most top colleges are like this. The richest students, across incomes, hang out with one another. The athletes, usually white outside of mainstream sports, hang out with one another. The Middle Class figure it out. The fgli hang out with the fgli.

All colleges are like this.

This was not me or DC's experience at our ivies.

There is no way someone with grammar this bad went to an Ivy.

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Anonymous wrote:It’s not surprising that people who think you need to “make connections” with affluent peers are being shut out of some social circles.

If you are there to have fun, make friends, and be yourself, you’ll end up with a like-minded friend group from a variety of backgrounds.

Bingo.

Add work hard to that mix, and you'll have both a like-minded friend group and the skills to take advantage of a degree from a school that also opens doors. Win/win.