Atlantic essay about Ivy League/income

College Headlines
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If nothing else, it is worth understanding that the path between, say, 9th grade and your career peak is an incredibly long one. And people with successful careers will typically report looking around and seeing peers who followed all sorts of different paths to get there. And of course anyone who went to a highly selective college will know about people for whom that didn’t really work out well. Sometimes dramatically, in the sense they really experienced serious problems. Sometimes just in the sense they didn’t love the experience, maybe ended up with a lot of debt, and reasonably felt like they could have gotten the same or better results without all that.

So it is just factually inaccurate, at least in the US, to think careers can be made at the time you are matriculating at a college. That’s basically like saying you are guaranteed to win a marathon as long as you are leading at the fifth mile.

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How do you know what these students think?

Well, this doesn’t seem like a ‘grinder’ to me, but that’s a highly subjective term. The reality is that there are plenty of people/young adults who are introverted and socially awkward who may have be academically focused, if that’s what you are talking about. Students in college now were in their homes for a protracted period of time during critical years of social development…in other words, I expect some college students’ behaviors were strongly influenced by the pandemic.

Maybe not privilege in terms of money/affluence. But certainly having educated parents and/or adults around with large vocabularies who are around and conversing with the kid are all factors in child development that may tie into what you are talking about. Requiring people to be ‘interesting and engaging’ in order to be deemed successful, or a desirable classmate, or get a job, is just off-putting.

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I believe there are golden tickets, but they can vary across time. For example, right now there are golden tickets for CS students that are exceptionally good at developing AI systems. Those golden tickets are most readily available to students coming out of Berkeley, CMU, MIT, and Stanford but many of the Ivy colleges have access to these opportunities as well.

The thing is, getting these golden tickets relies much more on natural talent rather than grinding. There is a famous expression in basketball that “you can’t teach height”. Likewise, some people have the raw natural talent to be great at CS, and find that work relatively easy. Others may never reach that level no matter how hard they try, and those are the kids that are most likely to burn out.

In summary, getting golden tickets is mostly a matter of timing, skill, and opportunity. Colleges can only help with the last part.

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But who determines who is interesting and engaging? That seems pretty subjective to me. Of course it goes without saying that being smart and attending a prestigious school isn’t enough for success. A lot will rest on things that are harder to measure.

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  1. I stated that this was based on my limited observations with some students at events, not all people.
  2. So Covid was damaging, but there are kids who go up to others and think that discussing their SAT scores is a winning conversation topic. Six years on social development does need to improve or it will hurt people.
  3. There are many jobs that do not require a good personality, but there are many that do, it’s just how life is.
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Well, I would say that many hiring managers might determine that they’d prefer someone who can discuss more than just a limited academic topic. They might want employees who can go to meals or cocktail parties and discuss books, art, culture, etc. I’m simply saying that it’s good to have interests outside of just school.

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Obviously many different types of people end up with successful professional careers.

That being said, I think social skills, including team member and leadership skills, are like any other sort of skill: a few people are “naturals”, but for many people developing good social skills is a matter of a lot of deliberate practice, over many years. And for the non-naturals among us, it can feel awkward at first, when we are not particularly good at what we are trying to do. So it can be tempting to avoid social skill development.

And I do think this is one of the top “advantages” that savvy well-established US families essentially buy for their kids. They know how social skills can be very beneficial, including in career development, and they make a point of choosing institutions–possibly starting in early childhood, and continuing through K-12 and then college–where social skill development is encouraged, with plenty of opportunities for progression (like from rookie to valued team member to team leader over a period of years). And as parents, they do their part to make sure their kids are making use of those opportunities, as appropriate for them.

This is not necessarily at complete odds with individual achievement, but I think there can be some tensions. There is a certain model of kid success that looks like a lone kid outworking their peers and accumulating individual accolades. That involves skill development too, but may not leave much time and energy for social skill development.

And again at the risk of over-using anecdotal evidence, we can see sometimes kids who are basically trying to shortcut this process. Like, instead of joining a popular student club and working their way up to a leadership position over several years, they found a student club and appoint themselves President. Or instead of volunteering for an existing local charity where they would get a lot of opportunities to learn from long-term volunteers and paid staff, they start their own charity. And so on.

OK, so on the one hand, I don’t think we should expect all kids to have the exact same personalities. On the other, I don’t think we should discount the importance of social skill development as one of the core types of development for young people. And I do think sometimes some parents are not putting enough value on social skill development.

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That, and just the environment the kids grew up in. All forms of privilege.

I agree, and don’t discount that at all. What I reacted to, among other statements/conclusions, was calling these types of students ‘insufferable’.

I do think college is a time where many students learn how to comport themselves socially and/or step up their communication ‘game’, and hopefully there are other students/adults around who will model that behavior and even take the time to teach them.

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I’d go so far as to say not having a healthy amount of social skill development is far more often career-limiting than not. Obviously there are exceptions, but in most professional fields, at a certain point advancement is no longer just about individual ability, you are expected to be able to work really well in teams, and eventually lead them; mentor and possibly recruit younger employees; be the chief representative of your employer to some of whatever clients/investors/stakeholders/regulators you might have; and so on.

Again, there are always exceptions. But I do think in most fields, if you get pegged as someone who can’t be trusted with those sorts of things, you are likely to be limited in how far you can advance.

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My problem with the use of the word, “grinds” is that it’s one of those words, like “hippies”, that seem to have evolved over time. Back in the day, we used to refer to the science students as grinds for obvious reasons - they had enormous amounts of material to cover just to keep from falling behind in class. It did affect their ability to b.s. with the rest of us, but it was an artifact of the times that students even had the time to “b.s.”.

What I’m assuming you mean now is the idea that grinding has affected the entire spectrum of the liberal arts and sciences.

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I’m sorry you didn’t like the use of the word insufferable, but simply put, there are students who do need to work on their social skills if they want to succeed outside of just academics.

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Yes, I try not to make it sound like I am blaming kids, or for that matter parents. I think most parents are sincerely trying to do what is best for their kids.

And yes, I think this has always been a core part of the mission of “liberal arts tradition” residential colleges. And it can work! But I do worry some kids are not always making use of those opportunities, maybe more so today.

Although to be fair, anecdotally again, I have heard plenty of stories about kids who maybe start off college in a way that worked for them in HS, find it doesn’t work for them in college anymore, have a bit of crisis of some sort, but then reorient and develop more sustainable practices.

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In general, I don’t disagree. I certainly wouldn’t call those lacking social skills ‘grinders’ though. And hopefully these students will find some open-minded people who will help them improve their social skills.

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I think the word probably means different things to different people - but my teenagers/young adults use it to refer to kids who only care about their grades, are grade grubbers, and talk about their grades and SAT scores as if those things alone make them superior to all others. They also are the students who have few interests, hobbies, or talents outside of just doing well in school and therefore can only talk about school.

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I am basing my use of the word grinders on what my own teenagers/young adults have described to me in high school and college, I realize that can mean different things to different people. Not simply lacking social skills, what I am describing is kids who prioritize grades above all else and have little else to talk about socially.

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I’m sure it would be impossible to come up with a universally-acceptable definition.

Regardless of the terms we use, what I have observed that concerns me is the distinction being understanding the work a certain task is going to require from you, and believing as a general rule that the key to success in school, or indeed life, is outworking your peers.

Unfortunately, sooner or later most of us encounter people who can succeed at things without as much effort as it takes us to succeed at the same things. Sometimes this is just a matter of different natural aptitudes. But often I think it is also at least in part a matter of developing efficient habits. Like, they are very good at assessing what is really required to succeed in a class, and are flexible enough to adopt whatever approach is necessary, and good at managing their time generally, and all that adds up to a certain efficiency that makes it look relatively easy for them.

Again, all this is learnable, but you have to know you are supposed to be learning it.

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Ohh. Grade grubbing. Yes, the lexicon does get kind of slippery over time. We’re on the same page as far as that being “insufferable”.

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Ha! I also agree.

There are plenty of grade grubbers who are highly skilled socially though!

And let’s face it, at the Ivies (the focus of this thread) where A’s are given out like candy, it seems like grade grubbing isn’t really necessary. But I’m sure there are still some students who behave this way.

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I think @Mom200309 cleared up what she meant and it wasn’t what either of us thought she meant. In my book of words and phrases, grinding/=grade grubbing. :smile:

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With regard to the Ivies, I think they are the same type of kids who would apply to every Ivy (those doing it for financial need not included) despite the fact that they are very different schools from one another, for the “prestige” alone and probably think that going to a school ranked 9 vs 12 in US News will have a huge life impact.

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