I don’t see this thread as depressing at all, except for the losses which were independent of school choice, like Intparent’s brother; I’m with brantly. I think someone (like my D) going to a top school and then not choosing the expected path is just fine, really.
Such an assessment must start with one’s personal criteria for one’s “success,” no matter the school/s one attended.
I know a number of people who graduated from top schools and are now working for non-profits for crappy pay or are doing something that doesn’t necessarily use their degree. They love their work and I consider them highly successful people who do, indeed, “live up to their school.” It doesn’t necessarily follow that a degree from Yale means prestige, power or wealth, and that when it doesn’t, the person has somehow fallen short.
And I should say here that my daughter has a very high GPA at Wellesley College, is majoring in medieval studies and French, and is wondering whether she might have a religious vocation. I consider her highly successful and yet, she is unlikely to be wealthy or powerful, and you’ll never read about her anywhere but on this site.
I know at least two people who went to tip top colleges and wound up in non-traditional and not-well-paying jobs. One was my HS classmate, voted Most Likely to Succeed. He went to Harvard and, for the last 40 or so years, has been a Raffi-type of singer/songwriter for children. The other individual went to Yale and has, for at least 25 years that I know of, taught science to three- and four-year-olds at my son’s nursery school.
Wow, after a few threads about marriage woes, I’m thinking we really miss some of the small good things that add up. Some of us are the generation told to stop and smell the roses- and though that was alongside the expectation we maximize our potential, it was a good point. The seemingly small things can matter.
The way I like to look at it, we’re part of the universe and some continuum. It’s nice if we could cure cancer or solve world hunger or sell the most widgets or write the next great novel. Or get some acclaim. (Or our kids get into great colleges and great jobs.) But what really might lead to “better” can be the things we barely notice, much less take credit for. We can’t just think of ourselves as 'big" or “small,” in the same way we think of wealth as big and some social worker ten cubicles down as small. Our own potential impact is more than that.
Yale isn’t only valuing grads who go on to power. If only I could find their quote that leadership can influence in seemingly small ways that have wider impact- the little league coach, the minister, a great teacher.
Donna; you have had more influence here on CC, through your openness, than I think you realize. The understanding you gave me translates to my own thoughts and actions. And I hope that then spreads in its own way.
My father (Ivy and Ivy med) was also a loss. But I like to think that somewhere in his life, something he did encouraged others. And that that, in turn, led to some positives being spread again, somewhere.
Then there are the people who appear to be models of success to the outside world - great educations, careers with prestige and nice incomes. But, if you know them, they are not good people at all. We probably all know at least an example or two we’ve crossed paths with in our own lives. To the outside world and even those that know them casually, they are seen as a “success”. For those who get a closer peek under the covers, yeah…no.
This is a key point.
I have often been accused of “not living up to my education.” But it’s not because of failure. It’s because I only worked part-time for 20 years while raising my children – a choice that I made voluntarily and have never regretted, even though it means that the full-time jobs I have been able to get after I finished raising my children have been far less impressive than the jobs I could have had if I had never left the full-time workforce.
I also know a woman, a graduate of the same college that I attended, who has been accused of “not living up to her education” because she became a high school teacher – a career that she could have prepared for at a much less prestigious and less expensive college.
I don’t think either of us are failures. People are not obligated to “live up to their education.” The point of getting a good education is to expand your choices in life, not to limit them.
Then there are also students who just don’t make it through those schools for whatever reason, and never graduate.
I think the original question is a valuable one. I look at just my family and I don’t see the connection between school and success - (material, wealth, or happiness) There are too many variables in life that impact our successes in life.
Sibling #1: OOS high ranking undergad university (much on scholarship) - top 5 MBA program. Took out loans and worked his tail off (we are from a working class family). First in our extended family (cousins, aunts, uncles) to go off to college. Married classmate from MBA program. She became SAH wife – then finally SAHM and did not use her degrees for 30 years - he went on to middle management and upper management making good $. They were happy and financially secure -with the trappings of their “position” in life. Lots of social functions and a lovely “lifestyle”. Consolidations and mergers in his late 40’s left him looking for a new position. Found one after 21 months out of work at a comparable level but a repeat job loss 3 years later (new company moved overseas after a takeover) and he found himself in his mid 50’s and unemployed again. Out of work more than a year the second time - repeated job loses destroyed savings, credit, and finances. Never quite got back on his feet - stress compounded other problems and they divorced after 29 years of marriage - they are both struggling financially and socially. Had kids later in their marriage so now have kids in HS (twins and younger sibling one year behind) with no way to pay for college beyond what they socked away in 529’s during their heydays of big $ (not enough since they were paying on the big house and vacations and thought they still had their “peak earning years ahead” - but more then many kids who didn’t have the income they had). They are hard working and smart but now barely making it in life and both are quite unhappy. Late 50’s both working jobs to “get by” but no “career” and health problems beginning to appear - related to normal aging and stress. Their kids should be OK and have enough $ for the local state school (their school careers took a hit with the job loses and divorce - although they are smart kids - not good GPAs). I don’t think they “lived up to their school” - in that they did not find lasting success or happiness.
Sibling #2 went to local state school and commuted from home. (saw older sibling take on debt and find academic success but was not the same level of student) Graduated and then went to trade school - his calling. He is hard working, financially secure for life (puts away lots of $ - easy when he makes LOTS of $), and is happy. His spouse graduated from a near Ivy and is a SAHM – worked for a few years in her 20s but has not worked since (and likely will never go back to paid work - she does charity work). She spends lots of time “at the club” so she may be using that degree in other ways (networking, organizing for the charities, giving her kids lots of advantages and experiences etc…) - but I do not know that she “lived up to her degree” - and the debt her parents went into to finance that degree.
Sibling #3 went through a local hospital nursing program near our home to get her nursing license. Completed her RN training at a local university in the city where she worked to get her BS in nursing with her employer paying much of the cost. She has a flexible schedule and earns a good living - certainly not what our older siblings earn/were earning. Her husband went to state flagship and has a fine job with the same company for 26 years. Her family is living comfortably in the middle class for her area (upper middle class by many definitions) and she appears very happy.
I went to a LAC that was pricey for our working class family (some guilt now that I see what my parents must have been going through to afford this for me). I could have earned same degree from our local state college for much less $. Earned degree and became a teacher – very happy but not the $ of many of my roommates, sorority sisters, and siblings. I make the least $ of the 4 of us and had the most pricey undergrad degree. I did gain confidence and independence at that LAC. I feel that I use the “soft skills” that I learned at my pricey LAC on a daily basis. I could be making the same $ and be at the same place with a much less expensive degree. Masters from local university. I don’t know if I “lived up to my school” but I do find that I am successful in my career choice and happy.
My kids are the oldest of the next generation – strange since i was the youngest. Just typing this out has made me more comfortable in our frank $ discussions with our HS junior and the word “prestige” and “university” have never been together in a sentence for her. I do feel “fit” is important.
Alumni magazines are not a good way to judge what graduates are doing. But the every five year annual that Harvard puts out with reunions is much more revealing. I read it cover to cover every time. While many have gone on to be doctors and lawyers and such there are plenty who have taken the road less travelled. One gave up his corporate life to make furniture. There are others (of both sexes) who have chosen to stay at home with kids for long stretches and have never quite had the mover and shaker jobs you might expect.
I’m at peace with what I did with my education. I’m no Frank Lloyd Wright, but I solve problems and have a little niche guiding recent immigrants through the process of legalizing work that either they have done (or just as often) previous owners have done in the houses they have purchased. I’m proud that I have never asked for a variance that wasn’t approved, because I never let my clients ask for something unreasonable. I don’t work just with rich people though I do get those clients from time to time. Even regular folks need architects and why shouldn’t they get a smart one?
@intparent - I find this thread very interesting. There is much more to happiness and sense of fulfillment than the school one attended. However, as said above, things happen in life that are not in one’s control or a result of just poor judgement. Medical/mental health issues or just bad things that really can throw any one a curve ball that one may not be able to overcome. I feel that resilience is VERY important. But how much of resilience is nature and how much is nurture is hard to know.
An Ivy grad – who always thought very highly of himself – was accepted into an Ivy PhD but left with a Master’s (done only when the student isn’t measuring up.) Bitter and angry, he taught high school for a while, then went to another Ivy for an EdD. He got a tenure-track job at a large east coast public university, but failed to publish enough, get high enough student evaluations, or endear himself to his department to gain tenure. Bitter and angry again, he left academia and stopped working, letting his wife support them. (Luckily, she, a public school grad, was a successful doctor.) His bitterness and anger eventually contributed to the breaking down of their marriage. Lucky for him, his wife was generous in their divorce. He does not need to work; he’s still bitter and angry.
The lesson: going to an Ivy does not make you an automatic winner in life.
The real question here is very philosophical, in that it comes down to 'what is the good life?". It is kind of ironic that the top schools like the ivies, elite LAC’s and so forth, have writers who write books on the topic, historians who write about people like Thoreau and his ideas, poets who write poems about it, people who write stories about it, yet a lot of going to these schools, especially these days, is about the idea of a ‘good life’ being the high paid position, whether it is the doctor (used to be lawyer, not so much any more), the business tycoon, the person with the MBA working as a high level management consultant or investment banker. To a tiger parent, a professor who changes kids lives, a high school teacher who makes a difference to kids in the inner city, a poet, a musician bringing music to kids who never see it, a doctor working for doctors without borders, have not lived up to their school, but is that true? Is the person working for McKimsey, whose operations often result in the loss of 10’s of thousands of jobs, or scummy business practices like insurance companies screwing people out of the money their policy is supposed to pay so the companies can increase their bottom line, living up to a school that claims to try and create well rounded kids? Are those who graduated from the elite schools, and created things like our Vietnam policy and other missteps, actually an example of living up to the school? Is Robert Moses, who went to Yale, and quite famous (and infamous) an example of
The problem is in the assumption that the good life means being someone whose name is well known (sometimes doesn’t seem to matter if it is infamous or famous, ironically), someone who has headed some big company or became famous for doing something ‘great’, or has achieved huge amounts of wealth, really living well or the good life? If someone does music that makes people forget about their troubles, brings them some joy, without being like Madonna, is that a waste?
The problem is people in the past, and to this day, turn the good life into something that is tangible, power and influence, money, whatever, I guess because that is a lot easier to see than fulfillment or actually making a difference in a lot of cases. When I see a path, like a kid that went to a top elementary school, went to a top private school, went to elite schools for college and grad school, was that because that is what they wanted to do, or were they pushed into it because their parent wanted the prestige and such? If pushed into it, I could argue that that alone is meaningless, and laurels like making a lot of money in investment banking is a lot less impressive than the person who chose to use their background to help others because that is what called them…It is funny, there was a family in the private school my son went to, the father came from a modest background, he went to an elite college, ended up quite a success in my area, well known for shopping malls…and his kids were an absolute mess, two of them got thrown out of the school for dealing or using drugs, another kid was a disciplinary nightmare, from what I heard from other parents who knew the couple, both parents were caught up in the prestige, yet shared very little together (reputedly both of them were serial adulterers), is that an example of living up to the school, or is the person who actually tried to understand what they hopefully learned in general ed courses there, and realized there was something to helping others, making others feel better, or even a life of the mind, rather than the wallet…I think someone who finds their passion, finds a way to use what they learned to help others or even help themselves, has lived up to their school, whatever it is, if it helped shape them into finding that, those on the other hand who simply followed the herd of lemmings towards the brass ring, not so much (and yes, some people who followed the brass ring in fact did many things to change the world, in big and small ways. I am a lot more impressed by Bill Gates and what he is trying to do with his money, than necessarily his role in the development of the PC and so forth, or the person who achieves power and fame and then seems to want to spend time figuring out what it can do for others. There is nothing wrong with achieving, but achievement for achievement sake is hollow as hell.
Bill Gates is an example of someone who got the brass ring and then walked away from it – his calling and business ideas were more important to him than his degree from a prestigious school.
Well, I’m a JD from a decent law school and I’ve been homeschooling for the past 9 years. 
I was steered away from teaching as a kid and somehow I ended up there (sort of) anyway . . . wouldn’t change it!
Years back, an alum of my law school was executed by lethal injection. He was listed among the other alumni deaths. I thought it was likely a first for my law school.
I was wondering how the late Justice Scalia would have done had he spent his career in private practice. Would he have been a partner at a white shoe firm making millions a year? Or, despite his brilliance, would he have been unable to bring in business and thus destined to be a lower paid “service partner”? Would he have ticked off a major client and gotten himself fired?
Ivy peer LAC undergrad BA in a field I left two years later, Ivy MS in a second field that I left two years later because of marriage and a move out of the country. Definitely do have occasional regrets about not living up to what I thought those two experiences were supposed to be getting me ready for. But I also have to recognize that my own natural temperament, the times I lived in, the places where I lived, and the choices I made all led to the life I have now, and there are some very good things in this life that I would not be willing to lose by going back and doing things differently.
Wow.
I haven’t seen many studies of it, usually studies come out that show how going to an elite college ends up with the people making more money and so forth, what I would love to see is a study looking at the graduates of the elite schools and quantifying what happens to them, what they end up doing, and looks at the eventual outcome, using measurements, like financial success, but also factoring in things like personal happiness, relationship success, and other factors and contrasting that to people who didn’t go to those schools…how do they match up? Are they happier as a whole (and yes, that would have to be defined, they would need to come up with standardized ways of reporting that, which might not be easier)…my guess would be that you might find that graduates of those schools on some planes might be less happy than those who didn’t go, if only because to get to those schools kids often are put under tremendous pressure and may never learn to be happy. There is a very large church here in NYC, it is a rarity (it is a kind of mega church, I think it is presbytyrian) , I know someone who goes there,and he said it is full of people who were pushed towards the brass/gold ring, went to the elite schools, and are for the first time finding there is more to life than that kind of success.
I’m not sure I like the underlying implication, did the end justify the means. How does one “live up” to their school? Does this mean all Ivy educated SAHM’s (to toss in a grenade) waste their education? And what about those brilliant criminals? Going to an Ivy means just that. You went to and graduate from that particular university. Nothing more, nothing less.
I hope no one feels that pressure to “live up to one’s school”. Wow. If so, when does it stop? When do you get to be the person who just happened to have gone to an Ivy?
I like @happymomof1’s take on her life although I have no regrets. You live your life on your own terms, be grateful that your education gave you choices and you got to hang out with some great, smart, thoughtfu, articulate students for four years.