Yeah it’s no coincidence that people talk about Silicon Valley as being a place where women are vastly outnumbered by men, but while “the odds are good, the goods are odd.” [fill in joke about engineers and Aspergers spectrum disorder] A normal, extraverted, confident leader-type personality can do well even with more mediocre technical intrinsics. They’re better with clients, with teams, in sales, etc.
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Adding…they also don’t need every technical skill. A LOT of what engineers do is stuff learned on the job…and that includes the culture of the company. My husband hired engineers for his company. The ones who didn’t make it past the probationary period were the ones who thought they already knew it all. And also, who did not have those soft skills needed to interact with others well.
Some of his best hires were folks (like him) who did blue collar types of jobs before entering engineering.
No one ever got turned down for a job because they waited tables or worked in the dining hall.
Full disclaimer here. I LOVED working in the dining halls. Very collegial group of both adults and students working there.
And it’s my opinion that every person should do some kind of service job. Waiting tables teaches you an awful lot about how to deal with people.
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And you really get to know people from all walks of life, and learn they everyone is a person with a unique story. And MANY people from all classes have outstanding characters.
Signed - so thankful for my kids’ friend group. Most of their parents will never crack 6 figures, but they are some of the finest people you’ll ever meet. I’d be honored if they brought someone like that home and into our family as a spouse.
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Really? He did marry the star of their class (Gates Cambridge scholar, Supreme Court clerk, etc.). And just guessing, but I doubt it was his looks that carried the day. I think there’s something hugely attractive about driven kids of either gender who’ve escaped from poverty and dysfunctional families through their own efforts and achieved enormous success. Look at the similar memoirs by Tara Westover (Educated) and Rob Henderson (Troubled). Regardless of politics, I’d have no problem with my kids bringing home either of them, if they met in college (or after).
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My 28 year old dated a guy she met in college for almost 8 years, she is now dating his friend who never went to college, and I’d 5 years younger than her (she’s a COA). My 26 year old son and his 4 year college boyfriend broke up a week after graduation. My 23 year old met her current boyfriend at orientation 6 years ago, I think they might marry eventually (they’re in grad school, Boston and Florida, DPT/chiropractic school). Let’s face it, most (at least here) don’t marry until their 30’s (which I think is wonderful, we got married at 28 so one of the first in our friend group, wedated for 5+ years).
I totally agree with all you’re saying here and didnt mean to imply that those values were in any way exclusive to the upper middle class. But there are also more “middle class” values like “workers vs management”, “union rules say X,” etc. that are at least somewhat in tension with what I meant to describe as professional class values.
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Women often get jammed up on this timeline. Certain life choices like large family are absolutely foreclosed, and even biological children can get foreclosed. I would completely lose my mind if my daughter dated a guy for 8 years.
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going to take a wild stab and get this thread back on track (according to the title).
S21 worked/interned every summer (and one semester) for amounts that I would have not thought possible. Allowed him the freedom to spend his spare time however he wanted during the school year. Gymnastics turned to wakeboarding turned to sailing, all through the University clubs. As has been discussed, he comes from his frugality directly from his parents and has a nice investment pot before graduation. I pulled the university determined amount for off campus housing from his 529 and offered that to him. He used more or less on his housing and food. Probably more now as he is valuing convenience items he can afford.
D24 is a very different situation. She’s even more frugal, but works over the summer and saves more than enough of it. I offer her UBER gift cards to get off campus and ensure she is participating in events. I’ll pay for any ‘necessity’ to ensure she doesn’t try and go without. She’s on campus with a dining plan now, but if she moves off campus it will be a challenge to find the right balance.
For both kids I pay for flights home on any break they want. I had to made an exception recently for D24. Her birthday present was a recent flight home, since it was to see her boyfriend instead of the family.
TLDR; I cover what I deem the basics for a certain quality of life, including family visits, their summer jobs are enough to cover the rest. This was eerily similar to the agreements my wife and I both had with our parents during our college years.
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Why? My DD and her husband were a number for about 6 years before they got married. And it worked out fine. Both were completing their post undergrad educations in different states. It worked out.
This thread sure has jumped the shark!
But I am, so let me take a stab at this based on not just my experience but also that of my friends and acquaintances who are senior leaders at various Fortune 500 firms.
Engineering is very egalitarian, and people really don’t care where you graduated from. They care primarily about your skills - both hard and soft.
“Educational pedigree” is likely not what you think it to be. Hiring managers may value certain programs from schools that you may not consider elite at all. @DadTwoGirls is a great contributor to these forums and he often points out how he (a graduate of two very elite schools) has been surrounded by graduates of all kinds of schools throughout his career. This experience is very typical.
Of course, an elite school provides many benefits so I’m not in any way discounting such an education - I’m only saying you may want to reset your expectations regarding what you want out of it (for your daughter).
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Lol I got married at 28, had my first at 29 (not planned), had #4 and #5 at 34. Our extended family is mostly divorce free, I support waiting because people change more early on. To me true love means knowing each others absolute worst qualities and it still not being a deal breaker. Better to find out earlier than later.
Yes, as an example of other ways to fill their hours - some kids play club sports which can take a lot of time but provide lots of positive benefits. My kid is on a nationally ranked club sports team (yes her sport does this) where practice is 9-12 hours a week and she travels with her team several weekends each quarter to in- and out-of-state tournaments. The community (coaches, teammates and alumnae) provided by this team has been nothing short of life changing for her. Not to mention the mental and physical health benefits of such exercise. She also serves on a club sports budget committee as well as manages the social media and does other jobs for the team. She has worked during summers in paid research positions on campus, but has not had school year part time jobs, because of these other commitments (plus academics! lol)
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I agree. BUT remember, your daughter could have a boss and a number of coworkers who are not graduates of elite schools. Or friends. And they are wonderful people!
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Yes, wonderful people. As coworkers of friends. But not as material for assortive mating.
So let’s get back to the original conundrum. What is the correct allowance to teach a young woman about the concept of thrift while simultaneously teaching her that those who must actually resort to thrift are not of her level?
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Dating app description: Seeking Intellectual elite who wont pay $7 for coffee.
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Is this a serious comment? You surely realize that there are a lot of “middle class” people on this thread, and a sizable proportion of “upper class”, i.e., “professional class” people who sent their children to the same expensive privates (and paid for them with no FA) that your daughter might be considering? Your comments are tone deaf.
The #1 thing employers care about is experience. Not college pedigree.
Your daughter might date a guy you don’t like. It’s crazy how that can happen. If he goes to a prestigious college but is a jerk, will that be okay? Are you sending her to college for social engineering purposes, or to get a great education?
I hope you are prepared for the possibility that your daughter might make choices you don’t like once she is in college. She is the one going to college, not you.
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Surely, “seeking intellectual elite with high end espresso machine” would be more appropriate? 
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We are now in the Wild West with this thread, so I am just going to keep on this wagon train:
These are universal values for all people. Your views are relevant to your thread. I ask in seriousness, why not just send your daughter to the school with the highest proportion of very wealthy students and be done with it?
Your comments about elitism, finding a potential spouse, jobs you deem worthy or not, and so forth are problematic.
Your D might have a roommate who is on FA. And FA doesn’t have to mean middle class. Even rich familes can have FA if they have several kids in college and some mitigating circumstance arises. Maybe she will become best friends with a FGLI Stamps Scholar. Is that person not her equal? She might date a guy she meets at the dive bar in town (news flash, yes, rich kids 100% go to dive bars. Every college town has one.) Maybe she gets a job doing laundry like my friend’s D did at her Ivy League school, instead of one of those “red herring” jobs. (FYI, the “red herring” job is a job.)
True story: very good friend went to one of HYP. This friend was a roommate of a famous graduate of that college. Call them part of the “upper class.” His D attended the same school. She stayed at her off-campus apartment one summer, even though my friend wanted her to intern at a financial place. She worked at a fast food restaurant and also did some “red herring” work on campus. She fell madly in love with a former criminal with literal prison tattoos who she met at a bar. Friend was mortified. They broke up, and friend said “thank goodness, I couldn’t stand him,” and she immediately got back together with him. This friend’s D has now calmed down and will start grad school this fall.
You will not be able to control all the choices your daughter makes. You can do your best to make sure she uses good judgement, but if you send your kids away to a residential college, they will almost certainly do something you don’t approve of.
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Actually the assortative mating seems much more likely to work in grad school than undergrad. That’s the Vance story (Yale law school). There are even articles written about that being common for MBAs (our neighbors met at Stanford GSB and now have 3 kids, that’s also where Rishi Sunak, the former U.K. Prime Minister met his wife):
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-hottest-new-dating-sites-business-school-campuses-11583443938
So maybe the lesson is to save your money for grad school, it sounds perfect:
Sarina Richard, who got her M.B.A. at Harvard in 2016, said the rigorous admissions process increases the chance of meeting an interesting, eligible companion. “You’ve already been vetted through the admissions process, so you know this person is legitimate,” she said. “You have this immediate connection around intellectual rigor.”
The odds of meeting a mate while pursuing an M.B.A. favor women, at least at Harvard. A campus study of its business-school alums found that a third of women, both baby boomers and Gen Xers, are married to, or partnered with, other Harvard Business School grads. It is 15% for similarly aged men.
Ms. Richard, 35, and her 34-year-old husband, Drew Richard—also HBS class of ’16—used their PowerPoint skills for a 50-slide deck presentation that detailed plans for their wedding guests.
…
Lindsay Hoffman, class of 2014, met her husband during orientation at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. They socialized at networking events and theme parties. “You get to see people in a variety of settings in a short period of time,” Ms. Hoffman said.
Now that 40% of Booth’s M.B.A. students are women, administrators say the business school has yielded nearly 1,500 alumni couples.
The Hoffmans used a kanban board—an agile workflow management technique they learned at Booth—to organize potential baby names. Their daughter, Quinn, has since celebrated her first birthday.
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