<p>Depending on what you do, contact is very important. My daughter has been tutoring a student from her high school (yes, it’s private) for a few years. She is paid more than most of programmers/hr because the parents don’t want to seem cheap, and my daughter is also very good. The parents have also told her that she could work for for their family software company if she is “not busy” this summer. To get an internship later, she will contact friends’ parents from school and probably family friends. Her uncle has already told her that she should spend time networking with kids from school because they are going to be her colleagues and business partners someday.</p>
<p>To be very frank, the reason most people pay for those top schools is to get a union card. You need that card for entry. If the reason we send our kids to college is purely for education, then we could send all of them to community college or Phoenix University because they probably all use same text books. Those top schools weed out students for employers and graduate schools. Those schools alumni hire each other’s kids and students from their schools. Those schools also admit those alumi’s kids, so the circle continues.</p>
<p>In other countries, often there is no way of breaking out one’s social status. In the US, education is a way for us to move up into different social class, and that is why people are willing to spend $50,000/year to send their kids to those schools.</p>
<p>I know this is not a very PC post.</p>