I could not possibly care less about getting onto Forbes Most Powerful Men list. And I haven’t the vaguest idea of what the Davos Top Academics list is, so I can safely say that I could not care less about getting on that list either. Apparently I have less than half of an IQ point. This is troubling news.
To live in a grungy, overcrowded, crime ridden city, with lousy weather? No, I don’t want that.
Furthermore, that $320k is equivalent to around $140k in other areas of the country.
Nor should it… I completely agree.
Eh, never mind.
That $320K comes with a price–80 hours a week at the office, very little down time to spend with a spouse/partner or family, lost of stress and it continues until you become a partner or move on. Even as a partner, you still aren’t working 9 to 5 if you’re in Big Law.
My bff from undergraduate school (Michigan) followed her husband and ended up at the University of Cincinnati Law School (not even close to being an elite law school). However, she was first in her class and because of that she clerked for a federal judge and then went to work for the biggest law firm in the city. She lasted five years, but was incredibly miserable–despite big bucks. One day she just had it–left the firm (and her husband a year later). She went to teach at a law school in another state and has been doing that for the last thirty years. She’s quite happy and makes much less than she would be making if she stayed at the firm.
I afford a nice 3 bedroom house on a PhD stipend, with a yard and a dog, in the safest city in my state.
Nope, I’m just fine here in Middle America.
Not going to go through this entire thread but it seems as if this concept is rock hard for some people. Yes, some doors can and will be closed to you for having not attended an elite school. Forget Davos. Look right here in the US where many of the top companies (Goldman, Silverlake, MBB, BlackRock) only recruit at a handful of schools: Ivys + other elites. On campus recruiting exclusively to some schools makes it incredibly harder for others who didn’t attend those schools to break in.
With that said, I do believe in creating your own destiny. Luckily entrepreneurship is an opportunity where the playing field will always be leveled.
You know what I think is going to close doors for me? The loss of IQ points I’ve sustained from repeatedly banging my head against the wall while reading this thread.
If it is true that a select few firms only recruit from elite schools, then I suppose you should go to one of those schools if you are dead-set on working for one of those firms. If the best we can say for elite schools in terms of outcome (rather than experience) is that you should go to them because otherwise Goldman won’t want you, that isn’t saying much. In any case, some of the posts on these last few pages have questioned how hard and fast even that rule is.
As others have said, OF COURSE schools that tend to attract high concentrations of smart people are going to be overrepresented in elite professions. That doesn’t mean that if one of those super-smart (and, in some cases, well-connected) people went to a different school, they wouldn’t be able to get to the same place. But beyond that, remember that students with certain ambitions are also more likely to go to the most elite school that accepts them. If a kid wants to be a doctor, from a purely practical perspective, it might actually make MORE sense to go to a less elite college where he’ll be likely to have a higher GPA. But the same ambition that drives someone to want to be president of the US or a titan of global industry is probably also going to lead them to want to go to the fanciest school possible. In turn, if the people who were likely to wind up in those roles anyway gravitate to certain schools, the notion that you “need” to go to those schools to succeed in those fields becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.To really gauge the effect of elite schools, we would have to RANDOMLY assign students with similar academic and demographic profiles to different types of schools and see what happens.
Obviously, going to an elite undergraduate school can give you a boost in certain professions, especially at the early stages. That doesn’t mean not going to elites excludes you from similar opportunities - it just might make things more difficult, the operative word being might.
@comfortablycurt, but imagine what you could do if you had a full IQ point. You could conquer the world!
Way to make me feel dumb for going to both community college and state school… but for the career I’m going for, the school doesn’t matter, but the degree.
Seems like this mostly just applies to some industries. People are saying it’s for business and law (law school lemmings, anyone?). But would it be the same for Computer Science/Tech/Engineering/Teaching(non-professors)/Healthcare(just about all healthcare fields can get degrees from anywhere and more vocational)? Probably not… The other fields, a degree from be from anywhere, but it’s what you do with the degree and your experience which counts.
As strange as this may sound, but apart from a scholarship summit, and one professor who went to an Ivy grad school… I don’t think I’ve met any other people who have been to Ivy schools… I’ve lived in Northern Arizona and Northern (rural) California…
Maybe I have, but didn’t notice? It seems like I just don’t meet all that many people who go to elite/ivy schools. I knew I could never reach an Ivy, and wondered about paying for college (very very low SES), and never took SATs or ACTs (yikes, guess half an IQ) and transferred to state bc it requires it. I might go back to CC to complete another degree bc it’s cheap and I can go back to 4-yr later for the bachelors… healthcare field seems based more on your skills/experience not where you got a degree.
Then again, I don’t think I know people who have $350k+ income… if I do, I guess I don’t notice 
. I live in a mostly rural area in NorCal, and also did in AZ. Sometimes I wish I could go back to my earlier days with the knowledge I have now and apply myself a lot in HS, and before then, really. But I didn’t and I cannot… so I chose a field which cares more about experience and having a degree, than elitism. Also, it’s very cold in other parts of the country, Cali weather is perfect, and I cannot move bc of my mom, really. I mostly use grants to fund my education, although I did have some scholarships which I lost.
In healthcare and I imagine in the other industries I mentioned, the sky is open as long as I keep making good grades and make choices which move me up. But healthcare is also a very kinesthetic field. Growing up, the teachers as far as I know went to state schools… I just didn’t have (and still don’t) have any experience with Ivy league people, let alone those schools… and it’s hard to wrap my head around Wall Street (which I’ve never seen… never been to NY, only went to east coast once on a whim 2 years ago) and Forbes-like businesses. I thought business was a good idea for a possible career in say, middle school, but I figured one would need 1) an income to start a business and/or invest in other businesses, even real estate, and 2) you could get a degree in it, but you wouldn’t be able to have a business without some money and experience to start one or invest in one. I guess in my small-mindedness, mostly rural life, I didn’t think I could work for “big firms” but always thought small. I guess it’s just hard to wrap my head around elite/ivy league degree = guaranteed success. It seems like there are others ways people make money. It seems like landlords, businessowners, and people who invested made the most money… and you cannot do that without an income first. So I guess in a circle, I thought 1st) income, 2) invest. The top job I aim for right now, although competitive, isn’t impossible, just takes a long time, and isn’t based off degree location.
It seems to me SES is more important to success than whether a person goes to an elite school. It seems people with higher SESs (and not living in rural areas or small towns, probably city and certain regions) are more likely to go to them and know about/hear about these careers and opportunities growing up. But there are plenty of fields which can also get a person big bucks $, but doesn’t depend on Where so much as Getting the degree and experience… but they’re more technical and vocational. Teachers also don’t need Ivy, but they seem very happy to me, imo. Some people also invest really well with their money/income, and don’t even have degrees… if money is important and have an income… there could be some crafty ways of making it larger if that’s what is most important. I just think for a lot of people, it probably isn’t bc of what they choose. And also, Forbes probably would cause many glazed eyes and out of reach of most people… maybe some people like me think they probably were born into a business-family and bred to be one, and also had a spoon-in-their mouth? It’s seems more like generations and generations of inheritances and “climbing up the ladder” to me, more than where they got their degree, and that along probably doesn’t belong so much with lower SES people. Ivies/elites often claim they will pay full amount (never knew that growing up and prob not living costs), but realistically think whether the lower SES/1st gen kid will have contact with “elites” and fully understand that path as a reasonable, possible choice.
Where do I get the only information I have about Ivys, “elite” schools, and high-paying fields/careers? My friend, the internet. True story, I have/had no/minimal contact with people who are in/went to/did these choices or inform me about them. Thanks to college confidential, internet lists, and other websites, my head can grasp at strings of I guess how “the other side” lives. Top 10-1%?
What defines “rich”? Annual Income? http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/08/defining_rich_in_america_what_are_the_income_cutoffs.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/01/26/what-the-top-1-percent-makes-in-every-state/
Is this thread about who becomes the richest and how?
It’s a thread about how we’re all too IQ deficient to realize we’re peasants.
Lol, I’m not going to hold my breath!
So much depends on your career choice as someone mentioned. As a health professional, nobody cares where I went to school. Even with my first job back in the late eighties. They just want to see my license.
However my eldest is working toward her PhD and wants to remain in academia. She carefully chose the schools she applied to based on reputation, research, etc and was accepted by her first choice school after graduating. The program she is in has led to huge opportunities and rewards that will greatly help her career. Two totally different careers. One it really didn’t matter where the degree came from as long as it was an accredited school and the other career greatly depends on the reputation of the institution she is attending.
What @Pizzagirl said in #164 and #179—I strongly suspect that there’s an observation bias thing going on here. If what you actually have is that folks from with elite-college (whatever that means) degrees are clustering with other elite-college graduates, whether because they have the same networks or the cultures of those colleges push people toward certain subfields or whatever, then if people with elite-college degrees believe that they’re working in elite fields or at elite workplaces, they’re necessarily going to draw the conclusion that an elite-college degree is necessary to work at such an elite place in such an elite field—even if the equally- or even more-elite firm down the street is stuffed full of holders of non-elite-college degrees.
And this isn’t even mentioning the confirmation bias issue, and that’s been demonstrated over and over on this thread, e.g., with claims that folks at ZZZ law firm nearly always have degrees from elite law schools, just look at their staff list and that proves it—only to have someone who doesn’t have that preconception look at the list to point out that no, no matter what you expected to be there and thought was proven by a cursory scan to make sure approved names actually appeared, that there’s actually a wide array of law schools represented there.
There are even some lawyers at that law firm who got their law degrees from low ranked law schools like New York Law School (which is not NYU School of Law).
http://www.wlrk.com/attorneys/List.aspx?LawSchools=004f34fd-61a0-43b7-aae3-dbdb535e44a6
Isn’t it true that most time in the past history, most people were peasants, independent of whether they were IQ-deficient or not? Am I too pessimistic/negative?
No that’s true, mcat. In many places in the world, the majority of people still are peasants.
I think you’re taking the peasant language a bit too literally though 
The above was referred to in the link
in post #188.
I would think the net worth referred to the wealth AFTER tax. Am I right?
Delete a duplicated post. My smartphone somehow manages to post the same post twice. Not sure why it happened. Sorry.
Long answer: No, doors will not close if you choose not to attend an elite school.
Short answer: No
You know, you might be an alumnus of somewhere, but you don’t seem like a very happy person to me…
“Yes, some doors can and will be closed to you for having not attended an elite school. Forget Davos. Look right here in the US where many of the top companies (Goldman, Silverlake, MBB, BlackRock) only recruit at a handful of schools: Ivys + other elites”
But these aren’t “top companies.” These are just companies. That’s what you’re missing. The only people who consider these top companies are the people who either work there or aspire to work there. In my list of A through Z, these are simply M,N,O, and P. There is nothing inherently superior or more fulfilling about jobs at these companies. So the fact that they are allegedly “closed” is a big so what.