Thi is sort of a spin off from the top 10 kids…and colleges.
Do folks know what the top 10 kids in the classes are doing NOW…say 10 years later?
I can do DD’s for the most part.
1 flunked out of college
1 graduated from medical school
1 is in medical school
2 are practicing engineers in NY.
1 completed law school
1 is in law school
1 is a teacher
Not sure where the other two are!
I can do my own class (many years ago so all firmly established). Overall it was a fairly pedestrian HS but the top students were very strong.
I don’t even remember who the top 10 kids were any more.
I never knew who the top 10 kids were. Perhaps its because their high school didn’t rank students and it never occurred to me to think about it My kids are fairly recent high school graduates ('12 and '16). I only know what some of their friends are doing.
Well, I don’t know who all the top 10 in my HS were, but I do know some:
Librarian
Free-lance technical writer
Music teacher for little kids
PhD and retired chairperson of a renowned uni’s Dept of Anthropology
Psychiatrist
PhD in early childhood education and author of several books
Deceased (but he was a builder of housing projects)
PhD and professor and author on Marx and Marxism
Psychiatrist, now with early-onset Alzheimer’s
Minister
PhD statistician
We had a lot of incredibly smart people in my HS. One of the people who didn’t even graduate with honors is now a PhD doing research into immunology and cancer.
I was very lucky to have gone there.
I don’t know what happened to the other five in the top ten.
There are also two professional baseball players, but they weren’t in the top ten.
I have no idea who our top 10 were back in the day nor do I know (or care) what many of my former HS classmates are doing. Some are MDs, some attorneys, some teachers, a few have died of various causes. One was a major intelligence/security officer in the military but has retired.
For my S’s HS class, one has graduated from Med school and will be doing internship and residency in CA. Some are engineers. No idea about the rest.
For D’s HS class of 2008, again I’m unclear on who the top 10 were. Of her friends, one us a pharmacist and employed full time. One is an occupational therapist. One is an editor in NYC. One is an IB in NYC. One is an EE, MEE and attorney, working for the local utility company. Others are working various jobs.
I don’t know most of them. From my older son’s class (10 years this June). Number 1 went to Harvard, but don’t know what he’s doing now. Number 3 was in grad school for biology last I heard. (Undergrad at Caltech.) Number 8 was my kid - he’s working at Google.
From my class many eons ago - no ranking, but the top students are doing all sorts of things from modeling in art classes and doing adminstrative work for husband who manages apartments, to working in health care and writing a health related newsletter, to doing something high up for a TV station, to writing for the New York Times, to being an architect of no fame, but plenty of satisfied customers.
D1’s class is 10 years out. Of the top 10, I know this:
1 is on Wall Street
1 has finished med school
1 is in med school
1 is finishing a PhD in geology
1 is finishing a PhD in chemistry
1 works for one of those 3 letter acronym government organizations
1 is a high school language teacher
1 works in sales (and probably is darned good at it)
1 is a software engineer at Google
1 is an engineer
Oh yea, another that was in D’s 2008 class is finishing or done with PhD at CalTech in engineering or physics. He wants to be a prof. Another from her class of 2008 will be getting his MD this month, en route to becoming a dermatologist. D was bottom half of her class–she got her BA in cinema from her dream U, USCal. She’s still trying to get healthy–and employed.
One of our friend’s kids got her PhD from Cornell and is doing medical research in Germany while her H is working on his PhD. S he was #1 from her UC undergrad class.
Oh and I forgot number 2 went to Princeton and dropped out with nothing left but the senior thesis. His parents hired a life coach who has finally said what I think everyone around them as been thinking. That while yes the kid has some physical and mental issues, what he really needs is some tough love.
I graduated from high school 38 years ago. I don’t know who was in the top 10, but our valedictorian is now the president of one of the Colleges that Change Lives.
I graduated from HS ~20 years ago.
Val is currently working as a lawyer for a non-profit charity/political advocacy organization for an underprivileged group after attending Harvard and YLS.
Sal is currently the head of a tech firm in the urban NE after doing his BS/MS in EE in 4 years and after working for a few years in Europe, returned to MIT for his EE PhD.
Plenty of engineers/techies(including some co-founders of tech startups), medical doctors, lawyers, ibankers/finance folks, accountants evenly distributed across the class.
Two practicing MDs I knew were among those who graduated at the very bottom of our HS graduating class by their own admission along with some engineers/techies.
Some academics as well.
A few folks who did stints as commissioned officers after attending USAFA, Annapolis, West Point before moving on to post-military careers in various professions,
A few folks involved in the movie industrial complex.
Don’t know. Couple doctors, a vet who quit vet med and is overseeing a biology department at a college, couple engineers. The legend in the batch, was this creep named Julian.
Julian was this affluent jerk who once had a teacher in tears tears telling her that when his inheritance came through, he would think back to the little people in his life, like her…and laugh. (Yep, this dude was a piece of work. Nasty entitled little creep who got away with sexual assault because of relatives on the school board and local government, too)
Anyway…a couple of years after graduation, he DID inherit Grandpa’s millions, including a racing yacht.
At 20 years old, he took his “best friends” out on his fancy new boat in Lake Michigan and had a party…reportedly with lots of coke, ecstasy, etc.
It wasn’t until late the next day that everyone woke up and made the discovery that he was missing. Apparently, he got hit by the boat sail rigging, had gone overboard, and drown. No one noticed for almost 24 hours.
I knew that kid from kindergarten, and I feel a little bad, because I should have FELT something about his death, some semblance of compassion, something…but very seriously, I laughed. Was one of those moments you have to believe in Karma.
If ever there was a person who was DUE being knocked in the head by a sail boom, it was Julian.
When I think of him getting in the face of that middle aged school teacher and refusing to leave her classroom when she ordered him to the office…when I think him reducing her to tears and her subsequent retirement…I seriously do laugh about the end he met.
How stupid, how tragic, and what an afterthought he turned out to be.
Julian sounds very similar to a HS classmate and his bigshot banker father who’d talk down to teachers/school admins during parent-teacher conferences* because of the supposed “exalted” status his father’s occupation conferred on both.
And while not as dramatic, heard from a conversation with a HS classmate from our class year that that bigshot father ended up fleeing the country some years after HS graduation due to a Federal indictment(still outstanding according to online public Federal court records) over his attempt to defraud customers who were mostly old pensioners to attempt to unjustly enrich himself and his friends.
If the Feds had not issued that indictment when they did, he could have preempted Bernie Madoff in his infamy by a few years.
Also, his son attempted to follow in his father’s unsavory steps…and ended up bankrupting himself in the process of attempting to defraud others. He really got his comeuppance.
I have no idea who the top 10 were in my kids’ classes, much less what they are doing now. From my experience, I am particularly proud to know several wonderful human beings who were not top 10. One is now a PhD clinical psychologist, one a well loved pediatrician and several others who raised wonderful children who are now tax paying productive members of society.
I don’t remember who the top ten students were in my class, but I did go to my 45th reunion not too long ago where I learned what people were doing. The valedictorian (who went to Vassar) was a college professor at a directional state U and the salutatorian (who went to Smith) had committed suicide.
Of the group of kids who were in my circle of friends, there were a few teachers, a doctor, a PR executive, an engineer, a nurse, a dental hygienist, and a guy who was the retired CEO of a food services company.
This was a working-class high school in a midwestern city where half of the class didn’t go to college. Of those who did go, the top two students were the only ones who left the midwest. The rest of those kids going to college were off to the local community college or the state flagship (Big 10) or one of the other state schools.
I didn’t know exactly who was #1 and #2 but one (classic nerd) ended up being an IT guy somewhere and the other became an MD (she was the type that always had her ducks in a row, very attractive but reserved).
Number 200 out of 400, ahem, ended up posting and lurking on CC too much in 2017 …
My HS class: #1 is a doctor, #2 was at the local college, transferred to the flagship and then fell off the face of the earth. One went to West Point. The two girls in the top ten went to the flagship; have no idea what one did after that; the other hangs out with imaginary friends online. 
The rest, all guys, went to Georgia Tech and are engineers. Only 30% of the class even went to college, and most of that cohort went to the directional in town.
There were a couple of folks who wound up with PhDs (psych), a geologist with a MS and MBA, a lawyer, an accountant and one guy who’s COO of a big senior living construction firm. I’m sure he makes more money than the rest of us.
My kids’ schools didn’t rank. Lots of folks in top grad/professional schools from their cohorts, but my kids aren’t among them at this point.
My high school class, 40+ years on. My school didn’t rank. 1-4 were pretty obvious, below that it’s a little bit of a guessing game.
Kid #1’s class, 12 years out
Kid #2’s class, 10 years out