I wish I had worked harder at high school

Had the same feeling of guilt and it ate away at me for a long time.

You must understand there is nothing natural about thinking about these things as a high schooler, in fact most kids are not future planning 5 years ahead (even the smartest ones - I was top of class). Rather, a lot of it is driven by environment/luck and how educated/wealthy your parents were. So while I believe in being held accountable, understand at that age environment/influence of parents plays a huge role.

While its too late to be the Ivy > GS/BX > MF/HF guy, it’s not too late to become the top 1% of America and get into IB/PE.

It is not completely your fault and you can fix it still. Giving up already will destroy any chances u might have. We're rooting for you and everyone here to do well, good luck 

You don’t get to the upper echelon by coasting. Good luck to you

I had a 2.9 in high school and went to a pretty low tier state school, I'm doing pretty well at this point. It's never too late and high school is such an early point that it's not a determinant of your future 

the lower the place from where we raise, the greater the taste of glory/victory

refuse to take no for an answer, do whatever needs to get done.

I don't think life is ever so binary to be defined by one college admissions process. My father went to some random university in the middle of nowhere with a 90% acceptance rate, was able to transfer, and is now working in private equity. Even though your friends have advantages they earned that you do not, there is no "one way" to success.

Regret does nothing. Forget it. 

Focus on what you can do today / tomorrow / Next week to execute a plan to get where you want to do. If you focus on whole journey you'll often get overwhelmed.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Forget your classmates. This is your life. There will always be someone smarter, richer, more attractive. Focus on you, otherwise you'll be permanently miserable.

Life is really weird. Same boat, different mast.

I used to think "if Only I tried harder in high school", but now when I look back on my childhood I can say that I have fond memories that I know the kids that had hyper obsessive parents do not have. I still made it to a place where I am happy. 

You'll get to this place some day. Just don't get bogged down with what success means to you. Success means happiness, and nothing else.

The most relevant thread I’ve seen on here yet…

For background : I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and went to a private school. My family wasn’t the wealthiest in town but sorta towards the middle. I didn’t care about my grades at all in high school. Graduated with 2.9 GPA. I was essentially the fuck up of my entire extended family.

I dropped out of my shitty college after 1 semester and worked at restaurants for 2 years. Tried to figure out what I wanted to do and worked on mental health stuff. Everyone around me thought I was a failure (at least that’s how it felt.)

After I saw my friends getting jobs I felt left behind and went to my local community college.

I grinded and left the community college with a 4.0 and transferred to a decent private school. I was 22 at this point and all my friends had graduated.

Now I have a good job at a known MM bank, and am surrounded by people who have been gunning for IB since they were 14.

Basically, it’s all up to you. I assume you’re still pretty young, and quite capable. At a certain point you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and just go out and do it. Everyone has a different path and with IB, it can be much more intimidating, but if you put your head down and work hard for what you want to achieve, I guarantee you can do it.

Yes and no. Yeah it would have been easier if I knew I wanted IB as a 9th grader and got into a target school and did the whole optimal path. But I got into a fun non target for econ, had a great time, and still made it into IB. You are far more in control of your outcome than you realize. It is never too late especially while you are still in HS or undergrad. After graduating, yeah you’re more limited but there are other paths in. If you want it and you’re good then you will find some place to be.

Richest guy I know barely graduated high school, life is a marathon not a sprint. College is four years, it doesn’t define you after even a few years of work experience. Keep grinding.

You can’t change the past. Focus on the future. Work your ass off and become knowledgeable so people are willing to take a chance on you.

When you have your own children you can teach them these lessons so that they have it better than you. You might not have had parents with connections to set you up early in life but you can be a parent like that.

I think its silly to take this view. The "traditional path" (Ivy>Internship>IB offer) isnt the only way in. I've worked with plenty of people that have done it that way of course, but also plenty of others that came into FO IB from other places (internal mobility from a ops/risk management role, credit rating agencies, Big 4 consulting), myself included. And the range of universities these people come from is also quite broad too

Well, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the next best time is right now!

Anyway, you are far from behind. You're still in college.

Being really successful is all about having things figured out at the right time. Everybody realizes what they should have done when it's too late.

The trick is looking at the next steps and figuring out how to get ahead now. What are people around you going to wish that they would have done at your age.  Then, go do that.

Also, don't beat yourself up too much. You have multiple stages in life. Sure, some people may have gotten a head start, but you've got a lot of innings left in the game. At each stage in life, you gotta make the right moves to keep winning. For example, maybe these kids got all of these internships but don't put in time for networking in their early career.  You might have missed the internships but now you're a networking machine. You could find yourself winning this inning in your early 20s while they drag behind. 

Also, when I see people knocking out of the park early with high school and college, it usually involves a lot of pushing from the parents. These types are not necessarily such good climbers when they are in the corporate world and out on their own navigating career and life decisions. So the game is far from over.

OP, your post would have been bulletin board material for my dad to me.  Could I have done better in high school and college?  absolutely yes.  Am I happy with my life today?  Yes. You’re going to grow/mature at your own pace, and maybe now that you’re exposed to the hyper competitive world through message boards like this, you might approach your next steps more deliberately.  Nothing wrong with that.  
 

I’m trying to get my elementary school aged kids to read more and watch less stupid YouTube and video games, and care about achieving something.  It’s been an uphill battle. Seems one day the light will switch on for them. What can I do. 
 

Don’t stress yourself out.  Visualize instead.  Write in your composition board/notebook a chart with the years on the top and steps below and lines on how long it will take.  Don’t start in the future, start in the present (meaning, don’t write goal MF Private Equity first, get there to that after you’ve written down your steps).

I did a 18 year plan in my early 20’s.  And I’ve done shorter plans at major crossroads of my life as I got older.  
 

I think in my 20’s my plan was to have an illustrious business career up until my 50’s, and then become the athletic director for the Univ of Hawaii and then after success there get elected Governor of Hawaii.  Well, today, that’s not happening and that is ok.  But I have new goals.  Try it. Visualize.
 

I did terrible in HS, but my mom played tennis with the Dean’s wife at the college I wanted to go to. Applications were closed and it was the July before an August start. 

My mom made a phone call and next thing wouldn’t you know the Dean called back and said he had a spot for me.

Then I took college seriously. Had two majors (B.S. and B.A.) and also started a new minor. Graduated top 10% roughly and got a lot of scholarships along the way.

Trust me, we all wish we know better at that point in our life. But you need to keep up with the pace of life as things becomes clearer and the reality of life set in. Welcome to adulthood!😊

I think you’re overreacting. The events associated with you doing poorly in high school might, at most, result in you needing to take an extra 1-3 years to reach the same goal you would have reached if you had done well in high school. That may seem like a decent bit of time, but careers are long; in the end, you’ll hardly notice it.

No one told me that everything would be starting at high school, that the friends and connections you make there would be an important future asset. I didn't take it very seriously, I didn't do my best in studying, I was still thinking about what I wanted to do so I thought "any college would be okay." I think I will regret this for the rest of my life. Why is it that when I know what I want to do now, it's already too late?

Not sure what you're getting at here. The only one to blame here is yourself. "No one told me that everything would be starting at high school"--sorry, do you need others to state the literal obvious? I'll take it one step futher: life starts even earlier, perhaps in elementary school. If you don't do well on all the things you're supposed to do well on--academics, sports, exams, making friends and building a strong social circle, hobbies, interests, eating healthy, and developing yourself in general, is it any wonder that you will not have achieved your full potential later in life? Before the internet trolls pick up the pitchforks, I'll just note that it's possible (and generally expected) to be exceptional in everything academic while maintaining a strong social life. That's just another thing you should have gotten good at.

The lack of accountability and victim mentality in the current youth generation is truly astounding.

I was an NCAA academic qualifier by the skin of my teeth in HS.  Thank God for junior colleges 

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Good post I'll chime in a bit - had the same thoughts as you when I was in university as well.

1. Unfortunately, this is one of the key lessons that most people will at some point learn in their lives - the friends and people you associate with matter! They say you're the average of your 5 best friends, but what that translates to is the community and groups that you're associated with you both influences you and is influenced by you to some extent. The good and bad news is, the connections you meet in high school are sometimes going to be just people you had a great time with for 4 years and you'll rarely/ never see many them again because they're going to do things in their own lives as you do yours.

The high school I went to was a lot more studious and academic than my elementary school, and I worked hard in high school to get good grades to get into a good university - partially because of parents but partially because of the environment that I was in. Not to sound discouraging (because I will encourage you in the next point) but realistically I'm almost looking in the opposite direction where I feel bad for my elementary school friends because they coasted in high school and were the popular kids who peaked, where many of them are actually in low paying jobs or can't find good paying blue or white collar job these days because they didn't focus enough on their education. At some point you need to realize that at every stage of their lives, high school, university, first job, second job, marriage, promotion, career switch ...etc. does matter to some extent and decisions have benefits and consequences but it's never too late. You're very right in that you can't tell how kids would turn out when they're still young, but with every good decision, every struggle to get better, every hour put in to work on whatever it is, that's the compounding effect of your investments in you. I'm that mid-tier classmate who was already "so far in life" with those internships during uni and got a nice full time job after I graduated. Sure I didn't do HBS/ Wharton GS IB or big tech soft eng/PM but I can live with that and keep learning the skills that those paths offer on my own time if I like doing that.

On the other hand, some of these people (who are or were my friends), will almost never be able to change their lives significantly for the better, whereas for me I'm not going to fatfire anytime soon, but at least I'm in an upward trajectory and know that if I live long enough and fight hard enough I can earn the life that I wish I could have had. And being from Toronto, it's only going to go downhill from here where everything would cost more due to politicians at the provincial and federal level from both parties making poor decisions on housing, immigration, health care, infrastructure ... etc. - meaning that you'll need to make more money through high paying jobs than before (e.g. than our parents' generation) to maintain that lifestyle assuming there's no economic crash in which case everyone's screwed.

2. Assuming you're in college now, and assuming you're not in your 4th year, you have time! Remember that every stage of your life is an inflection point and if you hate yourself enough and hate your current situation enough, you will find the courage and willpower to change. Instead of saying things just do it. Many smartest kids in my high school ended up being burnt out, lost in direction, and sometimes chose jobs/ careers that they love, but didn't pay much or was just out of gas after university and couldn't continue to push for a better life financially. The "best" high school/ university kids didn't necessarily "succeed" in the traditional definition, and the "worst" kids don't necessarily "fail" either. It's all about when you pick yourself back up and I've seen people do it in high school and in university or even after graduation when they went back to the grind after doing

3. This should be your plan going forward:

- You said you know what to do - find resources online (the internet is your best friend) - pick 3 good channels/ resources/ coursera courses whatever and get started on learning these things and do some projects if relevant to beef up your resume, then find internships and network by cold dm on linkedin and go on coffee chats if you're in a big city (you can find ways on the internet on how to do this politely) and see if you can land a role before you graduate. If you're going in your 4th year, you have less time but it's still more than doable if you put in the work. I don't care if you need to bullshit some financial modelling project to put on your resume to get an internship, but that still counts as a project and you will learn something from choosing a topic/ company/ anything you're interested in. Self-belief is important here, if you don't believe enough to put in the work, you won't put in the work, that simple. Bust your ass if you need to get an internship, and if you can't then find the next best thing in a related role even at a lesser known place. Repeat.

- You need to reassess your current friend group and look at your old classmates - are your current friends not as ambitious but good people? If so, you can always be friends with them but you need to figure out if you're ok with them not pushing you if you're the more ambitious one out of the group. If you look at the success of your old classmates, what did they do right? Did they capitalize on every opportunity they were given? Did you? Hopefully there's some lessons learned there about how you can use the same skills they showed to reach your own goals. Gradually, you'll realize that you're probably going to interact with new friends more and less ambitious friends less, and that's ok if you're ok with it. Not networking with high school friends is not a big deal - it becomes a bigger deal once you're out working/ in university. You have university friends and work colleagues who will likely become some of your closest friends going forward.

- Life is still very long for you - 6 internships in university means nothing if they can't convert to a full time job, and even if that's the case they might hate their job and their career path, and might end up going back school for an MBA anyways. Who cares man? I know it's easy to compare and I'm guilty of that too, but walk you own road because it's the only right road for you. Every job has pros and cons and no job is perfect. But you can change the ratio of pros and cons by trying new pathways, and if you have hobbies or weird skillsets you can see how you can be creative about and profit from it. Life would be pretty sad if everyone were an investment banker lol but if that's the path you want to pursue, figure out how long you want to put up with this shit for and what's the end goal for you, and then take it a year at a time and reassess multiple times a year if necessary.

The best time to change was however long ago, but the next best time is today - get working man I gave you the time it took me to type this out so don't waste it please. Good luck.

There is no point looking back - you are here now and you control your destiny. Also another perspective, I know people who were really successful in getting into their college of choice, but they became less hungry and were too complacent, which affected their career progress. 

I often times come to this same ruminating thought where "only if someone told me to start early or showed me the consequence of not starting early as it's too late anyways". See brother, not only connections but it would have been great if I developed the discipline to read books, workout, active sport, talking to women freely and overcome any anxiety. But I didn't and I don't beat myself up. If I don't do that now then it means it's no use regretting as I'm not doing it anyways even after knowing its important. My advice is START NOW!!!. I'm still not financially free or good with relationships. I'm saying so because I'm still working for average salary and need to hire women from sugarbook in order to sleep with me. I hope to become a TOP Chad purely from hard work.