Admitted to top 10 US undergrad but went to shit tier college
Hi WSO,
I thought about posting this on a tech forum such as Blind but prefer that my employer not be revealed. Besides, I thought people here might be more likely to relate since techies tend to eschew academic pretentiousness of any sort.
As a public high school student, I was admitted to college at a USNews top 10 US undergrad that is often ranked in the top 10 global universities. On my dad’s insistence that I was “not going there” and that I wasn’t “cut out for it” and that my parents couldn’t afford it and that I’d ruin my life by taking a $40k loan, I instead enrolled at and graduated debt-free from a no-name college with a >50% admission rate. In my parents’ defense, this was before the College Scorecard was created so there was no data on compensation by college degree program at that time (in 2009). They paid the same amount of tuition for my sister to go to another no-name college that they would have paid for me to go to the T10 college. My dad still hasn’t admitted his mistake to this day. I hated college, didn’t fit in, became unmotivated, and got mediocre grades. There was no CS program but I accidentally discovered my interest in programming there.
Two years after graduating and after some menial jobs and a coding bootcamp, I started working as a software engineer. After a few years at failing startups that were running out of funding, I started earning a bit over $200k at age 27. I’m turning 32 soon and have been earning a bit over $350k for the past couple of years after a job change. My net worth is about $830k. The work hours are good and the work is interesting, but the job security in this field is bad and that’s stressful. My original dream was to go to that T10 undergrad, work in finance, and become an economist or quant.
My life is ok from a financial perspective but I still often think about how my life might be different if I’d gone to that T10 college. I can’t help but think that I’d have more friends who are smarter than me and I wonder how much more capable, successful, and rich I’d be.
Anyone else here give up a top school for a much inferior one? How do you cope?
PS: I love WSO for the newsletter and the insight into the finance world. That said, I’m not looking for a career change and posted to seek advice about the above.
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I understand the feeling of regret. No matter what people say here, going to a good school is helpful. However, it’s not a guaranteed ticket to success, it simply gets you that first interview. The rest of your life is determined by you.
Just take a look at the backgrounds of people in top finance shops. Sure, many have the golden Ivy background, but many went to crap schools. In my group at work, everyone above me went to state schools or worse.
Maybe your life would be better career wise, but making 350k is pretty good by early thirties. Remember, that there is success bias to things you read here or on the Reddit finance subs, because only people killing it like to post. Everyone who sucks or washed out isn’t making a post, so it just seems like all finance people make lots of money. You’re only hearing from the winners.
One last thing I was curious about.
You said your dad made you go to a crappy school because he didn’t want to pay for college and didn’t want you to take on debt. But then your sister went to an equally crappy college, but it was out of state so your dad paid full sticker price? Is that right? Or did I misunderstand your post?
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