Elite schools - Rich kid territory? / Hidden gems for social mobility

Some very interesting data on the wealth distribution before and after attending various US colleges.
This is not for the business schools, but the overall college, but interesting nonetheless:
"Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60. Find Yours."

The "mobility rate" might be the most interesting finding for all those looking to attend a "hidden gem". While the data does not reflect finance job placement, it is a very interesting analysis and points toward the universal value of tech know-how.

What do you monkeys think? Does this confirm your on-campus experience? Have you found a new school to apply to?

Region
 

Absolutely true, went to a mediocre public HS that sent most kids to community college and now attend a top 25 university. Most of my friends here either went to private school or wealthy public schools. The ibanking/consulting crowd is even less diverse - almost all either went to prestigious east coast prep schools or public schools in Greenwich/Winnetka/Palo Alto type of suburbs

 

Great find! It really shows how the private American schooling system has ended up today. I'm from Canada and all major universities are public. This type of concentration of wealthy students at elite schools isn't as prevalent here. Regardless, I find that poorer students in general have more difficulty networking and climbing the ranks at school even though financial aid is stellar. Even after a student gets into university with a full grants/scholarships/aid, poorer students evidently struggle more - but a lot of them end up succeeding and doing as well as their affluent peers because of their determination and hard work ethic. So yes, I can see that the article is pointing out that low-income students potentially do as well as high-income students but it requires much more effort to do it. Low-income students have and will always struggle more - even elite colleges can't totally prevent this.

 

Uh that's not true.

Have you been on the Western, Queen's, McGill, or UBC campuses? The VAST majority of students at these schools went to private/elite public high schools.

And that's just main campus. If you go to the elite (read: private & expensive) parts of these schools - like the business school at Queen's and Ivey at Western (read: the schools that send kids to banking & consulting) - the student body is almost exclusively rich kids.

 

Queen's Commerce is definitely elitist but I wouldn't say any of the other schools mentioned are as anywhere elitist as American schools like Duke, Penn, Harvard, etc. I think "Vast majority" is overstatement. I'm most familiar with Ivey students - the majority of them came from public schools plus Western is made up of mostly middle class folks. UBC does have a large wealthy Asian immigrant population but I wouldn't say its Elitist. Just in general though, America evidently has many more affluent individuals than in Canada.

 
surferdude867:

Uh that's not true.

Have you been on the Western, Queen's, McGill, or UBC campuses? The VAST majority of students at these schools went to private/elite public high schools.

And that's just main campus. If you go to the elite (read: private & expensive) parts of these schools - like the business school at Queen's and Ivey at Western (read: the schools that send kids to banking & consulting) - the student body is almost exclusively rich kids.

From Canada and can confirm this. Ivey is expensive af compared to other schools in the area.

 
surferdude867:

Uh that's not true.

Have you been on the Western, Queen's, McGill, or UBC campuses? The VAST majority of students at these schools went to private/elite public high schools.

And that's just main campus. If you go to the elite (read: private & expensive) parts of these schools - like the business school at Queen's and Ivey at Western (read: the schools that send kids to banking & consulting) - the student body is almost exclusively rich kids.

For some reason I made and visited multiple friends from UCC during their UG. Their environments tended to be incredibly similar and the furthest you could get from need and misery.

 
Scott Irish:
  1. That add-your-school functionality is cool
  2. Good on Harvard, they admit about twice the % of the 60-percenters as my alma mater, which loves to boast about its Catholic mission.

Most "Catholic" universities aren't very Catholic these days.

 
Best Response

It is a pretty shady situation. I went to an elite public school in Palo Alto (ranked 1st public school in all of california). Completely filled with snobbish and wealthy kids who were either sons/daughters from anything from Stanford professors to the CEO of Ebay. We enjoyed a great amount of funding. We had like 5 different computer labs that always had the latest macs, just built a huge multi-million dollar building, and even bought an entire class their own personal laptops.

While the other kids were the most pimply yet annoying and douchey kids in the world, I gained a lot from the resoruces I was given. I am not going to lie, I put them to use. However, 5 minutes down the road you get to East Palo Alto a much more run down part of Silicon Valley, many call it the ghetto of the peninsula. Their school (they only had one high school at the time I think) were in atrocious shape, had no funding, and had the highest drop out and teen pregnancy rate in the bay. It was a horrible situation. Due to California law, both schools get equal state funding, however Palo Alto schools just have rich parents to donate.

While I am very much for capitalism and free market, I believe an education's playing field should be level, which it quite obviously isn't.

 

AP Classes, and all of College Board, is a waste of money and quite the scam. Many kids at my high school, who were from East Palo Alto but attended my school through some sort of special exchange program would not be able to take the SATs nor AP classes because lack of money. They knew from the beginning that they wouldn't be going to college, because they simply couldn't afford to even try. So what did they do, shit the bed and watched their lives go in downward spirals through drug use, lack of attention, and other sad things.

College Board needs to be out, or subsidized.

 

It is level, by law it is level. You have to remember that it is level on the governmental side, you can't legislate what parents and alumni do, that would be an outrageous affront to freedom of speech and expression.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

I think what he meant was that the level of government funding should be higher, not that you should prevent parents/alumni from donating. It's not that no one should have nice things, it's that no one should have terrible teachers or computers from the 80s.

 

I love how Brown is listed in the strata of having more kids from the top 1% than from the bottom 60%. Makes me chuckle when one realizes that people at Brown work incredibly hard trying to distance themselves from any kind of "privilege".

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

As someone who attends one of the schools being described here and from a middle class/upper middle class, it is important to note not only the value of the relationships you build and their connections but how it influences your aspirations.

Based on the way I was raised, I left high school with the goal of securing a job with decent pay and some stability. Seeing the way that some of my friends lived and the experiences their wealth allowed them, in addition to the competition of the school changed my aspirations entirely, pushing me toward the typical finance/consulting path with PE hopes in the future.

 
koenigp:

As someone who attends one of the schools being described here and from a middle class/upper middle class, it is important to note not only the value of the relationships you build and their connections but how it influences your aspirations.

Based on the way I was raised, I left high school with the goal of securing a job with decent pay and some stability. Seeing the way that some of my friends lived and the experiences their wealth allowed them, in addition to the competition of the school changed my aspirations entirely, pushing me toward the typical finance/consulting path with PE hopes in the future.

wow for a first post. care to elaborate more?

 

Sorry just saw this again. Long time lurker. This was something I connected with. My parents instilled a good work ethic in me and just expected me to be able to find a stable job that would make me happy. But coming to an elite school, you meet people who have had experiences that you envy, notably being able to travel wherever and whenever. I came to realize that I have expensive hobbies and it will take more from my career to pursue those passions.

Beyond learning about jobs where you can have incredible impact on companies and network with accomplished people instead of entering a F500 as an analyst or something, I realized not only the allure of competitive careers, but also the paths that they can take you. I realized that my friends and their parents were not smarter or talented than I, but many times the success came from their networks and their prep school backgrounds. I devoted myself to creating a network now and to choosing a career that will enable me to build that network to gain the same success in the future.

 

What's with Americans and their obsession with social classes? You think your competition is spending their time thinking about this crap? You think your Chinese and Indian counterparts spend time on forums talking about class inequality and social justice? They're the ones that really have something to complain about and they don't.

“Elections are a futures market for stolen property”
 

There's a point by Paul Fussell in his (imperfect, in my opinion) book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System about how this importance of class and class distinctions is in part due to the fact that there is no formal distinction as opposed to Old Europe (with aristocratic titles) or India (with its caste system). It would not be my only or even main point in explaining this, but it makes for an interesting point of view (and read).

 

In this US it takes some level of astute observation and social awareness to even know what these classes are, where the lines are, and how they exist. Much is up to interpretation which is why we often discuss it in the ways we do. In Europe the divisions are force-fed to you through titles, here in America, the positioning is obscured.

 

My generalization is that need-blind is more cover-my-ass than doing-for-real. in reality if too many poor kids got in, one or more of these things will crash

crashing tuition revenue smaller endowment budget rising internationals % network & donations

 

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Gimme the loot
 

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Array
 

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