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When the richest and most powerful start sending their kids to public school then I might believe this. Until then the title makes for good clickbait but nothi

by bruceb 2y ago

When the richest and most powerful start sending their kids to public school then I might believe this. Until then the title makes for good clickbait but nothing believable. This tweet I read earlier today lays out the case: "The best reason to go to a top 10 American university: In a random class you'll have a governor's daughter, the son of a billionaire and two guys with 170+ IQ. It's a hell of a group of people to mingle with to succeed in life. I'm super anti-university but I'll admit that this alone probably makes those schools worth it.." https://twitter.com/orrdavid/status/1784703997808455849 https://twitter.com/orrdavid/status/1784703997808455849

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
The richest can pay 20x more for something only slightly better and genuinely think it's a great deal. You can't.
- DrFalkyn 2y ago
  But if you make friends with those rich kids may open opportunities you would not otherwise have.
  - nytesky 2y ago
    But is it easy for a lower economic state kid to befriend rich kids? They do come from different worlds, and even the activities (skiing for a weekend, taking taxis to concerts, etc) can divide you. This was partly my experience, though it never entered my mind to try and befriend “rich kids” but I think my choice of activities (think LAN parties vs poker games with real money), my time spent in a campus job, not knowing how to ski or have money for a trip, definitely narrowed my friendship opportunities.
- rblatz 2y ago
  It’s always been the network, and it always will be. I went to a public university, all my friends and roommates are doing well, but none of them have started a company worth more than a million or so. Some are director level at big tech companies, but none are exec level.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I think it's pretty unpredictable how much value you will get out of a particular institution. Firstly, students enter at a time when they're still figuring out what life is. You could do a lot of research on how to maximize the best professors or network in a field but most won't predict what specialty they'll end up with. Even if they do, they're so young they could not know how to judge the quality of an authority yet, so who is to say you will estimate that correctly? The other reason people want top schools is for networking with other students. Some people will get a lot out of that and others won't. There's a bit of randomness involved. You could maximize your odds of being surrounded with good networks by going to the best school but honestly, I doubt you can truly predict the worth of that for an individual student.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  Ivy League schools give a large proportion of students a full ride, or close to it. Tuition is not really a reason not to go to the Ivies.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jcranmer 2y ago
The point I gave up reading was when Nate started arguing that a degree from an Ivy League would look worse than a good state school to employers because those students are clearly political activist nincompoops. And it's like... first off, these trends have been going on for as long as I can remember (and I am no longer young), and second off, you got your fame doing good statistical analysis, surely you could back up your assertions with hard data showing the decline of hiring instead of political punditry. But I'm guessing the data shows the opposite of the political punditry here.
- threeseed 2y ago
  It's hilarious to see people up in arms about these students protesting. As though students from different generations didn't do exactly the same thing about the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars.
  - brian_cunnie 2y ago
    > As though students from different generations didn't do exactly the same thing about the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars. I remember protesting at Penn in '85 ('86?) to persuade the trustees to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. And you know what? The trustees divested.
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2024/04/26/neil-young-four-dead-in-ohio-finds-audience-with-palestine-protesters/73469646007/ https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2024/04/26/neil-you... The irony of a group of people who loved the slang "ok boomer" going back to a boomer moment and a boomer song should not be lost on anyone...
- eli_gottlieb 2y ago
  > The point I gave up reading was when Nate started arguing that a degree from an Ivy League would look worse than a good state school to employers because those students are clearly political activist nincompoops. Right, the politics are way down the list of reasons to not bother with these kids. The politics are downstream of these kids being nepo babies.
aantix 2y ago
The connections don't matter as much as you would think. If you're driven, you will succeed. Regardless of school choice. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy-league-college-admissions https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy... “As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.” Krueger says that there is one exception to this. Students from the very lowest economic strata do seem to benefit from going to an Ivy."
- wredue 2y ago
  Just no. The single greatest predictor of your success is how successful your parents are, and the other predictors are not even close to the same ballpark, and a huge reason for that is connections. Anyone can cherry pick a few cases and say “see”, and I highly suspect that’s what’s actually going on there.
  - aantix 2y ago
    I don’t think you’re interested in a good faith discussion. There’s a study being discussed in the article cited. Feel free to discuss Krueger’s data if you think cases were cherry picked.
kelipso 2y ago
The fact that the scenario in that tweet is seen as a good thing is a societal defect.
bsder 2y ago
> In a random class you'll have a governor's daughter, the son of a billionaire and two guys with 170+ IQ. It's a hell of a group of people to mingle with to succeed in life. I'm super anti-university but I'll admit that this alone probably makes those schools worth it.." Except that you already have to have money to hang with that group. What happens when they're heading to Switzerland for Spring Break? Yeah, you from the lower socioeconomic group on scholarship aren't going. After a couple of exclusions like that, that group won't hang with you anymore. Sure, if you're from the very lowest socioeconomic strata, everything is up. Anybody you hang with is an improvement. However, if you're merely in the middle, that's not necessarily true when compared with a non-Ivy. And, I would like to point out that law is NOT always best served by having an Ivy credential for undergrad. If you're involved in state politics, it's often best to have your law degree from the best law school in the state (which is often public!) and then have something like a JD from an Ivy.
paulpauper 2y ago
Until then the title makes for good clickbait but nothing believable. This is much of Substack alt-center/centrism these days. Big claim in title for virality, walks back claim in article or gives unrelated or unsupported evidence to back up claim.

by bruceb 2y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

The richest can pay 20x more for something only slightly better and genuinely think it's a great deal. You can't.

DrFalkyn 2y ago
But if you make friends with those rich kids may open opportunities you would not otherwise have.
- nytesky 2y ago
  But is it easy for a lower economic state kid to befriend rich kids? They do come from different worlds, and even the activities (skiing for a weekend, taking taxis to concerts, etc) can divide you. This was partly my experience, though it never entered my mind to try and befriend “rich kids” but I think my choice of activities (think LAN parties vs poker games with real money), my time spent in a campus job, not knowing how to ski or have money for a trip, definitely narrowed my friendship opportunities.
rblatz 2y ago
It’s always been the network, and it always will be. I went to a public university, all my friends and roommates are doing well, but none of them have started a company worth more than a million or so. Some are director level at big tech companies, but none are exec level.
asveikau 2y ago
I think it's pretty unpredictable how much value you will get out of a particular institution. Firstly, students enter at a time when they're still figuring out what life is. You could do a lot of research on how to maximize the best professors or network in a field but most won't predict what specialty they'll end up with. Even if they do, they're so young they could not know how to judge the quality of an authority yet, so who is to say you will estimate that correctly? The other reason people want top schools is for networking with other students. Some people will get a lot out of that and others won't. There's a bit of randomness involved. You could maximize your odds of being surrounded with good networks by going to the best school but honestly, I doubt you can truly predict the worth of that for an individual student.
DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
Ivy League schools give a large proportion of students a full ride, or close to it. Tuition is not really a reason not to go to the Ivies.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jcranmer 2y ago

The point I gave up reading was when Nate started arguing that a degree from an Ivy League would look worse than a good state school to employers because those students are clearly political activist nincompoops. And it's like... first off, these trends have been going on for as long as I can remember (and I am no longer young), and second off, you got your fame doing good statistical analysis, surely you could back up your assertions with hard data showing the decline of hiring instead of political punditry. But I'm guessing the data shows the opposite of the political punditry here.

threeseed 2y ago
It's hilarious to see people up in arms about these students protesting. As though students from different generations didn't do exactly the same thing about the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars.
- brian_cunnie 2y ago
  > As though students from different generations didn't do exactly the same thing about the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars. I remember protesting at Penn in '85 ('86?) to persuade the trustees to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. And you know what? The trustees divested.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2024/04/26/neil-young-four-dead-in-ohio-finds-audience-with-palestine-protesters/73469646007/ https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2024/04/26/neil-you... The irony of a group of people who loved the slang "ok boomer" going back to a boomer moment and a boomer song should not be lost on anyone...
eli_gottlieb 2y ago
> The point I gave up reading was when Nate started arguing that a degree from an Ivy League would look worse than a good state school to employers because those students are clearly political activist nincompoops. Right, the politics are way down the list of reasons to not bother with these kids. The politics are downstream of these kids being nepo babies.

aantix 2y ago

The connections don't matter as much as you would think. If you're driven, you will succeed. Regardless of school choice. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy-league-college-admissions https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy... “As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.” Krueger says that there is one exception to this. Students from the very lowest economic strata do seem to benefit from going to an Ivy."

wredue 2y ago
Just no. The single greatest predictor of your success is how successful your parents are, and the other predictors are not even close to the same ballpark, and a huge reason for that is connections. Anyone can cherry pick a few cases and say “see”, and I highly suspect that’s what’s actually going on there.
- aantix 2y ago
  I don’t think you’re interested in a good faith discussion. There’s a study being discussed in the article cited. Feel free to discuss Krueger’s data if you think cases were cherry picked.

kelipso 2y ago

The fact that the scenario in that tweet is seen as a good thing is a societal defect.

bsder 2y ago

> In a random class you'll have a governor's daughter, the son of a billionaire and two guys with 170+ IQ. It's a hell of a group of people to mingle with to succeed in life. I'm super anti-university but I'll admit that this alone probably makes those schools worth it.." Except that you already have to have money to hang with that group. What happens when they're heading to Switzerland for Spring Break? Yeah, you from the lower socioeconomic group on scholarship aren't going. After a couple of exclusions like that, that group won't hang with you anymore. Sure, if you're from the very lowest socioeconomic strata, everything is up. Anybody you hang with is an improvement. However, if you're merely in the middle, that's not necessarily true when compared with a non-Ivy. And, I would like to point out that law is NOT always best served by having an Ivy credential for undergrad. If you're involved in state politics, it's often best to have your law degree from the best law school in the state (which is often public!) and then have something like a JD from an Ivy.

paulpauper 2y ago

Until then the title makes for good clickbait but nothing believable. This is much of Substack alt-center/centrism these days. Big claim in title for virality, walks back claim in article or gives unrelated or unsupported evidence to back up claim.