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My assumption is most Ivy leaguers (specifically undergrads) generally have no monetary constraints after graduating so this very much reads to me as a bohemian

My assumption is most Ivy leaguers (specifically undergrads) generally have no monetary constraints after graduating so this very much reads to me as a bohemian “by choice” decision to be more interesting than an actual tragic story.

djaouen 10mo ago
I graduated from an Ivy and, after graduation, I was (and continue to be, to this day) dirt poor.
- laidoffamazon 10mo ago
  I have some doubts about this, or at least what your definition of dirt poor is. The ability required to get into an ivy is so significant I don’t see how someone could fail to make substantial sums if they wanted to.
  - djaouen 10mo ago
    I grew up in NYC and was lucky enough (or smart enough, I suppose) to get into one of the top public high schools in the city. Because of that (and doing well enough in that school), I was able to squeak into Cornell via its wait list. But I don’t come from connections: my mother was a receptionist and my father was a sanitation worker. For a while after college, I managed to find work doing backend development for various local businesses, but nothing fancy. But even that has dried up due to various reasons (including a major health issue I developed after graduating). For some reason, it seems people in authority positions are irked by me due to my humble beginnings & my insistence on continual learning, even after graduating from school. If I had a penny (or I guess now, nickel?) for every time an interviewer asked me, “How did you learn that when you majored in Industrial Engineering,” I’d be a very rich man. Or at least able to afford all the books I want to read. :(
alephnerd 10mo ago
Statistically, you're correct. That said, the thing about statistics is that outliers exist. Also, imo the "Ivy" advantage is moreso a "family background" advantage - traditionally high social prestige and high entry barrier vocations were gatekept by Ivy and Ivy-adjacent membership. The rise of competitive salary and low barrier of entry vocations like Software and Accounting helped dampen the value of that "Ivy" premium.
- laidoffamazon 10mo ago
  I guarantee (as I have before and you’re well aware) every Yale 2017/2018 grad in CS (or likely any quantitative degree) out earns me and my public school undergrad from 2018 and likely has a multiple of my net worth if they decided to pursue private sector employment instead of academia (though exit opportunities for the academic track are pretty lucrative too)
  - alephnerd 10mo ago
    > I guarantee (as I have before and you’re well aware) every Yale 2017/2018 grad in CS (or likely any quantitative degree) out earns me and my public school undergrad from 2018 and likely has a multiple of my net worth if they decided to pursue private sector employment instead of academia What "public school" did you attend? I can assure you that if you did some form of STEM at a top/mid UC, UIUC, UWash, GT, UT Austin, UMich, UNC Chapel Hill, and other similar caliber public schools in 17-18 you would have had the exact same opportunities and earning potential as a Yalie or Harvard grad. Most CS/ECE departments offer salary data for you to look at, and at least for my HS peers who attended Cal and UCLA their outcomes were the exact same if not better than my HS classmates at Yale. I understand layoffs can be traumatic, but I've noticed a persistent negative streak in your comments here on HN and this mindset isn't going to help you.
    - laidoffamazon 10mo ago
      The accept rate of my university was 50% a full tier below UNC The only people getting Yale like outcomes from my undergrad is one person with exposure to the SpaceX ipo, one that’s a principal eng at Broadcom, and one that’s a senior or perhaps staff at Facebook. That’s 3 people.
Cheer2171 10mo ago
Your assumption is ignorant. Most Ivy League schools have free tuition if your parents household income is below $200-$100k and full ride room and board if below $100-60k. Rich kids can get cut off from their parents.
- tartoran 10mo ago
  Rich kids do get cut off from their parents but that's usually when they get off the rails, e.g start doing drugs or drinking heavily, drop out of school. When attending university most of them get some form of support from their rich families.
- laidoffamazon 10mo ago
  I want to improve my communication skills so I’d love pointers on this. Where exactly did I imply that it was the cost of the degree that is the constraint? Everyone knows poor kids and even middle class kids don’t pay anything to go to elite schools. I simply don’t think that means they face financial constraints exiting undergrad (or during undergrad). Why would they when HRT is paying $500k for new grads? There’s this weird belief that I should feel sorry for people that didn’t come from means but got into Yale or Brown or Stanford. Sorry, they’re just as alien and inrelatable to me as Jeff Bezos’ kids. These people are in an entirely different plane of existence and ability so I have a lot of trouble thinking they wouldn’t have unlimited opportunities exiting university that I can’t even dream of.
phlakaton 10mo ago
This generalization is very, very wrong. I can tell you, from my personal college network, many students had monetary constraints coming in, and many certainly had monetary constraints coming out. Some of that was choice of career path; some was not.
- laidoffamazon 10mo ago
  I don’t understand how someone coming out of Brown or Yale would have constraints coming out. Their degree is basically free, basically any degree can get them an analyst gig on Wall Street if they so choose, and at worst they can go down the law school path.
  - Philadelphia 10mo ago
    You don’t become one of the wealthy just by going to school with them. You’re still an outsider, lesser, just one of the little people, not their sort.
    - laidoffamazon 10mo ago
      As someone too inferior to get into one it sure doesn’t seem that way
somenameforme 10mo ago
This is definitely incorrect. If you graduate with a low-value degree from an Ivy League, you're still going to be just as unemployable as somebody that graduated from Party U with a low value degree. The only real difference is that at top schools there are less people that are completely directionless in life (since you're less likely to get admitted in such a case) so if somebody is graduating with e.g. a philosophy degree, then they're probably doing it explicitly with the intent of going to e.g. law school or on an academic path, whereas many people at lower ranked universities end up there largely through inertia and may pursue degrees of minimal value with no real thoughts beyond taking the easiest path to achieving a college degree, which is the direction they were pushed onto without ever really thinking about it. And even for valuable degrees, the advantage yielded is far less than you might think. It's not like the movies where you have dozens of companies begging you to come work with 6 figure starting salaries and fat bonuses up front. You open a few more doors, and people have a better than average initial impression of you, but at the end of the day - it's not a world-shifting advantage. The overall edge in outcomes is not because of the university, but because of the sort of people that the university admits. The sort of guy who graduates class president, valedictorian, wrestled at state, and with a near perfect score on his SAT is going to do disproportionately well in life completely regardless of whether he ends up at MIT, Party U, or just skips university altogether.
- corimaith 10mo ago
  There are plenty of directionless people in Ivy League who aren't emotionally invested in the paths their parents sent them, they just go into Finance or Consulting. And in those places, pedigree does matter alot, the actual skills are not as important as the cultural compatability.
  - laidoffamazon 10mo ago
    BCG consultants and traders at Five Rings are very much not financially constrained after undergrad (about $100-200k difference between them but either way)
  - somenameforme 10mo ago
duskdozer 10mo ago
People have such an odd belief that the Ivy League is all trust-fund babies, even though for years and years, these schools have shown that they recruit disadvantaged people and make it affordable for them to attend.
- laidoffamazon 10mo ago
  What about what I said made you think I said everyone there had a trust fund? I have a problem with homeless to Harvard as much as I have a problem with billionaires kids at Yale. Do you not understand this? How can I be more clear?

djaouen 10mo ago

I graduated from an Ivy and, after graduation, I was (and continue to be, to this day) dirt poor.

laidoffamazon 10mo ago
I have some doubts about this, or at least what your definition of dirt poor is. The ability required to get into an ivy is so significant I don’t see how someone could fail to make substantial sums if they wanted to.
- djaouen 10mo ago
  I grew up in NYC and was lucky enough (or smart enough, I suppose) to get into one of the top public high schools in the city. Because of that (and doing well enough in that school), I was able to squeak into Cornell via its wait list. But I don’t come from connections: my mother was a receptionist and my father was a sanitation worker. For a while after college, I managed to find work doing backend development for various local businesses, but nothing fancy. But even that has dried up due to various reasons (including a major health issue I developed after graduating). For some reason, it seems people in authority positions are irked by me due to my humble beginnings & my insistence on continual learning, even after graduating from school. If I had a penny (or I guess now, nickel?) for every time an interviewer asked me, “How did you learn that when you majored in Industrial Engineering,” I’d be a very rich man. Or at least able to afford all the books I want to read. :(

alephnerd 10mo ago

Statistically, you're correct. That said, the thing about statistics is that outliers exist. Also, imo the "Ivy" advantage is moreso a "family background" advantage - traditionally high social prestige and high entry barrier vocations were gatekept by Ivy and Ivy-adjacent membership. The rise of competitive salary and low barrier of entry vocations like Software and Accounting helped dampen the value of that "Ivy" premium.

laidoffamazon 10mo ago
I guarantee (as I have before and you’re well aware) every Yale 2017/2018 grad in CS (or likely any quantitative degree) out earns me and my public school undergrad from 2018 and likely has a multiple of my net worth if they decided to pursue private sector employment instead of academia (though exit opportunities for the academic track are pretty lucrative too)
- alephnerd 10mo ago
  > I guarantee (as I have before and you’re well aware) every Yale 2017/2018 grad in CS (or likely any quantitative degree) out earns me and my public school undergrad from 2018 and likely has a multiple of my net worth if they decided to pursue private sector employment instead of academia What "public school" did you attend? I can assure you that if you did some form of STEM at a top/mid UC, UIUC, UWash, GT, UT Austin, UMich, UNC Chapel Hill, and other similar caliber public schools in 17-18 you would have had the exact same opportunities and earning potential as a Yalie or Harvard grad. Most CS/ECE departments offer salary data for you to look at, and at least for my HS peers who attended Cal and UCLA their outcomes were the exact same if not better than my HS classmates at Yale. I understand layoffs can be traumatic, but I've noticed a persistent negative streak in your comments here on HN and this mindset isn't going to help you.
  - laidoffamazon 10mo ago
    The accept rate of my university was 50% a full tier below UNC The only people getting Yale like outcomes from my undergrad is one person with exposure to the SpaceX ipo, one that’s a principal eng at Broadcom, and one that’s a senior or perhaps staff at Facebook. That’s 3 people.

Cheer2171 10mo ago

Your assumption is ignorant. Most Ivy League schools have free tuition if your parents household income is below $200-$100k and full ride room and board if below $100-60k. Rich kids can get cut off from their parents.

tartoran 10mo ago
Rich kids do get cut off from their parents but that's usually when they get off the rails, e.g start doing drugs or drinking heavily, drop out of school. When attending university most of them get some form of support from their rich families.
laidoffamazon 10mo ago
I want to improve my communication skills so I’d love pointers on this. Where exactly did I imply that it was the cost of the degree that is the constraint? Everyone knows poor kids and even middle class kids don’t pay anything to go to elite schools. I simply don’t think that means they face financial constraints exiting undergrad (or during undergrad). Why would they when HRT is paying $500k for new grads? There’s this weird belief that I should feel sorry for people that didn’t come from means but got into Yale or Brown or Stanford. Sorry, they’re just as alien and inrelatable to me as Jeff Bezos’ kids. These people are in an entirely different plane of existence and ability so I have a lot of trouble thinking they wouldn’t have unlimited opportunities exiting university that I can’t even dream of.

phlakaton 10mo ago

This generalization is very, very wrong. I can tell you, from my personal college network, many students had monetary constraints coming in, and many certainly had monetary constraints coming out. Some of that was choice of career path; some was not.

laidoffamazon 10mo ago
I don’t understand how someone coming out of Brown or Yale would have constraints coming out. Their degree is basically free, basically any degree can get them an analyst gig on Wall Street if they so choose, and at worst they can go down the law school path.
- Philadelphia 10mo ago
  You don’t become one of the wealthy just by going to school with them. You’re still an outsider, lesser, just one of the little people, not their sort.
  - laidoffamazon 10mo ago
    As someone too inferior to get into one it sure doesn’t seem that way

somenameforme 10mo ago

This is definitely incorrect. If you graduate with a low-value degree from an Ivy League, you're still going to be just as unemployable as somebody that graduated from Party U with a low value degree. The only real difference is that at top schools there are less people that are completely directionless in life (since you're less likely to get admitted in such a case) so if somebody is graduating with e.g. a philosophy degree, then they're probably doing it explicitly with the intent of going to e.g. law school or on an academic path, whereas many people at lower ranked universities end up there largely through inertia and may pursue degrees of minimal value with no real thoughts beyond taking the easiest path to achieving a college degree, which is the direction they were pushed onto without ever really thinking about it. And even for valuable degrees, the advantage yielded is far less than you might think. It's not like the movies where you have dozens of companies begging you to come work with 6 figure starting salaries and fat bonuses up front. You open a few more doors, and people have a better than average initial impression of you, but at the end of the day - it's not a world-shifting advantage. The overall edge in outcomes is not because of the university, but because of the sort of people that the university admits. The sort of guy who graduates class president, valedictorian, wrestled at state, and with a near perfect score on his SAT is going to do disproportionately well in life completely regardless of whether he ends up at MIT, Party U, or just skips university altogether.

corimaith 10mo ago
There are plenty of directionless people in Ivy League who aren't emotionally invested in the paths their parents sent them, they just go into Finance or Consulting. And in those places, pedigree does matter alot, the actual skills are not as important as the cultural compatability.
- laidoffamazon 10mo ago
  BCG consultants and traders at Five Rings are very much not financially constrained after undergrad (about $100-200k difference between them but either way)
- somenameforme 10mo ago

duskdozer 10mo ago

People have such an odd belief that the Ivy League is all trust-fund babies, even though for years and years, these schools have shown that they recruit disadvantaged people and make it affordable for them to attend.

laidoffamazon 10mo ago
What about what I said made you think I said everyone there had a trust fund? I have a problem with homeless to Harvard as much as I have a problem with billionaires kids at Yale. Do you not understand this? How can I be more clear?