Atlantic Monthly essay: "Lost in the Meritocracy"

Parents Forum
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<p>Tom Wolfe writes "I Am Charlotte Simmons"--a book, I admit, I found a guilty pleasure. It makes a lot of $$ and so there's now a market for articles about kids from humble backgrounds who get messed up by going to elite colleges. </p>

<p>Are there spoiled rich kids at Ivies who go clubbing every weekend and play high stakes poker games? Yes. Do some working class/middle class kids feel the need to reinvent themselves to try to fit into this group? Yes. (Think Hoyt in "Charlotte.") A couple of years ago, there was a scandal at Harvard in which two students stole money from Hasty Pudding, an elite undergrad theater group. One of them was a girl whose dad was a retired military officer. She'd reinvented her past and stole money to create an image to get into the inner circle of the really wealthy at Harvard. </p>

<p>Know what? There are kids who would also do things they shouldn't to get into the "elite" sororities and fraternities at big state schools in the Midwest. There are girls who are jealous to the bone that they can't be Thetas at the University of Texas like Jenna Bush was. (My understanding is that all the girls in that sorority are from very, very wealthy families.) </p>

<p>There are also a gazillion kids from really weathly and connected families who hide their wealth so that they know anyone who befriends them is interested in them as people and not in getting a free ride or access to power. Al Gore roomed with Tommy Lee Jones (the actor) at Harvard. Jones was a working class kid with no money. Such friendships are not at all unusual at Harvard or Princeton or any other Ivy. The truth is that half the "connected" kids --the fourth generation in their families to attend Harvard, Yale or Princeton who attended one of the "Ancient Eight" boarding schools and can go to Vail or Aspen to ski on a three day weekend--are in absolute awe of the kids from Nowhereville who are at the same college. Yeah, there are people who are born on third base who think they hit a home run. There are also kids who are born on third base who know it and genuinely respect kids who got in by pure merit. Indeed, some of those kids could probably have gotten in on merit if they had tried and are insecure about their own self-worth because they doubt it. </p>

<pre><code>A lot of this boils down to raising your kids with good values and teaching them that one of the Ten Commandments is "Thou Shalt Not Covet." Not every poor kid is a saint and not every rich kid is a spoiled brat.
</code></pre>

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<p>Capitalism: The great equalizer. Fame and fortune achieveable by virtually anyone. Fame and Fortune easily lost by everyone.</p>

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<p>My son, a freshman at Stanford, claims that even jocks at Stanford are smart. Talk of snobbery ...</p>

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<p>Well, Patient's S is smart. It's a fact, not snobbery.</p>

<p>I agree with Jonri's post. There are all kinds of students in every college.</p>

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<p>My son is attending a very famous prep school on almost full scholarships. He live in his dorm with many kids whose parents name you will see in newspaper quite a bit. I agree with Kirmum observation. My son states that wealthy kid tends to hide their wealth by not brining in the subjects. Even more so, my kids have few friends who come from very rich and famous families. My kids monthly allowance at school is less than most of the kid at regular high school spend. In addition, I have spoken to couple of elite parents in parents day meeting. They were very nice and did not display their wealth even when the conversation went in great length. The author experience may be individual but it does not seem right. I can say that a prep school tends to have higher percentage of elite kids more than even Ivies. After all how many people can afford to spend $35,000 for a high school.</p>

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<p>Let me just defend the very fine writer of this article. IMHO, he didn't "invent his own experience." I've read many things he's written before and I believe he is at least my age [47] if not older, so he is describing the Princeton of many years ago. I flew up for a weekend at Princeton in 1978 to go to a dance with a friend of mine who had joined one of the top eating clubs. After spending the weekend with him and hanging out with people in his eating club, I feel that the description in this article of old money students and attitudes at Princeton AT THAT TIME is at least somewhat accurate. Additionally, I had another friend who went to Princeton from my Midwestern suburban high school and he became very depressed, in a very similar way and from very similar experiences to what this author went through. [The friend I flew in to visit was a big jock, had a father who was president of a Big Ten university and some claim to old money, and fit in just fine at Princeton, though I remember how surprised I was that he chose to hang out with this rather limited group for his four years there.]
I'm sure that Princeton has become more of a meritocracy in the intervening years, and thus the disbelief in the verity of this author's experience, though having recently plowed through "the Book of Four" by a more recent Princeton grad, it seems as if the Princeton of today still has some similarities to the Princeton of yesteryear.</p>

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<p>My sons' boarding/prep school has some students from the wealthiest, famous, culturally known famiies in the country. It also has a number of kids from outreach programs like Prep for Prep and ABC where the kids are on full scholarships. Some of those kids live poorer than anyone you are likely to see in a midrange suburban school district. It also provides a number of "town" scholarships for kids who live in the area and cannot afford to go there but are promising. It also gives some very limited financial aid for the more middle class families with kids that have some dimension that the school really wants (athletics or very high test scores and academic profile) . But then there is the range in the middle. Many, many of the kids who go there live in modest homes, and the families are what I would call upper middle income, just skirting the 6 figure range, which is a good salary, but makes it very tough to support an after tax commitment of $25K a year before factoring in college costs. Most are not from large families, so every dime of the family income is going to the kids. No decorators, fancy cars, etc. I would say that most of the kids in his school fall into either that catergory, or the next step up, where the school is affordable without scrimping but the family is not in the truly wealthy ranks. We fall in that latter category. I live in a neighborhood of nice but not elaborate houses. Ours is the biggest in the neighborhood but it is your standard "McMansion" and very bare bones inside as far as amenities like crown molding, sub zero s, viking stove type stuff. It is really a very big tract house in terms of quality. Our single biggest expense has been school related. Tuition, books, room and board, travel for schools, applications, commute, school related ECs are some of the ways we spend our money. I wear clothes from Cosco with an occaisional Talbot on sale splurge. My kids are all in hand me downs, or things just bought as needed without any brandnames taken into consideration though my daughter is going off on her own with shopping. When we moved four years ago, I could not list anything worth more than $2000 than we owned. The instruments were close, but they are student quality and the same brand is readily available right about there. Even with jewelry, I had no single item worth that much, and my furniture... well, most of it belonged on the curbside. But we spend more than what most families make on school related expenses. That where we spend our money, and when we did not have it, that is where we incurred our debts.</p>

<p>There is a new hardback out called, "Prep" written about a young girl from a lower middle class, midwestern family going to an elite prep boarding school. The "Charlotte Simmons" of the prep school is a good way to describe it. Better written in some ways than Wolfe's book, as a young woman wrote it. I am not saying it is typical of the prep school experience, but it gives an insight. I find the kids at my son's school more varied than at many of the public high schools I have seen with the single unifying thread being academic proficiency. Even the lowest ranked kids in the school, some who may even flunk out, have some academic life in them. I've yet to meet one who does not come from a family where academics and culture are not considered important. Which is a bit contrary to the protagonists in "Charlotte Simmons" and "Prep" where the kids are academic anomolies from families who did not encourage them to reach for the top academic expereinces.</p>

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<p>I agree with Jamimom. In summary, the kids I see aiming for and attending highly ranked schools are from families where education is valued, whether the economic status is poor, lower middle class, upper middle class, or wealthy. This is the prevailing common denominator, not status or old wealth.</p>

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<p>Kircum, I did not feel "impoverished" either when I was in school and I was on full scholarship and worked the cafeteria. But I will tell you that things have changed in this regard in that there are more opportunities to spend money these days. For example, at my alma mater, you either ate at the cafeteria where your parents paid for a plan so it was free to you, or you went to the "open cafeteria" where the school staff tended to go and you paid for mediocre food. The only other alternative was a snack shop with very limited choice. There just was not a whole lot off campus without a good 15-20 minute walk and even that was not really that great. A decent Chinese restarunt, and a sub shop were the choices, and they were usually late night choices. When we returned for a big reunion and looked around, wow! Food courts galore, choices all over the place and the streets around the campus are now full of little eateries clamoring for your money. Few kids eat at the cafeteria, only the freshmen,and many kids on the mealplans just don't use them, something none of us even considered. Also Starbucks with their expensive coffee drinks was packed. The Borders cafe, likewise. So even going to the same school, it would be a different story. I would be hard put to even have a latte every day on my undergraduate budget. Heck I was working to keep my cafeteria plan to a minimum and eat for free the shifts I worked. Sure, I could afford to chip in for cheap Chinese or half a sub a couple nights a week, but my coffe/tea was made in the dorm room with the old hot pot and instant mixes and tea bags. I don't think I paid for any drinks other than an occaisional my whole time there. And bottled water did not exist back then. There are big vending machines selling gatorade, juices and water at $1+ all over the campus and many kids sport a Starbucks cup, water bottle, gatorade in hand. If that is a regualr habit, alone that is a pretty big expense. Also the kids seem to buy their books rather than borrow them, including their leisure books. There are always kids buying in that Borders. When I visited downtown Ann Arbor, I saw an awful lot of student spending there. I did not spend much money my freshman year, and when I moved off campus, it was really a pain to go shopping as anything was a distance away, so again extra spending was not an issue. </p>

<p>Also the kids I knew tended to go with their families for vacation. If I was invited, which I was a few times, a goodly amount of the tab was covered. IT was never one of those things where each of us had to put in a large amount of money to go on a real vacation, just students. The beach runs were done really on the cheap, and no one really kept tabs. Trips abroad were not as frequent or exotic, and nearly always school based. Like you went to a school overseas for the term. Not really a sightseeing tour. I am amazed at the trips my boys' prep school sponsors each year. Vietnam, China, Russia, and they look more Club med than low budget school trips to me. Even the athletic training trips have a vacation element. </p>

<p>My son seems to have many opportunities to eat out as group. But he needs cash--usually $10 each time. Some of the sports do not provide a communal water jug during practice, and even if they do, kids like to buy a fresh gatorade or water from the machine. No one wants to drink from those nasty communal tubes provided. </p>

<p>People don't pack lunch or snacks as much anymore once the kids get above preschool age. I used to pack food when we went for music lessons, or skating because I did not want to feed the vending machines; I just have too many kids, it gets ridiculous, and I was not the only one. I rarely see parents with a bag packed with sandwiches now. I am ashamed to say that I now feed the vending machines. So there has been a shift in culture in the last 30 years, and free cash seems to be more necessary, if you don't want to feel left out. Also the universities are charging for stuff they used to include. I never paid a dime for university events, and there seemed to always be some sort of food spread out on campus. Not so anymore. Join a club sport, and you pay for nearly everything, sometimes even a fee to join. Some schools even charge NCAA athletes for stuff--they pay trips and other event related costs.</p>

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<p>When I was at U of M in the 70s we had two very wealthy guys in my fraternity. One let you know it, the other did not. They are exactly the same way today. I was good friends with both, but each relationship had different ground rules. I ended up in graduate school with the one that did not and we became even better friends. I still have long-distance friendships with each, although I talk to the one that did not on a much more regular basis.</p>

<p>The point is I don't think it is the school, it's the people in the school and how they choose to live their lives.</p>

<p>I know, this sounds like the Star-Bellied Sneatches.</p>

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<p>I think that Jonri's comment about "post-Charlotte syndrome" is hilarious. Also found "Charlotte" hilarious. One of the main characters aspires to be an "aristo-meritocrat!"</p>

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<p>would that be "scat- cat" or "Berloiz"?</p>

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<p>I so not know yet what the atmosphere will be at college, but in the private school my daughter attends, which sounds similar, but slightly less affluent than the one Jamimom describes, Motherof Two's point holds true - very true. The kids at her who aspire to or have gone to selective colleges are all top of the class, and the reason why they are top of the class is mainly because their parents valued education from a very early age. The underlying socioeconomic status varies of these kids, but the breakdown is pretty close to that of the school. Her private school tuition is cheap compared to what I would suspect most of you pay(About $7000 per), the students vary from a few multimillionaires to a few who struggle to make the $7000, mostly upper 5 figures - low 6 figures. Most of the kids who have ended up at selective schools are at the higher end of the middle income range for the school, mainly because the family's 100K salary goes a long way with the $7000 tuition, but not as far with $40000 tuition, many need financial aid, many opt for the state school which is very cheap, less than high school tuition.</p>

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<p>The base cost to go to sons' school is $25K. The school is needblind for admissions and no interest loans are offered, but who wants to borrow for highschool? Financial aid is very limited with just a few merit scholarships and mostly need aid which go almost entirely to outreach programs include the town program. Although the number of kids who do go to the top 30 schools is high, there is a large legacy, endowment, celebrity population here to skew those numbers. Few kids will qualify for financial aid, and that issue is addressed independently with a financial consultant who meets with such families. Very few kids get merit awards, I notice, far fewer than those at my other son's catholic highschool where it seemed like everyone got something. They were as aggressive as I have ever seen a school in going for those awards. And that is a $10K catholic highschool that does provide merit scholarships and financial aid.</p>

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<p>Jamimon, does the $25K include board? The boarding schools we've beene looking at seem to all be about $35K plus. Am I missing something? And do tell, where are there private schools that charge only $7K? Is LA just one big rip off?</p>

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<p>Most of the $7K private schools I know of are parochial schools.</p>

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<p>Oh, thanks. Yes, the parochial schools here are about that, too.</p>

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<p>I think MotherofTwo nails one facet very well: kids with educational ambition mainly come from homes where education is valued, regardless of economic class.</p>

<p>And Jamimom touches on another point: "the not enough money to pay, too much money to qualify for financial aid" syndrome.</p>

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<p>We've been calling that the "it only looks good on paper" syndrome around our house, sigh...</p>

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<p>Yes LA is one big rip-off :D. Private schools in the South are very different animals than what you are thinking of. My daughter's school is a "parochial" only in the sense that they have chapel once a week (more of a do your best, values sort of pep talk) and church once a month (somewhat more religious, but not overly so, several observant Jewish families are happy and comfortable sending their children, in fact moved them from the more secular private school across town). It is less expensive because the cost of living is less, the market will bear less, and the facilities, while quite good by our standards here, are not up to the "other" St. Paul's.</p>