Fully agreed.
And it’s short sighted to assume that a high stress job means a lifetime of high stress. My nephew is doing his residency at a big urban hospital and it is very high stress. But his career plan involves a much more cerebral specialty once he starts his fellowship-- and very research oriented- and his mentors have assured him that this is a temporary blip in a long, satisfying, and intellectual but not stressful medical career. My own job is significantly less stressful than it was 10 years ago. Technology helps (who could imagine working summer Fridays from the beach before email?) but so does everything else- leverage once you start managing a team, more clout inside the organization so nobody blinks when you say, “You are giving us an unrealistic deadline. We can’t get this work done by next Tuesday. We need an extra week” so you get an extra week for your team, so nobody is at the office until midnight.
I wouldn’t weed out careers based on perceived stress unless a kid truly had an anxiety disorder. I have colleagues with jobs like mine who couldn’t balance work and kids; I’ve got colleagues with jobs like mine who managed a demanding job, four children, and a host of board/volunteer/non-profit involvement AND helping to take care of elderly parents. There is no single stress-o-meter.
@Much2learn I am a little puzzled by your comment
“Yes, Elite/Ivy school grads do earn more. Ivy league graduates salaries are a lot higher than average college graduates, and are significantly higher than any other conference/league, and it is not close (~$7,000 higher average salary than second highest conference). Still, it is not all about league names and prestige.”
Why are you comparing academic performances of athletic conferences/leagues?
The OP talks about elite/Ivy League schools. Elite can mean anything, but I know that Ivy League means: 8 specific schools.
To decide whether the Ivy League schools earn more I still needed to make a comparison. The easy way to do that is to compare it to other leagues/conferences. It isn’t perfect but it is clear that average salaries for Ivy League grads are higher than in any other, on average. The Patriot League is second and about $7k lower.
I really appreciate my garbage collectors, but that does not mean I want my kids to be garbage collectors. Do you want your kids to be garbage collectors? It is an honest job with dignity, you know.
You should have sent them to a directional U instead. “Do as I say, not as I do.” is not convincing.
^^I think you’re missing the point again, @Canuckguy. I can’t speak for @Pizzagirl, but I agree with the quote from her post. Because I think education is more than job training, I am not judging the value of my daughter’s education solely based on the eventual monetary rewards that it will bring her. I hope it will make her life richer by expanding her horizons, exposing her to new ideas, pushing her to think, and providing her with tools that will affect her personal and intellectual life as well as her professional life. (And, yes, I think some schools do a better job of that than others.)
If my children desired to be garbage collectors and worked hard at it, why would I look down on it? I believe in what I said.
My question might reflect the value of an elite education: Super riches send their kids to elite schools but how many of these kids want to become medical doctors?
I’d LOVE for my youngest to get a job as a local garbage collector. A job that starts at $55,000 a year with benefits and allows him to be outdoors all day (which is something he desperately wants)? A job that would allow him to be independent?
Seriously, do you even read some of the stuff you write? It must be nice being a perfect parent with perfect kids.
@LucieTheLakie you must be in a high cost neighborhood. The median is about 33k but google says the high is 58k in metropolitan areas although it is not reflected in the attached.
http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector
There is nothing wrong with being a garbage collector or being in that business. The CEO of waste management made 11 Million.
If they find it fulfilling, and it lets them have a decent life, why not? I mean, garbage collectors here have a secure job with benefits, and yes, it does require them to get up early, but then gives them afternoons open to do stuff—and the pay isn’t spectacular here but is above the median for our high-cost-of-living/high-wage region. What’s not to like?
I can assure you that right before Giuliani became a mayor of NYC many garbage collectors in the city were making much more money than most Ivy graduates.
“You should have sent them to a directional U instead. “Do as I say, not as I do.” is not convincing”
Your logic makes no sense. I think there is a certain experience about being in an environment for 4 years with a lot of bright classmates that is an experience we wanted our kids to have - regardless of whether it increased their pay over State U. I’m not pretentious enough to act as though that experience could happen only at HYPSM but heaven forbid Tufts, or any nonsense like that. I’m also not naive enough to pretend there is no difference between elite schools and East Nowheresville State where the admission requirement is a pulse.
This isn’t rocket science. I am in Prague now (having traveled here from Vienna) because my H and I value the experience of ambling around castles, museums, etc highly. Even though back home we won’t get paid one cent more for having gone. Your analogy is like saying “well, you should have gone to Peoria instead.” Why? It’s an experience we value and worked hard to afford.
“To me the real question will they end up more fully satisfied with their lives than the non elite?”
- This question is way too general. The kid who was dreaming about Harvard will never be fully satisfied after attending somewhere else. How she could be if she ended up without the Harvard attached to her name? The kid who was looking to be successful at ANY place that seems to fit her, will MAKE SURE that she is satisfied at the one that she chooses. It just depends on the initial goal, there is no general rule here at all.
The directionals in my area each have a couple of areas of specialization.
Elementary Ed? Terrific. Allied Health (particularly speech and OT)? Fantastic. Accounting and Mass Communications (particularly in the technical disciplines of TV production and now digital)- Yes.
You can’t major in Classics or East Asian Studies or Urban Planning or Chemical Engineering. You won’t be doing interdisciplinary work in neuroscience or linguistics, and you won’t be able to study Data Analytics apart from a short sequence of courses in market research through the business department.
Folks on CC like to claim that everyone else is a prestige ^&* for not sending their kid to the local directional- but why should a kid who has no interest in teaching third grade language arts or becoming a CPA slog through their education?
Canuckguy, my kid is at kind of a crossroads in his young career - exploring several different options that may have different long-term economic prospects / money making potential. It may very well be that he chooses a less lucrative path. So be it. He has to do what makes him happy long-term and we want that to be his guiding principle.
I’ve noticed that a lot of successful people with an accounting background in the US came from schools that, let’s just say, are not considered among the elite on CC. Part of that is because most American elites don’t even offer an accounting major (unlike in many former UK colonies and the UK where being a chartered accountant is a route to the executive suite). But I wonder if accounting (and engineering) at those non-elites tend to draw the cream of the crop over there. Or perhaps there is a filtering system gor accountants at those places (as there is for engineering).
@blossom #254, I’d argue that you’re overgeneralizing from a smallish (or at least selectively chosen) sample, both in your claims about what directionals offer, and in your claims about what College Confidential denizens who criticize “prestige snobs” are basing those criticisms on.
Filtering systems is everywhere. The kid simply cannot keep up or does not fulfill the college GPA requirement and falls off engineering, accounting, CS, pre-med track, pre-law track, whatever…You got to be very determined in some tracks to fill the gap between the HS academic level and the college (ANY college) academic requirement. HS valedictorians are not immune to this process either. Many of them simply do not realize that “Oh, I got to step up in my efforts!” and they continue in the same way that worked for them at HS,…and ooops, you are no longer on your initial track, you belong somewhere else.
I never made the claim that all directionals function like the one which is in commuting distance to me. However- a kid who has studied Japanese in HS who wants to continue in college would not be well served by picking a university which offers no Asian languages at all past level 1. And no Japanese at all. period full stop.
If you live somewhere with robust offerings in engineering, science and the humanities at the directionals- wonderful for the students in your area.