@purpletitan They are both new graduates who studied the same major at Stanford.
FWIW, the person who is going into consulting currently has a summer job started in June through December for which he got a late starting date exception from the consulting firm. His summer job - google.
I googled philosophy and google and got this. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/05/why-philosophy-majors-rule_n_4891404.html
The two numbers are equal if one works in San Francisco, CA and the other in Madison, WI. No?
The anecdotal evidence I have is that the success of students at the Ivy I attended goes from great to super great. Students who were in poverty growing up making six figures. Students who were well-off growing up making mid-six figures.
I have always believed that having an Ivy League degree has helped me at least get my foot in the door for many jobs. When someone has life situations barge in upon their career, it helps to say “but hey, I have a really valuable degree!”
I’m sure the same is true for various top local schools moreso than Ivies, in their areas of the country.
As for starting salaries, please realize that many folks don’t even make six figures, and someone starting at 75K is likely to get to 100K within five years with a promotion.
I’ve found that dentists have more money than doctors, if you talk about general practice.
“the two could have easily switched their employers.” I doubt it. Google gets probably over two million applications a year from what I’ve seen, and hire only a few thousand. You can’t just waltz into Google ,even if you went to a place like Stanford or Harvard, if you can’t do the work. Perhaps the kid from Stanford who had an internship either was not hired full time or didn’t think it was a good fit. The initial screens are very difficult. I’m sure they are difficult at top consulting firms as well but they are looking for different things.
Just as a point of order, I want to interject that this mischaracterizes the way salaries work in Cuba—and not just Cuba: In the US, doctors are quite highly paid relative to other professions, but that isn’t the case in all countries.
Sorry for the breach of topic, but I didn’t want the meme to spread.
Garbage collecting came to mind because it was garbage day. It used to be a great blue collar job with outstanding benefits until the service was privatized. I would definitely take it if I must, but it is not on the list of “jobs I want to do when I grow up”.
To me, the problem is not about sending your kids to an elite, PG, but sending your kids to an elite while telling others “not to bother”. Rightly or wrongly, it gives me the impression that someone is trying to eliminate competition for the grandchildren…
My philosophy of education is not a secret @EllieMom . It is heavily influenced by Baron C P Snow’s Rede Lecture, delivered at Cambridge in 1959:
“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had”.
I still don’t see why one can not get a good education and be prepared for the workplace. Am I missing something?
Canuck- You aren’t missing anything- except to concede that there are other wonderful careers in the workplace that don’t involve science.
Other than that I am mostly in agreement with you.
And for the record- if your kids can get into a so called “elite” university and you can afford to pay for it, and as a family you all agree that it’s “worth” the money- terrific. Again, in agreement with you.
But not everyone who can afford it thinks it’s a good use of their assets- and I don’t get to spend their money. And not everyone who values a so-called “elite” education has kids who can get in, or would take advantage of those opportunities. And to make families who prioritize education feel bad that their kid is taking advantage of the education that they CAN afford… that seems unkind to me.
I’ve got an acquaintance whose kid is gunning for a college I’ve never heard of. After 30+ years of reading resumes this happens very rarely. The kid is nice but not an academic star (one of the parents is an academic which has required some adjusting over the years). The family is reasonably comfortable but not so much so that spending full freight for a second tier private college wouldn’t hurt. They’ve figured out that the kid would get lost at a big public U- not that aggressive in seeking out help, wouldn’t be advocating for herself to register for what she needed when.
So they’ve found a private college where the kid might qualify for merit aid and that’s plan A. Why should I make them feel bad that the kid can’t get admitted to our flagship (which they could afford), can’t get into Bryn Mawr or Smith or another LAC which would be the “vibe” they are seeking, and they wouldn’t qualify for need based aid anywhere else? All you can do is wish their kid well and hope the cards get dealt in the right way.
Should the kid be at Rice or Harvey Mudd learning STEM? After struggling through HS Trig? Should I be telling them that the only way for her to have a career which might approximate her parents lifestyle is to suddenly become better at math?
“To me, the problem is not about sending your kids to an elite, PG, but sending your kids to an elite while telling others “not to bother”. Rightly or wrongly, it gives me the impression that someone is trying to eliminate competition for the grandchildren…”
Where have I told people not to bother sending their kids to elite schools (assuming it is financially feasible)? Please find one post of mine where I’ve said so.
The “eliminate competition for the grandchildren” is so silly, as it’s not a zero sum world. That’s your own perseveration that elite schools are about “preserving social capital transmission.” A) I don’t have any social capital to transmit and B) you’re the poster who famously accused me of being a “Catholic mother obsessed with Ivies but who couldn’t get her kids in.” About the only part of that statement that is true is that I’m a mother.
I agree. And I, too, consider being literate in basic science to be part of being an educated person. I think where we might disagree is about the strict hierarchical nature of the academic landscape and on the wisdom of using a single yardstick to measure the worth of an education, which is what happens when ROI is reduced to a comparison of alumni salaries or STEM courses are ipso facto assumed to be more challenging than non-STEM equivalents.
@eiholi - they are both in Bay Area,
@sevmom - the second person already has a 7 month job in Google. They are intentionally leaving without asking for an extension (they got one already from just summer to summer+fall) because they want to be in consulting track.
The point is that income maximization is not always what all college graduates are aiming for. They are looking for choices that feel right to them.
@texaspg, That’s why I mentioned fit as well. One kid from Stanford who was hired by Google and also by a top consulting firm, does not mean that is happening for many people, even from Stanford. A place like Google and a top consulting firm are not totally interchangeable in terms of what they are looking for or need. Google gets millions of applications for very limited positions. Stanford grads are abundant there , of course, but , the ones that are hired have what Google is looking for, in terms of talent and fit.
Guess what- every company knows what it is looking for in terms of talent and fit. Disney doesn’t have the same hiring criteria as Comcast; Cisco doesn’t take Apple’s leftovers. You can’t fetishize certain employers even when they are in the same industry.
There are people at DE Shaw who couldn’t get hired at Bridgewater- even though many people in their industry believe DE Shaw to be MUCH more prestigious than Bridgewater. What does that tell you? Nothing. Except that the people who get paid to make hiring decisions make them on behalf of their own organization, not as a public statement or social engineering initiative.
@texaspg, I think you’re drawing unwarranted conclusions based off of very skimpy data.
That kid will likely work 40 years, give or take, and MBB is a terrific (and potentially extremely lucrative) training ground. I can certainly see someone looking to maximize income choosing MBB if that someone isn’t planning to die within a few years and actually has a long-term view.
It’s not as if the kid gave up the Google gig to become a starving artist.
I understand that that has to be the assumption for the two numbers to be meaningful. Here on CC we often don’t see the assumptions behind statements, leading to interesting discussions.
Some people do “fetishize” companies like Google and colleges like Stanford. I don’t get it as I think there are plenty of good companies to work for, plenty of interesting jobs out there, and plenty of good colleges beyond schools like Stanford and the Ivy League. I agree that every company has their own criteria about what they are looking for in a hire, and did not mean to imply otherwise.
@Canuckguy, I’ve looked back several pages for the post where PizzaGirl told others “not to bother” sending their kids to elites, with the implied agenda that it would eliminate competition for her kids or grandkids. Could you please give me the post number, or better yet, quote the actual post to which you are referring?
What does this mean? (Not a rhetorical question)
@panpacific: Someone looking to maximize their income over the long-term may not choose the highest-paying option straight out of college.
@PurpleTitan So specifically, would the likelihood of “making big” in the future by starting as a software engineer in Google or a consultant in MBB be inherently much different, or are we still talking about “personal fit” as in the sense that someone that is likely to prosper in high tech may not be suitable for consulting and vice versa?
@panpacific, likelihoods would depend on the individual and plain luck much more than anything else, as you probably know.
My main point was what I had originally stated, which is that assuming that someone chose a less lucrative path just because their first salary wasn’t the maximum they could have gotten is blindered.