<p>ok, i'm trying to figure out how wealthy people come out of non-prestigious schools. i mean for instance in my area, there are people that are wealthy that went to places like OU, Texas Tech, Okie State U., Baylor, Texas State, Arkansas, Arkansas State, the list goes on, yet many people with degrees from a top 20 school end up with less. i know some of it has to do with what they major in... but i mean MOSTLY( by mostly i mean somewhere between 50% and 75%) slacker kids that didnt do that great in high school go to the above schools(no knock on these schools, many intelligent people do go to these schools, yet many more non-intelligent people also go to these schools), yet somehow they must end up well off. i mean do they magically do well in college, acquire amazing networking abilities, and suddenly make money, even though their SATs were in the low 1100s, they had a 2.0-3.0 in high school, and just partied and didnt study. i guess what i'm trying to ask is how do people that aren't smart (or at least not smart enough to get into a top 50 college) end up making the big bucks. isn't there supposed to be a correlation b/t intelligence and wealth?</p>
<p>How smart you are rarely affects how rich you will become. Professors are arguably among the smartest people alive, yet they don't make as much money as some business junkie who made C's his whole life and got to be VP of marketing because his uncle knew somebody.</p>
<p>what is hard to understand? Do you think that MOST people from the non-prestigious schools you mentioned are wealthy? Or that a small percentage of them are?</p>
<p>If its only a small percentage, then why expect that ANY grad you know from the top 20 schools would earn as much as the top earners from non-prestigious schools?</p>
<p>And furthermore, the enrollment of the schools you mention is mostly in the tens of thousands. It should not be a surprise that one in a 100 or 1 in a 1000 ends up doing quite well.</p>