Query: Which is more vulgar, asking someone where they work or asking where they went to college ten or less years ago?
No need for sympathy (was the family in question really asking for sympathy?)
That said, I will at times say my daughter goes to “college in NJ” instead of saying the name of the school if it’s a situation where the name is irrelevant and may be a distraction in the conversation.
I do have a bumper sticker because that is mandated when one drives a Subaru 
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I thought those were Sierra Club bumper stickers? 
How can you see out the back car window with a sticker on it ? You’re kidding right?
Good luck in my area finding a car without a college sticker on it. I never see Harvard however - I bet their too embarrassed ?
I have 2 Subarus. No bumper stickers. Of any kind. None on either of 2 Hondas either.
yes. they have to live up to a standard that the average person cannot handle. you go to harvard, you are expected to come out earning 6 figures right out of school, or at least go to medical/law school at another prestigious institute.
I don’t have a single piece of Harvard swag but plenty from my undergrad, yet I find myself wondering if the free Harvard grad school alumni magazine happened to be on the top of my mail pile if some of the people posting here might think I was trying to get people to notice it. And why is mentioning Harvard bragging when mentioning most other colleges is just being a loyal alumnus?
Sheesh. My supply of sympathy has limits, and I generally save it for people with REAL problems.
After all, being the wealthy parent of a Harvard student is SO much more difficult than being too poor to pay for college for your kid. After all, being required to play down the college one’s kid is attending is so much worse than hiding the fact that one cannot afford breakfast for their kids.
Seriously, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the idea that the privileged parents of kids who attend Harvard should be entitled to sympathy because somehow their privilege is a burden.
PS. this is only a “problem” for wealthy parents of Harvard students. Poor parents are unlikely to feel the need to avoid justifiably bragging about their kid who is attending Harvard.
As employers, are they the ones asking college graduates for their high school SAT scores?
I would bet the universal set on the venn diagram for that would be pretty large. 
One more time:
20% of Harvard students pay nothing
55% receive some financial aid
$12k is the average parental contribution
100% can graduate without debt (as part of an aid package, this doesn’t include private loans)
"For families with annual incomes below $65,000, the expected contribution is zero. Families with annual incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute between 0 and 10 percent of their income. Those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10 percent based on their circumstances. "
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works
The real problem is guidance counselors and parents who don’t understand that Harvard and some other schools are affordable due to this generous financial aid, so the students never apply.
Some people who cannot afford a car to put a bumper sticker on, can still send a kid to Harvard 
I imagine, at the same time, that some of the objectionable practices, such as the Z list, help to fund the aid.
I’d like to nominate this thread for “The Most Graphic Portrayal of First World Problems” award…
This is the most hilarious thread in the history of CC.
A few observations:
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Harvard people seem to be divided into two camps, those who fit the Subaru driving WASP stereotype who can’t quite understand why it’s anyone’s business where they went to college (or, work, go to church, voted for in 2016 or otherwise donate their time and money to) and those who don’t fit the stereotype and somehow feel they are failing people’s expectations. The latter are the ones I feel sorry for.
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Harvard is the biggest bargain in higher education. Bar none.
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Despite #2, Harvard people are surprisingly tongue-tied about what they liked about the place. Dartmouth and Williams people will grow misty-eyed at the mention of mountains with peculiar colors (green and purple), Yale has its residential system, Princeton its architecture. Wesleyan and Amherst have their beloved professors with thirty and forty year-long teaching careers. Harvard doesn’t seem to have any of those things.
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There are an awful lot of stovepipes at Harvard. Harvard is a great world-class university of which Harvard College is but one component (if I had to bet which institution has had a bigger effect on the lives of average Americans, it would be hard to choose between the College, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School or Harvard Medical School.) I think this contributes to an overall lack of school spirit. I keep thinking of the Mark Zuckerberg character in “Social Network”, toiling away, alone in his dorm. Maybe, if he’d gone to a couple of hockey games instead, the world would be a different place.
@circuitrider, why vulgar? When ShawWife was in school in France many years ago, they tried to place her socially by asking about her grandfather (what he did, where from?). In Japan, they sort out positions in the social hierarchy. In the US, people often ask what you do? One of my Southern friends tells me that people ask which church you attend as a way of placing you in the social hierarchy. Placing people in the social hierarchy has been happening for eons. Arguably animals may also do this (who is the alpha male, etc.).
Are these questions also vulgar? Is placing others in the social hierarchy vulgar? Or do you find the particular social hierarchy (which schools you attended or what your job is) vulgar relative to others (what do your parents do or what church do you attend)?
What I find interesting is the shift from grandparents to your school/job. In the old days in Europe and no doubt the US, the important question was what you were born into. In the current world, the question about jobs is much more about what you do and have accomplished. [Of course, school and job are both influenced to some extent by family and school perhaps more so now than a few decades ago].
I think the current version, which focuses more on what you did than on the status you inherited, to be preferable. When I showed up as a very bright middle class Jewish kid at one of HYP back in the dark ages, people were clearly paying attention to which social institutions would let me in (or that I felt comfortable in). One of my GFs family came over on the Mayflower and I remember the interrogation from her (vaguely anti-Semitic) mother, trying to figure out whether I was Jewish without asking and generally whether I had money. Interestingly, her father sensed that I was going to be successful and was welcoming and supportive.
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I’m so glad I was smart enough to attend Harvard, as it has allowed me to go through life achieving virtually nothing without letting anyone down.
Oops ^^^ That was supposed to be NOT to attend
i * 
Perhaps, at least for any that truly regret their decision to attend, as appears to be the case for this prominent respondent who took the Proust Questionnaire in an interview for the Boston Globe:
@2Devils Would agree with you re: medical fields and maybe a handful of others. But the medical field ( doctors in particular) are well underpaid relative to their education through obtaining their final accreditation. Other fields are cumulative with someone holding a bachelors, then grad then Phd working their way up the pay scale in a more moderate fashion not a huge gap between one the the other. Still doesn’t make up for the expectation that 40% of H grads are making >500K+. There are many fields where that figure doesn’t even come into play for the top person in the field.
Nobody said 40% of H grads are making $500k. Instead, all described sources have suggested much lower percentages.
It may be more clear to start with the overall population, rather than Harvard grads. At age 35, the median individual earnings is ~$46k across the full US population. However, among the small subset of the population who have kids attending Harvard, the average salary is much higher. The NYT linked study found median family earnings of ~$180k (adjusting for inflation) among Harvard parents. The Harvard freshman survey suggests a similar median income. This doesn’t mean the median income suddenly jumped from $46k*2 at age 35 to $180k at a decade later. It means you are comparing 2 very different samples. The small subgroup of families that are Harvard parents have a very different income distribution from the overall US population.
The same principle applies to Harvard legacies. According the NYT linked study, at age 35 the median income of Harvard legacies was ~$90k (adjusting for inflation). The Harvard freshman survey suggests the small subgroup of Harvard legacy families who have kids attending Harvard have a median income in the $400k to $500k range (46% > $500k). This doesn’t mean the median income suddenly jumped from $90k*2 at age 35 to $400-500k a decade later. It means that you are comparing 2 very different samples. The small subgroup of Harvard legacies that have kids attending Harvard have a very different income distribution form the overall US legacy population.
Among the overall population, the NYT linked study suggests the following degrees of overrepresentation among higher income groups, based on dividing portion of Harvard parents to portion of overall population. With each and every increased income step listed in the NYT linked study, the group becomes more overrepresented among Harvard parents. In short, the higher the income, the more likely that family is to have a kid attending Harvard.
Top 0.1% (>~2 million income) – 30x more likely to be Harvard parents than expected
Top 0.1 to 1.0% ($500k to $2m) – 13x more likely to be Harvard parents than expected
Top 1% to 5% ($250k to $500k) – 6x more likely to be Harvard parents than expected
A similar idea applies to legacies. I’d expect the higher the legacy’s family income, the more likely that legacy family is to have a kid who attends Harvard. If I apply the same overrepresentation among Harvard parents to the listed legacy income at age 35, then I’d expect far more than 46% of legacies who have kids attending Harvard to have >$500k income. The NYT linked study shows 21% of legacies in top 1% at age 35. You don’t need much overrpresentation among high income families for that 21% to become the majority, when making the transition from all Harvard legacies to just the small subgroup of legacies who have a kid in the matriculating class. One key factor in the smaller than expected 46% with >$500k is likely spouses. If 21% of Harvard grads have top 1% age income 35, that does not mean their spouses also have 21% in top 1%; so the family income becomes lower than what would be expected based on legacy * 2.
“Never will. Also, the NYT has very little cred in reporting anything these days.”
If you’re talking about the NYT interactive tool, most if not all their data is sourced from a report, Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility”, The Equality of Opportunity Project.
Now yes, the Equality of Opportunity Project is biased for sure, the report was written by:
Raj Chetty, Stanford University and NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research)
John N. Friedman, Brown University and NBER
Emmanuel Saez, UC-Berkeley and NBER
Nicholas Turner, US Treasury
Danny Yagan, UC-Berkeley and NBER
their mission statement: “based at Harvard University, our team of researchers and policy analysts work together to analyze new data and create a platform for local stakeholders to make more informed decisions.”
“Why would they fill out this survey and what is their incentive to report personal income to the NYT?”
They’re not, they’re reporting it to Equality of Opportunity and maybe others associated with NBER.
"So, you put cred in the NYT "
I’m not a subscriber to NYT or anything, but bashing them for being the messenger seems a little odd. I briefly perused the EOO website and it seems they’re trying to reduce the income gap, provide more opportunities for the poor in America and one of their targets is elite universities.
.