<p>I'm just curious really. My 1st cousins wife has an mba from Wharton. She makes six figures and works for General Electric. She's in her mid-late thirties(we aren't close). Idk were she went to undergrad.</p>
<p>Her life is fairly...plain. I thought she'd make a lot more then she does. I wonder why she didn't become a banker.</p>
<p>Do you know any HYPS grads? What percentage would you say go on to be rich/7 figures? Or do most make six?</p>
<p>Would you say that on average they do significantly better the other top 25 graduates? What about top 50?</p>
<p>I know many. I have no idea what they make, but none of them are rich – and the ones that I know who went into finance/banking don’t seem to sustain that employment over time. </p>
<p>I know a kid who went to Vandy and I think he was making $70-$80K a year or so out, but he’s a petroleum engineer. If you want to make good money, then engineering or computer science is probably the best bet.</p>
<p>By daughter has 8 close friends from her Ivy undergrad who are all attending HBS in the fall. They all come from investment banking/consulting. It is not a matter of people being in finance not lasting long, many work 3 years, and either go to business school and return, law school or decide to do something different. </p>
<p>One friend, worked in consulting, really did not like it, the job helped her get a paid externship with a major cosmetics company, where she was doing strategic planning. Leaving to go to HBS in the fall and has an offer to return after she graduates.</p>
<p>Yale undergrad, non ivy med school, excellent residency, 12 years into a small town three provider private practice set up by local hospital to fill a need. The goal was to buy out the practice once it turned a profit… 3-4 years was the expectation. The practice has yet to turn a profit large enough to allow them to operate without hospital support. Physician living on a salary below the average for that specialty.</p>
<p>Maybe she’s a saver. It’s hard to estimate how well someone is doing by looking from the outside. Some people are ok with a low key lifestyle; some people need to have the lifestyle (big house, vacation home, three cars) – does it mean they’re doing well? Or does it mean they’re spending, not saving? </p>
<p>I know one Wharton grad who has a very plain lifestyle – modest home, one car, and she saves. A lot. Enough so that when she got fired and it took her a year to find a new job, she didn’t have to sell her house in a terrible market or limit her daughter’s options for college.</p>
<p>Bing, you aren’t going to get much controversy on the parents forum because parents know that so much of an individual’s success in life is because of the person not the college and success is measured by many metrix…not just compensation. You need to be intelligent and somewhat aggressive to get into an Ivy so the individual might have a bit of a leg up in terms of potential to be highly compensated but many people choose fulfilling careers that will never escalate into super high incomes. I personally know several mid-life Ivy grads who are extremely happy and fulfilled but not highly compensated. Success is measured by many things unrelated to compensation.</p>
<p>What an interesting word choice. She’s “plain” because she doesn’t make as money as you thought she could or might? Leaving aside the fact that you really don’t know how much money she makes unless you’re examining her tax returns, it’s very telling that you think her world is “plain.” She might have a rich life – rich in friends, relationships, arts, physical activity, whatever… but I guess if she’s not a banker, it’s all “plain.”<br>
Why didn’t she become a banker? Gosh, perhaps she didn’t want to. </p>
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<p>Comfortable six, but again I’m guessing, because it’s not good to count other people’s money. A few likely make 7 … but so do some people I know who went to schools like Tulane.</p>
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<p>No, not particularly. It’s not some magic dust or anything.</p>
<p>Maybe they are saving so they can send their own kids to school full pay, instead of living lavishly and then not having the money. Is living super-lavishly the end game? Because that’s pretty immature, IMO.</p>
<p>If you want to make the really big bucks you need to own your own business. A great education doesn’t guarantee a large salary unless you earn it once you get there. The risk takers in the world reap the rewards, not the cogs in a large corporate wheel.</p>
<p>It’s possible to be in the 1%, as far as household income goes, while making 6 figures. I would guess that simply making 6 figures, as in $100,000, would put a household in the top 20% or maybe higher. So that’s not bad for an individual earner. calmom’s stats look more or less as I’d expect. bingotingo, did you think HYPS degrees were the keys to becoming very wealthy? And by one’s mid- to late thirties?</p>
<p>I think many CC kids think that the college they choose correlates to the income they will earn. Remember this is the generation of kids that were all above average and received As for Effort so they can’t imagine anything other than being “not average” and they grew up in the 80s and 90s greed is good era so they equate success with money.</p>
<p>I know many HYPS (and the like) graduates, from their 20’s to their 80’s. I have always been interested whether the older ones (who weren’t legacies) were significantly better off financially than their parents but haven’t found any real bootstrap to riches stories. There is a bit of impact by the 30’s depression but it is more or less a blip on overall family wealth accumulation for these folks as far as I can tell.</p>
<p>The very few extremely wealthy HYPS (and the like) graduates I know come from extremely wealthy backgrounds. Those from an upper middle class background tend to stay there unless deliberately making choices that put them in the middle class. A few from middle class backgrounds have become upper middle class.</p>
<p>I know a lot of these graduates but only a handful who went into business/finance. Interestingly, mainly family businesses. I don’t think I know anyone who makes a seven figure salary. I have to think about that. Maybe a couple of those in 65 - 80 yr old bracket.</p>
<p>I definitely know HYPS (and the like) graduates who make less than 6 figures. And not all of them are in their 20s :)</p>
<p>A six figure income is fine. When you say “her life is plain” what do you mean? No diamonds in public, doesn’t drive a Rolls Royce, doesn’t brag about vacations, doesn’t let the label of her designer clothes stick out?</p>
<p>Some folks are very modest and that is fine. </p>
<p>We happen to know a number of HYPS graduates and none have become millionaires.</p>
<p>“The very few extremely wealthy HYPS (and the like) graduates I know come from extremely wealthy backgrounds. Those from an upper middle class background tend to stay there unless deliberately making choices that put them in the middle class. A few from middle class backgrounds have become upper middle class.”</p>
<p>This is my (limited) experience as well, as well as my experience of my classmates at Williams. (The other part of my experience is that the men as a group “did” in terms of wealth much better than the women.)</p>
<p>Big wealth in my experience is all about “leverage” - that is, borrowing lots of money (for business or investment) in hopes of future payoff. It can be leverage of family wealth, or leverage from other people’s money (start-up companies or investment banking).</p>
<p>But then I am just about the richest person I know, even though I don’t have much in the dollars department.</p>