You’ve got it backwards. It’s the kids of the wealthier families who are able to go into fields that they may want to be in that don’t pay well (such as social work or the arts), whereas the kids of the poorer families kind of have no choice but to grab for the best-paying job they can get. Who can best afford the stint in the Peace Corps or Teach for America, do you think?
Teach for America actually pays but you have to work in the ghetto so no wealthy kids are going to do that. Everyone talks about connections from college. I don’t think colleges give the connections people think, especially not to classmates, but better schools are tied to better alumni. Their better reputations mean that good big companies come there to recruit employees.
Good points.
Remember though, for some career path, the “ECs” that takes multiple years of commitment like Peace Corp could be a ticket (or at least an asset) in the admission to some professional school. The students from a poorer family background may be less willing to do this.
For example, many premeds from a poor family may choose this route to medical school: Take as many college-level courses (e.g. AP, IB, dual enrolled courses) in high school so that they could graduate in college in, say, 3 or 3.5 or at most 4 years while being an engineering major (something to fall back on just in case, only to be penalized by choosing a overly-vocational major that could be a terminal degree to another career path and/or to be penalized as having no passion (this could be true - many of them could not afford to have one), only having academic chops and nothing else to offer (Does this sound familiar to you even in the elite college admission?), or being “immature” due to a younger age.
So these are against the students from a poorer background also. But hey, do not complain because at least the system still gives you some fighting chances. (Just try not to skip all of the required “check list” items that will be done by those students from a different background.)
So many factors. Where are the grads getting jobs- in a high cost area with salaries in line with expenses? What portion of grads goes on to more education? Large schools can have the higher absolute numbers earning more than small colleges- public U’s cater to many needs. Finally- is the measure of money earned the only measure of a successful, rewarding life???
Vanilla, my sister in law comes from a 1%er family and did Teach For America and lived in an apartment within walking distance from her school in St. Louis. She is now an early education teacher.
My small residential college within a public U was mainly the children of well off individuals and our TFA placement was incredibly high.
Don’t make broad, definitive statements like that.
Payscale.com “data” is garbage. It’s all self-selected, self-reported, and unverified, and for many schools it’s just a tiny number of alums reporting their own salaries. Case Western Reserve, for example, does well (#22) in the Business Insider ranking in part because of high median starting salaries of its graduates as reported on payscale.com. But if you drill down into the payscale.com “data” you’ll find a median salary for Case Western graduates with less than 1 year of work experience of $65,448. Sounds pretty good, until you notice that this is the median self-reported salary of exactly 8 people in that category who bothered to report. With a self-selected sample that small, you can’t assume the median salary of those 8 people is at all representative of the median salaries of the larger cohort of Case alums. You don’t know that the mix of majors is representative, for one thing, and in a sample that small, a very small number of unusually high or unusually low salaries could radically skew the median.
Going to salaries by major clearly illustrates this point. Payscale shows the median salary of Case Western alums with a BA degree (n = 4) is $58,500. But the median salary of Case Western alums with a BA in History (n = 4) is $127,918. Presumably this means the holders of the BA in history aren’t included in the category of BA holders, who must be holders of the BA with no major specified. Why the radical disparity in median salaries? Well, obviously the median salaries of History majors are skewed by an extremely small number of high salaries- 2, to be exact. Even if you assume that self-selection and flat-out lying don’t bias the results, the sample sizes are just too small to generate meaningful results.
I can’t believe people continue to cite to this garbage as if its provided real information.
I’ve found it to be quite the contrary. Programs like TFA are very popular among kids of wealthy parents looking for something prestigious that they are supposed to do, while allowing them to delay having to commit to real life choices. Good for those with no real drive, a trait common enough among the less-motivated ones who never had to want for anything in their life since they already had it.
Though, to the program’s defense, I have heard that it does a good job of helping its participants to develop the sense of purpose that they may have lacked when they joined. In a way, that might just be the point of it all in the first place.
I too find Teach for America to be a program that is very popular among the children of well-to-do parents. The kids I’ve known who’ve done it certainly fit that criteria.
I think it’s unfair on NeoDymium’s part to say it’s “good for those with no real drive” and it smacks of jealousy to suggest that the kids of wealthier parents “never had to want for anything since they already had it.”
I don’t know where this weird meme started that if someone’s parents are well-to-do, they automatically got every single thing they ever wanted with a snap of their fingers or that there were never any budget or monetary constraints. Gosh, believe it or not, just because your parents are 1%-ers doesn’t mean that you fly first class everywhere, or that you have an unlimited clothing or restaurant budget, or whatever. It’s pretty ignorant to think that way, frankly.
Wow… TFA is for people with “no real drive”?
I beg you to talk to some TFA people. They work longer hours and are more dedicated to their work than the majority of people I’ve met in other occupations.
I never realized some see TFA as such a low-tier program. Sheesh.
@Pizzagirl you can thank the Kardashians for the warped view of the 1% in this country. Except for a few brash examples, I would agree that in most cases you wouldn’t be able to pick out a 1%er from a 30%er on any campus nationally, or in any job after college side by side for that matter.
I detect a lot more resentment on your part than there was in any of my post - you’re seeing something that frankly isn’t there.
I’ve known plenty of 1%-ers, some of whom were hard working, some of whom really were not. None of them were ever in any risk of having to go through bad jobs, much less poverty, since worst comes to worst they could usually have a very prestigious position be given to them by their parents’ connections. For some people, that kind of safety net leads people to live a very low-ambition life. If they don’t, so much the better, but they have that option.
When people see something as a means to add “prestige points” to their resume rather than a means to gain and deliver real value, then said people lose some respect for taking that route. Same applies for people who go into medicine because they have little ambition but are expected to be successful (rather than because they want to help people) and for people who choose to make a PR statement of traveling to Cambodia to help the poor (rather than helping in your own community) because it “looks better on a college application.”
I do have respect for those who do it because they want to help the less fortunate. Sadly that isn’t the primary goal of all too many people who are involved there, although if they learn the spirit of service along the way then that’s even better.
No one with the slightest hint of brain thinks the Kardashians are “how 1%-ers live.” 1%-ers live in nice upper middle class suburbs, take vacations that involve flying, maybe drive nice cars and can afford to go to nice restaurants. They aren’t wearing high-fashion clothing changed multiple times a day or flying around in private jets. The majority of 1%-ers are in the bottom rung of that and the parents still have to get up and work for a living. These are your dual- income doctor, dual-income lawyer households, not Kardashians.
“None of them were ever in any risk of having to go through bad jobs, much less poverty, since worst comes to worst they could usually have a very prestigious position be given to them by their parents’ connections.”
This is again odd. Let’s take a dual doctor household. Unless they bring their kid in to manage the front office, what “connections” are they going to have? They can’t stick a stethoscope on kid and let him loose. I think you’re far overstating the “jobs held in abeyance” by well to do people. There aren’t anywhere near as many of them in this economy as you think.
See how grim things are for most families. http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept15/days-of-rage9-15.html
Did anyone have the talk with their student on what it will take to keep lifestyle intact on graduation? We built a spreadsheet expected income less expenses. He will need a 100k a year to keep his living standard.
Kids need to know what it means in dollars where they live.
My kid was never delusional enough to believe right out of college his income would allow him to have the living standard he enjoyed while under our roof.
Did he scale back his spending habits and financial expectations, or is he now feeling like he will be forced to chase the money at every college and career decision to maintain his spending habits and financial expectations?
My kid and his future wife will earn more money upon graduation in June than dh and I have ever seen in our lives.
He is teaching himself how to budget, having lived frugally in college. His fiance is very sensible. I think they will do well. My son’s weakness is music equipment. 
I can’t imagine having my upper middle class kids think they would automatically live at the lifestyle they grew up in / with.
Isn’t it part of the natural rite of passage that a new college grad lives in a crummy apartment, has a cheap car or uses public transportation, and has cheap entertainment?
Attending grad school after college seems to be a downgrade in terms of life style for most students.
When I was a grad student, I heard of a joke: Whenever you see a student who drives a new car, he must be an undergrad student. Whenever you see a student who drives a clunker, he must be a grad student.
I think for some (but not all) college students, college is the last phase of their lives when they still live comfortably on their parents’ dime.
This is especially true for the students at a $$$ private college ($$$ includes contributions from all sources, including the source from the college, not necessarily only the contributions from the students and their families.)
But there are also students who try to find a job as soon as they set their foot on campus. It may be much easier for these students to transition after they graduate from college.
Hmm…I guess for DS’s GF, her living environment is upgraded after graduated, but the life style is downgraded – due to very long work hours. But this is just my speculation only because we rarely hear much about it. (We have a call every other week AT MOST and we do not talk much about his GF other than just asking “Is she or are you two OK toward the end of our call with DS?”)