I was hoping someone knew the answer. Everyone here seems to know so much.
I actually really enjoy people who are ostentatious. I find it highly entertaining. Like the Kardashians and Housewives of.
Iâm not at all sure that envy and dislike needs any fuel to begin with.
JustOneDad: Why should you care if other people like to dress well? You seem to think you are kind of above it all. I guess I donât understand why you are on this thread. I am sharing some of my personal experience. What are you adding to this thread? Oh wait, you are asking some poignant questions. Not.
You remind me of when we were 5-7 yrs old, there is always a kid in line who would just poke or pull at someone because he is bored and just want to get a reaction, because negative attention is still better than no attention. We are too old for that. If you have something to say, just say it or else move on.
âIâm not at all sure that envy and dislike needs any fuel to begin with.â
Indeed.
The Seven Deadly Sins (fueling most of classic literature):
Pride, ENVY, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth
The question of âgiving backâ is addressed in part in this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/first-generation-students-unite.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
It is more from a mentoring perspective and within the confines of academia and research. The article itself is part of a Sunday NYT âEducation Lifeâ supplement.
The article was very good⊠As is the link provided up-thread to a This American Life piece.
oldfort: Personally, I donât care at all and I never said I did. My comment had to do with what other people were constantly remarking on. It happened several times in this thread.
If you donât have an answer to the questions I have, then donât worry about it.
There is nothing in the story about the schools providing on campus jobs to many of the students and paying them more than $10 an hour.
I am curious whether the top schools are forcing students to work and pay most back to school in fees as opposed to allowing them to keep it for pocket money.
It seems like it would be very difficult to calculate that accurately.
Students typically have limitations on how much they can effectively work and those hours times the rate you mentioned donât add up to much compared to the total cost of tuition, room and board. How would one know if they were spending it on pizza, video games, books, fancy pens or âfeesâ?
Iâll make another more foray here. Most of the people I spend time with are at about the same SES as I am. I would venture to say that is true of many of us. The colleges in the title of this thread, for a few short years, shake that up a bit. If everyone learns something, about themselves, about each other, from that, thatâs a good thing. Itâs also worth the realization that people with more or less money have more or less choices, or things, or experiences, or whatever.
Ouch and QED again! Why would it be incumbent upon them to do so any more than those from generational wealth? I hope my kid gets to do whatever he wants with his life. Do I think he needs to choose to âgive backâ because of his FA? Only so far as I hope he wonât complain if my grandchildren are full pay.
And I donât need any âCâ pointing out differences to me, nor do I have any illusions that the differences will go away.
I think I remember that the elites offer the option of taking work-study jobs or the equivalent in loans (this is from several years ago though).
Personally, I see getting a university job to be a positive, not a negative, but I come from a background where having a job was always the ultimate goal.
Very poor students are typically on Pell Grants and/or other generous aid, which satisfies the Cost of Attending. They are also typically required to enroll in a Work-Study program which gives them jobs anywhere from only a few hours a week to maybe 15. (There is a cap on their hours, because there is a cap on W/S funding and because theyâre supposed to be full-time students and only part-time workers.) The very purpose of an approved W/S job is to give them money for their âextras,â including books, clothing, entertainment, etc. I assure you, itâs not a whole heck of a lot. It just helps.
It seems like the obvious answer to that is there is an expectation that they will do something to improve society. Maybe at least enough to narrow the widening gap between the âhavesâ and the âhave notsâ as it has been so often expressed.
Otherwise, why are âweâ expending the gelt on them?
Ds1 put every bit of his work-study funds toward tuition and paid for incidentals/minimal entertainment from his summer earnings. Because he was such a conscientious worker he actually was given a refund upon graduation.
âThen why does everyone on CC keep mentioning it, including the prestige of the labels found on folks clothing and handbags?â
Because thatâs what unsophisticated, insecure people do - they let themselves be âintimidatedâ by someone with a nice handbag (etc) and they preemptively form judgments that said person must be shallow, materialistic, look down on others who donât have such accoutrements, etc. Which is nonsense. All you can conclude about a person who has (say) a designer handbag is that they like that handbag. The. End. You cannot conclude anything about whether they are virtuous or lazy or snobby or anything else based solely on that observation.
Nope, checked my FA letter and thatâs not in there. But if it helps, based my kidâs starting salary, consider some small part of the âgapâ narrowed.
I know a student at a âtop schoolâ who is experiencing something like this right now. Apparently, some of the other girls have discovered she shops at thrift stores. And, it is becoming a problem.
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I donât think these students are any more obligated than anyone else to help society. Frankly being a good upstanding citizen who has a job and pays taxes is enough.
What does âa problemâ mean?
That she cares that her friends know that she is not well-off, and worries that they will abandon her or feel sorry for her?
How about, if they shun her, theyâre scum and she is lucky she found out now? And not when she goes out for a night on the town and drinks a little too much, and they laugh at her and leave her without a ride home?
How about, if they try to help her, she should accept gracefully or refuse gracefully?
How about, they donât care and it isnât mentioned?
I just donât get it - the more people worry about what others think, the more they are miserable. I am not talking about work politics and so on - you do have to âplay the gameâ and to me that is much harder if you are starting out, and have to âdress the partâ but canât afford it.
But if you are at âan Ivyâ or similar and you have a group of friends who mistakenly think you are well-off and you are not, if they actually care about that, you should find new friends. There are more than a few who are not well-off at Ivies.
My spouse was quite poor at an Ivy, and he was not alone in that. He had some frat brothers who were quite well-off, and they never offered help and he never asked for it. But NO ONE treated him poorly or different. Yes, when they were able to buy fancy foreign beer, he was a beneficiary of it.
(thatâs why I fell into the âtrapâ of falling in love with and marrying a poor guy LOL 
and if you have seen the numbers I have posted, he has done MUCH better since his Ivy League education, and the rest of his family is near poverty still - was it worth the âstressâ of being poor at an Ivy to now be what some would consider âupper middle classâ? My kids likely think so.)
âknow a student at a âtop schoolâ who is experiencing something like this right now. Apparently, some of the other girls have discovered she shops at thrift stores. And, it is becoming a problem.â
Why is this a problem for her? Anyway I donât really believe this. Most people donât really care about othersâ clothing etc the way they think they do.