Why private school?

@nada - yeah I guess my wife & I started working on Wall St at big dumb banks this way
Pass the on-campus, then fly to city for the big second round college recruiting event.

Bank rents out conference center in hotel, they put you up for a night, you get some talks, some dinners, and interviewed in a cubicle the next day along with 100+ other kids in the conference center.

Get a call weeks later if you have a job offer, and maybe, what role/team that would be.
Some banks you are explicitly hired into a rotational program with at least 2 rotations after which you sit on one of those teams or.. have to find a job internally.

I didn't meet my manager until I had accepted the job.

At the time, Google didn't even want to talk to people from my college, and certainly not if you didn't have a 4.0 GPA.

People underestimate the growth in FAANG / Big Tech / etc staffing.
Wall St staffing is much more similar to what it was 15 years ago, by comparison.

Of course GOOG had 10k employees at the time they wouldn't deign to talk to me. By comparison they had 190k in Jan 2023 and laid off 17k to get down to 178k right now. So Google fired an entire mid-2000s Google in Q1 2023.

Probably an extra 1M people in the top ~10 big tech companies alone. Even long-established companies like Apple/Microsoft are 5x the size they were 15-20 years ago

So big conveyor belt recruiting is fairly normal.

This is a strange conversation, that sadly like most conversations then departed into political discourse. Sure, private school in NYC is expensive, but taxes on a nice house in Westchester are $50k+ a year, assuming you are willing to live in Westchester. If you value your time at a similar rate to what you are paid, shaving two hours off a commute might be worth $100K/yr.

The "usual" magnet public high schools are statistically as hard to get into as any fancy college. But you sort of need to blaze that trail much earlier. Folks who send their kids to private grammar schools in some cases already made that choice (because some also have high schools), and the momentum to stick to the private school environment is enormous. Also, it is not very practical for kids these days to commute from Manhattan to one of the magnet high schools outside on Manhattan (although I commuted two hours each way by public transportation for high school in the 1980s).
Depending on your religious preferences, there is a separate network of religious NYC private schools that are far less expensive then the typical private school circuit. I only know the catholic iteration, but I or members of my family have attended Regis (free), Xavier, Sacred Heart (not cheap), and several others in outer boroughs.

Heaven forfend that this poor unborn child want to do something solidly practical or compassionate.

It's possible to make a good living as an electrician - and there was an article recently (NYT?) that pointed out that this is a growth profession. Technically exacting, intellectually stimulating, and not so all consuming that you can't go home to the kids at a decent hour.

Also, I have several friends who have been nurses -- hospice care, emergency room, etc. Solid academic training, but not full-on doctor level knowledge. They're helping far more people than the McKinsey consultants who are advising how to increase returns, rather than lifespans.

Not all satisfaction comes from being an urban PMC striver.

> In any event, none of yhe Ibank interviews were technical - they were all “Are you one of us?” interviews.

So how did it go? On one hand, private school/college suggests you were one of them. On the other hand, a girl... in the 90s... at an ibank.

Nowadays ibanks also do very technical interviews. While a smart kid can successfully wing it at a consulting case interview with some minimal preparation, for ibanks, kids regarding of major need to learn answers to 400 finance and accounting questions and be able to do solve problems (such as an LBO or DCF) with paper and pencil to pass an interview for a senior year internship... as sophomores.

@inonada Fun ROI calculation, thanks, with a few gaps to point out.
1) The value to parents of joining the club of paying too much for kids private school is not captured. It is possible that parents could get some career benefits as well...
2) ROI depends on the kid's percentile rank quite a bit. The kid would be weeded out if the percentile is 30 or below, but also get a very limited compressed benefit if percentile is 90+. And we don't know what kind of kid we get...

Also, check out this piece on how ROI calculations have "ruined" Harvard.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/4/21/barton-harvard-graduate-consulting-finance/

> but taxes on a nice house in Westchester are $50k+ a year, assuming you are willing to live in Westchester. If you value your time at a similar rate to what you are paid, shaving two hours off a commute might be worth $100K/yr.

The median sale price of a home in Scarsdale (known as one of the best suburban school districts) was $1.3M last month per Redfin (which is similar to Manhattan prices, not adjusted for unit sizes), and the real estate tax is around 2% . So the median tax is $26,000.

I am paying (via maintenance) ~$19,000 taxes for my 2/2 apartment in Manhattan, but I also have much less living space. And I am paying NYC income tax.

So if we consider taxes a wash, and just look at the commute, the $100k value of time is really paying for having double the amount of living space for a similar cost home.

For a large family, makes all the sense in the world to move.

>Heaven forfend that this poor unborn child want to do something solidly practical or compassionate.

Electrician or nurse are solid choices for a 50th percentile child. But I think we decided that everyone on this board is having 85th percentile children (at a minimum) :-)

I walk away from this thread for a few days, and look, lot of bandying about of the name of my dear college! Class of 2026 was admitted at 1,984, and had supposedly an 86% yield, so that's about 1,700 undergrads, vs. my class, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, of 1,600 something.

But there need to be a lot of distinctions here about the "right kind of people" -- a friend of some dear friends of mine just died, in straitened circumstances, because she'd had trouble finding work. HBS grad.

No education is an automatic golden ticket, and given the choice between being smart enough to get into a top college or lucky enough to be a nepo baby, I think I'd pick nepo baby.

> I don't think the "corrective actions" have necessarily changed the self interest of the private school educated, it just changes the words they use.

A really excellent point from Steve123. The Crimson article I linked above discusses how top colleges in their image have moved from being "finishing schools for the ruling class" to "meritocratic institutions educating the nation’s (world’s?) smartest students, crusaders of the poor and embodiments of the American dream". However, they are still massively advantaging legacies, students “of interest to donors”, and rich-kid sport recruits. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/harvard-university-and-scandal-sports-recruitment/599248/)

Their merit-forward brand is actually a virtue/another advantage sold to the rich. These colleges mix nepobabies with some 99.5% percentile smartest kids and award them the exact same diploma (with identical 3.9 GPAs to boot, based on the article that inonada shared). Now these grads go into the world with a distinction that makes it easy for employers to justify hiring the most connected, upper class individuals, while claiming to have a fair and meritocratic hiring process.

>You seem to have been raised in a culture of cronyism advantaging mediocrity, so I can understand the lens from which you view it. 300 focuses on the improved education, you on the connections. I do wonder, however, whether the “woke agenda” that has reduced the douchery in your view would also reduce the cronyism. The two seem like they’d go hand-in-hand in the mind of the crony/douche.

And in light of the above, I think MCR's take is more honest and self-aware.

In this thread, people have claimed that 50% of private HS kids would not be able to get into public magnets, but also that more students will get into a top college from private schools.
Assuming public magnet HS admission test is a proxy for intelligence + study habits, if top college admissions were meritocratic, more kids would go to a top college from a magnet (where 100% kids passed the hard test 4 years earlier), than from a private school (where only half of the kids would be able to pass the test). But evidently that is not how it works!

The douches now use new vocabulary, and will claim that private schools offer better learning. But that might be just a talk-track aimed at legitimizing advantages received through cronyism.

>No education is an automatic golden ticket, and given the choice between being smart enough to get into a top college or lucky enough to be a nepo baby, I think I'd pick nepo baby.

Yes, although a nepo baby often will also go to a top college, and use the diploma to increase and mask the true nature of their advantages.

What if "connections" are an intergral part of merit in certain sales oriented jobs? For example, success in investment banking (M&A, issuance) is big part due to connections and ability to develop connections and the technical part of job can be done by well paid $200-400K per year people. There are many other such professions.

My nieces and nephews (private school kids) and all the children of our friends (all private school kids) are turning down many of the perks of their privilege and scolding their own parents. They guilt my generation into behaving better. I am telling you it is real, and it is awesome.

>> The "usual" magnet public high schools are statistically as hard to get into as any fancy college.

Is this really true? FP quotes ~5K placed each year, out of a population of ~100K kids according to demographic pyramids. So 5%. Nationwide, the equivalent population is ~4.5M, so 5% would be ~225K kids. That seems well outside the capacity of all the “fancy colleges” for most definitions of “fancy college”.

Aaron2>> Not all satisfaction comes from being an urban PMC striver.

I hear you. This PMC striver path was never of interest to me personally: I wouldn’t derive satisfaction from it. But to each their own, and I appreciate learning about it nevertheless.

>> My nieces and nephews (private school kids) and all the children of our friends (all private school kids) are turning down many of the perks of their privilege and scolding their own parents.

Really: ALL private school? That’s quite the bubble you’ve gotten yourself stuck in… ;)

>> given the choice between being smart enough to get into a top college or lucky enough to be a nepo baby, I think I'd pick nepo baby.

Well, there are nepo babies and then there are nepo babies. What rank of nepo baby would be enough to do the trick — garden variety 50th percentile, 85th, 95th, or 99.9th? And with your newfound nepo riches, would you join the career ranks of RE broker, journalist, nurse, electrician, or PMC striver?

>> Heaven forfend that this poor unborn child want to do something solidly practical or compassionate.

I’d like to be a fly on the wall at the future moment when the parents truly come to understand that their kids are sentient beings whose true interests and passions have nothing to do with their own.

>What if "connections" are an intergral part of merit in certain sales oriented jobs?

That is definitely true in wealth management, and probably a few other fields.
However, investment bankers usually specialize in some narrow sector, and I imagine the chances of their private school connections being concentrated in that particular sector is low. So this is more about the skill of networking/building new connections. Employers would be wise to select for that (and they do).

Still, I am not sure if I would consider connections as "merit" when evaluating college applicants for example. I certainly wouldn't know how to "fairly" measure it.

By the way, check out this paper that analyzed the detailed admissions data Harvard shared during a law suit. The data show that 43% of all admitted white kids are from one of the four types of "cronies". Cronies have an order of magnitude higher admission rates, and admitted cronies are weaker on various ratings than typical non-crony admits. Cronies tend to be richer and whiter. Recruited athletes are more likely to be white, are extremely unlikely to be URM, and have 86% chance of being admitted, despite being so badly rated on academics, that if not for the athletic tip, the predictive model estimates their chances would be less than 0.1%.
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf

@nada - yes, born and raised in the bubble. As far as still being in it, much to say about that. Mr MCR was public-school-from-nowhere USA then Harvard. Neither he nor any of his closest friends at Harvard belonged to any of the crony groups identified in krolik's link above. All went on to rise to the top of their respective fields based on talent, hard work and just being nice to be around (an X factor if you will). Those who have children all opted for private school in their respective cities.(And of course on my side all of my friends continued the private school thing that is all they know).

@krolik- I was as close to "one of them" as they were going to get in a female at that point in time. I knew I was not one of them and opted for the Foreign Service instead. I worked abroad while I was awaiting the results of the exam, and that was eye-opening indeed. Even though I was fluent in French and looked like the power structure, I had no network, and it was rough. Gave me profound respect and empathy for immigrants, particularly those who immigrate to a country without even the benefit of language fluency or physical resemblance to the power structure.

Wow, athletes are “cronies”…. OK, I guess that’s where your biases lie. Heaven forbid schools admit kids who’ve chosen to focus on athletics and achieved exceptionalism, lest it take away from their core mission to maximize academic strivers seeking employment at “brand” companies. There’s no way these exceptional athletes could operate as well as a corporate cog, and Lord knows they tend to be just the types who might direct their future energies to unworthy endeavors such as becoming a teacher or something.

@Aaron2 - plenty of private school kids go on to do something practical and/or compassionate. Having gone to private school in no way lessens their opportunity to do that, but in my opinion, it does increase their opportunities overall.

As for the rest of the cronies, it’s not as big as I was expecting if you actually understand the details.

Based on the study’s methodology, LDC applicants (what Krolik calls cronies, minus athletes) are typically much stronger than the typical non-athlete applicant. LDC admits are comparable to non-athlete admits overall, slightly weaker on academics but meaningfully stronger in athletics. The importance placed by admissions on academics compared to athletics nevertheless reveal that LDC candidates are being somewhat favored. In lay terms, it seems that they are giving preference to LDC over marginal differences in academics, etc. The advantage in being top-tier over second-tier is far more important than the advantage of LDC within a tier. Nevertheless, these marginal differences yield meaningfully different outcomes. E.g., a second-tier LDC may end up twice as likely admitted as a second-tier non-LDC. But a first-tier’s advantage over a second-tier is much larger.

Legacy and athlete status also seem to produce marginal differences on racial composition — see Table 5. An effect, but not tremendously large. Removing racial status, OTOH, does.

I’m not making any statements or judgments on what policy should be, just what the paper finds.

>Wow, athletes are “cronies”…. OK, I guess that’s where your biases lie. Heaven forbid schools admit kids who’ve chosen to focus on athletics and achieved exceptionalism, lest it take away from their core mission to maximize academic strivers seeking employment at “brand” companies.

Nope, you can't put me in a box - I actually used to be a pretty exceptional athlete (not in a sport that was offered on campus) and I do have a lot of respect for athletes and their passion and discipline, although their playing a sport typically has mostly personal benefits and limited benefits for society. I celebrate athletics as a great past time, or potentially a pro career, I just don't understand what this has to do with colleges. Call me European :-)

The reasons I included recruited athletes in cronies:
1) Intense athletics they way they are implemented today on campuses detract from college primary mission. Athletes enter college less prepared than other students, and have limited time to spend on academics due to training and competition schedules. They are taking up a spot in a classroom that another kid could take a greater advantage of.
2) The specific sports offered at top schools are not offered at most public HSs and are inaccessible to majority of the population (sailing, anyone?) and therefore effectively act as affirmative action for very affluent, mostly white kids that would not have gotten into top schools otherwise.

Brand companies are not necessarily the goal, more of a reality - I went to work for one primarily because I had 6-figure student debt and this was the quickest way to pay it off. And just because someone is an athlete really does not mean they are more likely to become a teacher or a philosophy professor. A good portion of the people applying for elite jobs at my Big Company are student athletes... many big companies love them.. as long as the resume says Harvard or another top college (probably because top college + rich kid sport signals affluence and connections which can be useful as 300 pointed out).

@mcr -- I agree, many private school grads do something more socially useful than sales or money changing*, and private school can increase their opportunities, but I would suggest that, outside the individual's ability to actually absorb the particular education given, it's all about the connections. I think this thread is generally landing on 'connections are valuable, perhaps even more so than solid academics'.

(*both fields of dubious value, in my upbringing, what with having parents who lived through the Great Depression. And yet I work for a global financial firm. Talk about moments when they realized their offspring was a sentient being !)

>>Well, there are nepo babies and then there are nepo babies. What rank of nepo baby would be enough to do the trick — garden variety 50th percentile, 85th, 95th, or 99.9th? And with your newfound nepo riches, would you join the career ranks of RE broker, journalist, nurse, electrician, or PMC striver?

None of the above, these career options are too hard. Better options could be 1) Socialite 2) Executive Vice President at daddy's company (just to start as my first job out of college) 3) Art Gallery owner in East Village 4) Actor / Actress (hire me, you don't even need to pay me has helped start many acting careers) 5) Formula 1 driver (if daddy buys a team) 6) Angel investor 7) Ambassador to somewhere desirable (France or Switzerland, for example).. the list goes on...

@Aaron2 - Agreed.
@krolik - Ha!

@Krolik - you are more on the right track there.
Photojournalist, documentary film maker, art gallery/bar owner, EDM DJ, record producer, painter/sculptor, etc

Basically anything that mixes socializing/travel/hobby with making money (but probably not enough for the lifestyle you live), in a niche that is heavily connections driven where rich people like dealing with other rich people

Krolik, I wasn’t implying you have a bias against athletes as human beings but rather against them as undeserving members of the college community, which you do. That’s what the word “crony” implies. It’s OK.

If you actually read the report you linked, you can see that removing athletics would have a relatively muted effect on racial composition. Table 5. Removing race as a consideration, or presumably increasing it, would have a much larger effect.

Actually, in my real life, if only I had a trust fund, I would have continued my career in a niche sport that I was very passionate about and in which I was exceptional. At some point during my pro career, after a very successful season, my spot on a promising, but financially struggling team was offered to a less talented pro athlete that was a nepobaby educated at Harvard as an LDC admit (not recruited athlete), who offered to sponsor the team. Shortly thereafter I decided I needed to do something new that made me more money and switched careers.

True story. You can't even make this up!

I will advise my kid to be a PMC striver only if they don't find anything else they like better :-)

>Krolik, I wasn’t implying you have a bias against athletes as human beings but rather against them as undeserving members of the college community, which you do. That’s what the word “crony” implies. It’s OK.

The reasons they are "cronies" is because majority of the specific sports offered require one to be rich to participate. The selection of sports might not be accidental. Admitted athletes are whiter and richer than Harvard average.

>If you actually read the report you linked, you can see that removing athletics would have a relatively muted effect on racial composition. Table 5. Removing race as a consideration, or presumably increasing it, would have a much larger effect.

I did read it. I said nothing about racial composition, and don't use it as a yardstick to measure "fair" admissions. I know it is a huge factor. In fact, the data became public because of a suit against Harvard brought by Asian-American applicants that are experiencing discrimination by Harvard from every angle. The court decided in favor of affirmative action, which serves a societal purpose, for now.

What societal purpose do crony admissions serve?

@Krolik - Amen.

>> I said nothing about racial composition

Sorry, for some reason I took these words to reflect comments about racial composition effects from the inclusion of athletics in admission criteria:

>> Admitted athletes are whiter and richer than Harvard average.

>> mostly white kids that would not have gotten into top schools otherwise

And I thought you said the white/rich biasing (i.e., racial composition effects) serve as demonstration for why they are an unfair admission criterion.

>> What societal purpose do crony admissions serve?

Not my policy to defend. I never donated a single dollar to my alma matter, largely because of legacy admissions. At first, because I didn’t want to taint any child’s potential application with donation-favoring. But as time has gone on, I don’t care to do so as a form of protest. If legacy/donor admission goes away, I’d be inclined to direct a giant chunk of money their way.

FTR, these are my values, and I don’t judge people who believe differently. If you want to advantage your child by donating, legacying, sending them to private school, whatever, that’s your prerogative.

>> although their playing a sport typically has mostly personal benefits and limited benefits for society

Lloyd Blankfiein once jested that investment bankers are doing God’s work. I’m sure that every PMC striver believes in the value of their work for society, and they’re probably right. But if you actually asked people in that society whether we should get rid of the athletes or the (say) investment bankers, I’m pretty sure I know who would stay and who would go.

>Lloyd Blankfiein once jested that investment bankers are doing God’s work. I’m sure that every PMC striver believes in the value of their work for society, and they’re probably right. But if you actually asked people in that society whether we should get rid of the athletes or the (say) investment bankers, I’m pretty sure I know who would stay and who would go.

Amateur athletes playing their rich kid sport for fun in college in front of empty bleachers while earning a degree preparing them for a career in consulting are more similar to amateur traders on Robinhood or Coinbase than to professional investment bankers doing paid work.

>If legacy/donor admission goes away, I’d be inclined to direct a giant chunk of money their way.

I also don't donate much to the fancy grad school I went to, but for a different reason: I don't believe they need more money. These elite schools have huge endowments and I think a marginal dollar wouldn't have much impact.

I don't donate to my cash-starved undergrad school because they have a huge unprofitable money-sucking athletics program that compromises on the institution's educational mission and dilutes the quality of the student body. I don't want my money used to build more gigantic stadiums.

>And I thought you said the white/rich biasing (i.e., racial composition effects) serve as demonstration for why they are an unfair admission criterion.

Yes, I see how that did not come across quite the way I meant it (since other people use race a lot in their articles/law suits, it is hard to get away from when quoting sources).
To be clear, I am primarily trying distinguish between those born into immense privilege (majority of this group can be described as white and rich), vs. those who were not. I believe innate talents shouldn't materially differ between groups, and children should get similar opportunities.

My personal view is that affirmative action is most needed for two categories of students:
1) those from low socio-economic class
2) first generation college students
Both categories will have large overlaps with underrepresented minority groups. The American almost singular focus on race puzzles me. Call me European :-)

@Krolik - largely agree, and the thing with 1 & 2 is that if we are truly doing racial preference to help underprivileged, then 1&2 are a more pure targeted version of this AND will hold up in court over time AND doesn't inadvertently hurt poor whites & asians because we've decided they are all automatically privileged.

One challenge is that #1 may be gameable to some degree (but so is FAFSA), and #2 may be hard to measure & subject to self-reporting lies (but so is race!)

How does the board feel about Harland Crow's paying private school tuition for Clarence Thomas' grand nephew? That pretty much sums it all up. :)

Krolik, it seems you are against college athletics programs in general. Even if there were no difference in opportunities, removal of white/rich-favoring, etc., you’d still be against athletic considerations for admissions. Right? That’s a fine viewpoint to have, I’m just trying to separate your dislike of athletic considerations from the rest. You’d like it gotten rid of, not “fixed”.

Looking at Harvard sports teams:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Crimson

I’d say just over half are garden variety high school teams while the other half are rich-kids’ sports. But because team sizes on the latter tend to skew smaller, I’d guess the athlete count skews 30% (?) to rich kids’ sport?

>> To be clear, I am primarily trying distinguish between those born into immense privilege (majority of this group can be described as white and rich), vs. those who were not. I believe innate talents shouldn't materially differ between groups, and children should get similar opportunities.

I’m not saying this judgementally or accusationally, but you may want to take that into consideration in your decision of public vs private school. At $75K/yr after-tax, I think it’s fair to say that it’s only a choice only for top 1%-ers.

Note that for all who are apoplectic about race being a consideration in admissions likely only have a few more weeks to wait until SCOTUS rules in your favor. At this point, I wouldn't mind that grievance being taken away from those whose kids can't get into the school of their choice. Their kids are still not going to get in and they will just have to admit that their offspring might simply not be part of the best and the brightest.

>I’m not saying this judgementally or accusationally, but you may want to take that into consideration in your decision of public vs private school. At $75K/yr after-tax, I think it’s fair to say that it’s only a choice only for top 1%-ers.

Yes, I am struggling with this point. On one hand I am biased in favor of the inclusive environment at public schools for my kid. I also wouldn't mind not having to pay $75k (due to zigs and zags in my career, student loans, and NYC cost of living, I am not where I want to be on retirement savings yet).

On the other hand I never appreciated the private school connections point until this thread.

> Krolik, it seems you are against college athletics programs in general. Even if there were no difference in opportunities, removal of white/rich-favoring, etc., you’d still be against athletic considerations for admissions. Right? That’s a fine viewpoint to have, I’m just trying to separate your dislike of athletic considerations from the rest. You’d like it gotten rid of, not “fixed”.

Correct. I think athletics should be taken into account as another extracurricular activity, and provided on campus as entertainment / social / health activity for students, not a professional activity that distracts all from the primary mission of a university. However, it is a separate consideration unrelated to "cronies" point.

> Note that for all who are apoplectic about race being a consideration in admissions likely only have a few more weeks to wait until SCOTUS rules in your favor. At this point, I wouldn't mind that grievance being taken away from those whose kids can't get into the school of their choice. Their kids are still not going to get in and they will just have to admit that their offspring might simply not be part of the best and the brightest.

Interesting to watch. For context, I am white, but my unborn child is an underrepresented minority!

>> I think athletics should be taken into account as another extracurricular activity

Understood, but I think you’ll have the same objection on the importance given to this criterion. According to the study, being exceptional on extracurricular activities is just important as being exceptional academically.

Very loosely, you can view admissions via inonada’s Measure of the 9’s — on each of academics & extracurriculars (including athletics), are you 90th, 99th, 99.9th, or 99.99th percentile? Count up your 9’s.

At a place like Harvard, do not pass Go if you don’t have at least one 9 on academics. But if you do, you can continue playing. 4 total 9’s is a shoe-in, 3 9’s is a crap-shoot, and 2 9’s is a hail-mary.

Across all applications, a person with 4 9’s will probably get admitted pretty much everywhere Harvard-like. A person with 3 9’s will probably get admitted *somewhere* Harvard-like. And a person with 2 9’s will probably get admitted nowhere Harvard-like.

That’s the criteria, and beyond the minimal “one 9” standard on academics, it doesn’t matter whether your other ones came from academics or extracurriculars. Of course, you have to count across all extracurriculars. Being 99th percentile in basket-weaving does not count as 2 9’s — you better be the national champion in basket-weaving, because few people engage in that as an extracurricular.

> That’s the criteria, and beyond the minimal “one 9” standard on academics, it doesn’t matter whether your other ones came from academics or extracurriculars. Of course, you have to count across all extracurriculars. Being 99th percentile in basket-weaving does not count as 2 9’s — you better be the national champion in basket-weaving, because few people engage in that as an extracurricular.

And herein lies another problem with rich-kid sports: few people play them and it may be inherently less competitive to get titles and recognition.

>>And herein lies another problem with rich-kid sports: few people play them and it may be inherently less competitive to get titles and recognition.

True, but also true based on geography and school districts. I have a client from the "suburbs" of Portland, Maine who was waxing poetic about the accomplishments of her son who lettered in 4 sports. Turns out there were 70 males in his graduating class, so being one of the 25 guys on the baseball team and 16 on the basketball team was not much of a feat. Still, got him into Princeton. One of my colleague's kids goes to one of the fanciest LA private schools. For the most part, anyone who wants to be on any sports team can be.

When I was a kid and you had to go to the NYC high school in your zone (unless you went to Stuyvesant or Bronx Science), the high school in my zone had about 5,000 students.

Mr MCR and I were talking about just that yesterday when I was reading this thread to him. I got to be on two sports teams at private school that I woukd have had no chance to be on had I gone to the large public high school in my home town. Being part of those teams was integral to my high school experience (no idea whether they factored into college admit decisions). Such was another benefit of private school for me personally.

> For the most part, anyone who wants to be on any sports team can be.

That's how it is supposed to be. Kid sports are for enjoyment, character building, and social and health benefits. Not for gaming college admissions and resume building. A large school with a lot of demand should have team A, team B, etc. Just my opinion.

So I have been studying the very complicated NYC public education system and finding gems:
Kaufman school for music - K12 public school with intensive music training, but math and science there are weak, I might be too risk averse for that
Hunter school - free and very rigorous K12, but kids are supposed to pass a test at 3 years old (?!?!?!)
G&T programs - but none convenient to my home and looks like admissions are by lottery
Regis high school - free and very rigorous, but must be catholic, willing to study theology for 4 years, and no K8 option

By the time the kid is 3 and a half, I need to figure out s/he is a brainiac or a future Taylor Swift. No pressure LOL

>> no idea whether they factored into college admit decisions

I’m willing to bet that your middling athleticism neither helped nor hurt your admissions. And equivalent showing academically would most definitely have hurt.

>> no idea whether they factored into college admit decisions

>I’m willing to bet that your middling athleticism neither helped nor hurt your admissions. And equivalent showing academically would most definitely have hurt.

If the school was Harvard, and if admissions then were similar to what was disclosed during the recent law suit, I am pretty sure it helped. They score each applicant on few dimensions: academics, extracurriculars, athletics and personal (+ special consideration for cronies, but it is separate). It does not help to get a low score on any of these, so I think the optimal strategy is to stand out on one criteria and avoid a low score in any of the others.

Unless you are a recruited athlete or a person of interest to a very important donor. Then nothing else really matters. A recruited athlete has 86% chance of admission, while not a recruited athlete with similar academic, extracurricular and personal stats has 0.1% chance of admission.

>>That's how it is supposed to be. Kid sports are for enjoyment, character building, and social and health benefits.

That is crazy, and not at all what it is supposed to be. Sports are supposed to be a competition. Sure you can have gym classes that all participate on. I played high school basketball in the early 1980s against Kenny Anderson, Mark Jackson, Chris Mullin, etc., and a host of others that were astonishing athletes that did mot rise to that level. Early lessons that you are not remotely as talented or special as you think. That is the beauty of competition. There is no relevance to the idea that you were on some sports team unless it shows that you separated yourself in some way from others. Otherwise, the resume just says i like sports. Good for you, no one cares.

> Sports are supposed to be a competition.

How are you supposed to compete if you are not on a team?

I dont understand. That is the point. If the sport is competitive, some modicum of success suggests something relevant. If it is not competitive, it is sort of like i enjoy comic books.

My school encouraged all to be on sports teams because team sports teach you how to work with others in a role. Teams are a bonding experience. I think they are part of educating kids in important non-academic skills.

>> Early lessons that you are not remotely as talented or special as you think.

LOL, nyc_sport. I think people might have trouble understanding this academically too.

The top-5 schools can only fill about half their rosters with 99.9th percentile academics, simply because there are too few of them (~4000 per year). Along the way, they pick up some 99.99th percentile academics (~400 per year). But they still need to fill out the other half of their class, so they selectively admit some 99th percentile academics. Which ones? There are 10x as many of them as you have space, so why not select the ones who are exceptional on some other dimension? Maybe a 99th percentile academics who is *also* a 99th percentile athlete will prove better than someone who has nothing to show for other than 99th percentile academics, so that’s how they select. I knew one of this guys in high school — not only top-tier academically, but also the best athlete in the class (football, basketball, etc.). Remarkable, if you really think about it. And just a great human being, to boot. He’s one of the few who got into a top-5 college — Stanford.

But then you get to college, and none of that means diddly. Said friend was good enough to be part of the football team, but not good enough to play. 99th percentile athlete, not 99.9th. His sin? Probably that while he was plenty tall and big, just want born tall and big enough.

The same thing happens academically. The half that are 99th percentile struggle to keep up, but mostly they fine mentally because they already knew they weren’t the best and are glad to just be there. But really, they go from being one of the smartest in high school to being one of the “dullards” in college. Most of the other half that are 99.9th percentile are fine academically, but they struggle mentally. They thought they were the best, but now it’s demonstrated they are simply middle-of-the-pack. Their sin? While endowed with a remarkable brain, it just wasn’t a 99.99th percentile brain.

It then becomes kinda funny how people view it. They think every 99th percentile academic is now equally qualified to be educated in a system geared towards the 99.9th percentile academics, in search of the 99.99th percentile academics.

It’s sorta like saying every accomplished high school football player should be part of a competitive college football team, because said team has to have *some* such players, to merely fill out the practice squad. They’re looking for NFL players, dammit, this ain’t kindergarten!!!

All the while, minimize the accomplishments of what it means to be a 99th athlete while simultaneously holding down 99th academics.

>> At this point, I wouldn't mind that grievance being taken away from those whose kids can't get into the school of their choice. Their kids are still not going to get in and they will just have to admit that their offspring might simply not be part of the best and the brightest.

Exactly. As long as we’re burning it all down, let’s get rid of extracurricular & athletic considerations too. Purely academic: 99.9th percentile or bust. Cull the herd!!!

>> If the school was Harvard, and if admissions then were similar to what was disclosed during the recent law suit, I am pretty sure it helped.

Except that is completely wrong according to the data. Look at pages 41 & 42 of the report. You can see a plenty of unremarkable academics in the applicant pool, but these are totally gone in the admit pool. For example, a “4 or worse” academic score shows up in 8-50% of the “Typical” applicants, depending on race. For admits, it becomes 0.00-0.08%.

The same “4 or worse” in athletics shows 31-45% in the applicant pool and 29-44% in the admit pool. There are even slightly more 3’s in the applicant pool than the admit pool. It’s only the “2 or better” rank that yields higher percentages in the admit pool than the applicant pool.

Translation: unremarkable athlete => doesn’t matter. 90th percentile athlete => that’s nice. 99th percentile athlete => OK, maybe we give this person some consideration in the deluge of 99th percentile academics we need to filter.

I thought the kid is not born yet!!

Re "Exactly. As long as we’re burning it all down, let’s get rid of extracurricular & athletic considerations too. Purely academic: 99.9th percentile or bust. Cull the herd!!!"

@nada - I suspect you are being facetious. I believe you and I agree (but do not assume) that these elite schools put an extraordinary amount of thought into what they believe an education with their brand should entail and admit a diverse group of students they have determined will produce the best education for the cohort. With the endowments these schools have, these schools should reject all public funds and take away the spectre of "state action" that subjects their actions to constitutional review. I am distressed that my position here confirms my already-disclosed private school bias. While I always cast my vote to increase the quality of public education, I do believe that private is better at this point in our country's history, and I fear the gap between the quality of publicly provided and privately provided education for the vast majority of kids is only growing.

Yes, I was being facetious.

On a more serious level, these schools are attempting to gather a diverse set of extraordinary students. Extraordinary is the important criteria, not the specific activity. The minimal requirement they put on academics is higher than the rest, but it would be incorrect to interpret their search for extraordinary as a purely academic criteria. They could do this, and it’d cut a swath of athletes, national champion kazoo players, underrepresented minorities, etc. from the mix.

If I were looking to advantage a non-extraordinary child (yes I know, all children are extraordinary in their own way…), I question whether private school would be the best way. If we are to believe the assumptions in my calculation above, we are talking about $1M present dollars at a DCF of 5-6%. Can’t I just nepo-baby them with a $1M endowment instead and grow it at 5-6%? Why stop at $1M, why not $10M?

Another bit about the extraordinary athlete/student friend from my high school. After a year or two at Stanford, he transferred to a no-name school just so he could play ball. No-name academically, no-name sports-wise. Just for the love of football & basketball. Not concerned about credential-grubbing — he just knew he’d be alright. Looking back — what a badass! That sort of awareness at age 20. Ended up an MD.

So while I hear all this talk about advantaging around the edges, I am mainly drawn to all the extraordinary people I’ve met in my life journey. How many of those do you get to meet in a journey built around constant advantaging? From how you describe it, it mostly sounds like inevitable constant disappointment relative to what everyone “should” have become.

>I thought the kid is not born yet!!

haha, no, s/he is definitely not born yet. I guess this is a bad case of tiger parenting.

In my defense, based on my research, Hunter K12 school subjects 3-y olds to tests for admissions, and Kaufman special music school subjects kindergarten applicants to auditions. The kid probably needs to start tutoring the moment it can crawl, and piano lessons the moment it can sit up, if it is to compete with other 85th percentile NYC kids.

>If I were looking to advantage a non-extraordinary child (yes I know, all children are extraordinary in their own way…), I question whether private school would be the best way.

I think 85th percentile to 95th percentile calculation is an oversimplification. A more nuanced story is that if the future career requires connections to rich and powerful people (as is the case in politics, high finance, consulting, and come parts of entertainment, or one of the nepobaby careers we listed above), then private school will help maximize that. On the other hand, if we are talking about a science, medicine or engineering career, or a sports/niche talent career, or some every day career nurse/electrician/teaching/etc. then other ways to spend $1M might be wiser, especially if 1M is a consequential amount and not a rounding error. A somewhat impossible decision ex ante for upper-middle class parents.

>They think every 99th percentile academic is now equally qualified to be educated in a system geared towards the 99.9th percentile academics, in search of the 99.99th percentile academics.

It is a gross oversimplification to think about people in academic percentiles. You can have an autistic kid that is brilliant in math and engineering but does not get along with anyone on group projects, or someone who is a gifted writer/artist, and cannot do math. Or someone who is brilliant in all subjects, but has no patience for homework and test prep, and instead chooses to do a personal project on the side that later becomes a multi-billion dollar company. The cookie-cutter A student that goes into consulting will have a higher GPA and standardized test scores than any of these people, but so what?

The system isn't geared to "search" for any percentile of academics, that is more of a byproduct. Any college's mission is to educate. Top colleges used to be just schools for the rich/ruling class. In the 20th century, they have rebranded as meritocratic institutions (though continue to educate the ruling class via legacy admissions). Top colleges have fancier buildings, better career services, more and better-funded clubs, nicer dorm rooms, smaller class sizes, free food at every seminar or function, more famous faculty (often hired after the faculty made a significant discovery while working at a less prestigious college). But an organic chemistry class at Harvard and at a state school covers the exact same material and follows the exact same books, preparing students for the same GRE or MCAT exams (that most organic chemistry students aim to take). The Harvard version of the class might be actually easier for students of all levels to do well in, with smaller class sizes, PhD teaching assistants that speak English, and insane grade inflation.

The most brilliant people I have ever met are not private school -> Ivy kids. They are typically people who had a non-linear paths with curveballs and adversity, imperfect GPAs or test scores, unique talent in one or several specific areas, and incredible resilience (they do not always have the best career outcomes, because they had a different starting point with no advantages< but very impressive given the starting point). But I also met some brilliant Ivy undergrad people (with much better career outcomes).

For $20k to $30k in investigation you could probably dig up some real dirt on the admissions committee of your choosing.

>> It is a gross oversimplification to think about people in academic percentiles.

And yet that’s exactly what Harvard does, giving each applicant an academic rating between 1 and 5, with +/- modifiers. When you get to a 1 vs a 2, I doubt they are doing this based on GPAs and test scores. At that level, it’s indistinguishable. It’d be as silly as determining exceptional football players based on 40 yard dash speed, bench press, etc. Sure, they are correlated indicators. But it’s not the actual story.

They way you describe it, there is no such thing as a 1 vs a 2. Or perhaps there is, but admissions cannot possibly figure it out. That makes sense, I guess, given how you’ve seen your firm run recruiting. “Admit a bunch and see what sticks!” However, as Table 6 makes it clear, the Harvard admission advantage given to a candidate with a 1 rather than a 2 in academic rating is huge. The advantage given to legacy candidates is only 1/9th as large. Clearly, they believe they are able to identify high degrees of exceptionality in academics, and admit accordingly, even if you don’t. Same with extracurricular.

>> A more nuanced story is that if the future career requires connections to rich and powerful people (as is the case in politics, high finance, consulting, and come parts of entertainment, or one of the nepobaby careers we listed above), then private school will help maximize that.

Another oversimplification. Take the equivalent of $1M in tuition back to 1973 (i.e., discounted for inflation and productivity growth). Put it in the S&P 500 for 50 years, and you’d have produced enough net worth to put someone in the 99th percentile in 2023 from that alone. At the same time, ~10% of the population went to private school. Clearly, they cannot all be in the 99th percentile of wealth…

Question. Given that ~10% of all kids go to private school, how do you ensure that they only hang out with the “rich and powerful” kids instead of the muck? I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation between parent & child too. The kid’ll probably spend the whole lifetime’s worth of 85th to 95th percentile advantage on therapy.

You've hit the nail on the head, nada -- private school does tend to "sort" by the wealth you come in with. There are exceptions -- one person I went to college with befriended the heir to dynastic wealth, and is now himself as rich as Croesus -- but in general the stories I hear of NYC privates are that the billionaires are hanging out with the billionaires, and the run-of-the-mill upper-middle-class kids are hanging out with the other upper-middle-class kids. Which is not to say that private school might not confer some social advantages; they just might not be as great as one hopes.

NYC has many different kind of private schools K-8. 15-20% of the kids in NYC go to private schools which is more than the national percentage of 10 or so. There are Jewish ones in BK with $20-25k tuition. There are catholic schools with low tuition. Presumably, Krolik and most people in this discussion are only talking about top 10-15 private schools in NYC.

>For $20k to $30k in investigation you could probably dig up some real dirt on the admissions committee of your choosing.

Love the real life, practical suggestions :-)

>the Harvard admission advantage given to a candidate with a 1 rather than a 2 in academic rating is huge.

Yes, there is consistency in how the admission committee uses 1 vs 2 label, which was given by the admission committee.

Kind of reminds me of this other situation where a company graded their own homework and concluded they did a great job:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-02-27/jpmorgan-s-1-percent-gender-pay-gap-is-suspicious

>private school does tend to "sort" by the wealth you come in with. There are exceptions -- one person I went to college with befriended the heir to dynastic wealth, and is now himself as rich as Croesus -- but in general the stories I hear of NYC privates are that the billionaires are hanging out with the billionaires, and the run-of-the-mill upper-middle-class kids are hanging out with the other upper-middle-class kids.

My partner brought this up also. One of his young cousins growing up in an upper-middle class family went to a private school, but felt alienated as many other kids from rich families were constantly taking extra lavish "enrichment" trips/activities he could not take part in.

> Another oversimplification. Take the equivalent of $1M in tuition back to 1973 (i.e., discounted for inflation and productivity growth). Put it in the S&P 500 for 50 years, and you’d have produced enough net worth to put someone in the 99th percentile in 2023 from that alone. At the same time, ~10% of the population went to private school. Clearly, they cannot all be in the 99th percentile of wealth…

So based on the point that 300 brought up, I think in this calculation we have to only count graduates of top 10-15 privates, which is much less than 10% of the population, and based on connections being super useful only in some select professions, further reduce the pool.
Also I am not in 1% by wealth, so I do not have 1M for tuition to invest today, but I do have 70k per year for tuition...

It is very hard to generalize what is good for a child and family in NYC. The academic outcomes from private schools are wide-spread as evident from this page from a K-8 good UES private school.

https://www.allen-stevenson.org/discover-allen-stevenson/where-our-graduates-go

I am picking K-8 as college admission statistics by many private schools also reflect top performing public school students who join these private schools in 9th grade.

5y old child's academic success is highly unpredicatble with school only one of the factors. Perhaps Nada can refine his 85-->95 percentile model with some dispersion assumptions which will makes the returns calculations very risky.

>> To be clear, I am primarily trying distinguish between those born into immense privilege (majority of this group can be described as white and rich), vs. those who were not. I believe innate talents shouldn't materially differ between groups, and children should get similar opportunities.

>I’m not saying this judgementally or accusationally, but you may want to take that into consideration in your decision of public vs private school. At $75K/yr after-tax, I think it’s fair to say that it’s only a choice only for top 1%-ers.

@inonada how would you suggest to take this into account, what would be the framework?

By the way, and completely off topic, there were some news today about one of those banks that in 2018 was claiming to be paying/promoting equally. When someone else graded the homework, they found issues:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/05/09/goldman-sachs-gender-lawsuit-settlement/70199429007/

Something similar at JPM few years earlier:
https://www.fisherphillips.com/news-insights/pay-equity-matters-mind-the-gap/jpmorgan-settles-gender-pay-bias-suit-for-9-8-million.html

>> how would you suggest to take this into account, what would be the framework?

That’s hard for me to say, because we have pretty different viewpoints. We both place value on quality education. You place value on connections, credentials, etc. that comes from private school. I place anti-value on it. If it came down to it, I’d probably pay $75K/yr to avoid private school if I could find comparable education publicly ;).

Krolik,
What's wrong with paying women less?

>We both place value on quality education. You place value on connections, credentials, etc. that comes from private school.

A strange conclusion to make from a thread I started because I wanted to understand why anyone would send a kid to a private school instead of a public magnet. :-)

>Krolik, What's wrong with paying women less?

Firstly, they love to point out that they are paying women the same, as adjusted for job responsibilities (though Goldman and JPMorgan lawsuits and 2016 Google investigation by DoL have shown otherwise). For some weird reason, women just don't make it to the top paying jobs. They must not want it or something. In my group no woman wanted it, clearly, as there are over 30 men, but zero women with Partner/MD title. Entry-level hiring has been fairly gender balanced for over a decade.

I am anxious about the moment I have to tell my employer about the pregnancy. Lots of men in my group, including junior employees, have kids, but none of the women do, not even fairly senior ones. We are terrified of the "mommy track".

>> A strange conclusion to make from a thread I started because I wanted to understand why anyone would send a kid to a private school instead of a public magnet.

Search for the word “connection” in the thread, and you’ll see multiple places where you attribute value to it for some professions, for recruiting, etc. You also attribute value to the name of a school giving people an advantage in recruiting and beyond. I’m not saying you believe these values are absolute, but in your mind they are in the “+” column. In my mind, they are in the “-“ column. The only thing I would consider a positive from private schools is the quality of education. Everything else, from connections to name to class size, it’s a negative. Too coddling.

I am on a fact-finding mission to figure out what the advantages are exactly (given I am an outsider to the private school world, and I (as well as everyone I am close with) went to a public school myself). While advantages clearly do exist, I never said I like that or approve. Quite the opposite. What I said in the thread:

> I really believe in public schools in principle, and I am already paying for them in taxes, so unless there is a very compelling reason, would prefer to have my child attend a public. Also a luxury good of sorts, in a weird way it would help me feel superior to my prestige-obsessed private-schooled colleagues.

>What I am saying, school brand is not everything. Neither is GPA. Life is complicated.

>The most brilliant people I have ever met are not private school -> Ivy kids.

>> While advantages clearly do exist, I never said I like that or approve.

You are misunderstanding me. From your perspective, “advantages clearly do exist”. From my perspective, they do not. If anything, I view them as disadvantages. IMO, those attributes coddle a kid into a mindset that is likely to ultimately hurt them rather than help.

I respect your viewpoint, and I understand your desire to balance that which you may find advantageous against that which you may like and/or approve. However, I am no good as an armchair ethicist. It’s hard enough to apply one’s own ethics onto others to begin with. It’s even harder to do so “in theory”, and harder still when you don’t even believe the premise. If I had any capacity for doing so, perhaps I could’ve become the NYT Ethicist column writer. But I lack that capability.

So do you think 300's 85% --> 95% is really 85%-->75%?

I suspect Nada's view will be that 85%-->95% will catch up in life some time as the kid is taking extra boost for granted after high school.

My thinking is that dispersion in results is very big for a child regardless of the school and a lot depends on what the parents are doing or able to do with the kid at home.

If you’ve always been sailing with the wind at your back, you’ll never learn how to sail into the wind. In real life, the wind won’t always be there. And when the wind’s gone, will you have trained yourself on how to handle it?

I also wouldn’t want my kids learning lessons like this:

>> Maybe an added benefit of private school is that kids learn earlier its not WHAT you do, its HOW you sell it & you only get what you ask for in life.

>> If you’ve always been sailing with the wind at your back, you’ll never learn how to sail into the wind. In real life, the wind won’t always be there. And when the wind’s gone, will you have trained yourself on how to handle it?

This is a good point, and something to be guarded against.
There is a fine line between pushing your kids academically and greasing the wheels so that every interaction in their life is smooth and frictionless.

Personally I went to public school in nowhere, and was top 5% of my class while having a 20hr/week job in high school. I didn't bother doing homework or studying.
Of course freshman year first semester of college was a nice wakeup call because everyone was a STEM focussed smart person, at a school that didn't inflate grades, and suddenly I felt like an idiot.

Feeling like an idiot first semester of college at 18 meant I had the time to develop better study skills and how to apply the appropriate effort at the appropriate time.

Had I been legacyed into a school that hands out As like candy in an easy degree program, maybe I'd have not had that wakeup call until I was 22 on my first job.

And if my first job was for daddy or one of his friends, maybe I'd be 35 before I learned, if ever?

@inonada - the point I was making in that quote was that .. being a public school kid, I thought you just put your head down and do the work. Not until a few years into my career did I realize you had to promote yourself to get.. promoted. And you have to ask for a raise to get one. The range in compensation for the same work output in a role/title can be 3x.

It still doesn't come naturally to me and I have to really force it. One of my roommates in college was private schooled and then transferred out to an Ivy after 2 years. Let me tell you HE got it. Success wise, I think he got everywhere I got a decade earlier.

Look at Jobs vs Woz. STEM guys tend to think everyone will just recognize how great whatever product we deliver is, naturally. There's a reason businesses have sales & marketing departments. So like that, but on a personal basis.

>Personally I went to public school in nowhere, and was top 5% of my class while having a 20hr/week job in high school. I didn't bother doing homework or studying.

So this is evidently not a public vs private dichotomy. Many public schools are not competitive, and seems that many top private ones are.

The issue that I was not aware of but that 300 and others raised in this thread is that NYC public schools, especially middle schools, vary, and some are really bad (even where you don't expect, in good neighborhoods). Knowing about the issue, I will be very careful to make sure my kid goes to a competitive public school, which is also an advantage.

>Success wise, I think he got everywhere I got a decade earlier.

Do you think this is because of his social/political skills, or also connections?

>There's a reason businesses have sales & marketing departments. So like that, but on a personal basis.

Totally. For those under the impression that "extracurricular activities" reflect how interesting and accomplished a 99th percentile person is, consider that half the time it probably reflects how savvy the applicant's parents and counselors are. There are numerous Ivy job candidates that I interviewed in the last two years that listed on their resume that they started some non-profit while in high school. That must be a thing for college applications to look impressive nowadays, because not a single one was doing anything with that non-profit now that they have successfully gamed admissions. Have they learned some valuable lessons while navigating incorporation and tax forms? Maybe. Have they learned how to present themselves and look good to committees. Definitely.

I respect your perspective, steve. I just have a different one.

On Jobs vs Woz, I would say that Jobs not only marketed the products but also created and delivered them. The Mac and iPhone are very much products of Jobs, not any engineers’. The reason the world is punching away into iPhones is because of his vision & execution, not because of ads. A little sizzle & a lotta meat. Both Jobs & Woz were products of a public high school.

There’s also the extreme counterpoint of Elizabeth Holmes, the turtlenecked copycat whose main skill was in hype and credential-/connection-peddling. A product of private school, just sayin’…

@Krolik - my buddy was genuinely extremely sharp. He also was a foreign student from his countries equivalent of a very prestigious boarding school where 50% of grads then go to university in the US, often to very selective programs. So he was quite better prepared and had a very rigorous education before college.

I would also say that the type of role he took on graduation was something that they really only recruit at the Ivys for anyway (front office sales&trading), so the direct path wouldn't have even been an option for me.

It's funny he spent 2 years at my school, then 1 year at the Ivy before interning on a trading desk (internship interviews are in fall semester so he probably was only at the Ivy for 1 semester before he got recruited haha).

Same banks all came to my school, for software engineering roles exclusively.

From there he did very well for himself and ended up a partner on the buy side before he was 25, roughly as Dodd Frank shut down prop trading at banks which was where he started.

So as always, a combination of skill, luck, and being in the right place.
Much in life is path dependent.

What’s he doing now, Steve?

https://www.ft.com/content/97e31cbd-60da-4801-ac01-85e3d8708aa7

lol

lol

>Much in life is path dependent.

Totally. We looked up my partner's American high school in various rankings... it was listed in 4950s area among public high schools in the US, and that was the BEST high school in a town with a half a million people or more. We had a laugh.

Being born with the "right" passport, in the right city, and/or to the "right" parents determines so, so much in one's life. Before it even began.

My baby is unbelievably privileged.

@nada - he played the smart game, got out of the industry before 35, and is angel investing / entrepreneuring

@krolik - exactly, being born in NYC to rich parents who are optimizing for your education at all puts you so incredibly far ahead that much of the jockeying beyond that is rounding error by comparison

Are you going off the "US News ranking of 24,000 public high schools"?
If so, I'm surprised to find my HS was in the top 3000, and my wife's was top 2000.. !
Pretty sure 1 kid from my class of 500 went to an Ivy, and 0 from my wife's class of 200ish did, lol.