As compared to the kid paying for their own degree and boarding so they’re going to school full-time and working full-time…
I don’t think kids that are privileged enough to just have to study full-time understand that workload…
They probably do have more pressure to succeed… and also probably have more job opportunities with 2.0 GPA at graduation than a student who isn’t related to executives of corporations…
It’s not just that.
It’s the fact that the privileged kids that “pay their way” to Ivy Leagues have a lot of help post-grad as well.
If you think those Ivy League Wall Street analysts are living in roach-infested studio apartments with roommates you’re crazy
No, they’re probably either living in West Village or Manhattan via their parents paying rent
And look, I don’t want to sound like a complainer to the full degree because if i was in those circumstances, I would probably want the exact same thing
An Ivy League degree gets your foot in the door regardless of background, but simply being 2 or 3 social classes above the average (or in this case, the poor merit-based admitted students) puts them so far ahead in ways I can’t even fully explain
Yep… as my folks always said…
Life ain’t fair.
And…
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good…
If a high schooler is exhausted they aren’t brilliant enough to be Ivy undergrad. Merely excellent.
Many middle to upper middle East Asian and Indian families are willing to pay full price for Ivy undergrad.
I lived in student housing in NYC. Many are in the Village, SoHo, etc and commute to CU grad. If you work on Wall Street, you can afford a decent place on your own.
I respect what you say. Expect CWF to make you dead wrong on this and me thinks you’ll be glad to say, you were wrong.
I dunno. I live in the tri-state area too. Do you have kids that are high schoolers around here? Are they trying to get 1500+ SATs, run to violin performances (and I mean at a very high level, i.e. Juilliard or MSM), make straight As (with loaded AP courses), involve themselves (deeply and meaningfully - no last minute bs to pad a college application) in community service? I think they’re brilliant enough. They supposedly have privilege (and yes they do), but they just have different stresses.
I didn’t say anything about affording a place, so not sure where that came from. I said they were overworked and exhausted from the pressures in their lives.
As another poster said, “life ain’t fair”. Trying to run down these kids in Manhatttan as a bunch of preening peacocks is definitely stereotype - no matter what their “privilege” is.
Perhaps the topic went to the wayside a bit, but the point is that Ivy Leagues won’t admit you unless you are truly gifted.
If you don’t have money, aren’t a legacy or related to an alum, or aren’t at an Ivy League feeder prep school, then you have to be truly special.
A low income POC will likely have other obstacles in their personal life that make it hard to put 100% effort in to high school academics. Actually, this is a large problem especially in black communities with high crime and poverty. Plenty of those kids have potential to be intelligent and high-achieving, but unfortunately they are sideswiped by externalities largely out of their own control.
When you have a sheltered upbringing, where you are handed a silverspoon of private schooling, high paid tutors, test preps, and not major obstacles such as the need to work a part-time job or taking care of siblings without a nanny, then yeah it’s not that simple
This is all true. Most private schools, including the Ivy league, will give consideration for those with more challenged backgrounds. The ones that are NOT challenged - well you need to do it better.
There seems to be in this thread people who lump generational wealth alongside “working-class wealth” as all spoiled. Well the Indian hedge fund manager (working class wealth who likely graduated Ivy himself) is going to be very hard on his kids. And that is the vast majority of the so-called privileged class going into Ivys.
Bringing all this back around, SMU is in. They may have bought their way in, but they are in. Respect? They’ve earned their respect.
Just like legacy kids in top schools, or those whose parents paid for naming rights to a broom closet, SMU has the respect, or envy, of those who couldn’t start on second base.
That and whole lot of NIL $$$
I used to live in NYC. The top 20 want brilliant kids, and not just average excellence. Sports are definitely a way to get in without being tippy top. A Vandy grad who was friends with my daughter said everyone at Vandy seemed to be damaged brilliant. For example he wrote an essay on living with his mom who survived brain cancer. He wasn’t brilliant. Another Chinese kid was #3 in the class and finished all of the Kumon series one summer. She graduated from MIT and works at a hedge fund. Parents are professors making $250k between them and probably paid full price.
You’re not even listening. I’m sorry I wrote that kids are exhausted. That doesn’t make them less brilliant. So forget the exhausted thing. Just focus on my message, which is they are not primadonnas like some would suggest.
And I am not surprised one bit about your example of the family that only makes 250k and pays 100k after tax full freight for Ivy. There are so many of those examples of sacrifice. I know of an Indian couple that does just that for Harvard.
Well I’m married to an Ivy Leaguer whose intelligence far exceeds mine.
And she is a non-jock and non-legacy.
Jocks and legacies have very different (lower) admission standards, as do special admits for big donors.
SMU is essentially the latter….in a conference realignment version.
The IB and consulting graduates of Ivy are exhausted too. Haha. I was thinking about a friend whose kid was described as having a photographic memory. Did the minimum in HS but finished second. Went to Baylor on big scholarship and now leads M&A for a large oil company. His kid goes to Kinkaid in Houston which is no sweat.
IB and MBB want the smooth brilliant types. Plenty of them at SMU but more so at top 20. Probably like your kid.
What makes a kid a prima donna? Lack of empathy?
I’m trying to differentiate between those who have the wherewithal and those who have even MORE.
There is a simple assumption that they are one and the same, which is categorically not true.
A primadonna - in my mind - is a student that has been provided absolutely everything and hasn’t really achieved much relatively. Sure they’re reasonably smart and not entirely irresponsible. However, their parents are on the board of their prep school. They donate enough where if there are only two spots to say Yale, the counselor is giving them one of them. These are the people a poster is likely referring to when they say these guys “bought” their way in.
The working class affluent, however, may look upper-class on paper, but need to work MUCH harder to make top flight schools work. This is the vast majority of the “haves”. They make too much to get needs-based aid and honestly too little to afford the retail price of these schools. I think these guys take nothing for granted. I think both parents and kids work their tails off for an Ivy dream.
So that’s where I’m coming from when I say you (not you specifically) can’t just make a blanket assumption of their motivations and talent. Sure they don’t have to close the restaurant at 2am, but I can assure you that they are deadly serious - as you need to be in order to compete in the application process.
I get we don’t need to respect the way SMU got into the ACC.
But I’m pretty sure we, especially with our two years of being 4-8 losers, should probably avoid casting stones in general at any team in the playoffs. Do you know what’s less cool than being the rich kid who bought their way in? Being the loser kid.
The point being, we are a cool kid that didn’t have to buy our way into the cool kids lunch table the way that SMU did.
Man trust me, if I am wrong nobody will be happier than me!! (Other than CWF 
)
Well the point might be that most here think SMU have proven they’re legit and belong. We’re not cool. At least not yet
I mean yeah, but man it just reeks of a loser kid whining while he’s being a loser. If we were both winning it might hit different.
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