How the Ivy League Broke America

I think those are two sides of the same argument.

If certain kids are getting in because of tutoring rather than because of talent/ability, then they are the kids that are being pushed unnecessarily to participate when they'd be better off doing something else. Those kids take up the space of kids who are poor who could benefit from that kind of instruction.

If I were you, I would focus on three things:

1. Raise your kids to be decent people - to have ethics, empathy, and compassion. ("We can buy anything" is likely to negatively impact this.)

2. Raise your kids to not blow it. They aren't going to have more money than they can possibly spend; they could still end up broke. Raise them to be responsible with what they have.

3. You are in the privileged position of being able to raise your kids to find out what they really want to do, and to pursue that. This means giving them a lot of things they can try early, and seeing which one floats their boat. (It also means not forcing them into forever pursuing what they liked when they were five.)

Yes, I am aware that 1 and 3 kind of contradict each other.

You could argue that raising them to be people who can make their own way without the money - that is, who can earn a decent income on their own - is part of 1, or 2, or both.

Educational materials are freely available now (from elite schools even), so I see university primarily as a means to acquire credentials and to meet a high-quality spouse. Your kids don't need credentials, so I suppose the question is whether those schools would help them to be surrounded by the right kinds of people, and whether they wouldn't otherwise already be.

If you feel that it's a rat race, and if the people who go there are the types that participate in it (and later make their kids participate in it) despite knowing it's pointless, are they a good fit for your kids? If not there, where would they find a better fit? They're already economically secure, so your primary concern should be maximizing the chance that they end up with a happy family life and end up as well-rounded people.

Education is still important for them to grow up as whole people of course (c.f. classical takes on "liberal arts"). But if it's merely in service to developing an impressive resume, who are they trying to impress?

On a related note, these sorts of articles are always bizarre to me as someone not in that bubble. I was a B student growing up (mostly out of apathy), went to a state school, and have worked "normal" engineering jobs. I plan to have an order of magnitude less money than you, but that's still on the line of what I'd consider to be "generational wealth". Going to an elite school was never necessary except to make sure your kids are around kids who go to elite schools. Only someone in the elite school bubble would think it's necessary or that it's normal to make your kids' lives revolve around it.

Similarly, when articles like this conflate "eminence" ("becoming a full professor at a major research university, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a leader in biomedicine, a prestigious judge, an award-winning writer, and the like") with flourishing in life, it's clear to me that they're just living in a different world in terms of value systems. I was always in the 99th percentile on standardized tests, and being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company sounds like a total nightmare to me. I don't even want to move from an IC to management role or to reach the top parts of the IC track for that matter. I plan to retire from such work and spend more time with my family.

> What's sad about it is that it's a lawyer. Now I don't mean to poop on lawyers, but the kind of recruiter we are talking about sells a very specific narrative of success,

Can't speak for other countries but in the US there are a glut of lawyers, and if you're not at a Top 14. and in the top half the class, you're not going to make the Big Money -- and the stats generally bare that out.

Doesn't mean you can't do well, but the market is packed, tolerable jobs in law are sparse, hours are long, and student loans are large.

“President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken)”

You’re quite mistaken there: he did his undergrad at the very public University of Delaware, and went to law school at private but definitely not Ivy League Syracuse.