Panda said:
If you are in your 30s or 40s. Look among your peers, relatives, and friends, etc. For those of you who went back to your 10 year high school reunion, 20 year high school reunion. Which group of people you know are more economically and financially successful? Look at your friends who also went to Ivy, how did they turn out in their 30s and 40s.
Group A:
SAT scores below 1000
GPA: 2.9
Group B:
SAT scores above 1400
GPA : 4.0
Old SAT : 1600 perfect score. 800 Verbal / 800 Math.
Let's discuss!
Just went to my 10 year reunion a few months back. ;D
Group A: Out of 10 people I saw at the reunion and talked to during high school only 1 person kind of made something of themselves. He owns his own construction business because it was handed down to him by his father. The rest of that group are still going to school part time and working odd jobs or are Real Estate agents or Loan Officers who aren't doing too well (no offense to anyone). I'm sure there are a few people from my graduating class from Group A that are doing well but I didn't see any of them at the reunion or kept in touch.
Group B: I keep in touch with this group quite often. I actually work with 2 of them. My best friend our valedictorian 1600 SAT (black guy) lol, he went to Cal with me and then onto Harvard for law school. He's going to make partner pretty soon and I can say he's doing pretty well for himself. 3 other good friends of mine also graduating top of our class went to UPenn, Carnegie, and Yale. The Penn/Yale friend are in IB/PE. One's a Principal and the other is a Managing Director. Both pursued higher education at UPenn. The Carnegie friend worked at Google for a while, product development/R&D, then we both went to Stanford for our MBA and now he's part of a start up.
Just to echo what JMoney said "driven people will generally succeed... even those who didn't even go to college." I agree with what he said to a certain extent. For me, driven people are more likely to succeed because they put themselves in the position to. College is a great foundation to help you reach "success". College doesn't make you a better person, it doesn't go to the interviews for you, it doesn't show up 5AM in the morning and stay till 1AM in the morning for you at work, to me it just shows you can follow direction and memorize things