Holmes's background doesn't add up

Four years ago, I stated that “People with exceptionally high IQs but inadequate parents often have poor life outcomes because of the mismatch.”

There are two key elements of James Holmes’s biography which makes me wonder about his parents.

First and most importantly, he attended UC Riverside, which is a crappy commuter school that’s 37% NAM and only 17% white. Why would his parents let (or maybe even encourage?) him to attend such a crappy school?

Secondly, it has been reported that “for a time, he worked part time at McDonald's after finishing college.” Why did he have to work at such a loser job? I get that he couldn’t find a job in Neuroscience, but only people from low prole backgrounds would sink to working at a McDonalds.

However, Holme’s father is said to have a doctorate in statistics and is described as a “manager” at a software company. I would think a guy with a decent white-collar background like that would be less clueless about his son’s choice of college.

James’s mother is said to be a RN, which is a lower middle-class type of career track; she would probably be clueless about the importance of going to a proper college. Maybe James’s dad is aspergery, and his mother inadequately handled the decisions about James’s education and after-work employment?

* * *

The Unabomber has been mentioned a few times during the last three days. It should be noted that the Unabomber had an exceptionally high IQ and prole parents. His father worked in a sausage factory.

Comments

[T]

Not everyone is from New York City. Middle class people outside of New York (especially in the pre-tech-boom west) don't think about status at all. Your way of thinking (that college is for status rather than education) is alien to the vast majority of middle class people. I might almost go so far as to say that the defining characteristic of the middle class is that they don't think about class.

[HS: Stanford is in CA, so it's not like there aren't people on the west coast who are sensitive to school prestige. His parents were clueless here.]

[Conquistador]

Like I said in another thread this guy and his family obviously didn't know the importance of school prestige. Many people don't especially on the west coast. Pioneers moved out west to get away from the rigid east coast caste system and begin anew. The idea that a school's prestige makes or breaks you is alien. However we do have plenty of UC snobs who display nothing but contempt at CSU and CC students. They think UC = golden ticket without realizing the UC system has it's own prestige hierarchy.

[Syon]

Yeah, the UC Riverside thing is odd.People with real brains (assuming that they are planning on attending a public university in California)go to UCLA or Berkeley for their undergrad degree.Perhaps his parents were simply unaware of the lay of the land and though that one public uni was as good as another?

[asdf]

Are they together or divorced. More details are needed.

Certainly the difference between your expectations and results tend to fuel this sort of thing. People with low expectations don't go crazy.

[Sheila Tone]

"Secondly, it has been reported that “for a time, he worked part time at McDonald's after finishing college.” Why did he have to work at such a loser job?"

That tells me he absolutely had to have a job, so he wasn't one of those kids whose folks would just give him money. McDonald's is one of the few places that's always hiring. No doubt he held out as long as possible for a real job and then grabbed that out of desperation.

The same site you linked to also notes that two years earlier, in 2008, he worked as a camp counselor at Max Strauss in the Glendale foothills, a really nice area but a long way from both his home and college. At any rate, camp counselor is not a job that an antisocial loser gets or seeks. More evidence something switched over in his brain.

As for UCR, I wonder if he got a scholarship. I have wondered the same thing as to why you, with your stellar high school and undergrad credentials, would go to a third-tier law school like ASU.

[Sheila Tone]

Although I slagged UCR in a previous post, I think you're going too far in the other direction. In prestige, it is still above any Cal State and many private colleges in California. What would really be alarming is if he'd went to SDSU. UCR does not have a medical or law school, but did have a fairly prestigious pre-med program that fed into UCLA medical school.

Holmes probably wanted UC San Diego (middling prestige, and highly competitive because of its beautiful campus), got rejected, and picked the next closest UC. I've heard science programs are impacted at all the UCs, so it may not be so unusual that a good student was turned down by the more prestigious UCs.

[Peter]

"Yeah, the UC Riverside thing is odd.People with real brains (assuming that they are planning on attending a public university in California)go to UCLA or Berkeley for their undergrad degree."

Maybe he wanted to go to Berkeley or UCLA but couldn't get in. As I understand it, admissions at both are extremely competitive.

[Just Speculating]

@ HS

I myself attended a prestigious institution here in NYC and I have prole parents. I made sure not to emulate them in anyway.

Am I missing something? Were my efforts a moot endeavor?

[m]

Sigma: "James’s mother is said to be a RN, which is a lower middle-class type of career track

Sometimes your ignorance astounds me. "Lower middle-class type"? Nope.

Most RNs complete four years of college and with surgical specialites, more. Most RN's make middle class money, more with overtime or haven't you seen their salaries recently?

That you said "lower middle-class" is....unbelievable when most American who are "lower middle-class" have no degree beyond hs.

[ProleMadeGood]

I'm a prole that made good at HYP (now in private equity), but grew up on the west coast. T and Conquistador hit the nail on the head - it was thought "weird" that I applied to colleges "out of state" my senior year of high school.

I'm 10 years out from high school, and without fail, the guys faring the worst are those who are high-IQ, quiet and came from unconnected higher-prole families (engineers, etc.) They did all the supposedly "right" things - pursued a STEM major, made fairly good grades, kept in decent shape...

At this point, these guys are lucky to have a lower-level 60k programming job, and maybe a girlfriend (I'd say maybe 25% of these guys get laid at all). Since they were quiet, nice guys, they didn't even try to participate in their college's Greek scene, and have very weak social networks. Meanwhile, their former contemporaries at Directional State U. that studied Mass Communications and took 5-6 years to graduate are now making their way up the career ladder, thanks to the strength of their fraternity connections and outgoing personalities.

Its tough for me go back and see my old friends now. They're smarter than alot of the people I work with, and would probably contribute a great deal to the firm. And I know there's just no chance of that ever happening.

[m]

BTW, you need to get our of NYC and travel the country to see how people live. Those 500 sq. ft. "apartments" in the city have squeezed your brain so that you don't have any sense about "class" or "status" beyond that island.

Do you know what kind of property, what kind of house two teacher incomes in most states can buy? Two nurses' incomes? Hell, one nurse's income.

[whatever]

The question is whether his parents actually cared what happened to him at all.

You need to listen to some Americans ramble about how incredibly proud they were that they "kicked their kids out at 18" or their bizarre claim that they "started out with nothing, so why shouldn't their kid to?". Or other similar insanity.

Many parents may even be unhappy with the consequences of their mentally ill behavior, but they feel that taking responsibility for what they did is far more painful than simply dumping all responsibility on the kid. Since they are moral, physical, and emotional cowards.... obviously they are going to blame the kid(to absolve themselves) and follow up with "nothing I could have done"(to absolve themselves).

And then the kid becomes a loner who doesn't trust anyone! A remarkable and surprising development that no one could see coming!

NOTE:The parents didn't actually start out with nothing, that is simply a stupid lie.

[Conquistador]

@ m

The girls I know that went into nursing are pretty trashy. Drama queens and sluts all of them. Nursing is definitely lower middle class. They make good money but we're talking about class not income.

[Conquistador]

"That you said "lower middle-class" is....unbelievable when most American who are "lower middle-class" have no degree beyond"

They would be high prole not lower middle class.

[superdestroyer]

Holmes was reported as living in the honors dorm at UC Riverside. My guess is that Holmes was pursing a career in a normally distributed career and realized that being in honors program at UC-Riverside is probably better than being in auditorium classes at UCLA.

Prestige is only important in log-normal careers. Paying premium prices for prestige in a career field that is normally distributed is a waste of money.

[Conquistador]

"What would really be alarming is if he'd went to SDSU." - Sheilla

Could you expand on this if you live in the area? A girl I know wanted to continue her education in the San Diego area but avoided SDSU like the plague. I hear a lot of NAMs go there.

[mikeca]

"HS: Stanford is in CA, so it's not like there aren't people on the west coast who are sensitive to school prestige. His parents were clueless here."

There are lots of people in CA that are sensitive to school prestige. Most of them are Asian.

Asian's parents put a far higher importance on education. It is Asian parents that pay the million plus prices tags for small, old, ordinary track houses in Cupertino, CA because of the quality of the Cupertino schools. It is Asian parents that enroll their kids in SAT training classes and are willing to pay the high tuition at schools like Standford.

To the immigrant Asian's that did not speak English well, science and engineering degrees were the keys to the upper middle class in the USA. High tech companies here in silicon valley were willing to put up with engineers that could barely speak English, but there was a limit to how high those people could rise in management. Those Asian parents immigrated and succeeded in the USA because of higher education and they are trying to instill that in their children.

The white middle class just does not place the same kind of value on higher education and is not willing to make the same kind of financial sacrifices to make sure their kids get the best higher education.

[superdestroyer]

Holmes had a scholarship at UC-Riverside. http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20120720-colorado-theater-shooting.ece

What is odd is that he started in December (UC-Riverside is on quarters instead of semesters). What did he do in the fall that year.

[TheOne]

High IQ is only one factor, the energy a person has to expend is just as important. Someone that always has to be moving and doing something because of their energy levels is going beat out someone who is laid back and isn't all that enthused by achievement.

It all has to do with the underpinning biological energy economy and nervous system sensitivity. Many people with High IQ's are also more sensitive then other people to a wide range of things which also makes them targets for being taken off course due their experiencing the world much more intensely then other people.

[rjarnold]

As someone who recently graduated with a bachelors in science, this makes perfect sense to me. Public universities make all kind of promises like they are on the cutting edge, they are just as good as the top universities, that you'll be able to make grad school, and get a great job in research if you graduate. You then graduate and there are very few research jobs, most of which don't pay well.

A bachelor's in science, especially at one of these schools, doesn't make you employable. You have to go to professional school in order for a bachelor's in science to mean anything. I know several students who had to get crap jobs after graduation if they didn't immediately get into med or pharm school. None of them were McDonalds, but they weren't that much better. His social-awkwardness probably hurt his chances of getting a slightly bette job.

[J1]

Being one, I'd question whether most (or for that matter any) Californians would consider UC Riverside more prestigious than San Diego State or Cal Poly; admission to either one is more competitive than UCR. Riverside is a very low prestige school, "UC" prefix notwithstanding. It may be that the parents expected him to go to grad school and didn't think undergrad mattered, possibly because that was his dad's experience.

To expand on m's comment, most of the prole segment of the RN field has been replaced by LPNs. An RN in the LA area can easily make $100K+. It was a prole occupation 20 years ago, but has split into prole (LPN) and upper middle class (RN) segments.

[Camlost]

Holmes probably went to UC-Riverside since it was close to home and therefore close to his only friend (mother).

[Jack]

My understanding is that UC Riverside is actually somewhat competitive.

94% of incoming freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school class, similar to most of the Ivy's. Accepted student percentage is 60-something percent, though.

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/university-of-california-riverside

[Severn]

>"James’s mother is said to be a RN, which is a lower middle-class type of career track"

She probably makes more than you do. RN is a good paying job.

[HS: The average RN salary is $81K, and I make significantly more than that.]

[Sheila Tone]

"Could you expand on this if you live in the area? A girl I know wanted to continue her education in the San Diego area but avoided SDSU like the plague. I hear a lot of NAMs go there"

I just meant it's part of the Cal State system (and not even a Cal Poly, which has more sciencce focus) rather than a UC. An intelligent, truly middle-class person at least goes to a UC. Also, SDSU was ranked at the top of the party school list for many years.

[Just Speculating]

"The white middle class just does not place the same kind of value on higher education and is not willing to make the same kind of financial sacrifices to make sure their kids get the best higher education".

Someone please contribute. Whites are usually more well adjusted socially than Asians regardless of class. Asians don't benefit from the educational achievements, that is anything beyond monetary gains.

[Sheila Tone]

Everything I've read about his parents actually indicates he was pretty lucky. They were upwardly mobile enough to have two decently-paid careers and live in upscale Rancho San Penasquitos and the Poway school district. Sure, it's great to have rich parents from Harvard, but his background seems more than adequate for success in his chosen field.

The parents may have been a tad religious for my taste, but it was a mainstream middle-class religion (Presbyterian) and they were apparently sociable (hosted holiday parties). Unlike with Jared Loughner's parents, I've seen no indication they were off in any way.

These poor folks appeared to have every reason to believe they raised a successful, attractive, well-adjusted kid, at least until recently. What a heartbreak for them.

[Peter]

"their former contemporaries at Directional State U. that studied Mass Communications and took 5-6 years to graduate are now making their way up the career ladder, thanks to the strength of their fraternity connections and outgoing personalities."

Sorry, I don't believe that in the least. Fraternity connections count for far less than most people think. Especially at non-prestigious universities, where few if any former frat members are in the sort of top jobs where they're in a position to help other members.
As for "outgoing personalities," I spent time in the life insurance industry, where I saw more such personalities than you could imagine. And the vast majority of them failed miserably.

[map]

Whatever

"Many parents may even be unhappy with the consequences of their mentally ill behavior, but they feel that taking responsibility for what they did is far more painful than simply dumping all responsibility on the kid. Since they are moral, physical, and emotional cowards.... obviously they are going to blame the kid(to absolve themselves) and follow up with "nothing I could have done"(to absolve themselves)."

The typical attitude of most parents is that they put food in the mouths of their kids, a roof over their heads, and something warm to wear. You know who else has that? The family dog. In other words, most parents raise their kids like you would raise a beloved pet and then they wonder why their kids don't turn out right.

[nebbish]

"To expand on m's comment, most of the prole segment of the RN field has been replaced by LPNs...It was a prole occupation 20 years ago, but has split into prole (LPN) and upper middle class (RN) segments."

That ignores the explosion of certified nursing assistants (CNA's) who do a lot of the grunt work that full-fledged RN's and LPN's used to do. That's the true prole segment of nursing care. On the flip side, the RN has increased in relative prestige due to shortages, increased salary (equal to or sometimes greater than primary care docs) as well as the fact that the credential is a good segue into hospital administration. Many hospitals like to hire people with nursing backgrounds for director and VP-level jobs. That applies even for areas that are not directly related to nursing care.

[mikeca]

If you look at SAT scores of incoming freshman, UCR has 19% of freshman in 600-800 range. UCB has 78%. UCLA has 65%. Even touch me, feel me campuses like UCSC has 39%. San Diego State also has 19% in the 600-800 range and CalPoly has 50%.

By contrast, Standford has 94% in the 600-800 range and Harvard 96%.

UCR is the newest and lowest prestige of the UC campuses.

[asdf]

"Meanwhile, their former contemporaries at Directional State U. that studied Mass Communications and took 5-6 years to graduate are now making their way up the career ladder, thanks to the strength of their fraternity connections and outgoing personalities."

This is only true if the parents are Upper Middle Class and most of the fratmates are UPC too. For instance, fraternity life at my college was a good path. However, fraternity life at my local State U (which is a decent one) wasn't anything special. Lots of ordinary middle class kids, no special connections. Most of them low IQ and in easy majors, many no graduating and jobless afterwards.

[mikeca]

"If you look at SAT scores of incoming freshman, UCR has 19% of freshman in 600-800 range."

There are worse schools than UCR in California. San Jose State has 12% in the 600-800 range. Chico State has 14%. Fresno state has 8%. Fullerton state has 12%. Cal State Monterey Bay has 9%. Monterey Bay is a new campus build on a closed military base.

[ProleMadeGood]

@Peter

Its up to you whether you believe what I wrote earlier, but its the truth. I was back home recently to visit with family and caught up with a bunch of old friends who did the state U. STEM --> mediocre programming/engineering track. Their lives aren't turning out the way they (and I) thought they would.

Most of my buddies seem worn out and act much older than they are. Here in NYC, guys their age with decent careers are out several nights a week and enjoying the significant boost in status/mating prospects that comes with being a successful late-20s male. My friends aren't living this way at all - they spend their nights playing video games and ordering pizza. I had to berate these guys to come out just one night while I was back - one night! - and they wanted to turn in after a few beers. I gave up, told them to get home safe, and called up an old buddy who went to the same university (and who had joined a fraternity while there). Night and day - frat guys were living a somewhat scaled down version of what I live and see here in NYC. Lots of fun, and they've got attractive women around all the time. None of them have "failed miserably" - all are upbeat about their career prospects, and most already have 2-3 promotions under their belts at this point.

That trip back was just a huge "there but for the grace of God go I" moment for me. If I had made the same mistake as my buddies...

[whatever]

Sheila said:
********************
Everything I've read about his parents actually indicates he was pretty lucky. They were upwardly mobile enough to have two decently-paid careers and live in upscale Rancho San Penasquitos and the Poway school district. Sure, it's great to have rich parents from Harvard, but his background seems more than adequate for success in his chosen field.

The parents may have been a tad religious for my taste, but it was a mainstream middle-class religion (Presbyterian) and they were apparently sociable (hosted holiday parties). Unlike with Jared Loughner's parents, I've seen no indication they were off in any way.

These poor folks appeared to have every reason to believe they raised a successful, attractive, well-adjusted kid, at least until recently. What a heartbreak for them.
*********************

Let's get to brass tacks Sheila. I agree that mental illness is partially biologically based. Now, given that, it is partially inherited.

If he was mentally ill, were his parents also?

Could growing up with a mentally ill parent(s) be bad?

The immediate absolution of all parents instantly is pretty tiresome after a while.

[ProleMadeGood]

@ asdf

Point taken. All of these guys are "prole" in the NYC sense - but for the west coast, they're middle to upper middle class. Everyone's parents went to college, they've got white collar jobs, etc. Nursing is probably the closest anyone's parents get to actual physical labor.

I know all about the low-IQ ordinary middle class kid fraternity track - it aint pretty. Alot of those guys are working at call centers these days.

[AE]

"Not everyone is from New York City. Middle class people outside of New York (especially in the pre-tech-boom west) don't think about status at all. Your way of thinking (that college is for status rather than education) is alien to the vast majority of middle class people."

I agree. Half the reason I read HS's blog is because his way of viewing the world is so strange, but in an interesting way. I think I would have to commit suicide if I was always thinking about pecking orders. I know a lot of people from affluent backgrounds who could care less about the rat race. Being obsessed with status does seem like an East Coast thing.

[JimB]

So, can we mention the shooter was a Jew?

[HS: He was Presbyterian.]

[CamelCaseRob]

"[HS: The average RN salary is $81K, and I make significantly more than that.]"

That's the national average, right? See if you can find the average for hospitals in NYC.

[Abelard Lindsey]

I can tell you that, even though the university as a whole is not so good, UC Riverside does have decent engineering and science programs. I have a friend who got his undergrad at UC Riverside, then got his PhD at Princeton. Admittedly this was about 30 years ago and the UC system may have declined since then. Also, the country as a whole was much less status conscious 30 years ago than it is today.

[Peter]

Let's not forget Occam's Razor. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation. What it means in this case is that James Holmes most likely shot all those people because he was mentally ill. Not because he went to UC-Riverside, or because he worked for a short time at a McDonald's, or because he was introverted, or because he didn't get enough poon tang, or because Western culture demonizes white men, or because he lived in a predominately minority neighborhood.

[Peter]

"There are worse schools than UCR in California. San Jose State has 12% in the 600-800 range. Chico State has 14%. Fresno state has 8%. Fullerton state has 12%. Cal State Monterey Bay has 9%. Monterey Bay is a new campus build on a closed military base."

All of those are part of the California State University system, which is separate from the University of California system and not as prestigious. Generally speaking, the U of C campuses are the flagships (with Berkeley and UCLA being more flagshippy than the others), while the CSU campuses are equivalent to directionals in other states.

UC-Riverside may be among the lower-ranked U of C campuses, but contrary to the impression being given here it's not like the students are morons who cannot use flush toilets without assistance.

[E. Rekshun]

@prolemadegood. Does being in a frat really help one's career advancement? I think the value networking is way over-rated. I think very very few of the Mass Comm majors you mention are working in corporate America. Am I wrong? On the otherhand, my career resembles those low $60K STEM majors from back home that you mentioned.

[E. Rekshun]

I don't think RNs are lower middle class, more like solid middle class, but these class divides are not very well defined anyway. But, I think what HS is really trying to say is that the study of nursing is directly vocational.

I'm familiar with and have dated a few RNs. Starting salaries are about $50K right out of school, and often plenty of overtime. One RN I know worked two full-time $65K nursing jobs at two different hospitals: three 12-hour days at job1 and three 12-hour days at job2. Anyway, all of them soon try to do something other than bedside nursing.

[Thrasymachus]

Holmes had had some rough spots, but no more than millions of other people who find themselves in similar circumstances. Ultimately it will come down to some severe personal dysfunction- the Adult Friend Finder account is telling. It will all come out at the trial

[Just Speculating]

@ Prolemadegood

"Here in NYC, guys their age with decent careers are out several nights a week and enjoying the significant boost in status/mating prospects that comes with being a successful late-20s male".

Your friends must be Asian I gather, or lower tier Jews. Most SWPLs in NYC regardless of income enjoy themselves with the nightlife. The most successful guys who are usually in finance and BIGLAW, don't even go out several nights a week because of their work hours.

[Conquistador]

"I know a lot of people from affluent backgrounds who could care less about the rat race. Being obsessed with status does seem like an East Coast thing." - AE

People on the west coast are more obsessed about their looks than school prestige. It's just a different type of rat race here.

[Flico]

UC Riverside is not a "crappy" school by any measure. The suspect came from a northern San Diego suburb within 1 hour and a half of Riverside, which also might be a reason why he might have chosen it, instead of a more distant school. (Some people want to stay close to home, not to mention reduce travel costs)
You seem surprised that the suspect's parents would encourage him to go there, it's not. Californians care little for what seems like stuffy social hiearchy imported from the East Coast. As for MickeyDs work, almost everybody starts off at fast food or some other similar job.

[Conquistador]

@ ProleMadeGood

Agreed. The idea that the popular guys from high school or college become losers later is a myth. Whenever that does occur it's because their looks declined (balding, weight gain, etc).

Looks = everything in life. http://www.amazon.com/Looks-They-Matter-More-Imagined/dp/0814480543

[Flico]

The most likely explanation for the shooting is that the suspect really thinks he is the Joker.

[Alex]

"Most RNs complete four years of college and with surgical specialites, more. Most RN's make middle class money, more with overtime or haven't you seen their salaries recently?"

It's true middle class. The idea that nurses are lower middle is out of touch, when most Americans don't have any degree at all.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"The white middle class just does not place the same kind of value on higher education and is not willing to make the same kind of financial sacrifices to make sure their kids get the best higher education."

The Asians are being ripped off because going to an elite undergrad school is increasingly not worth the tuition expense *unless* their kid gets into HYPS. Getting admitted to HYPS is difficult for Asians to do because there are covert restrictions to how many Asian elite schools will admit because if they allow too many Asians in the white upper class will stop trying to get their kids to HYPS.

Anything Ivy below HYPS is not elite enough to justify sending your kid there instead of a good State U, which is what white collar whites outside of the Northeast correctly do.

[Finger]

$81k average for a registered nurse sounds a bit high for most of the country, but I'd be interested in seeing halfsigma's COA-adjusted income compared to, say, a similar figure for a RN, dental hygienist, or similar position somewhere in the rust belt.

My wife went to school aimlessly for a few years before settling on two years of dental hygiene. Now makes $60k in a zip code where under 30k is average, works banker's hours, good PTO package, etc. We just bought a new SUV, are about to buy a nice house in the country (at a fairly young age) and most of our friends with advanced degrees can't figure out how we're doing it. You'd probably rank our friends on a higher in terms of class because of something abstract like "values" but while they're sitting around talking about trips they'd like to take, based on these values, we're traveling regularly and enjoying our lives. "Class" might be easily expressed in terms of a linear scale, but in real life it's not always that simple.

[ksm]

Sir Isaac Newton's father was an illiterate farmer. His mom pulled him out of school so he could work on their farm. She had to be persuaded by one of his teachers to let him go back to school.

I suspect that Lincoln was very bright. Prole parents. We know that Bill Clinton is very bright. Really prole parents. I think Sam Walton came from the lower half of society too. I could go on.

One of the smartest guys I went to school with had lower middle class parents (mom a school teacher, father a low-ranked army officer), and he did very well. The guy's a genius, though not of the stereotypical nerdy kind.

HS, you're probably generalizing from your own experience. There have always been some really smart, really successful people who came from nothing. They never made up a majority of really smart, really successful people, but that should be mostly due to genetics.

[m]

Conquistador said, "The girls I know that went into nursing are pretty trashy. Drama queens and sluts all of them. Nursing is definitely lower middle class. They make good money but we're talking about class not income."

"Drama queens and sluts all of them." Sounds as if you hung around the theatre department females, Mr. Gay.

Just where did you attend school? (And when's the last time you had surgery, dude?)

[m]

"Half the reason I read HS's blog is because his way of viewing the world is so strange, but in an interesting way. I think I would have to commit suicide if I was always thinking about pecking orders. I know a lot of people from affluent backgrounds who could care less about the rat race. Being obsessed with status does seem like an East Coast thing."

Yeah, irony of ironies, for a guy who is so status-attentive, HS sure is provincial...as are most people from NYC.

[Joe Walker]

Quote: "only people from low prole backgrounds would sink to working at a McDonalds"

In case you hadn't noticed, the economy hasn't been doing too well lately and unemployment is over 8%.

[Just Speculating]

@ Conquistador

"Agreed. The idea that the popular guys from high school or college become losers later is a myth. Whenever that does occur it's because their looks declined (balding, weight gain, etc).

Looks = everything in life. http://www.amazon.com/Looks-They-Matter-More-Imagined/dp/0814480543"

Realprole's buddies are engineers and IT guys. Most guys in these STEM areas tend be dorks. I see alot of unattractive Indian and East Asian dudes. Lower tier beta type Jews and proles are also found in IT.

Better looking guys in STEM are usually doctors.

Good looks are convincing. Many sales people are good looking and it's no coincidence.

[nebbish]

"Looks = everything in life."

Hmm, now I understand how Lloyd Blankfein got as far as he did.

Your point about looks has some truth but is stated with too much hyperbole. I wonder if it is not also more true in California than elsewhere.

[ArtisteNextDoor]

It appears that Holmes really put a lot of energy into his undergraduate studies and had a lot of research experience. He graduated with honors, so he had top grades - it seems he wasn't just some smart slacker going through the motions. But it seems that he didn't apply to graduate programs right away - one news report mentioned that his mother "sent" him to the grad program. If you need money, it would make sense to go to grad school right away, since you're funded. So, perhaps he had some total breakdown in the last few years - he clearly didn't want to, or couldn't, continue with the grad program, or maybe he never wanted to start it in the first place. My guess is he just totally went nuts after finishing college.

[Melykin]

superdestroyer wrote:
Holmes had a scholarship at UC-Riverside. http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20120720-colorado-theater-shooting.ece

What is odd is that he started in December (UC-Riverside is on quarters instead of semesters). What did he do in the fall that year.
---------------------------------

In The Telegraph article HS linked to it says:
"And on the back windscreen of what is believed to be the car of Mr Holmes in the family driveway is a sticker that reads: "To Write Love on Her Arms". That is the name of a charity that works on depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide."

-----------------------------------------

It may be that James Holmes has suffered with some type of mental illness after graduating high school, and was receiving treatment for it, thus delaying his entrance to university. That might also explain why his parents may have wanted him to attend a university fairly close to home. It may also have influenced him in his choice of neuroscience as a major--he may have been interested in this field because of his own mental problems.

His parents are not necessarily mentally ill just because he is. But he might have mentally ill grandparents or other relatives.

The fact that his parents belong to a church, combined with the other facts we know, suggests that they may have (or have had) some sort of serious problem in the family--at least I have observed that regular church goers are more likely to have some traumatic family problem in their past or present, and are attending church for the support and comfort they find there. (Mind you, I am in Canada where a much smaller portion of the population attends church than in the US)

It is completely unfair to blame his parents and suggest they are negligent and somehow caused this. It is troubling that some people at this blog appear to know so little about mental illness that they would start pointing fingers at the parents. If you have never had much exposure to this type of thing you probably don't realize how very powerless parents are in the face of mental illness, addiction, etc. His parents may have known something was very wrong with him and been frantic with worry for months before this happened. He probably refused to get any help or to even communicate with his parents. His mother must have known something was up for her to have said "You have the right person".

I agree with the previous commentator who said he may really think he is the Joker. I read somewhere that he was still claiming to be the Joker after being locked up and was spitting at the guards. This guy is crazy. He may end up being found not guilty by reason of insanity. It was a bad mistake to close down most of the mental hospitals during the second half of the 20th century, and to make it nearly impossible to have someone committed against their will. There are a lot of really crazy people on the streets today who would have been in a state institution a generation ago.

[Jeff]

UC Riverside appears to have somewhat lower SAT scores than San Diego State.

Other anecdotes in this thread describe why STEM is overrated, especially for a white guy. Your life is mostly determined by your social network. A STEM social network will have few attractive women.

[ArtisteNextDoor]

Regarding his parents - mom's a nurse, dad's probably a bit geeky. Their house looked (at least on TV) a bit unkempt. They probably aren't status-aware and status obsessed, and they also seem a bit older. But their son was doing pretty well up to this point - who knows, maybe he went to UCR because he got a scholarship there and not at some other school he got into.

Regarding nurses - it's not really a question of whether they get degrees, but whether they need to get degrees, theoretically speaking. And they don't. If you hang around the nursing station and listen to some of the conversations, and just observe their behavior, you will see that nurses generally aren't the most sophisticated people. But most people aren't either, so I dunno...

[m]

"HS: The average RN salary is $81K, and I make significantly more than that."

Yeah, and you don't consider yourself "lower middle class," and most importantly, you live in an area in which 81K doesn't buy a decent place to live.
In fact, you live in an area in which twice that much doesn't buy a good place to live, unless you think having between 500-1000 sq. feet of living space is high status.

The nurse with 81K lives in a nice community, has a big, comfortable, up-dated house with pool and yard for entertaining, a very nice car/SUV, and depending on interests perhaps a boat, and is headed to having a summer place near some lake.

Get out and travel the States, HS. You don't know what you don't know.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"The Unabomber has been mentioned a few times during the last three days. It should be noted that the Unabomber had an exceptionally high IQ "

The Unabomber was a gifted mathematician. He could well have been a Fields Medal winner and one of the greatest mathematicians on earth if he had taken a different path.

[Conquistador]

@ m

I'm not saying nursing girls can't perform well academically or professionally but personality wise they're extremely prole.

[ProleMadeGood]

@E. Rekshun

If you went to a state school with recognizable D-1 football / basketball, then yes, absolutely, being part of a frat will help you with your career. Especially if you're decently bright and have your shit together early on - alumni of the frat will help you with career advice, get you in the door for interviews at the local companies, your brothers will always be working to throw parties that get you laid, etc. Not to mention - its a ton of fun, and really not any more expensive than living in the dorms.

If you were planning on living at home during college, or doing the community college --> transfer to state U. thing, you've already lost. You've just foregone the greatest networking / class jumping opportunity that will ever be available to you.

@Just Speculating

I'm in finance. Myself and most of my friends are out a minimum of 3x a week. Its summer now, so that number goes up to 4 or 5. Private equity has been very slow for the past year and a half or so, and guys are taking advantage.

My friends from home are majority white, with a few Asians mixed in. My friends here are white and Jewish. Asian men do very poorly in NYC, and aren't generally welcome at good night spots. You'll end up getting quoted outrageous prices for tables if there's an Asian guy tagging along with your group of friends.

@Conquistador

Its not like my friends from home are ugly - they really, objectively aren't. I was just slightly more social and status-conscious than they were growing up, and for whatever reason I was a little more ambitious. We started off more or less in the same place - 30 years ago whatever differences there are between us would have been negligible.

So what ends up happening is I leave town for HYS and end up in private equity in NYC, and they stick around, do the STEM thing at the state school, and make 60k in initech-type jobs. They aren't being promoted and don't have much (if any) access to women. Its messed up, and I know I could have easily ended up just like them.

[Conquistador]

LOL why do people keep insisting James has a mental illness? Perfectly sane people have done a lot worse. So what if he insists he's the joker? Stalin insisted he was a man of the people too. I think some here are afraid to deal with the ugly issues this story raises where as the MSM narrative is a lot more comforting.

[Just Speculating]

@ Prolemadehgood

"My friends from home are majority white, with a few Asians mixed in. My friends here are white and Jewish. Asian men do very poorly in NYC, and aren't generally welcome at good night spots. You'll end up getting quoted outrageous prices for tables if there's an Asian guy tagging along with your group of friends".

Dude, you right on the money about Asian men and the social scene. They did a study about it in New York. Low tier proles do better than Asian men. It's really goes back to the attractiveness factor that Conquistador was talking about. Good looks and more respect. No high end establishment would want dorks mixing with the ladies. I know, because I see these high earning Asian guys all alone.

[UDC]

People on this blog overrate how imp. As if you can be thrown off track by the slightest misstep. Just like liberals will use this shooting to push for gun control, or conservatives to blame violent media or immorality or whatever, HBD-types, will, apparently use it to push their pet theories.

I did everything wrong after high school.

I partied really hard in college. Way harder than anyone else on campus -- I started off with dime bags on the weekend, and by sophomore year, I was regularly smoking crystal meth before class. Well, really, I was smoking meth anytime I could get my hands on some. Unsurprisingly, I failed out.

I sobered up (toughest thing I've ever done, and, hopefully, will ever do), worked menial jobs for five years while attending school part-time, and eventually graduated with a degree in accounting.

Now, at 27, I've been working for a large public accounting firm (but not one of the Big 4) for a year and a half. Pay is decent, hours can be tough.

Even when I was living in the shittiest neighborhoods, working the shittiest jobs, with the shittiest roommates, spending thousands of dollars on weaponry and shooting up a public place never crossed my mind. This kid sounds like your classic schizophrenic -- I mean, he said he was the Joker!

[Conquistador]

"Now I understand how Lloyd Blankfein got as far as he did."

There was once a time in America when anybody could make it to the top. All it took was grit and guts. If you came of age then (boomer) you'd be on top of the professional world today. Nowadays? You better born to the right family, go to the right schools, have the right connections, and have the right looks.

[Janneke]

Interesting how the Excited States is now more status obsessed than many an old world country.

It's nice to live in a country that does not view being an RN or a police officer as high prole or goyishe kopf vocations.

[NotStatusMoreAlphaLol]

@ProleMadeGood

Is that really true about Asian guys doing horribly NYC nightlife-wise? I am an Asian guy but don't fit most the negative stereotypes (and actually I'm not that much into STEM either) and don't feel I do too bad when going out with buddies or drag a group of friends/wings down when going out on the town.

[Finger]

@ Conquistador

"I'm not saying nursing girls can't perform well academically or professionally but personality wise they're extremely prole."

It's funny how an inborn urge...nay, need...to classify things is often accompanied by an inborn inability to have a sense of perspective about the whole endeavor. A person with that combination of traits has an awful lot to sink their teeth into on a site like this.

I love how relatively abstract things like "values" and "personality" are always offered as proper measures of class when the amount of money some reg'lur folk earn begins to make these armchair "class aficionados" (who are undoubtedly drawn to this sort of people-classifying as they feel it shows them to be of relatively high rank) somewhat uncomfortable.

Not that I think that the concepts of values and personality are completely unrelated to class. It just seems like that they're normally alluded to only when the larger picture of finance, quality of life, etc. subverts the idea of what these people's lives should be like based on how we typically think of their job..."nurse", "lawyer", etc. I doubt this is a coincidence.

I also doubt that it's a coincidence that "it's not all about income" arguments are only ever meant in a negative sense when thrown out in reference to a relatively low class. In other words, when talking about nurses, etc. a person who's saying "it's not all about income" is almost always trying to argue that these people are of a lower class than their income indicates. Isn't that interesting, if only from a statistical point of view? When was the last time you heard someone throw that line out, "it's not all about income" with the implication that a nurse, etc. may be of a HIGHER class than their income indicates? Virtually never! Again, not a coincidence.

By the way, how many books do I need to buy in order to cancel out that Burger King cheeseburger I just ate? ;) Really funny stuff guys, way to take a valid generality like "class" and ruin it by insisting on particulars.

[asdf]

Conquistador,

The popular kids fail thing is a prole thing. If you grow up with proles then the popular kids in your high school are good looking athletes, but they often have IQs of 100 or less along with unconnected prole parents (IQ being heritable, prole communities have low IQ). Thus after high school they tend to become losers. High IQ nerds with prole parents really do see themselves doing better then their low IQ prole peers. This is where all the revenge of the nerds stuff comes from.

In the upper middle class though most people inherit their parents high IQ and connections. So the good looking popular athlete actually has the resources to take advantage of his good looks & IQ, and will outcompete someone with just IQ.

[Susan]

I'm from London and over here we cannot access guns.....enough said.
Oh yes just remembered , we did have a massacre here as well, does anyone remember Dunblane?, where a man entered a primary school and shot nursery/infant school children?
The government here banned all hand guns after this episode.

[J1]

"Stanford is in CA, so it's not like there aren't people on the west coast who are sensitive to school prestige"

My perception, probably from reading this blog, is that Stanford is a little more academically rigorous than IL schools. I also (again, being a Californian) would not necessarily consider Stanford more prestigious than Berkeley. Apart from that, let's dispense with the "UCs are more prestigious than CSUs". As a group, they're not - it depends entirely on which schools we're talking about. Berkeley and UCLA are, the rest of the group is a mixed bag.

"The fact that his parents belong to a church, combined with the other facts we know, suggests that they may have (or have had) some sort of serious problem in the family"

In the US, this statement is too ridiculous to even argue about. As you note, being Canadian alters your perception (though a negative perception of churchgoers is probably a larger factor).

"I'd be interested in seeing halfsigma's COA-adjusted income compared to, say, a similar figure for a RN"

My guess is Half is looking at salaries for the NYC area - I Googled RN salaries in LA and got about the same number but it included LPNs, who make a lot less. My guess is NYC is a lot like LA - floor RNs (entry level for that job) probably make 60-80K. Once they move into a specialty, 100-110K.

[Blue Collar]

All that school prestige doesn't earn you a special place on the Unemployment Lines. Nor will it guarantee that your spouse won't get down and dirty with the neanderthal mechanic, who by the way, is richer than Hades because he was smart enough to know that all the college dudes didn't like getting their hands dirty.

[ProleMadeGood]

@ Just Speculating

The financially successful Asian male stuck all alone definitely happens here in NYC - I know a few from college that have stuck it out in banking. They're senior associates and junior VP level now, so their hours aren't too bad (out at 6 or 7 unless there's a live deal). They play video games most nights, and occasionally head out to K-town (even though they aren't Korean) and come up empty most of the time. K-town is probably the only place in NYC where Asians can go out without facing too much discrimination, but even there, the more aggressive/alpha Koreans aren't too fond of the Chinese/other Asians trying to get into clubs.
The lucky ones from this cohort have been fixed up with women well below what you think would be their potential in terms of a mate (we're talking a guy that's an objective within-the-Asian-community 7 dating a 3 or 4) by friends and family.

@UDC

I'm glad you were able to overcome the drug addiction and get your shit together career-wise. I'm not trying to be rude here, but the track you're on, without a whole lot of luck, doesn't lead to very lucrative opportunities. Yes, you'll be able to make high five figures / low six figures for the rest of your life (thank Sarbox for lifetime employment haha), but you'll be shut out of elite business schools due to what I assume was pretty poor undergraduate performance and non-elite work experience. This means that you will have a hard (if not impossible) time breaking into the more remunerative areas of finance (investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, etc.) Now, maybe that's not what you were interested in doing, but I assume that most young, aggressive, finance-oriented guys are looking to make as much money as possible and take their careers as far as they can.
You're probably a very bright guy, and had you not screwed up college, you could be making 5-10x what you currently make (assuming you went to an elite undergraduate school - if not, it would take top grades at a state school and then an elite business school to break in). That's what HS and I are referring to when we talk about the importance of career tracks - you will never starve, but without some huge stroke of luck you won't ever be rich either. And if you want to live well in a major metro area (NYC, SF, LA, DC), non-big 4 public accounting won't cut it.

@Conquistador

You're 100% right here. You should see some of the guys at the top in private equity and at hedge funds - prole through and through (although most of them work extremely hard to hide that fact). Alot of these guys grew up in flyover country, somehow made it out to an elite college (hockey players, basketball players, etc.) and just rode the massive bull market that started when they started their careers to the top of this profession. Here's the thing though - they send their kids to the top private schools in NYC (or SF or LA, etc.), and expect for them to follow in their footsteps.

My generation in this business is almost entirely upper-middle class / upper class and from major high-cost metros. Parents were doctors, high-status (not TTT) lawyers, etc. Probably the last real opportunity for proles to make it in finance was the credit bubble - the sector will continue to shrink for the foreseeable future, and opportunities will be more scarce (and awarded more and more based on pedigree, connections, looks, etc.)

@NotStatusMoreAlphaLol

Yes, its true. Pick a night, any night, and find a higher-end nightspot with a bouncer and a line. Observe who makes it in and who doesn't. Compare the reaction of the gatekeepers to a group of Asian guys / a mixed group of white and Asian guys to an all-white or mixed white / higher-class black group of guys. Its all completely out in the open. Most Asian guys get the message after being in the city for a few months - that's why you don't see too many of them out in the first place.

@asdf

I agree. Truly prole average IQ popular white kids end up doing a whole lot of stupid low-time preference stuff around HS graduation / right after that. They've always made poor decisions, but the opportunity to really fuck your life up emerges around that time. These guys and girls end up strung out on drugs, with children out of wedlock, all sorts of criminal offenses, etc. Sometimes they figure it out and head to trade school in their mid-late 20s.

[Kennedy Morgan Ellington]

"Hmm, now I understand how Lloyd Blankfein got as far as he did."

This is the best counterexample I have read in months. Thanks for the LOL!

[Kennedy Morgan Ellington]

superdestroyer,
What is your educational and professional background? Clearly, STEM. Please post more.

[Kennedy Morgan Ellington]

ProleMadeGood's postings in this thread about his divergence from his hometown friends is the best commenting I have read on HS in years.

What is interesting is that it's not the typical "My hick childhood friends in flyover country are breeding at 22 and selling tires for $12/hr" but they are intelligent college educated single middlings with white collar careers.

Why did they not move to LA, SanFran, Dallas, or any larger major city? One thing that might be their salvation is to take their flyover $60k programming experience and move to a big city where their programming careers can lead to $150k-$500k lifestyles once they get into mgmt, startups, IPO, equity situations in their 30s and 40s.

It's also interesting that they have no access to females, who all flock to the city. ProleMadeGood, tell us more about the dating life of you and your NYC coworkers.

[MC]

Most nurses I know are the second income in a middle to upper-middle class family.

[HS: The average RN salary is $81K, and I make significantly more than that.]

LOL. You lived in Phoenix, right? You DO know that 81k is far above lower-middle class in most of the country, right?

[Bitter Clinger]

@Susan - Banning handguns has really worked out well for the UK hasn't it? Now your violent crime rate is the highest in the EU and is several times higher than in the U.S.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

[DaveinHackensack]

It's too bad you don't have kids, Siggie. Then you could do all the things for them you resent your parents for not doing for you. And if your kids grew up to be bitter and resentful anyway, you might belatedly reconsider your resentment of your parents.

Your obsession with class and status elides that there are people who break into higher classes by themselves; and that, if you go back far enough, pretty much everyone in a high class today came from lower class origins. Examples abound, but one sticks in my mind because he was interviewed in the FT the weekend before last: Nicholas Serota, chief of the Tate Modern museum in London (hard to imagine someone higher class than that, right?). Grandson of a cabinet maker (a "prole", right?): http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/fc4beda0-cb48-11e1-b896-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21THMt7OG

[Un-biased reader]

What has the university attended by Holmes have anything to do with the incident. I don't see the point of the author (as well as other commentators)criticism (degrading) of the university attended by Holmes!

[Jonathan Silber]

The guns, ammo, and body armor that mass murderer James Holmes is reported to have possessed would have cost to purchase, new, at least $5,000.00. And most, if not all, of this ordnance, he's reported to have purchased in the last sixty days.

Where did he get the money for these purchases?

Where, for that matter, did he get the money he lived on?

[HS: He had a $26K/year stipend, plus I'm sure he had credit cards. It wouldn't have been a problem for him to buy $5K of weapons, especially if he's not concerned with having to pay back his credit card charges.]

[Theakinet]

"James’s mother is said to be a RN, which is a lower middle-class type of career track"

The most ignorant comment HS has ever made. In big cities $100+K is a standard salary for an average nurse at an average hospital. My mom and aunt work at a major DC area hospital, and both make $150+K/year with only Associates degrees! My mom told me for the last few years you need a BSN to start in nursing, and older nurses with only an Associates have to go back to school (she's about to retire so it doesn't affect her). She also told me salaries sky rocketed when men started working as nurses; nursing hasn't been prole in 20 years.

[ProleMadeGood]

@Kennedy Morgan Ellington -

Believe me, I've tried to convince several of them to up and move to SF / LA or even apply to graduate school and try to backdoor into the more elite STEM paths. I never have any takers. There are others here far more familiar with the STEM employment market, but my understanding is that the best jobs in the space (interesting work that leads to equity stakes, fast career rise, etc.) are becoming very pedigree focused as well. BTW - not all of them are programmers - there's a good number of mechanical/electrical engineering guys in there as well.

Aside from any impact that pedigree might have - its weird - there's a lack of confidence that I see in my buddies that I know wouldn't be there had they attended an elite school. I thought nothing of calling up senior execs at companies I wanted to intern for during college (freshman and sophomore summers) - and got nothing but positive responses (and jobs!). You're bombarded with messaging from the moment you arrive at HYP that you are a member of a group of people that are the best of the best, the smartest, most capable, rightful and inevitable "leaders of society." I mean, the goddamn acceptance package comes with an embossed certificate to commemorate your admission. I'm not going to argue that this is right, but the messaging certainly helped me develop some confidence as an 18-year old of a prole background from the west coast. That led to being aggressive with my career goals, executing on those goals, etc.

My buddies from home are just sort of passive now - I feel like all those brutal weeder courses in their engineering programs just crushed whatever base level of career/professional confidence they might have had, and their employment outcomes haven't exactly helped to boost their confidence either.

Dating in NYC as a late-20s not-ugly in shape white male with a successful career in finance is fantastic. Never in my life have myself or most of my buddies gotten laid this much. Remember, I was a prole nerd once. Still sort of can't believe it, lol.

[asdf]

ProleMadeGood,

Prole finance guys were already one the way out when I first started in the early 2000s, though maybe the credit bubble helped them come back. I worked for JP so it was higher class then some other outfits, and I was a derivatives quant which most of the prole guys can't handle (you mainly found them in vanilla sales roles).

All of your comments in this thread are spot on.

As for this debate about nurses I think we need to understand the fact that status/class takes a generation to be established. This helps isolate class from market swings. Jobs don't increase in class until their higher earnings are firmly established as something that is going to remain rather then slip away once a market boom evaporates (real estate agent in the credit crisis is a good example). If nursing continues to pay such high wages the "right kind of people" will start to go into it and then within a generation it will be higher class.

[Kennedy Morgan Ellington]

ProleMadeGood, tell us more about how you got into HYP. How did you afford HYP? Public HS? SAT tutoring? How did you get into HYP, and these guys only got into decent state schools? I am thinking you are 1400 SAT vs. their 1200 SAT?

Tell us more about getting laid this much. Like a new girl once a week? Or a few girls a year? Do you do 1 night stands? Or mostly get phone numbers and escalate via texts, dates, etc?

[DaveinHackensack]

Lloyd Blankfein also grew up in public housing, the son of a postal clerk and a receptionist.

[Just Speculating]

@ ProleMadeGood

They don't even need to go to the clubs to find out. Walking the streets of NY, I don't see many of them to begin with; they probably have it all figured out that NY isn't their town and the women here generally don't like them.

Did you hear about this research done in NYC? One of the guys I knew did a survey asking women what they think of White, Black and Latin guys in city. It was kind of interesting, women prefer NAMs over Asians. Just in case you don't know, Asian guys were judged as how you described it.

[nebbish]

"I mean, the goddamn acceptance package comes with an embossed certificate to commemorate your admission."

Is that new? I don't recall people accepted to those schools in the mid to late '90's receiving certificates, but that could just be a lapse of memory. Back then, the HYPS institution with which I'm most familiar didn't care so much about undergrads. They certainly didn't all end up in high-powered Wall Street careers either, although many did. Perhaps the confidence-boosting has really been amped up, or were you an athlete or member of a frat/finals club with special connections?

[RandomMedStudent]

The personality of NYC is aggressive. It is the type of environment where Jews excel but Asians do not. In fact, the character of NYC is strongly influenced by its large Jewish population.

[ProleMadeGood]

@asdf

Oh no question that proles are being phased out in finance - that trend has accelerated since you started at JPM in the early 00s. What I meant was that the sheer number of junior-level positions that the credit boom created gave proles who didn't perfectly execute at every step at their elite college the opportunity to get in. Many of them may no longer be in finance, but the resume value of their time at an elite BB bank is still fairly high at F500s.

I never spent any time on a trading floor (did 2 years as ibanking analyst at a bulge bracket), but my understanding was what you mentioned - that alot of the sales guys were guys from Long Island with prole backgrounds that had hustle and determination. Not sure if that's still the case...

@Kennedy Morgan Ellington

Coming from an upper-middle class (by income) yet still prole-mentality area on the west coast was definitely to my advantage when applying to HYP. They rarely get applications from my area, so the competition was alot less intense than say some kid from Brookline, MA would face.

My group of friends from HS all scored 1300+ on the SATs. I actually wasn't the highest scorer - the guy who scored the highest won a full scholarship to the flagship state university and was admitted to their honors program. Like I said earlier in the thread, I was just a bit more status-conscious and ambitious than my buddies at the time - they were comfortable with state U. at varying levels of scholarships/perks, and I wanted more. None of them put in applications to elite universities. I did the usual things good prole nerd HS students do - debate, community service, sports (cross country), studied for a few weeks for the SATs (no tutor, just the Princeton Review book and some coffee), asked my teachers for recommendations and that was it. There isn't this pressure-cooker mentality around college in UMC white families on the west coast that you read about with kids from major metros. You just "get your application in" and then head off after you graduate HS.

I worked all through HS, during school, and every summer while in university. HYP committed to meeting all demonstrable financial need with grants (not loans) my senior year, but even before that my EFC was something like 15-18k - parents covered 7 or 8 and I covered the rest. Finance internships back then typically paid 50 or 60k pro-rated for the summer (10 weeks), so I graduated without any loans, and had enough money to take a few fun trips while in school.

@Just Speculating

Yeah, I don't see too many Asian males around here either. What research are you referring to? Got a link for me? Genuinely curious about it - I've come to my conclusions just by observing what's happened to people I know, but it would be nice to have some solid data to back up my conjecture.

@nebbish

I don't know if the certificate thing was new when I got it - then again I started after you (2002). I wasn't a member of any elite organizations while at school, nor did I play a sport. I know its tough to believe, but you really could be a nobody and wind up on the elite finance track back then. Now, not so much.

[RandomMedStudent]

Undergraduate schools with "bro" type atmosphere produce graduates with bigger paychecks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/theory-bros-make-the-most-money-2010-7

[asdf]

ProleMadeGood,

Your background sounds like you were a borderline admit. I think your right about your geography helping. I grew up in NYC area and what you describe would have been laughed at by most of my peers.

I would also advise against taking an HS definition of prole. If you weren't upper middle class you might not have made it. When I think prole I think like my 17 year old nephew that grew up with my white trash half brother. He lives in a white trash neighborhood where only 10% of kids are going to any kind of college and his father vomits from over drinking all the time. We flew him out here just this last weekend to show him another way of life and get his SAT/college admissions on track (the standardized tests show he has the raw IQ for college). A kid like him might have gone to a much better school if he had an environment more like yours. Now we are trying to get him set up somewhere where he can get some cheap credits and apply for a good transfer.

[Twain]

"It is completely unfair to blame his parents and suggest they are negligent and somehow caused this. It is troubling that some people at this blog appear to know so little about mental illness that they would start pointing fingers at the parents."

Has a biological cause of mental illness ever been proven?