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Comment by ljf | Hacker News Reader

I know exactly what you mean- but is it easy for a kid to make a change? I fell in with certain groups and left others as we either shared an affinity for things or had very different values. There were some groups or friends where I put up with differences as I really wanted to be part of the group, but there were many that just weren't open to me due to my interests and sensibilities. How much I could have changed those things which were already a construct of my upbringing, background, social conditioning etc. I do not know.

I guess what I am saying it, why did person X end up being friends with the booger eater and not the chess team?

I'll be interested to see how much I can shape the direction and range of my kids friends - but I doubt they'll listen ;)

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To the extent that one can affect it, I think it has more to do with selecting the entire friend pool, not picking individual friends (which obviously won't work).

The friend pool at Phillips Exeter's got a higher top-end of friend quality and a higher bottom-end, generally speaking, than your average public school—the best and worst likely cases for your kids' friend groups are both "better", probably—to pick an exaggerated example.

We do the same thing when we choose where to live for the public schools. It's largely about finding better likely friend group outcomes. "Better" kids are easier to teach and their families are more likely to push them academically, so a proxy for that is how "good" the school is (test scores, college readiness, reputation) but it's kinda sorta mostly about the kids with whom your kids will be hanging out 7-8 hours a day.

The worst case scenario for rich kids, regardless what they do, is so much better than the average scenario for "average to bad public school" kids that it makes no difference exactly if your friends play chess, golf, or, like the ones at my private school, mostly do drugs and buy stuff with their mother's credit card.

Kids at average to bad public schools never meet people who own investment properties, don't learn how to pitch ideas, and don't treat their bank and insurance companies with the careless veneer of superiority that convinces them that whatever has happened to you is merely bad luck, a challenge on the way of better things, versus proof of your moral and genetic worthiness. Kids at average public schools think they can fail, and not merely that the world can fail them. Kids at average public schools think it matters that they be good, and not merely surround themselves with people and circumstances that are good to them.

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