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Comment by whyenot | Hacker News Reader

I'm a little curious where your data comes from, because:

"The median family income for Harvard undergraduates is $168,800—more than three times the national median, according to a recent study."

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-...

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Oh shit. You’re right. I googled “Harvard demographics” and got a nice chart from US department of education. I just looked at it again, and it looks like it’s data for _all_ students in the U.S. Sorry to the OP. I was wrong. I’ll edit my posts in a minute.

Also check out the portion of white students who are legacy admits.

There is the non-elite "meritocracy" and elite finishing school, side by side. Which are the suckers propping up the other? You tell me.

> the portion of white students who are legacy admits

I’m curious to learn more about this. Do you have a good source for this data?

https://qz.com/1713033/at-harvard-43-percent-of-white-studen...

Isn't that practically poverty level on HN? That's like one person making $100K and a spouse making $68K. Don't entry level SWEs make as much by themselves these days? Plus stock options. And ping pong tables.

In SF, maybe. In most places, hardly. And keep in mind that entry level SWEs usually don't have kids that are at the age of heading off to Harvard, so they'd earn that income for a decade or two. That would probably put them somewhere in the range of the average income with their dividends alone.

You seem to start with a tone of disagreement about something, but overall seem to be agreeing with what I said, that in context, around here, $168K is not very much, especially when it, on average, would be more than one earner.

Why do you tell me to "keep in mind" essentially the very point I was making?

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