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Actually, most of the people in those positions tend to be well educated and studious. This tends to not be popular in high school.

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you haven't spent much time with wall street types, have you? It's a lot of alpha-male, machismo, 'let's drink beers and tell dirty jokes' - which, in my experience, is pretty much in line with being "cool" as an adolescent. Your implication that being well-educated and popular are mutually exclusive is just plain false, at least where I grew up...

I have spent a lot of time with them, actually, given that Northwestern's most popular major is economics. I'm also in a frat and enjoy drinking beer and telling dirty jokes with many of my finance-oriented brothers. Of course, when the rubber meets the road and they have a statistics test the next day, they're not out partying, they're studying all night with a big cup of coffee.

I would say that this kind of popularity is less common in high school, though. Simply the fact that you care about school and study is likely to put you into a separate group. College, however, is a different story.

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