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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

I attended an "elite" boys school back in the 1990s. It was a doctor and lawyer factory. Everyone went to university and most got advanced degrees. But I talked to a teacher there recently. The students are now so wealthy that they are hard to motivate. Doctors have to touch sick people. Lawyers have to go work in an office. The students at my old school today don't dream of success. They all pass, they all do well, but they aren't performing like they used to. They know they will all go work for daddy's real estate/banking firm. Why bother even trying?

My old school is now no longer the top in the country, slipping to 4th last time I looked. The student body is smart, but simply doesn't try as hard at anything anymore. I don't blame them.

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Doctors and lawyers aren’t elite though. They are solidly middle class.

In SF/NYC/LA, maybe. In any city with less than a million people, they are much more frequently upper-middle to upper class.

Additionally, despite often being mentioned in the same breath/status, doctors and lawyers follow very different distributions of compensation. Attorney pay is shockingly bimodal: the ambulance chaser firm advertising on the back of the city bus is paying first-year associates <60k, if that, then there’s a huge gap, and then more prestigious law firms can offer 200k+, even in cities like Nashville, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, etc.

A while back I was curious to see what the 10 most expensive houses in my bay area (east bay) city were. They were all up on the hills of course. With some more search I found out the owners and what they do and 9 out of 10 were doctors and one was a CEO of a company.

although genuine, this analysis is sort of 2D cutout characterization, which feeds class stereotypes in another way.. "When I was in school, I had to walk 2 miles every day, uphill both ways! .. you people are less motivated" sort of applies

Modern life has the number of human signals daily, increased to stratospheric levels.. this is new, very new. It is not clear how intelligent, social people are changing under this communications environment.

other points omitted for the sake of brevity, but not the whole story here..

The fact that an experience is stereotypical doesn't meant it is also inaccurate.

Students today do not have it easier. They are working less hard at school because they need to work harder in other areas. Grades don't matter. Everyone gets strait-As so as long as you meat that standard there is little point in trying harder. Even Going to a good school matters less and less. The things kids have to do today are very different than I faced. For me, grades were enough. For today's kids grades are only the starting point. For instance, social media presence is now very important. I never had to deal with that when I was applying to universities.

> For today's kids grades are only the starting point. For instance, social media presence is now very important.

Care to elaborate on this?

“I was speechless when a school official asked me about all the clubbing and party pictures I posted on my Facebook Account. In hindsight, I think I got rejected from that school because they might have thought I will do the same once I join school."

https://ischoolconnect.com/blog/effect-of-social-media-on-co...

"According to a 2017 survey administered by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, 11% of respondents said they "denied admission based on social media content" and another 7% rescinded offers for the same reason."

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019...

"According to the 364 colleges across the United States we recently spoke with, 25 percent tell us that they have visited an applicant’s social media page, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to learn more about them*."

https://www.kaptest.com/study/pre-college/college-admission-...

Perhaps bank accounts, transactions, credit reports, grades, should be public information, physical measurements, medical history, etc should be public information.

That way we, we do not have to play these signaling games and can focus resources elsewhere.

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