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Comment by hexis | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the federal government of the United States has always attached conditions to federal funding.

> Yes, the federal government of the United States has always attached conditions to federal funding.

Sure, but that's a very high level of abstraction.

At a lower level, it is far less common (if precedented at all) for the federal executive to attempt to unilaterally impose conditions that violate the Federal Constitution and would require those subject to the conditions to violate federal civil rights law.

Not like this, no, and it has never shaken down schools like it has at Columbia or Harvard.

As much as I despise these institutions and their undergrads this does nothing to punish them and everything to increase the power of this current corrupt executive.

Why specifically the undergrads?

They hate the rest of us that didn’t get into elite schools and are permanent members of the upper caste of this country. Graduate school admission is more purely meritocratic on if you can do research but even that isn’t great.

Is this like a humiliation fetish at this point? This is seriously unhealthy. We don't hate our friends that didn't a go to an eLiTe school because we're not sociopaths. Not sure why I'm even trying since you seem pretty dead set on this, but it's just a lot easier to go through life without made up enemies.

People that go to elite undergrads think the rest of us are a lower inferior caste. I don’t know how that’s even something you can deny. You’ve clearly expended a lot of effort to segregate yourself from the likes of people like me or people that go to SJSU because we don’t have “merit” or “potential”

I can deny it because it's obvious bullshit lol. I don't think that way and neither does anybody I know from MIT think that way. This is reality versus your imagination. If there's anyone I look down on it's my classmates who could've worked anywhere and still went to palantir...

I can't claim 100% aren't assholes, but the vast majority realize the luck and arbitrary nature of it. Are you going to be stuck in decision day sadness mode for the rest of your life? Life is too short

I've asked people at MIT this repeatedly. They all say they came to MIT for the peer group. Peer group = people that are not _like me_. They shut up quick when I challenge them on that point though, or ask what the difference between them and me is. Even the non-assholes sometimes genuinely don't realize there's an entire parallel world beneath them with zero privilege or respect that made $150k out of undergrad instead of $500k.

I am nearly sure that you are not arguing in good faith, but just the fact that you think all elite school grads make $500k shows that you have not talked to a nearly representative sample. I went to an elite school and have friends that make much less even than $150k. Are you aware that there is an entire parallel world beneath you with zero privilege or respect that make $40k instead of $150k?

I’m not sure why you think anyone is targeting you specifically. The vast majority of students at elite schools, in my experience, know that we got lucky in addition to all the other things that we did well to get admitted.

A couple people in this thread now have told you that they don’t match your description of “every” and “all” graduates of elite schools, and the nice thing about using such strong descriptors is that a single counterexample disproves them.

> I went to an elite school and have friends that make much less even than $150k.

They're doing so by choice to do PhDs or go into public service. They (as in, the ones in quantitative majors and many even outside of it) _also_ had the choice to make several multiples of what I made by working at Jane Street or HRT or Citadel or now OpenAI and Anthropic.

I didn't have the choice. Nobody is selecting me for anything, I don't have the optionality of doing just anything. I took the best offer I got at a company that most elite school students would consider to be beneath them (Amazon).

Anyways, I'd also bet you make multiples of what I make now too as someone with a higher level if you're an SWE or adjacent.

You are simply wrong. Mechanical engineering majors, as an example of the most common non-CS major, don’t have any such high-paying opportunities until at least after a PhD (and even then they are lower than you are saying). Many make less than $100k out of college. Even CS majors have a hard time getting an interview at those top-paying companies.

Wait, are you saying Course 6 is still the most common major? And thus still has the most direct path to making $500k a year out of undergrad?

Of course, MechE's frequently also work at these companies or in finance too...

I'm just trying to shatter the illusion. Stop wrecking your mental health because you can't hang with the IMO kids. Many of these people are, unsurprisingly, very insular unless you want to talk about math and TC all day. Sounds really fun. The red pill is to be happy you're already making a fuckton of money for typing shit into a computer and make some friends in pottery class

> because you can't hang with the IMO kids

Maybe that's true. I'm sympathetic to the fact that these people aren't even interesting enough to be around. But then I see articles like this [0] sympathizing (?) with elite students that don't end up going into public service while still canonizing them and then I fall back into depression

[0] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/elite-ivy-leagu...

This is not a productive point to make in this thread.

Is it? Seems like the elite schools probably should be knocked down a few pegs but the state schools shouldn't.

isn't it? isn't this why we're at this place. Let's not not get caught up in facile pretexts. 'those coastal elitists' haven't thrown enough bones to the rest of the country, and they feel resentful for being marginalized. so we send troops into the city and harass the universities and break up with the europeans to 'fix' the situation, just like we fixed the California fires by venting freshwater into the ocean.

Have you ever met undergrads from these schools? This as far from my experience as you could get.

Yes. I live in a city with two Ivy+ institutions and graduates from many more. They're all the same, except some are better at faking it than others.

And why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they think people like me are lazy and genetically predisposed to be stupid? I didn't make $500k out of undergrad. HRT or OpenAI isn't going to recruit me anytime soon. My net worth isn't $12m at 29, it's a tenth that.

Whenever I ask what the difference between them and their infinite success and potential is and people like me they never have an answer. They're always so confused.

> My net worth isn't $12m at 29, it's a tenth that

This honestly reads like you are just bragging about how successful you are. I think you know this, but if you made $150k at 22 and have a net worth of $1M at 29, you are far more monetarily successful than the vast, vast majority of the country. I’m pretty sure you are rage baiting, which doesn’t belong on HN, but if not you are seriously out of touch and not grateful enough for your luck or proud enough of the work you have put in to get there.

This is not bragging to literally anybody that went to an Ivy+ school for CS ~10 years ago. A $15m+ net worth is their standard for success. Hell, it's their standard for _average_.

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