Who paid $6.5 Million to get their kid into an elite school?

Captain Rhett Butler

Captain Rhett Butler

Driving Instructor
My son studied hard, got accepted into college and graduated with an engineering degree. We didn't have to bribe anyone, he just had to study harder than the next guy. That makes a huge difference. Gee there's an idea...study hard, get rewarded. He graduated from Southern Polytechnic State University (prior to the KSU merger).
Hard work pays off.



https://news.yahoo.com/parent-paid-6-5-million-030408486.html
 
I had co-workers when I was at Nortel that worked their butts off and gave up almost all the rewards of their job to send both their kids to MIT. I never saw the point. Yes, you might get a slightly higher paying job with "MIT" on the resume, but I seriously doubt the education will be much better than you could get from any good engineering school *if* you apply yourself to it. If you don't apply yourself, you are not getting much from it wherever you are. At least my co-worker's kid qualified to get in there on their own.

I think these other parents didn't pay 6.5 million for their kid to get into those schools for the kids sake, 'cause the odds are if they didn't qualify normally, they were not going to survive the school anyway. The parents paid that money to so *they* could say "My Kids going to xxx". Pride. There is a reason it's a deadly sin...

Tell your son "Hi" from another Southern Tech Grad (1987). Well, the diploma says "Southern College of Technology" (The fighting Scotties?) but it will always be Southern Tech to me. I've been happy with what I could do with the degree.

I had always planned on going to Southern Tech as my dad taught there and told me the difference between the two schools was Ga Tech taught theory and Southern Tech taught practical use of engineering. I wanted to be able to *use* my degree when I got out and wasn't interested in research. However the pressure to go to a big name school is out there. One of my early girlfriend's father told me when I was in high school that going to Southern Tech would cost me in salary. My first manager was a engineering school bigot. He wouldn't even look at a resume that didn't have Ga Tech, Alabama, Clemson, or some other major engineering school on it. I only got into the team because I was hired on in the proposals group and worked with his team closely and he saw I knew my stuff. But I am still glad I did it anyway as I could live at home and pay as I went to Southern Tech.

So now 30<mumble,mumble> years later I'm still a SysEng, working with customers to standardize on our absolute state of the art communications equipment. (We just announced a 400 Gigabit per second per channel DWDM product that can cross the US without regeneration) Yea, I might have made more money in some stuffy R&D lab somewhere or moving into sales or management as my co-workers did, but I seriously doubt that I'd be as happy as I am now. I'm doing what I always wanted since I was kid. I'm still learning something new on almost every project I work on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have the R&D types who enjoy the lab and create the toys I get to play with. I just don't want to be them. I'm very happy where I am.

I hope your son has success as well.
 
My son has gotten to travel all over the country with his degree. He's been to California, New York, Boston, and umpteen places in between. His company is a sub-contractor for Siemens and he's currently diagramming/wiring control panels for a water treatment facility in New York. When this contract plays out, he may be at a factory in Ohio or an Airport in Nevada or a power generation plant somewhere across the globe. He's still single, so he pretty much travels from place to place and he's loving it. My wife always told him to reach for the stars and since he's left Paulding County, he doesn't seem to be looking back.
 
Yep, my daughter got into college on her own. I just paid the bills.

She did very well at Coca-Cola and they offered her a promotion to director after just 2 years that would have started at well into the 6 figure mark, but she declined it so she raise her kid (now two kids), and I respect her decision.
 
Captain Rhett Butler said:
My son has gotten to travel all over the country with his degree. He's been to California, New York, Boston, and umpteen places in between. His company is a sub-contractor for Siemens and he's currently diagramming/wiring control panels for a water treatment facility in New York. When this contract plays out, he may be at a factory in Ohio or an Airport in Nevada or a power generation plant somewhere across the globe. He's still single, so he pretty much travels from place to place and he's loving it. My wife always told him to reach for the stars and since he's left Paulding County, he doesn't seem to be looking back.
Click to expand...

Yep, even married, I've enjoyed being able to see different places and scope them out for family trips. Between work and personal travel, I've touched down in all the states except four: West Virginia, North Dakota, Vermont and Maine. I've been five of the 12 Canadian Prov. It's been a blast!

We had several single guys in our team that were road warriors. They'd rather be on the road exploring than in the office. That's the time to see all you can.
 
I enlisted in the Army to get the GI Bill. I used it to get my Bachelor's and then used the Post 9/11 GI Bill to get my MBA. People can go to college if they want to and not have to take out student loans, nor have their parents bribe admissions people to get into an upper crust college. The parents who spend money on bribes to get their kids into a "good" school teach their children nothing when it comes to responsibility. Instead, they should have taught their kids they have the responsibility to work hard in high school to get accepted in those schools.
 
Boss 302 said:
I enlisted in the Army to get the GI Bill. I used it to get my Bachelor's and then used the Post 9/11 GI Bill to get my MBA. People can go to college if they want to and not have to take out student loans, nor have their parents bribe admissions people to get into an upper crust college. The parents who spend money on bribes to get their kids into a "good" school teach their children nothing when it comes to responsibility. Instead, they should have taught their kids they have the responsibility to work hard in high school to get accepted in those schools.
Click to expand...
I went to school with a lot of folks who were on the GI Bill. Of course Vietnam was still going on so very few achieved their status voluntarily, but it helped a lot of those boys get on with their lives. Much respect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top