Comment by parpfish
1 year ago
grad school is definitely a prestige move. not a 'get rich move', but def a prestige move. prestige is not just money.
for med or law school, there are very clear hierarchies about who's better than who and next steps in your career. you get money AND intellectual status.
but for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursuing abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever and not caring about financial success. it is very monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of their "calling".
... but as high-minded as these people are there is still a very clear hierarchy that lets you compare rank/compare yourself against your other recent grads so you can talk about who's doing well and who isn't even though none of them have money.
BUT grad school for CS and engineering is different because there's so much money and employability at the end of the rainbow. these aren't really a calling in the same way, and are closer to MBA degree becayse it's just a thing you do to get more money later. A comp sci PhD with a job in industry is lauded, but those folks don't understand the deep sense of failure that a non-CS PhD feels when they have to 'resort to' an industry job in the private sector
> for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursue abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever. it is very monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of their "calling".
These comments are oddly cynical.
The people I know who went to grad school did it because they enjoyed the academic world.
That's all. There was no flexing or bragging. Those who went in for the wrong reasons very rapidly learned that it wasn't for them and dropped out.
The mental human model that people are only what they consciously think about themselves is just wrong. Of course prestige matters, even if you were to pass a (functioning) lie detector test where you claim otherwise. You are so much more than your conscious thoughts. Your brain uses all information, and that includes the "meta" you know about things.
And...
> The people I know who went to grad school did it because they enjoyed the academic world.
What does that even mean? Where are your thoughts about the why? Why does their brain tell them those are good jobs? You have not even considered it, that sentence is meaningless in the context of your argument if you leave out such important parts. What makes things "attractive", or not, in the first place?
For some people external validation is not very important and they genuinely love and enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and have little interest in what others think of them.
Sure everyone requires some degree of external validation and there is a hierarchy in every group but all is not vanity.
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I think both can be true. The majority of people I knew who went to grad school genuinely liked academic life so it’s natural they want to continue it.
But we are also social creatures that value status. That’s also why many people try to construe their academic careers while also enhancing their open prestige, whether that’s defined by the institution they attend, the advisor they have, the grants/thesis they pursue or any number of dimensions. To pretend someone isn’t motivated by status denies a very human quality.
Will Storr writes about this status seeking across three domains: dominance, success, and virtue. I bet if you look, most people who choose grad school value status in one of those domains. Maybe their identity is in being the smartest person in the room (dominance), or supremely competent in their field (success), or following a thesis because of what it contributes to humanity (virtue). Whatever the reason, prestige is still part of the equation.
The weird thing for me is the number of times the word "prestige" turned up in this thread. I don't remember once hearing this word used 25 years ago in high school / college / job pipeline in my friends circle. And some did go onto Ivies, FAANG, HF partners in 20s & retired by 30s, etc.
But it's unmissable how much it is drilled into kids heads now. On some of the job forums I frequent, every other week some kid is asking about "the most prestigious [college / degree / masters program / banking job / bank / team within bank / type of fund / specific fund / specific team within fund].
What's crazy to me is these kids are targeting such a narrow narrow funnel they might as well be asking about "how do I become a quarterback for a team that has won a Super Bowl in last 3 years". Like good luck kid, 1 of those seats opens up per decade (if at all), and theres 100 of you asking about it every week.
To me the whole point of a good college education is that there are thousands to millions of jobs in the field to go after. Why on earth would you fixate on a role that is basically 1-in-a-million?
Part of it is clearly the mentality of kids who have been "on the tracks" since their teens, and having made it thru a 99% rejection college admissions process think they can make into this seats. Which is mathematically literate since even limiting just to Ivys there are 1000-10,000s of you looking for finance jobs each year. So the 1-seat-per-decade fever dream is like a 99.99% to 99.999% rejection rate.
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